Shaun Newman Podcast - #255 - Danielle Smith

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Former leader of the Wildrose & now UCP nominee for Livingstone-Macleod. We discuss the Alberta First Initiative, medias transition away from traditional sources & Bitcoin. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. Hope everybody's week is cruising along. Before we get to today's guests, let's get to today's episode sponsors, Canadians for Truth. They are a nonprofit organization consisting of Canadians who believe in honest, integrity, and principal leadership and government as well as a Canadian

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Giveaway Gartner a call 780808. 50, 25, and if you're heading into any of these businesses, make sure you let them know you heard about it from the podcast, right? Now on that ram truck rundown brought to you by auto-clearing Jeep and RAM, the prairie's trusted source for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Fiat, and all things automotive for over 110 years. Originally from Calgary, Alberta. She graduated degrees in economics and English.

She was a leader of the Wild Rose Party from 2009 to 2014, and while the leader of the Wild Rose, she became the leader of the official opposition in 2012. former director of provincial affairs for Alberta with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. She's extensive experience in media, radio host with chorus entertainment for over six years, and writer for the Calgary Herald and served as a host on Global Sunday. Now she has her podcast tied with the Western Standard. I'm talking about Danielle Smith. So buckle up.

Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Danielle Smith on. It's lovely to have you back. We've been talking now for like 20 minutes. I'm like, why haven't we started recording? It's a bang. You just started recording.

And here we are. I should have just had a click. We've been talking about media, media in Western Canada in general. And I would say to you that most of us look to our neighboring country for what we find out in the news. Like tons of people watch Tucker Carlson and Fox. I listen to Joe Rogan. And that isn't for news. That's because he's the best of what he does.

Others listen to Lex Friedman. Others listen to CNN. BBC. Where's the Canadian stuff? Nobody trusts the CBC anymore. Why? Ottawa was a good starting point, but I mean, like, you go back further than that. You'll find things that everyone's like, that doesn't even make sense, right? Like the fact that our government is subsidizing them freaks everybody out, rightfully so. Our media, it's such a sad thing because I've been in and out of the mainstream media for a long time. My first stop in media was when I was at the Calrae Herald back in the 1990s. And it was a time when Conrad Black actually had just purchased the Southern Noon

Chain, news chain. And everyone was freaked out because, oh my gosh, Conrad Black, that arched right winger, what's he going to do to media? And I bet there's a lot of people in newspapers now that wish that they had somebody who loved that medium as much as Conrad Black did and still does, because look at him. He's continuing to write as a columnist in the National Post. But McLean's just went bankrupt, as I understand it. And you've got your total. Right. I mean, I like to try to get as much from the mainstream media as I can just to see how they cover things. But then I also will augment everything that I that I read about with the alternative media sources. And there's a few. I mean, Western Standard. I just launched a show today. I saw that. Congratulations. Thank you. You're bugging me about how you increase everything on a podcast, right? Because as the viewers know now, listeners know, I've gone full time. And that is a big leap of And I laughed because I'm like, well, tying on to the Western Standard would be a good start. Well, it's true because I had considered, I was really interested when Ryan Jesperson left mainstream media,

that he started up his own media enterprise. And it looks pretty slick. He's got television cameras and he's got some staff and he's got some producers. And he, for a time there, I don't know where he's at now. Maybe now that you're going to be chomping at his heels full time. He was the number one downloaded political podcast in Canada. And so I thought, wow, that's amazing that we're in an era now where you literally can just get a couple of cameras set up on Zoom or on Stream Yard or one of these other streaming services and talk to anybody around the world and broadcast on all of your social media platforms. It's remarkable to me that I'm not sure how the legacy media is going to exist 10 years from now with all of this infrastructure that they have to pay for.

it's expensive to run a mainstream radio or television shop. And the talent's leaving it, right? Because they're handcuffed. You know, the thing you have Ryan Jesperson being one, right, and yourself, right? Because you were the two sides of the coin on 630 Chad when I used to listen. And then they got rid of one or however that went down. And, you know, and then Jesperson's gone. It was a nice balancing act because I don't listen to Jesperson.

I would argue that a lot of my listenership doesn't listen to Jesper. But one of the things you two have over a guy like me immediately is you were on arguably the biggest talk radio show in Alberta. I mean, it would be right in the conversation. So right away, you step away, you have a big viewership. Like, I had to start from scratch. If anything, Danielle, everyone went, Sean Newman is going to do what now? That's stupid. I remember lots of people saying, well, it doesn't sound stupid.

stupid now. But at the time it did. Like, I mean, you go back to like my first, I don't know, 20 episodes, you're like, well, this is, this is going to be, we'll see where this goes, right? But I mean, like so many great things. I mean, you stick with it. You'll be surprised where it goes. You get better and better. That's the thing that's interesting to me is the number of people who have started without a name. And in some, in some ways, if you've been in the mainstream media, it becomes, it's a little bit harder to start up right from scratch. You guys have, because you have the radio brain. Listening to somebody who's gone from radio into a podcast is really interesting because

you have the radio style show on a podcast. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. What does that mean? What is the difference between a radio mindset versus a podcast mindset? Okay, so I sat down with you and I don't know. You might have a time frame for this. I don't. What I mean by that is,

is like this conversation. I'm going to let the conversation go wherever it is. I have questions, but honestly, I want it to be more natural than you. So it's going to go wherever we want it to go. But a lot of that's going to come off of the things you say, and I hope I'm going to pull some things out,

and I hope it's going to be interesting. When I listen to, I don't listen to Montreshey Gannum, but when I have recently, he brings somebody on for 10 minutes, and they've got to be quick. And there's nothing wrong with it. That's just a radio-style show.

There's a radio-style podcast. I'm just not into that. Joe Rogan doesn't worry about a 10-minute stretch. He goes for like four hours. Can I ask you about that? You're very right about that. It's one of the things that I'm just getting used to. Because over the last year and a half,

I did do a couple of additional podcasts, one with the Fraser Institute. And those ones tended to go to an hour and a half. I'm not sure why. That just seemed like the right amount of time for the conversation. And then I did ones that were more business-oriented. And those tended to only be about an hour. And I think my guests felt a little fatigued by the end of it.

But I don't even know how you go for three or four hours in a podcast. I kind of lose some steam when I'm listening to Joe Rogan. I kind of get to the hour two mark. Then I kind of take a break. That man's a machine. I would say this. I don't listen to every Joe Rogan podcast. I pick out the ones that I find interesting.

I find my listeners do the same thing, right? So for the people that are into Daniel Smith, they're going to listen to you if I go for seven hours. Then they're going to tell me it was way too long. Maybe, right? You never know where the conversation goes. For somebody who doesn't like sports and I have a sports guy on, which I haven't done in a little while, if I went an hour, 20 minutes or seven hours,

it's all too long for them. But if I get on Dan Bullford a couple weeks ago and we go for close to three hours, everybody loves it, listens to every last second of it. I'm the same way. When, when Joel gets on Dan Carlson or Neil deGrasse Tyson or men like that, or heck, different women that he's had on, like I soak up every ounce of it. Like, it's just, like, it's fascinating. And I like how in depth they go, Jordan Peterson's last almost four hours. And at times you're like, I wish he would talk longer. But the thing is, is like gauging, I don't know, and sometimes I'm great at this. Maybe I'm very poor at this. I don't know. Is gauging,

how interested you are as the person sitting in this chair, right? If I, if after an hour, I'm like, yeah, I probably could wrap it up. Then you wrap it up. But if the conversation's still flowing, I don't know. You just let it go. I've stopped worrying. Are you telling me that we're going to be sitting here talking for seven hours? I have, I have some things I need to do today. So I should have to clear my decks. No, I've never done anything. I think the longest I've ever done is three and a half hours. I, I purposely target about an hour and 20 minutes. I feel really good at an hour and 20. But if all of a sudden things come up and you keep going, why cut a conversation short? People, a good podcast is almost like an audio book in that you listen to

it and then you run out of time you have to go into the store or, you know, for me, I drove a lot in my previous career. So when I got to site, I'd turn it off. But then I had the ride home or I had dishes or I had laundry or I was here or there and you just flick it back on. You hop right back in like you're an audio book. And if it's really good conversation, I find myself, way more attracted to that than any piece of real quick hitters. That's just me. You're so right. And now you've sort of identified why it is that mainstream media personalities have a

hard time making that leap into podcasts. Because in the mainstream media, you have to make room for all the other stuff that needs to get shoved into a cast, right? So you've got your three to four to five minutes of news at the top. And then you've got a mid, a mid-half-hour break where you've got to pay the bills. so you do the commercial break. And then if you're doing drive home or drive in in the morning, then you've got a sports update and you've got a weather update.

So you've got, it's really kind of like a collaborative project in putting together a three-hour newscast. The idea of having to fill all of that time without having breaks, that's not something that radio and television personalities are really trained in. And so I think that's part of the reason why it's created this new group of experts who come up who are doing it an entirely different way. I'll argue this too. Every time you're on radio,

you want to reintroduce, oh, and I'm talking to Danielle Smith. And I'm talking, because if people are hopping on, then they've got to know who they're talking to. It's completely fair in a live show, right? Especially if it isn't like visual, so where they can just have a name pop up

so you don't have to keep saying. So on radio, you have to constantly reintroduce who your guest is. And for a listener on radio, it's fine. but it breaks up the conversation. And every time you cut out a piece of the conversation, the guest, and I'm speaking specifically to you right now, remember, oh, I'm on a show, right.

And oh, yeah, I got these other thoughts from one instead of my head. And I would argue that when you get going in a podcast, it's almost like I forget anyone else is there. I don't really care. This is for me talking to you. And they get to come along the ride for the conversation. And if I do a good enough job at it, They actually enjoy where I'm going with it.

I'll hear about it if they don't like it. But for me in the beginning, and even now, I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried about trying to keep it entertaining for the people listening. Because if they hate this conversation, there's nothing I can do to not get them to turn it off. They'll just fast forward through the boring bit, see if it gets more entertaining. But you've got it because what happens when you have to take that break is that you go and do a little bit of a bio break or you take some time to. look at texts or you take a little time to see if some email has come in. So you break the flow. You get out of the flow. And then you're thinking, what comes next? Or how do I wrap it up?

And so you're not in the moment of the conversation. But the one thing I do love about radio. And this is one thing you have over my podcast, hands down, is interaction with people. And that is what a text line is fantastic. That is what a live show is great about. Because now you can have people, because that's what I love about 630, Chad, when you, you'd open up the phones. and you'd be like, oh, let's see what people are going to grill you on. Because now you're, you know, that's a, that's a type of like jiu-jitsu almost or boxing that you can't prepare for. It's an favorite part. Yeah, well, it's fantastic, right?

Because now you don't know where the conversation's going to go because you're going to get questions from the whole spectrum. People that hate Danielle, people that love, and somewhere in the middle. And they're going to ask all these questions on the guests you have, right? There's a place for all of it. I love talk radio. I just would never be very good at it. Because I don't like sticking to a 10 minute script, right? Like, got to get these questions out.

And you're listening, but you're actually thinking about how the time's counting down. And you're like, I just like having, okay, everything's away. Let's have a conversation. And let's see where it goes. Because in my opinion, most solutions for really complex problems don't come out in a two-minute span. They come out after like really thinking about something for a really long time, arguing about it, breaking down things, throwing out ideas, running with it, coming back to the drawing board, right? Like, that's usually how things like kind of bubble up. And then eventually

you find something. And it usually came from that. I don't. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Well, now you have me worried that I'm structuring my, my shoulder wrong way because what I'm trying to do is do quick hits on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Because Dave Rubin does that. So Dave Rubin, I don't know if you've ever had a chance to interview him, but I adore him. He'd be he'd be one person to put on your on your notch. Well, we'll be talking about, yes, we'll be bugging you about Mr. Rubin after this. How's that? Okay, okay, good.

So what I love about Dave Rubin, though, is he's one of the very first walkaway candidates. So one of the sort of Democrat registered in the United States, grew up in the left, complete progressive. And then the progressive side of the party just got too woke for him. And so he's now, I don't even know if he's a registered Republican. I think he probably is still. more of an independent, but he finds, I think increasingly, that he's got more common cause with those on the conservative side of the movement. But what he did is he just did these little quick hits where

he do essentially a 30-minute monologue identifying three issues that he thought his listeners would want to weigh in on. And he also does his long-form interviews. So that's the style that I'm copying, because I kind of like both. I know that there's a lot of people who want my input on a bunch of political issues and you can there's just so many to deal with. And so I think I'm still in a bit of a radio mindset in saying, okay, let me try to deal with each of these in five or 10 or 15 minutes and then do the long form interview. Because I do enjoy that too, because I agree with you that it's remarkable as you're having the conversation. One thing that a person says leads to something else that you want to go down a bit of a rabbit trail and explore and then come back again. So I'm going to

try to do a bit of a hybrid. But you sound like most of yours are. are the dialogue. Do you ever do kind of a monologue? Do you ever get into a monologing mode and just tell people what you think? So I've done one monologue. It was right after I disappeared from Ottawa and didn't podcast for like five, six, seven days. And I had listeners very concerned. I had lots of people very concerned. So I did about a 29 minute update on where I was, just in my thought process of going silent from Ottawa and really digesting what I'd saw and everything else. But that's the only time. I would say if I go back on this entire conversation, I'd say, first off, you're getting my opinion, which is, that's how I really like.

I mean, if you're into, let's go with like Tim Poole or somebody like that who really, really fast, right? and multiple people. Anyways, you get the point. There's people that really love that. I just, I've, I've, I've struggled for a long time and how you can get an answer out in two minutes. Like, it's, it's impossible where I want deep, complex thoughts. I'm a guy that wants to hear people think out. And I really dislike when people take one sentence and then smear somebody on it. And I'm like, I really, and that is our mainstream meeting.

That's, that's that. So that's why I'm really. on too long form. But lots of people really like fast, right? So you asked if we do me and a buddy 222 minutes, who is a guy on Twitter, who's a political commentator, have started a little side project where that's exactly what it is. It's really fast. And there's going to be a ton of people who hear me say that right now live and they go, I haven't seen that yet. It's because it's kind of a little secret project to see if we even like it. Because normally it's a complete opposite of what I do. I like this. But come on. You're a hockey.

guy. You got to come up with those zingers, right? It's just part of, it's part of the culture. I've watched, I've watched Letterkenny. I've seen those hockey, those, uh, lot of the fun, the fun thing about fast is you're not worried about being like you're just, it's just like quick and it's funny and it's fun because the energy is really high. And it's a complete different conversation than what we're doing here. Well, it is. So where are you doing this? Are you doing it on Twitter? Are you doing it on one of the social media sites? So it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, this is a, this is, I'm not big, Daniel on releasing details of a, of a project until I know what's going to go. And what I mean by that is, is like, I think if you start something up, take the podcast for this, my wife really

struggle with us at the start. I'm going to do a podcast. Okay. And then I'm like, I'm going to release an episode every Wednesday. Okay. And then Tuesday night is your daughter's, whatever. and now you're going to the studio or wherever at 11 at night. And she goes, just leave it alone. I said, no, I said I'm going to do it. And that means I'm going to do it because people are expecting it, even if there's only five, even if there's only two, they're expecting it. And so I've been really hesitant to release anything on this little hidden project because

I don't even know what it is yet. Okay, so you're either going to have to tell us more about it and tell us where the link is or you're going to have to erase the last five minutes that we've just had. Or I can just create some anticipation. everyone's going, what, what is this? Tews is going to get hassled on Twitter about what is going on? What is this little hidden project? Already some people have figured out there's something going on.

They just, yeah, I'm good with it. I mean, it's like if tomorrow there was news that Christopher Nolan, a director I really enjoyed, Dark Night Trilogy and Dunkirk and things like that, Interstellar, he's working on a project. He's working on a project? Well, it's a project. I don't know. Oh, well, that's interesting. Building the anticipation.

I don't think you. You're also about marketing. Let me go back to this issue, though, of the short, the short little snappers. Because I think our attention span has really been reduced over the last 10 years because of things like Twitter. So why does Joe Rogan, why is Joe Rogan so successful? Well, this is what I want to explore with you because I'm trying to figure it out because my husband, he, whenever he has heard me do long form podcast, he says, who in the world is going to listen to an hour and a half of conversation? You can't understand it. And the reason is he comes from the television world.

So in the television world, 90 seconds is a long time to tell a story. And when you've got images and you put together a well-crafted story, it's very true. They can pack a lot of information into 90 seconds. And yet movies are longer than ever. Television series are becoming more well-funded and longer and more creative and everything else. And what do people do? Netflix, binge it. They sit down for long periods of time.

time. If you can create something compelling that people want to listen to, and I'm not saying that I'm an expert at that. I'm just okay at it. And if you get the right guest to come on, then people will gladly give you your time. I will gladly give you your time, right, or my time. My time is valuable. And Joe Rogan gets a good chunk of it. Why? Because he creates value there, like that I want to go to. I'm like, yeah, I want to go listen to this guy. Like, can you believe he got, I don't know who is who is one of the the greats lately I always come back to Jordan Peterson because I'd love to have him on here so let's put that by boat again Jordan Peterson wherever you're sitting like when he gets him on he gets him to open up on so many different

things that are just fascinating to hear a guy talk about and that's what's cool about he does now do I want to hear long form on I don't know ballet there's a lot of comedians I must tell you I have tried to watch this comedian or or or MMA, right? And I'm like, no, I'm not really that interested. That's a good, that's a good point. And that's how I structured mine. I hoped the problem I got into was I got down the rabbit hole of COVID because it

wouldn't go away. So what are you going to do? Stop talking about it when that's the only thing to talk about. Like how can you, in my brain, how can you literally talk about the oilers, which I want to do? But how can you do it when I can't literally go to an oil game? I can't get in restaurants. I can't do anything.

I can't leave my country. Oh, wait, I still can't leave my country. like we got to talk about that. And so I got down a rabbit hole, but I structured it after Joe Rogan, right? Adventure, history. I do want to go down that rabbit hole with you, but I want to close off. Who's interviewing you here? I do want to close off, though, by trying to figure out what have been the key technological

touchstones that have caused us to change direction. So I would have, I put forward to you that I thought it was the sort of the Twitter Facebook world that caused us to have this short attention span. maybe it's the fact that we did have Netflix and we were able to binge watch full series that sort of stretched our attention span and it initially applied to entertainment because you know what? I find movies too short now. I find like I can't get into the characters in only an hour and a half or two hours.

And in a way that I can when I get into a full series that I'm binge watching. And so I actually prefer television series. But TV was crap for so long. We couldn't watch anything on it. Go where the money goes, right? And there's a ton of money. being put into it right now. So could it be that Joe Rogan has actually extended our attention spend? Do you think he helped get us there with the longer attention spend on important issues?

Or do you think it was the environment that we're in that we got tired of the quick hits? And so he was the first to be able to really capitalize on that change. What came first? Well, one of the big issues we have right now is censorship. And we can see it more and more evident. anywhere you go. I'm not just talking social media platforms. I really mean like mainstream media. If you want to see something not talked about, they do a pretty bang-up job of just steering away from people, subjects, everything. And one of the things that Joe and others have done extremely well is talked about those things and got those people on. And the only way you can talk about a complex issue or something that's caused a lot of animosity is to allow a person to

explain themselves. And you can't, like, the evening news has a really hard time. Because I understand the constraints of evening news. And I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of good things that come out of it. But when you go into a complex issue, which it just seems like everything we do right now is so complex. It's almost impossible. So you rewind it back. Social media exposed that. Like really, really, like, it was very blatant. It still is. Like, if you say something silly on a television, television show. It gets clipped. It gets thrown on social media. It explodes. Exactly. And then, oh, well, how have you avoided the cancellation that comes from giving a platform to those who have views that's called it outside the mainstream? Because that was, I must admit, I mean, I feel like

I stepped out of media just when that voice was so necessary. But I think for me, it was there was no way to get that message out on the mainstream. It was such a great frustration for me that I felt like I would personally be compromised if I had to stay on mainstream media, but couldn't cover the full range of issues. And it's been remarkable to me to watch, as I kind of sat on the sidelines, how people like you and others were able to take that up and give that platform. But it's still, it's still perilous. A lot of those doctors that you've given a platform to are still facing regulatory reviews by their colleges, may have their licenses pulled, may not be able to practice again. There is still this internet bill coming through where they want to

regulate these kinds of platforms the same way that they regulate radio and television, which would basically classify in an emergency, anything that isn't official government propaganda as misinformation. And so I'm just wondering, are you feeling like the walls are closing in at all or maybe you're, maybe you're cancel proof then. Are you a unicorn? It's very rare to find somebody who's canceled for these things. Well, I mean, I've been removed off YouTube, right?

So my entire channel got removed off YouTube. It's funny, though, all the listeners are like, well, it's a badger honor, right? You're doing something right. And I'm like, I don't know, right? Like, that really sucked because my YouTube was just getting to the point of where it was going to start doing something for me. And then they wiped it out, all off in our interview with Chris Barber. And I would argue the interview was, was harmless.

But like, listen, for the last eight months, almost closing in on a year now, Danielle, everything I put out has like misinformation on it. And I'm just like, but like you can literally go on Facebook, look at anything and it's got miss. It's like so overused now. Everything's misinformation. It's like, well, whatever. Why doesn't that impact you though? I mean, maybe I was taking it to, maybe I was being too sensitive.

But I'm really, I almost, I guess the way I look at it is that I worried about being canceled. So I canceled myself. I took myself out of those two, out of those forums. I'm not, I'm not really on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. I've decided to live on my, with my newsletter, which is a subscriber newsletter. So people would would go and if they want to hear what I have to say, they actually have to sign up for it. And when I have people beaking me saying that they didn't like something I wrote, I said, oh, well, exercise your right to not listening to me anymore and unsubscribe.

Because that's how I think the world should work, is that a person should be free to say what they want to say. And if you don't like what they had to say, you can decide to tune out on them. But for me, there's, I wonder about the long-term consequences from a career point of view of getting tagged as misinformation on the social media platforms. Or are we at a point now where, as you say, it's so overused. there aren't going to be consequences. Does that not trouble you at all? What troubles me more is if we don't, if we all censor ourselves, right? Like, so I've been, listen, I could sit here and say I don't have fears or that some of it doesn't trouble me,

but what troubles me more is if I don't continue doing what I'm doing. And I'm not meaning that I'm God's gift to Canada. I don't mean that. I just mean that there's very few people doing in Canada, I believe, what I'm doing, which is talking openly, allowing certain people to have some voice, which I think is very needed. And what comes with that risk, yeah, like one of the things I shut myself down in Ottawa for is that was a really hard choice, right? Like half the people I interviewed went to jail or are, you know, went to jail, got out on bail, are facing a stack of things. that, you know, and I had to sit there and like think about that. So that's, listen, there isn't risk in what, what comes to that. I think I'd be really naive and dumb to say something like that.

I think for most people, though, we have to understand, like, if we don't start talking about things, things aren't going to get better. They're going to get worse. And so what I'm trying to do better now is I would love to have on Ryan Jasperson and see what his thoughts are. Not because I think I'll agree with everything. I'm certain I will not. But I am horrendous at discussion and like having a disagreement. Not that I won't listen to somebody, but I have a trouble getting my point across. It's something that is a skill and I don't do it enough. And so I can't expect to be like amazing when I first do it. It's something that's just like we were talking about before we started recording. I want to interview a ton of people. Why? Because I want to get better. I think there's something to be said about being able to talk and think out your thoughts and and get

convey that that is a lost skill i mean geez we just had two years where they told you not to talk to anyone don't go around anybody what do you what did that do to everybody not not good and so when i come back to this cancel thing it's like i grew up in an area of canada that has been labeled redneck or whatever else and as a kid or as an young adult i remember thinking i don't know I don't even know what the thoughts are. COVID hit, and I've never been more proud to be from this area because we have a lot of independent thinkers. And independent thinkers, look at things critically, here's things they don't like, still will listen to it, still will gladly have discussions with you. I'd be lying if I didn't say, I don't have my few scars and scrapes. I certainly do.

I post my phone number on every episode, and I let people give me blast me. It's fine. Do they want to express their emotion? Fine. But I still get to have a show. Danielle still gets to have a show. I'm not going to let, and I don't think we should let any group of people tell you you can't think things and say things. No, that's not how we got here in the first place. Actually, the reason why we're in such trouble is that we keep trying to censor everything.

And that is just dangerous. I don't know. What did you think of Donald Trump getting removed from Twitter? Let's go back to a guy that was very controversial. Sure, it was controversial, but he made the Twitter medium what it was because look how many followers he had. This is the thing that bothered me about the social media and why I decided to take a different track when I established my newsletter and went on locals is I thought, I read someone who had written a column or maybe it was a goodbye post on Facebook saying, okay, so I have helped you build your profile, build your audience, you have all their data and now you're canceling me. That's kind of how I with anyone who's been canceled off YouTube or Twitter or Facebook is it's predatory. You've got these big tech companies that are using these profiles and using people who have some public presence and then basically free riding on them to build their own database of eyeballs that they then

sell to advertisers and then they just toss them out when there's a slightest bit of controversy. And this is what I'm not sure that we've gotten over yet, though, is that there is such a narrowing of public discourse. There's just, there's the lines of what is now seen to be outside the norm or outside the mainstream or beyond the bounds has become, the, the bounds have become so narrow that it's perilous to try to, to try to have these kinds of conversations. Now, how do you take that over? Because this is my other challenge, because I want to get back into politics. How do you continue to have these kinds of real conversations knowing that somebody might be listening to grab a little clip that they can then spin out on Twitter to make you look like you're some kind of lunatic? And that I think is the real problem that we have is that we're not going to change the political culture until the big P politics is able to change.

And I think Donald Trump is an example of that, that he was so offensive to the mainstream. wokeism that it was they literally wanted to ban him from the public sphere as opposed to what you should have happened is anytime you disagree with somebody from a political point of view pick their argument apart say well he's wrong here here here here and here and here's why and you actually engage in it that's how it should occur and i'm worried now i think a lot of people were thinking that Donald Trump might pave the way for others to have a more honest and robust discussion in the public square. I worry that it's been such a backlash, that there's been a reversal, that we're now in a position where we have fewer and fewer things that you're allowed to state in the public square.

Do you share my fear or do you see something that I'm not seeing? Well, so Donald Trump, when he got removed, I had, as you know, I got three older brothers. I had arguments with my brothers over it. I thought it was warranted. I was like, guys, the president, saying crazy things on Twitter. Interesting. And I would go back and tell that, Sean, you don't understand what you're agreeing to. And well, okay, well, then tell me what did you agree to at the time? Why did you agree at the time that he should go?

Because it is a remarkable thing that the president of the United States would be deep platformed. I mean, just think of it in our own context. What if Pierre Pahliav, who's saying some pretty challenging things right now? What if Pierre Pahliav is somebody that Twitter decided was spreading misinterpreted, misinformation or was a authoritarian populist as one of the pollsters is trying to call them. They're using all the same language that they always used to try to discredit conservatives. What would you do if Twitter stepped in and said, okay, well, there's been such a backlash in the community that now we've got to get rid of this guy too. That's what I worry about. Well, I'm a product of

my own thought, right? I think you should pull Donald Trump. Why? Because I think he's in a position of power and he's abusing it. Fast forward and I've been removed from YouTube and I went, it was the door opening the censorship and it was probably cracked well before Donald Trump. Donald Trump was just on such a large scale

and now you see the people that are moving from Twitter and I'm like this is getting out of hand. The problem is once that door is open how do you close it up? Can Elon Musk buy Twitter and close that door and bring back on Donald Trump and everybody else? I have

no idea. But it's an interesting thought. So my thought back then, you know, wasn't well thought out. And I, and then, you know, if you go back through the podcast, I bet you I have a lot of thoughts that aren't well thought out. I'll have more thoughts from this point onwards that aren't well thought out. I've become a product of like people trying to censor what you do. And why? Because you talk differently. You have different thoughts. You know, at one point, I interviewed everyone. I interviewed Eric Payne and you got to meet Eric Payne. Eric Payne is a highly decorated doctor who said children shouldn't be vaccinated. And then others had doctors on pediatricians who said they should. Why is their argument pushed over here and is so right and I'm taken and pushed all the way down here?

It's the one glaring one I have where I'm just like, I don't understand. There are two people arguing kids should and shouldn't be vaccinated. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a moral dilemma that's been for years upon years. This isn't COVID-19. That was the newest version, but that's been going on for here or forever. And what we've done is we've started to censor one side, so all you hear is one.

And it's like that's what's eroding trust. That's what's eroding everything is like when you push a narrative so hard and discount everything on the other side, well, everybody can see that. Even if they, like, even if they're blind, yeah, sure, go blindly follow that. But we're not allowing the other side to talk.

And as soon as that happened, We're in for bad days ahead because it's got to find this lovely word, Daniel. It's called balance. I'm not saying I'm right on everything. I'm sure they're not saying I'm wrong on everything. But somewhere there's a balance. Somewhere there's a middle that people just want to, you know, like this travel bad. For the life of me, I can't figure it out.

It's like every conspiracy theorist is going to have, this is what they're going to do next, lockstep, and they could be right. I'm not discounting that. But if you're sitting in the government right now, looking at this, federal travel way. You go, okay, so why are we stopping unvaccinated? Because they can spread it. Well, everybody can spread it. Well, they can get it. Everybody can get it. They can get it worse. Can they get it worse? Right. Can they? Oh, wait, you need how many boosters now to be protected? Like, at what point are we just going to throw the thing out? And it's one thing about politics that I really have a hard time with is you can't admit when you're wrong.

And I'm like, so when does that always been the way you've been in politics? Why is that? It's, well, let me see if it's always been that way. First, I'd say about Donald Trump is that I think that was the real problem is that if you have granted a tech company, the power to cancel the president of the United States, then they can cancel anybody. And that's what now you're experiencing, right? Is now they're getting to, they're taking the position that if this is the bar that justifies cancellation, anybody who meets that bar can be canceled. And that's the reason why we have so many people who've been punted off these different platforms. So how do you reverse that? It's a good question. You know what I've discovered is that it seems to me that our political

leaders think that we're all a bunch of morons. They think that they can't have a nuanced discussion. Otherwise, and they have to speak in very short, direct sentences and not confuse the message. Otherwise, people are going to do terrible things. So I think, think what happened initially was that when I when I when I when I when I when I go back and reflect on why we couldn't have a conversation for instance about hydroxychloroquine is ethyromycin and zinc. It's because there was one story of one guy who went and looked at his fish tank cleaner and saw that it had a part of the same word as hydroxychloroquine and drank it and died. And so you get the impression that the governments think that all of us are going

going to go to the fish tank and grab the cleaning product and drink it and we're all going to die and that we can't tell the difference between a medication given to us by a doctor and and fish cleaner. And I think that's the real problem that we have. Same with natural immunity, which is one of the things that really bothers me. I've talked to many people who haven't been vaccinated because they've had Omicron or they've had Delta or they've had both and they've tested at a very high level of antibodies, higher than me. And I have been vaccinated. And I have been vaccinated. But the government takes the view that because there was one guy in one place in Alberta who attended a COVID party and to get to get natural immunity and then got very sick and hospitalized. Therefore, if you recognize natural immunity, everybody's going to go out and try to get and try to get sick and some people are going to die.

It's almost as if they don't believe that the vast majority of us have any capability of thinking through nuance. You, you once upon a time with the wilderose, right? Leader of the official opposition, that was about a decade ago, correct? Yeah, it was actually. Okay. So here's a question for you then. In my eyes, more of us are paying attention. And I think you might be on to something that 10 years ago,

you could have got away with some of the stuff that was going on and didn't have to worry about the population caring because I don't think the population really cared. I could be wrong. I was younger. And I have to admit, I was. just coming back to Canada. And I wasn't married and I didn't have kids. And I,

you know, I find a lot of people would never have had time for politics five years ago, let alone now, like 10 years ago, the further you go back, I think the less.

And I know there's a ton of people who love politics. But I mean, I started this podcast as about hockey. As you can still see on my wall, I still have the jerseys. Someday I will hopefully be back to some, some interesting hockey stories.

But I find, right now, very time sensitive, critical, that we talk about some things that are meaningful and get people up to speed. And I think that's changed. Now, that is a younger guy's perception of it. You were in politics. Now you're coming back into it again. Do you think the same change is there? Or am I just seeing what I want to see? You know what it is. This is part of the reason why I think politicians do have a bit of a 10-year shelf life is because all those kids who come of age and are able to vote at age 18, years on by the time of 28, that's when they really start getting interested in politics because they've gotten married and maybe they tried to buy a house and they're still paying off their student

loan payments. Maybe they've got a couple of kids who are planning for it. And that's when things start, they start really paying attention to how the politicians are playing with their lives. And they judge the ones who are in power at the time and say, is this what I really want? Because that's what I think is fundamentally the problem with how politicians are looking at this freedom movement right now. They're mischaracterizing who all those folks are. I've been astonished to see how many in particular young women, young moms are at these events. And it's exactly as you describe.

Everybody was just out minding their own business, having kids and taking them to hockey and rolling them in band and volunteering at the school and seeing mom and dad on Sundays and maybe going camping or going across the border to Montana. and then everything got interfered with. Every single aspect of their life got turned upside down and backwards. And they never expected. They never saw it coming.

If you haven't been paying attention to politics at all, I can't even imagine how that would have felt to have seen all of a sudden everything is locked down. And they've canceled Christmas. You're not allowed to even see your parents at Christmas time. I remember I have a stepson whose wife has an immune. disease and we we were giving each other gifts outside on the driveway no one ever really anticipated that would ever happen but i think what occurred is that once we started getting through and

understanding a little bit more about this disease the politicians have have been reluctant to give up that control and that power and not only that we were getting to the end of it we're getting to a point where we're talking about it being endemic where everybody had now had omic or knew somebody who had and they were saying, okay, we can handle this, we can move on. And that's when the federal government has come in through with even more rigid restrictions. And I think that's part of what is misunderstood right now

is that those restrictions are still there. Even though the trucker convoy was successful in getting the provinces to remove some of the restrictions, they still can't go cross-border and deliver goods. You still can't get on a plane, either to travel in Canada or outside of Canada. I had somebody asking me a question, is there a border crossing that will let me go across?

The answer is no. It's kind of hit and miss at the border. It's remarkable that we're living in a country where there is this level of or this lack of understanding there's a portion of our citizens who are literally trapped in the country, who cannot leave. And I don't know if there is, if it's sort of an apathetic point of view

of those who had been paying attention to politics and they're less considerate of those who have made a different choice. But it seems to me that there's still a lack of awareness at what we're finding that that we've subjected some of our citizens to. There's less at least now of the anger and the pitting one against each other. But none of these rules actually make sense anymore. But that didn't come from politicians either, right? Like the politicians didn't stop the anger amongst one another.

Now I'll bring up Scott Moe because he did come out and say something along the lines of, you know, we need to heal or whatever. But that came after the fact that the citizens started taking that upon themselves, right? That you started to see more and more people talking openly about like we need to move past this. And I find that, I don't know, I find that very interesting that politicians. Once again, I'm new to the political world. and it's a dangerous little beast that the politicians live in, but they're so reactive to some things. You know, if I go back in our conversation,

you were saying, you know, how does one have these conversations and not worry about getting attacked on social media? Yeah. Well, don't you just need a good cleanup crew? And what I mean by that is, is somebody who's monitoring the situation, and when they come out, you've got to be on top of it. Because social media, to me, you can point out all the flaws in it because there's a lot.

But you can point out some of the good that comes from it too. If you're having a long conversation and somebody's out there is going to pick on little things you've said, you've got to be pretty aggressive back on social media explaining that that's not the case. I think the population, and maybe I'm wrong on this, I think if I represent part of the population, I'm ready, like more than ready for more and more politicians to get on things like this, to have open conversations, to follow through on what they say, and maybe that's impossible, I don't know, but to be a little more trustworthy of their population, their constituents, that they can handle some of the hard truths that are out there, right?

If something is impossible or hard to come by, I would just like to hear why. Not that, yeah, we'll see if we can get it done. It's like, well, that doesn't really work. I don't understand, you know, you had Mike Kuzmiskis on your show not too long ago. And mean him, he's the reason why SMP presents kind of came to be. Because I thought, why is it that Mo or Kenny won't get an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, list off a couple other professions in a room and talk about some things so that we can creatively get people back together and stop pitting us one against the other.

Right? Like, let's have some solutions. I'm not saying it's got to happen in a week. Just say that you're doing something. And in a two-month span, you've got to have some things we can try. Well, Mike Kuzmiskis is an engineer who goes out and starts testing antibodies, creates, you know, I-Corps blood services. They go all over the place.

Like, where's the government in that? Like, why aren't they doing that? He's a really interesting success story, isn't? Because remarkably, he's still, I think, to camp down to Mexico. And this isn't what he wanted to build his business on you. wanted to build his business around all the tests that you can't easily get from your doctor, like your vitamin D levels, which have been really important in determining how serious a COVID case you might end up having. Those with vitamin D have had terrible outcomes. They've done a number

of studies on that. He wants to also be able to test for the different fertility hormones so that men and women can figure out if that's causing fertility problems. So that was the bread and butter of what he wanted his business to be. And look what he did. He's built a business. out on the basis of the rapid testing and on antibody testing. And he's just brought in that T-cell test, which is, I think, going to be really important as well. But I don't think that's what he wanted his business model. I don't think anybody wanted their business model to be that. No, completely. Here's the question for you, Danielle. Why are you getting back into politics now? You know, like you had a pretty successful start. Then you had what many in Alberta would say

a nuclear bomb, you're never going to recover from that to coming back to politics again. What drew you back to the fight? It must be temporary insanity. At least my husband thinks so. There's a couple of things. And it goes to the issue that we were just talking about of can you get a nuanced, complicated message across? And there's two things I'm struggling with right now because I'm observing that it is hard to get a

nuanced message out. So I'll give you two examples. And it doesn't made me, it hasn't made me not want to get into politics, but it has made me realize the task of politics is really challenging. Because I've spent a year and a half doing much the same as you are, trying to, through my newsletter, give profile to some of those marginal voices, through my locals page, trying to give an opportunity for a community to get together like mine so that they could share information. So I thought it was sort of fairly well known, that I was walking down the freedom track with people. But I had had a conference.

with Paul Brandt, who is close to, he lives in Southern Alberta. I had asked him if he would be interested in doing a concert. And he said, well, you know, I can't because my guys are unvaccinated. And so I can't bring my band back here. So you've got somebody who has been advocating for natural immunity being recognized so that he can do his job. So he can go across the border and play and he can bring his band back here and they can play as well. And so I just made a comment, well, we need to recognize natural immunity. So people like this are going to be able to, get their business back. And now I've got people saying, oh, you're in favor of a vaccine passport. And so you have to stop and say, hold on a second. The environment we find ourselves in is that it's

the federal government, Trudeau and Singh, who have decided that they're going to partner until 2025. The two of them, when they were given the chance to remove all of the restrictions, they chose not to. So this is the environment that we're in for the next three years. And given that we are trapped in this environment, what is the way that we can give more freedom back to our citizens? Because I think if we recognize natural immunity, it would blow the whole thing apart because so many people have been exposed. But you see what I mean? That me trying to make a nuanced argument was turned into, oh, you support vaccine passports. That's one. The other one is I'm trying to do, I'm trying to chart a path forward for how we can start making our own decisions in

Alberta without whining all the time about we can't do that because Ottawa won't let us or we or Ottawa standing in our way where we can't get Ottawa's approval and so one of the things I've been quite interested in is Bitcoin blockchain decentralized currencies I took a course from RMIT years ago and I developed a project called health coin I don't know if I've talked to you about that before but to me decentralized currencies are kind of the key to to being able to fight the centralized power of government, the central banks, and the power that they have to erode our currency. But you've got a group of people who think that Bitcoin is the same as a digital coin, and they're going to be able to track all of the spending that you're

making. So these are really complicated issues that we need to be able to resolve, because to me, those who are worried about government creating a digital coin so that they can track every single penny that you spend to start nudging you in one direction, Bitcoin offers a solution so that you can continue to transact your business without government even knowing. But how do you explain that in a short conversation? How do you explain that in an interview? I'd explain that online. It becomes really difficult to do. That's an interesting. Well, that's an interesting problem. The question is, how do you get across a complicated message of Bitcoin is good and can help us distance ourselves from having a centralized currency. Essentially is what you're saying.

And the centralized currency is being dominated by Ottawa. Completely. And even in the U.S., it's dominated by the Federal Reserve in Europe. They've got a central currency as well. You know, the big problem, and Pierre Pollyoff keeps talking about this, is that when you've given the power to the central banks to print as much money as they want, steals our purchasing power. It just is a truism of economics. But have you thought, go back to Alberta. Yeah. Have you thought about, let's say you snap a finger.

I know the Jason Kenney review, well, it gets pushed from what was going to be, 15,000 people descending to basically vote them out. There's only one reason that gets canceled. I think it's laughable. I should point this out. I think it is laughable that they didn't say it, like they said, oh, we can't handle that amount of people. That is move the venue. Figure it up. Especially red because they've got the Westerner Center,

which is a big rodeo grounds. So I'm pretty sure that they'd be able to find a way to manage 13,000 people coming and going, especially if you did it over a few days. So I digress. But yes. So now they have the ballots. When does that, when does that officially, when will we know? Well, I got my ballot on just this past weekend and turned around quickly, filled it out, sent it in.

So that gives you some idea. What are we at? I don't know when this is airing, but we're talking. It'll be May, May 20th, April 20th when this comes up. Okay. So it's coming out in a few days. So the, so that's actually, so everyone has to have their ballot returned by May the 11th. And you know what?

If everyone had the same experience that I did, they've received it, they've turned it around. Maybe most of those ballots will get in on time. They'll be counting them between May 11th and May 18th, the decision will be made. maybe 18th. So we still have, we'll have a month before we know. But here's, I guess, the problem, as you pointed out, the only reason to change the in-person vote was because he was probably going to lose. Not probably. He was going to lose. And so now we have a vote of 55,000 people. And if he wins, he says he only needs to win with 50% plus one. If he wins, is that going to be enough of a mandate to keep the movement together? That's the really difficult challenge.

So you asked me, why did I get back into politics? And I am a bit, I have to learn to be a better communicator. As part of the reason why I started the Western, the show on the Western standard is I feel like this kind of long-form discussion will allow for me to get, be my own platform and get my own message out. I don't want to be misunderstood the way I felt like I was the first time around, where my words were either written by somebody else or crafted by somebody else, or I had a written statement as opposed to being able to speak naturally.

And I feel like I'm going to make mistakes, but in a long form, I can have people challenge me and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up a bit. I didn't understand what you said. And then I'd be able to talk that through. And we've had a great tradition in this province of political leaders doing radio programs, William Aberhart, Ernest Manning. And so I figured this is kind of the new medium to be in. You have to be able to communicate long form.

So I'm giving it a try. I don't know how many other politicians have, but do you know any other politicians who do podcasts? I think Ron Paul does a regular podcast. Maybe there's a few other Americans. There's probably a few others, but I would say that making mistakes is fine. Like that's human.

Like I don't think you could sit here for two hours, an hour and a half, whatever it turns out to be, and not make mistakes. Oh, I guarantee you I've made mistakes. mistakes. Like, and I guarantee you're like episode 255 or something along that lines. Oh, I made lots of mistakes. But that's growing. Like, that's human. And I think majority of the population can understand that. Trying to be perfect, that's an impossible task. Like, I don't say impossible very much because I don't believe in that term except for when it comes to trying to be perfect.

Well, that's like assuming you know all the answers, which I'm sorry, Danielle, you don't. And well, I'm glad to hear you say that because I agree with you. I don't have all the answers. why I love talking to people too, but may I say, will people, because I've now decided to go into politics, will people have a higher standard of perfection for me in the political realm than they did in the in the radio realm? Because what I loved about the radio realm is that I would make mistakes all the time. But you know what would happen is that in the break, someone would say, whoa, whoa, you got this wrong. Here's an article that shows the other side. And then when I came back after the break, I'd say, oh, wait a minute. John just let me know that I got the

this wrong, let me correct the record. And so there was a real easy way of having a conversation and making a mistake wasn't fatal, whereas in politics, that's what I worry about, is that making a mistake is seen to be fatal. And I wonder if, this is going to be my great test, is I wonder if by being honest with people about who you are, putting yourself out there, being prepared to make mistakes, being prepared to correct, I wonder if that's maybe the new way that we need to do politics. And maybe if people are willing to give that kind of latitude to podcasters, maybe we can start giving that same kind of latitude to politicians. So am I hearing this? Am I hearing this correctly? If you get voted in, when you get voted

in, if you make a mistake, you're going to openly admit that? If I get voted in, I'm going to keep doing a podcast. And so you have no choice, but to be called to account for the mistakes that you made and to justify them or to explain why you did something wrong or to explain why you need to why you've come around to a different viewpoint that would be extremely intriguing like you would have my attention because I wonder do you know of a politician that openly admits when they're wrong oh I made so many mistakes I mean obviously but out there you're not a politician right now oh you're media right you get voted in I'll hold you to that yes Do you know of an active politician that openly admits when they're wrong?

The one I remember was Ralph Klein, who when I got involved in politics, this would have been before your time since I think you're for years younger than me. But I started getting interested in politics in my early 20s. And Klein, I worked on his campaign. He got elected in 1992. So that's how, so while I watched his political career and I kind of, I appreciated that about Ralph, is that, boy, he made a lot of blunders. And he often would recognize, sometimes he'd fight back. Sometimes he'd get his backup. But sometimes he'd say, whoa, that was a doozy. And he'd switch course. In fact,

sometimes him floating an idea was a way to find out whether the public was with him or against him. And it was allowed for him, I think, to be really in touch with where people wanted to go and where they wanted to be. And that, I look at that as a bit of a golden era in politics. I wish it could be more like that. that. I wonder if he'd survived today in a social media environment. I wonder if he... There's no, no, doubting. If you go that route, you will have, you will take some arrows like hard, but you're going to take arrows anyways. To me, that's, when I look at it, you're always, like, the other side's going to come at you. Oh, she admits she was wrong. I'd be like, really? Did I hear that right? Like, because you just don't have that open conversation nearly as much. You keep doing.

in your podcast. I tell you what, as a leader, I'll be harassing you in a good way, right? Because I'm like, I think if you, like right there, that's to me a promise of like, if Daniel Smith gets in, she's going to be open. And I'm like, I, you have my attention because I don't see that any, any politician, right? Like, and I'm not saying there isn't a few. There probably is because I don't know of them. But I haven't seen any of the leaders get up and go, well, by the way, we were wrong on this one. We're going to reverse course and this is why. You know what I love about American politics. And I didn't really follow American politics all that closely. I had to because I got elected, or not got elected, got unelected and got on radio at the same time as the primaries were

beginning for the Republican Party. And so everyone was so interested in American politics, I kind of got swept into it. And because the Americans just have such an influence, not only on our political discussion, but also on our, are the decisions that we make, I had to get quite interested in American politics. But I found that there are personalities in their own right in the United States, like Ted Cruz, for instance, or Rand Paul, Ron Paul, and Jim Jordan, who I just love listening to, obviously Ron DeSantis, right? But there's a whole range of positions that you can have an elected office in the United States and still have a public profile, still be an independent person, and still be speaking in something other than just can talking points. Why can't we have that

here. I mean, even if I'm, so even if I'm not, don't get a chance to run for a leader again, why would it be unusual to think, because it is unusual to think, that I could continue a podcast as an elected MLA and just talk about the issues that I think are going to matter. I have a really interesting riding down in Livingston McLeod. A lot of our food producers are down there, but it also has a big center in High River with a lot of seniors. So health care is a big issue. We've got ambulances that are constantly called into Calgary. And so we've got constant red alert. of not being able to have ambulances, which is an interesting issue. Education is an interesting issue. All of these things I care about. And so why aren't there more MLAs who are trying to

create a platform for themselves to hear from constituents, gather information from stakeholders, and then use that to make better decisions in the legislature? It just seems like it's such an obvious, we've got this medium that never really existed when I was in politics before. you're synchronizing, synchronizing. We're both synchronizing and synergizing. Two things that you're very good at, right? Like at one point in time, you're the leader of the wildrose. It doesn't matter, in my opinion, well, I mean it does, but like lots of people now

stare at when you walked and they want to bring that up and they're very frustrated, right? And I always go, I wonder if enough time has gone by that enough people would be like, you know what, I'm okay with it. Let's move on. The thing is, and then you've done a successful, in my opinion, a successful radio show. And so you're putting politics, which is public speaking, and radio, which is public speaking, together. And a lot of politicians aren't that great of public speakers. Which is remarkable to me, because it's the job. You have to be a communicator. That's the whole purpose of being a politician. You know, I often wondered if I would have been a better politician, if I'd had six years of talk radio first.

Guaranteed. Guaranteed. Well, yeah, because what I experienced was, I mean, it was pretty intense. I don't even know how I did it for as long as I did, but I would have six or seven segments a day, different topic on each one, five days a week. So I'm doing 30 or more topics a week. And then I'd have that constant feedback from my textures, and we'd have a half an hour call at the end of each of my show so that I could hear from what people were in the audience

were thinking about things. Do you miss those days? I really miss that interaction, which is why I think I felt compelled to get back into some kind of a forum again. I don't think that the mainstream media environment has settled out enough for that to be the right landing spot for me. And I prefer the podcast medium anyway, because I do prefer the long-form conversations. And I do like the ability to reach a non-conventional audience.

A lot of my audience began to download my, I was making my show available on podcast. podcast. Well, that's where I started listening to it. There you are. So I think it may be a more natural leap for me to get into into podcasting. But you know what happens really when you have conversations with people as opposed to just the gotcha that happens in politics. In politics, you're doing kind of like that secret project that you're doing with your Twitter friend. You try to find the zinger. You try to find the line. You try to find that that eight-second soundbite that's going to get on the evening news. And that's not really conducive to building relationships.

When you're in talk radio medium or a conversation like we're having, you actually have to build some rapport. You have to listen to what the other person says. You have to try to find something that they says that you can either agree with or disagree with. You disagree. You want to try to do it agreeably so that it doesn't break down the relationship. And wouldn't that be amazing if politics work that way? because that I think is what's really missing is we've got this, we're just having this yearning to have connection with one another,

especially after these last two years. And yet all of the images that we're seeing and all of the communications we get from our politicians continue to be combative and creating division and name calling of each other, of the public, of their supporters and non-supporters. I think people are very frustrated that we're not getting the kind of representation that is really authentic and sincere. It stems from leadership. Right?

When Justin Trudeau comes out as the leader of Canada and divides the population, it gives license for all politicians to do similar things. And I'm not saying if you put the right guy or lady at the top of the country that it goes away tomorrow. But unifying a country has to start from the top. I thought, I mean, the truckers certainly did something that I thought was beautiful, but you saw what the leadership out in Ottawa did and with the help of all the mainstream media made it try and look like it was this horrendous thing. But like when leadership points out a

division and then just keeps putting pressure on that, I don't know how any policy, like that's, so that's going to trickle down. And that's what we have in politics right now. If we're all for Canada being the best place ever, you would think you would want to have conversations with people. But I'm not sure that's how politics works. Like, I don't know. Can it trickle up? I guess that's the question. And where does it trickle up from? I mean, you can get some good, I think there's some good examples of local leadership where that can and has occurred. But I think the problem is that we've gotten so partisan in our politics at the federal and provincial level. I don't know. I'm trying to think of the last time I saw a real conversation between a

politician and a host or politician and a podcast. Or maybe, Pierre Paul, you have is the best example. Maybe that's part of the reason he's taken the country by storm is, I mean, I think, I think he's given. What have you thought I hit the turn out for Pierre in Western? Astounding. I've not seen anything like this. But you know what he's done to? He's, he goes on to podcasts and he is a natural person. Like I didn't see the one where he was smoking the, the, the shisha pipe. Is that the correct? term. I've never done. I believe you're correct. Okay, good. Some people thought he was smoking pot, but I think it was just, he was having a little bit of shisha. And that to me is when, when's a lot? I don't know how many, when have I ever seen a politician? Well, that's why. That's why Elon Musk got such a like, right? Here's this giant business mogul. I mean, he's done a ton since and goes on Joe Rogan and smokes pot. I mean, at the end of the day, like in our country, it's legal. So why would it be so taboo? And yet nobody does that. Why? Because.

It is taboo. Even if we won't, you know, right? Like it's, it's, but I mean, me and you literally lit up a joint right now. Let's see, we're sitting together. You know how quickly that you want to get famous real fast? I bet you have a bunch of politicians come on and smokes a pot with you. I bet you that would go over. I am square.

I was one of those kids who was a teacher's pet and didn't want to do anything illegal. Smoke pot once felt really guilty about it, never smoked again. So even when it's become legal, oh, it's just, It's a hard thing. I might try a CBD oil, so not the THC, and I might try CBD infused drinks, but I just, I've not been able to pass that. You rule breaker. You rule breaker. Just it's, it'd be a tough one for me. But you know, let me talk to you about here for a minute, because I'm really interested as well in what you think about this, because I, I, I didn't anticipate that he would get the kind of reaction that he did. Because,

I've loved Pierre Pahliav as a politician for a long time. I met him when he was an intern, I believe, at Art Hanger's office when he was 14 years old. I think that was one of his first forays into politics. And so he's been in the political realm for a really long time. And he got elected very young. I think he was only 22 or 24 when he got elected. And he's been there since 2004. So when you look at somebody who has had a long career in politics, he already has and he's still a really young guy. But he's really tapped into, I think, what it is that people are concerned about. He's, he, I don't know how much he talked about the issue of a freedom, economic freedom and individual personal liberty prior to the trucker convoy.

But that was really his moment where he came out. And he drew a line and he's just been going forward on that. And he got 5,000 people in that Calgary. I was at that event. I think he got 4,000 in Edmonton. I must tell you, I don't think we've seen crowds like this for a politician since Peter Lohy. I remember hearing about Peter Lohy being able to get thousands of people out. And so this is really unusual in conservative politics. It's quite extraordinary. And I'd love to know what you think is behind it. But it looks to me like he's got clear sailing to get into the leadership. Well, when you talk about conservative politics, the one guy you saw on social media all the time is Pierre. Always. Always grilling somebody on always. I swear his social media, you want to talk about great social media. He's got it. They do a wonderful job of showing, and he's, he's not a guy who mince his words. Like he goes after things. And it's very, he frustrates me though, too, but maybe it's just because that's the way politics works. That's the way you have to be in order to keep somebody on point, right? Where he asks the same question 18 times over and they won't answer the same question 18 times over. And you go, like, are we solving anything? From a social media standpoint, everybody knows who he is.

That is first and foremost. Everybody knows who he is. Two, I would say, when the convoy went to Ottawa, every politician backed away and sat there and waited to see what the population was going to say. And Pierre was the first one to the table to say, I support this. And this is why. And he talked around some of the issues that people had with it, you know, like a white supremacy or the guy with the Confederate flag or the non-examination.

or the guy with the Confederate flag or the Nazi flag. He talked to it. And he talked to it very articulately, where you're like, you can't even get mad at him for saying what he said. And right there. Do you remember his line?

I remember that press conference. Because it wasn't even a press conference. He got stopped on the steps since he was going into one of the parliament, one of the buildings. And he said, well, just because there are some former employees of the CBC

that allege that there is racism at the CBC. I'm not going to assume that every CBC. reporter is racist. So it was kind of a slam against the people who were asking him the questions. But it is the case. He was able to make that nuanced argument that every movement, every collection of people will have extremists in it.

And this is true of those who are gathering for conservative reason as it is for those who are gathering for progressive reason. And so you don't dismiss the entire group of people, it was his argument, because you got a few extremists. You dismiss the extremists and then you listen to the full argument. And that's the difference, isn't it? That I think is part of the problem that we've had over the last couple of years is that an entire group of people's concerns have been dismissed because there's a few people who may have trouble expressing themselves in kind of a mainstream or moderate way. And so we've ended up alienating a whole sector of the population being dismissed as extremists and lunatics and bigots and

whatever else, the language that the politicians are using. And they're feeling even more alienated because they're actually a pretty mainstream group of people. People don't like to be named called. And you're right. I think he gave that that group of people who have legitimate concerns and have been pushed to the sidelines for so long. He said, yeah, you're right. You've got some reason to be concerned. I'm listening to you and I care. So does it surprise me that the guy who's been all over social media for the conservatives? Then the first guy to acknowledge that this isn't a group of Nazi, misogynist, white men here to destroy Ottawa. Does it surprise me that that man who goes around and gets a turn out like he does?

No. Because they see it as a, well, rightfully, wrongfully, it doesn't matter. I look at it and I go, here's a guy that's a part of his population and what everyone knows Justin Trudeau should have done and he didn't do was he should have acknowledged the truckers. He should have went down and talked with a couple of them, saw it was going on, and brought his country back together. Instead, he plays this division card, and it is ugly. And now you have a politician on the other side that looks like he's going to try and bring us back together.

And if he can pull that off, you got something there. My question always comes back to, it's great that it's happening in the West, but the West has always been conservative. I mean, go back to the last election, it was pretty much all conservative. Rockstar turn out or not, I look at it and I go, this has been the story of the West now for two elections. So is it going to matter in the next one? That's what I want. What do you think of that? That is the question. I feel like, and you would know this better because you did go to Ottawa, I feel like there is a group of freedom loving people in every province. And maybe we just have a lot more of them in Alberta and Saskatchewan than there are in mainland British Columbia, but certainly in central BC. We've got folks who are with us. certainly in rural Ontario and rural Quebec.

Do you think you're living in Quebec City, we've got people who are with us? If you were living in Toronto and they just closed off everything for two years and won't let you out, Doug Ford's doing what he's doing and Trudeau's doing what he's doing. Don't you think there's a ton of people in the city's going, I just want life back. It's just whether or not they can get a leader in there that can hear their voice too. That's a very tough job of Canada politics, trying to identify. with all the different populations. I will say being in Ottawa,

I would say that there was something that united all the provinces and it didn't come down to energy or what industry or health care or anything. It was just freedom. And I know that's a very broad term, but it really welcomes everybody in.

We just want everybody to live their life, have a little body autonomy and move on. And if there's problems that are going to come, let's work together, not against each other. And if you can get that message out, I think that's going to resonate with a ton of people. And if Pierre can do that, then maybe we got a shot. This has been my great dream coming at politics from the conservative side of the spectrum.

Because part of the reason I'm a conservative libertarian, as opposed to a socialist libertarian, is that I believe in free enterprise. I believe in economic freedom. I believe in property rights. I believe actually, in fact, that is the most important. If you can have some autonomy over your life's work that you can, you can, you can, include, engage in productive work that benefits somebody else and you will get paid for it, that is the manifestation of your life's energy. To me, having economic freedom, being able to keep more of what you earn, that is essential to freedom. And so I've always felt like if we could just get young people who believe in bodily freedom, the right to love who you want to love, the right to make a choice if you have an unwanted pregnancy, the right to consume what it is that you want, if you

like to consume intoxicants. There already is a group I thought of young people who understood civil liberties. And so I felt like the sweet spot is for us to get those who love economic freedom and those who love civil freedom together under one umbrella. And then you could have a political party that was where the majority of people were. But I'm very gravely concerned of what we've seen over the last two years that not only were people able to put aside, economic liberty, shut businesses down and not even really think twice about it, but there's also a group of people who didn't want civil liberties anymore. When we started the conversation about Vax mandates, whoever thought we'd have it progressed to having politicians talk about

forcing people to be jabbed in this kind of the situation we're in right now, the only reason to maintain these restrictions. So trying to make life so uncomfortable for people that they will go and get jab, which is such a strange environment to be in. So what I'm worried about is, are we going to be stuck in this mode of having government knows best for a period of time because it's been popular because that's where 70% of the public is, 70 to 80%, because that's how high the vaccination level is. They say for those over the age of 18, somewhere between 70 and 80%, does that mean that the freedom lovers are in such a minority that it's going to take a longer period of time before we see that conversion. That's what I'm not sure of. Because Maxine Bernier pushed out

some pictures of his huge crowds that he was getting over the summer. So I shouldn't say I've not seen it before. Maxine Bernier was getting thousands of people out too. But it didn't translate into him getting a large percentage of the vote. It didn't even get enough concentrated vote to to win a seat anywhere. But that's because the powers it be wouldn't even let him into the debate. And like, here's the thing. You know, I'll bring it back all the way to Jason Kenney changing the leadership vote, how it was going to be in the date and everything.

What concerns me maybe a bit more is like, but I'll just sit here as average Albertan. I see that and I go, he can do that. Like, isn't that a red flag to everyone that he's trying to. control the process. And that is a, like, to me, that's, that's dangerous. I'll go back to a conversation I had with Paul Schu, my professor of history from, from college. He laid something I didn't know that the donation limit in the United States to a political party is gone. So now, like, if you make a billion dollars, let's just take Elon Musk or Facebook or whatever, you can donate

unlimited amounts of money to your political party. Like, immediately I go, that doesn't feel right at all. and so but here's the things that are trickling in on on our political system you come back to so jason kenny does what he does and everyone goes like i don't know i just sit here i go like i don't even know what you do it just feels like oh he can do that because we're gonna whatever there's too many people and we can't handle it it's like the so schedule it for another day and have it in person like wouldn't that just make sense we're not in the pandemic like at all anymore 15,000 people are willing to come. Like that's, but I don't know.

And so you sit here and it's happening right in front of her eyes. What's more concerning is that there isn't a riot happening in Alberta right now. But I don't even know where I go for the riot. I don't even know what that would accomplish. Well, and it is, and it's a difficult thing is a lot of people who signed up to take part in that process or people would not be involved in politics before. I think it's a bit demoralizing. It's a kind of a sad thing to see how many people who got politically engaged because they were concerned about a passionate issue. They felt like they could do something about it.

And then they got the rug tugged out from under them. That's what I'm worried about because that creates apathy. If you get to the position where you think, well, I'm following all the rules and now they've just gone and changed the rules, is the system rigged against me? Is there any way that I can make a difference? So you bring that up and it's that's the hill that is or the mountain or whatever that's in front of everyone is if you believe in freedom, the problem is that we think, politics. I thought politics, you know, like it's

leadership review. Okay. Well, we'll find out April 9th, like one way or another, it's going to happen. And then it gets pushed because, well, there's only one reason it gets pushed and I know it. And it's simple. You aren't going to win. So we got to find a different way to maybe give you a chance or to make sure you

win. Okay. And that that's happening. That's how you know politics is a little bit greasy. Because Maxine Bernier, he needed to have a certain percentage of the vote. He had it. Is he on the federal debate? No. Why? Why do we have a guy from Quebec who says in the debate, I don't want to leave? I'm just like, this is our country. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. Like, you got Maxine Bernie. Maybe you don't like what he has to say. That's fine. But he should be allowed to say it if he has enough of the popular vote to get into the debate. But they control that. So the only way you're ever going to change that is by taking over the control. And this is where politics gets really dark. It's because it's like, well, what are you going to do then to get to the place where you need to be?

I don't know. And that's what a lot of good people worry about. So here's, I've been a good critic of Jason Kenny for a good reason. I mean, I gave him so many chances to do the right thing and follow the path of some of the red state governors when it was so obvious that that was the path that we should have gone down. And I think that he took a bad turn when he promised that we wouldn't have vaccine passports. So he brought them in and put pressure on businesses to fire. vaccinated workers. And then some people have forgiven him through this process of he was one of the

first to dial back on on the restrictions. But I don't think he should have gone down the path that he did in the first place. And so here's, I guess, the question is what does it take to change direction? So I use that as an example because would the premier have changed course in February if we hadn't seen that outpouring from the freedom convoy and everybody who supported it. And I would put it to you no. And so you can have a huge amount of power as an individual group of people, an advocacy organization. And that is where the sweet spot really is in making government change, is that if you have enough people who care about an issue, they can get organized.

And it doesn't matter who gets elected under what party banner. They're going to go forward and they're going to make the decision. changes. Now, have we, have we gotten to that point yet where no matter who gets elected next year that we're going to embrace freedom? I don't think so. I think that this battle that is shaping up is still going to be between the forces that want government to do everything and the forces that want freedom. But there are lots of ways to be an influencer. There's lots of ways to make a difference. I think politics is one way. Leading an advocacy group is another way. Having a podcast is another way. having local groups, if you've seen them, these little freedom groups have sprouted up all over

the province. I've gone to a meeting where there, I think, were 50 different freedom groups represented. And so part of what we're seeing, I think, as politicians are kind of taking on more and more power and taking away more and more of our freedoms, people are finding workarounds or finding ways to live a normal life that is free of politics. I think, I hope that we don't end up crossing back over under the line of apathy where people feel like there's no way to make a change. But I think what we're seeing instead is that on the freedom side of the spectrum, we're seeing a replication of what those on the other side have been doing for the past 20 or 30 years. The sort of the extreme environmental advocates who have been trying to shut down industry and stop us from traveling and wanting us

to count every amount of CO2 that we produce and are putting limitations in and taxes, that That movement has been underway for 30 years. I've been watching it since the 90s. So maybe this freedom movement is going to realize that they can have similar types of successes. You begin by starting a group. And then you have an impact on your local council. And then you have an impact on electing your local MLA. And then ultimately you change the character of the leadership. And then you have an impact on the other political parties. I'm hoping it's not a 30-year process for us to get back to where we have this embracing of freedom.

I'm prepared for it to be a long period of time, if that's the case. But that to me has been the most exciting thing to see develop is all of these self-organizing groups, self-organizing around the ideas of freedom. I have not seen that. I've been hoping for that in my entire career in politics. It's the first I've seen it. Around the idea of body and like being able to choose what goes in your body. Like being able to discuss with somebody different ideas.

Oh, conversing. geez, discourse, geez, that'd be nice, right? And all these things where it's just getting back to some of the fundamentals. I don't, you know, it's funny when I say freedom, when I come back to freedom, you know, the extreme side of that is like freedom to do anything. It's like, well, no, I mean, I still want to live with the laws we have in our land and speed limits and you can't kill somebody. And there's certain bounds to freedom.

I think we've been, we experienced that all the way through my entire life up until the last two years. but the last two years have been overboard and everybody knows that and now none of the none of the mandates make any sense and majority of people understand that like i don't know how many times you got to you got to try and travel across this country and go like that doesn't make sense anymore like it just doesn't and everybody knows that that's the thing i found so interesting i went to a maxine bernier event because i wanted to see what kind of folks were coming out to his event and i remember talking with andrew lawton there he was covering it for true nor He just told me the profile of a woman who was there.

I think he said that she was a lesbian who had a couple of kids and she was like a reiki instructor. And when you look, she was dressed in the full kind of hippie kind of garb. And so that is not what you would think of as a typical conservative voter. But that's the type of person who wants to have bodily autonomy and wants to make their own choices and probably is pretty clean living. We've had a huge organic movement and from farm to table movement that has taken place in the country as well, which has been related to the environmental movement. And so should it be any surprise that there's a group of people now out there who've taken the view that they want to keep their immune system healthy and they want to eat well and they want to exercise and get good sleep? And they don't necessarily want to turn to a medication every time they've got a problem. So it's such a strange thing through COVID, how it's really broken down some of the traditional.

some of the traditional, call it, coalitions that we've had in the past, because politics is all about coalition building, that you've got different groups with different interests who all come together under the same banner. And this is an unusual coalition that I think we haven't seen what the end result of it is ultimately going to be. I haven't seen yet if it's going to be large enough to make the kind of change that will allow someone like Pierre to get elected to public office across the entire country. But it is not the usual coalition. That's why I get so frustrated by the politicians when they're out there trying to mischaracterize the concerns that people have. These are normally sort of fairly regular mainstream type of folks.

The person I just described, I would have thought that that would have been an NDP or a liberal voter in the past. Now that person is not going to vote liberal or NDP because of the way that they've been targeted and the way that they've been demonized. And so that's, I guess, the other part of it is that we have to start. listening to what people's genuine concerns are. And seeing if there's a way that we can address them, regardless of what partisan label we end up carrying, I think that that, if any success comes out of this, maybe it will break down some of that polarization and some of those barriers. And we'll see these new coalitions form. There'll be a lot healthier. I've always felt like this is how I conducted my show. If you talk with somebody who comes from a totally different

perspective and background is going to open your mind to looking at the world in a different way. And that really is the essence, I think, of what ends up building communities and building societies. And I think that, gosh, we've gotten so divided and so polarized over the last while. Maybe we've got enough to see a bit of a turn. I don't know. You tell me, do you see any of the other leadership candidates that are tapping into something other than Pierre? Well, certainly on the conservative side, like Leslyn Lewis has certainly talked openly. I'm trying to think right now.

Jean-Sorais is another. Well, I was going to say, you're laughing. You're not thinking he's the guy. I was going to say like Joseph Borgo is a guy who has announced he's running in the conservative thing. He sponsors a podcast. Like his company sponsors. That's right.

I met him at your event. And I was like, where like to me? I was like, where did this come from? Right? Like had no idea that that was even, you know. And certainly he embraces a lot. if not all of what the freedom convoy was about. But overall, no, like Pierre has done a great job of aligning himself with a lot of things and being

at the front of it, not waiting until every politician jumps on, being the first there to say and defend and everything else. The only concern I have is that we saw this once before in Alberta when Stephen Harper got elected. Everyone thought, oh, we got our guy in. And then they went back to sleep. And they stopped paying attention to federal politics. And sure enough, Harper was there for, I think, almost 10 years. But what happened when he left? Talk about a boomering effect. So bring this back then to your Alberta first initiative. You know, we started talking about Bitcoin there for a short. If I got you for a few more minutes, Daniel, I would love to talk about your.

your latest newsletter that talked about Bitcoin and maybe an idea for Alberta. Like how reasonable, explain your idea and then just tell me, how reasonable of an idea is that? Because in your letter, I love how it breaks down. I'm like, oh, in a month, we could be the Bitcoin capital of the world. I know. It's sort of crazy to even think about it. And it was just, it was a conversation that I had with the organizers of this Canadian blockchain consortium.

So I'm moderating an event for two days with them on the 20th and the 21st. And as we were talking things through, one of them said, look, we can have total autonomy. We can export our energy without pipelines. So that got me thinking, what, what do you mean? How do we export our energy without pipelines? They said, it's very simple because part of what we do as an export province, we send our oil and natural gas elsewhere so that it can be refined into fuel so that fuel can be used to turn things into useful products. And so what happens if you bring a bunch of that activity into Alberta? And what is the biggest user and growing user of electricity right now?

So this was the insight that they had is why don't we make Alberta the Bitcoin mining capital of the world? We've already heard Pierre talk about making Canada the blockchain capital of the world. And you've heard that the premier as well, they've got two ministers who are going to this conference. So they're quite keen on seeing what the opportunity would be. But when you look at the amount of energy, it takes to mine Bitcoin. I know it's a funny term. People who aren't familiar with Bitcoin, the way you create a Bitcoin is through having computers do a lot of complicated calculations.

It was easy to. It's a different way to think of mining gold, right? It is. To get to gold, you have to dig. That takes energy, fuel, whatever. Mining Bitcoin is the same way, except it's just computers. But what do computers get their energy from? while from, you know, the grid.

And the thing about the oil industry, which I think a lot of my listeners actually know, because I've had Stephen Barber on here before, who's a guy who takes wasted gas and uses that wasted gas to power Bitcoin miners. And one of the things that if listeners don't know, what you were implying was, or not implying, what you're saying is Bitcoin mining has become a global concern because of the energy consumption, right? And how it affects the grid. Well, because I mean, if you got all these Bitcoin miners that take up a whole bunch of energy

away from houses and everything else, you can see why they're an easy target to harass. What a lot of people don't understand is there's a lot of wasted energy out there that could actually benefit from Bitcoin mining. And one of them is the oil industry, because we all know out here, we're shooting gas every which way that isn't getting used. and it can be captured and used to mine Bitcoin. So I see where you're going with this. It's pretty remarkable. And you're right.

There's already a number of different Bitcoin operators. Uh-oh. My dog's going a little bit crazy in the background. I'm hoping that he'll be quiet. I don't know. You might have to. I know you probably don't end up editing. He says, he says, enough about Bitcoin, go walk me.

I know completely. I think he's about to go for a walk, which is why he's very excited. my husband's down there with him, so he'll be, he'll be quiet shortly. But I think the thing that's important to realize about this, about the energy now being used to create more Bitcoin is it's essentially, it's almost equivalent to the entire amount of energy that we, that we use in a year in Alberta.

And so that's how much energy is now required to mine the certain amount of Bitcoin that they have. So when you end up with a mining operation being attached to a power grid, In Texas, for instance, in February, they had to shut them down because they were worried about the stability of the grid. In Surgeon County, they ended up shutting one down because it was making so much noise that it was near local residents. And so they're not very easy to cite these different mining operations. But think about it this way. What if we were to decide that we were going to have a mining operation somewhere near Loy Minster?

Choose an area that is away from the main population base, create a 100,000 acre business park. create a mining operation, put in a natural gas generator. So it's off the grid. So it's completely powering the local mining operation. And then you can build out all the infrastructure to that area. You can make sure that there's broadband internet access. If you're near a reserve, you can make sure that there's fresh water and electricity. If you can create these little hubs all over Alberta, you can basically turn our natural gas into an exportable product. Take our natural gas, turn it into electricity, take our electricity, turn it into Bitcoin. And all of a sudden, you've created an environment where you're attracting the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the

world, those who are in the Bitcoin mining industry. You're also continuing to use our traditional industry of natural gas. You're also then, if you create carbon capture and you create carbon tech associated with that, now you have a bunch of additional spinoff industries that can come out of that. And we can do all of that without getting Ottawa's approval. We can establish Bitcoin mining operations. We can build natural gas power plants without Ottawa's approval. We can build our pipelines from a natural gas producer to those hubs without asking for Ottawa's permission. We can build broadband internet access all over the province and export Bitcoin without asking Ottawa's permission. And so why don't we, if we're going to be in this position where we're

constantly being subjected to increasing restrictions from Ottawa, why don't we find ways within our own areas of jurisdiction and power that we can find our own workarounds. Why do we have to continue to act as if we're under the thumb of Ottawa? I think we've got an immense amount of power. I think we've got the ability to assert ourselves on our energy and environment front. We've got the ability to assert ourselves in our banking industry. I just opened up a credit union account, as if for instance, why do we continue to bank with banks that have a divestment strategy away from oil and gas. Why don't I support my local banks that actually want to support our local industry? We have the ability to have our own trucking industry is provincially regulated.

Those who are within our borders, anything that's within our own borders is provincially regulated. Maybe we could have our own radio and television stations within our own border provincially regulated so that we don't end up facing some of the shutdown edicts coming from the federal government. I guess I feel just that we have been sitting here victimized for so long. that we think that there aren't other options. And I'm really keen to look at ways in which we can assert our autonomy so that we can push back against Ottawa. If we don't start doing that,

they're going to continue to put additional restrictions on us. They're going to continue to tell us, yes, you can, no, you can't develop those different proposals. No, you can't develop those export markets. I feel like we keep getting told no, no, no. And so if they're going to say no, let's figure out a way that we can get to yes. And once we start developing these new industries and attracting these new entrepreneurs and attracting more people here, then maybe we can take the lead on building economic corridors

in the rest of the country. We've been sitting waiting for Ottawa to do it. Well, why don't we take the lead in partnering with First Nations to build an economic corridor to Thunder Bay. So we have access to the Great Lakes system to get our product to market or work with our partners in First Nations to build a pathway to Churchill or a Prince or tuck to yucktuck. Shane Getson would be the guy who talked about the Northwest corridor. Completely. And we need more than one. We need multiple. And this is the thing about an economic

corridor that I find so exciting is that it's not just for oil and gas pipelines, which is important. It's also for transmission lines. It's for broadband. It's to bring drinking water. It's to maybe build a new rail line. Maybe we build a new highway system so that we can interconnect. But I think that we have sat back and just thought that that somebody else's job. that is Ottawa's job because it involves into provincial partnerships. And I think at this point, we have to decide that we've got to chart our own course and we've got to build bilateral relations. And we've got to look at how Alberta can be an economic hub of Western Canada.

And let's just do a coalition of the willing. Let's work with those partners who want to work with us on achieving those aspirations. I just feel like we've been sitting here since maybe the National Energy Program saying, okay, don't hurt us anymore. We'll just keep on doing our thing here and we'll keep on sending money to Ottawa. Just don't hurt us and trying to keep our head down because we don't want to be a target. Well, we're a target anyway. And so why don't we be bold about it and say, no, you've gone too far, just like the trucker convo. Sorry, just crossed the line here. You've just gone too far. And now we're going to push back. No, we do not want you telling us how to run our long-term care system. We can do that

ourselves. No, we don't want you telling us how we need to institute a dental plan or a pharmaceutical plan or national daycare or meddling more in our health care system. Ottawa, every time they come saying that they want to help, we need to understand what that really is all about. It's about taking money out of Ottawa, out of Alberta into the Ottawa coffers so that it can be subsidizing programs in the rest of the country. Because we're a very productive population, We've got a high level of workforce participation, very high level of incomes, very high amount of corporate taxes. So we pay disproportionately more into a federal system. So when they have aspirations for more federal programs, it just means it's more of a cash grab out of Alberta. We've just got to be

a bit more like Quebec. Quebec doesn't really spend a whole lot of time thinking about what Ottawa should do to help them realize their aspirations as a province. They just realize them. And I think that that's the attitude that we've got to take in Alberta. Maybe that's the awakening that happened with the freedom convoy, is that we've got to start taking care of our own business. Because here we have a different attitude about the balance between government and freedom. Then I think the rest of the country does. There are pockets that I think support that attitude,

but I think Alberta is a really special place. And if we don't push back now and start doing these kinds of things, then I think ultimately we have the danger of becoming just like everyone else. That's um that was a lot. I know sorry. You got me monologuing. See, this is the problem with politicians. They stop dialogging.

The Bitcoin thing, I mean, what do we have? Tons of space, tons of natural resources. It seems like almost a no-brainer. But I mean, I'm sure there will be red tape around a bunch of it. But you think about it and you're like, gee, that sounds like something that could actually work, right? I really could. And can I tell you why it could work faster than you would expect? First of all, natural gas plants are very fast to build.

It's the fastest type of electricity that you can build. And number two, we've already developed carbon catcher projects associated with natural gas plants because the emissions are concentrated. So we've already scope that out. There's a- You have tons of the infrastructure that's already there, Daniel. They got shut down because at one point, you know, we had so much natural gas and there was no market for it.

Completely. So like you're taking something that. that I'm sure you can't just flick a switch and there it is, but it's not that far off. It is that far off. All it takes is capital to build it. Completely. And look at the pricing on it right now. When we're treating gas at four, five, six, seven dollars that pays a huge amount of royalties to the provincial government. So you get a new income stream from using more natural gas. You get new royalties and income stream from the fact that you've got these generators setting up and they're going to be

profitable businesses, a new income stream for all your Bitcoin miners who are profitable they'll be paying taxes, new revenue stream coming from all of the incredible products that are going to be made from using CO2 for cement and carbon nanofiber and whatever else. To me, it's a really exciting way for us to generate a whole bunch of new local economies based as well on the fact that we have our traditional energy industry that we're able to rely on, but we're also going to embrace new technology and new industries, which is diversifying. I just, I haven't done any calculation on how much this could increase our GDP, our growth, our personal wealth, our government revenues, which would then allow us to pay for all the things

that we care about. But why don't we start doing those things? Why aren't we more bold? Using the opportunities that are available to us, there's an obvious need that is out there because these mining operations keep getting shut down and moved all around the world. And they're only going to grow. The demand for Bitcoin mining has increased, I think, the numbers I saw fivefold in the last 10 years. And Bitcoin is really just going mainstream now.

You now have politicians in Canada talking about how this should become a part of everyone's portfolio. You've got pension fund managers saying, well, you know what? To diversify, maybe we should hold a little bit of this stuff. And so we're just now at the cusp of this becoming a new industry. we've got everything we need here to be able to to capitalize on that and also stick it to Ottawa because you know what fine you don't want to allow us to build any more natural gas pipelines that's okay we can build a bunch of natural gas pipelines in our own province and I think you said something there that really resonates with me and that you know we got Trudeau Singh now till

2025 no matter what we do nothing's changing which means you can either sit here and batten down the hatches and allow them to push through 10 more things what they're going to do anyways and just go along with it. Or in the meantime, you can be doing things, because it's not like, I always say, it's not like you don't get to play the game. You get to play the game. I'm just a person who gets to bring people on

and talk about these things. But business owners, investors, politicians, everything, we still get, the next three years, it's not like they're just gray and you just suffer and you put your head down and go, oh, yeah, like you can still do things. And I think you raise valid points, no matter what comes to the next federal,

election. Alberta, Saskatchewan, you know, I sit right on the border, can do things to put themselves in different positions that make it harder and more autonomy for each province to really push back against some of the things that are going on. I think that's a very interesting thought. Can I just say as well with Saskatchewan? Because you've got uranium deposits there. I mean, we have a real potential as well as everyone's talking about small modular nuclear. You know, my vision of these Bitcoin mining operations powered by natural gas may only be interim. Maybe what we actually need to do is start being the two provinces that pioneer small, modular nuclear, and really see a greening of the grid and really see the ability to concentrate energy.

Because this is one of the problems that we're now facing is that energy is getting so expensive that it's acting as a detriment to locating in our two provinces. So maybe we establish the initial infrastructure with the idea that we'll at some point repurpose those plants using small modular nuclear when they find their way through the regulatory approval process. It's not that far. The first one is going to be in Darlington in 2028. And so we can actually set up a system with that in mind and then capitalize on what's happening in Saskatchewan as well. Plus we know that we've got fertilizer shortages around the world with potash and. with natural gas, we can we can solve that problem locally.

We got it all here. We have everything here. Yeah. That's part of the frustration of all the people is like we have everything here, but we just can't get out of our own way. But maybe what you're saying is, is stop worrying about what's going on federally. I mean,

you still got to pay attention to it. But provincially, you can take some of these things into your own hands and do something. And stop expecting Ottawa to solve all our problems. And maybe maybe in the past, we were too... I don't think anyone expects Ottawa to solve problems. I should say that.

But don't you think that that's part of what we've fallen into in the last while? I think we've fallen into that Ottawa dictates life. And the truth of the matter is we do not have all this crazy autonomy as provinces, but we have more than we like to admit. We have way more than we ever use. And if we started exercising some of that, we could really start to push the dial. And in some of the ways the federal government even wants, right? You want to be more green?

Well, there's some ways to do that. You know, like there's ways to do that that actually benefit the provinces and benefit all the people within them. Now, before I let you go, we got to do the Crude Master Final Five or the Final Five brought to you by Crude Master. It's just, it's a time segment now. I've changed it out from all the questions, mainly because I got to the point where I had reoccurring guests and I'm like, geez, you know, like, why? do I have to try and think up all these new questions, but nobody really cares. So my question for you at the end is a podcasting one. You know, I'm going to go all the way back to where we started that.

You got your new show coming on the Western Stan. Okay. You're going to do long form and you're going to do all these short ones. Who is a guest you're trying to attract, Danielle, for a long form? I'm not worried about the short ones. Who are you, you know, I've said this. I'm going to put it out in the universe again. Jordan Peterson, he's, he's one of my two goals for 2022.

And so I'm really actively trying to figure that one out. Crack that nutshell. Who somebody Danielle Smith wants to have on over the next year on her show with the Western Standard? Moving forward. Ron DeSantis. I'd love to have a Florida governor on. Because you know what I'd love to know. I'd love to know how he also developed the courage before anyone else did.

He was, I think, the first politician who drew a line and said, you know what? I'm going to go a different way. And he got he got pounced on, pounded on by the media, and he stayed the course. And I'd love to know how he had that internal fortitude to do that. He would be my top pick. You got to assume he had a group around him that believed in what he was saying. Yeah? Maybe he was just watching podcasts. He came to the same conclusions you and I did. Maybe. But he's definitely red-pilled. Like he is definitely why. read on all of the various medical opinions. And there's no going back for him. He is very firmly in the choice camp, which is remarkable to see. I just, I want to understand a little more about

the decision-making process there, especially in politics. There are just so, so many pressures to do what Twitter tells you, or the mainstream media tells you, or you're getting pummeled by the opposition. How did he have that certainty to just stay the course? That's a, that's a person I want to My guess at it would be that the people closest to him believed in what he was saying. And I'm not saying that was a group of 20. That could have been a group of three for all I know. But he had to have some support there would be my guess. Because if COVID, you know, you talk about all these little groups popping up all through the provinces.

Part of the reason they form is because people wanted to have a conversation about what was going on. Oh, wait, there's other people that want to have a conversation what's going on. Oh, and there's people that think like I do. Oh, geez. And so now you have these little groups form everywhere. Why? Because people wanted to feel like they weren't alone again. And if you were alone, I don't know how many people I've ran into that were just absolutely hammered through COVID and depressed and everything else. Maybe they got the shot. Maybe they did get their shot. It doesn't matter. They lost family, friends, whatever. And all these little groups gave them a little bit of a new group to surround themselves that allowed them to have a little bit of a support system. And I think for a lot of us, we didn't realize how important the support system was. You're totally right. When I was in politics the first time, I had three people I called the keepers of my soul. So I knew I wanted to be the same person when I came out the other end as when I entered it. One of them was a dear friend, Link Byfield, who sadly has passed on. Now, there was a dear friend of mine that I met in my property rights advocacy days, Gordon Butler, who was a rancher from the special areas in Alberta. And the other

was Nigel Hanford, who'd been my colleague on the editorial board at the Calgary Herald who knew me from the time I first started off at advocacy. So maybe I need to reassemble that group. Maybe. Maybe that's what you need. It's just because I tell you what, if you go into politics now, you're going to face, I mean, social media world, the world we're in right now. Nobody, we can't discredit how difficult it'll be. In saying that, it's needed more now than ever, right? Like, it just is. The challenges we face moving forward are big, but they've always been big. But a support group is an interesting thing because it allows you to share your thoughts quietly, loudly, it doesn't matter, in a room and get feedback without being chastised for

everything that comes out of your brain. And it allows you to proceed because, I mean, without that, man, she's a dismal world. But it's very true. And there's all there's, when you get into politics, it becomes mudier because you, I think disproportionately, I remember when I was lobbying back when I was with CFIB, Lloyd Snellgrove was the Treasury Board minister at the time. And we kept putting the message forward about how you need to restrain spending and you need to make sure that you're looking at ways to reduce taxes. He said, you know, for every one of you, there's 20 people who come in here who tell me to spend more and that reducing taxes doesn't matter. And so there is another thing that happens in politics

is that you do, it's that it is the squeaky wheel problem, is that the people who are the most intense in lobbying you aren't necessarily the ones that have the right ideas. They just have the most stamina. So to get the balance, you actually have to go out of your way to make sure that you're hearing across a broad range. Well, Danielle, I've thoroughly enjoyed this. I've kept you probably longer than you thought you're going to be here. It wasn't seven hours, though. Regardless, though, I appreciate you hopping on and being open. If you do get elected, now you know my promise to you. I will make sure I hold you accountable for anything that comes. But regardless, I'm going to be checking out for all the listeners. Western Standard is going to be one of the new

areas to find you. Any other place you want to give a shout out? I know you've mentioned a few of them, but if people are looking to find more Danielle, where can they find you? The best way to reach me is through danielsmith.ca. And I have a newsletter that I do weekly. I also have a link to my locals community, which you have to sign up for. And that's what we'll be putting most of the stuff that I do over the next year. There's a year-long period before seeking the nomination and when the actual election day is going to be is not until May of 2023. So I've got a long runway, long runway to explore a lot of these issues. And hopefully we'll be able to talk to you again. Sounds good. Thanks, Daniel. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in today, guys. I hope you enjoyed it.

Please like, share, comment, all the above. If you want to support the podcast, you can go to my Patreon account the show the link for it is in the show notes or tell me a flag light that's all that's all good this coming Friday I got a cool one coming for you a Zubi and if you don't know who that is well look him up he's a he is an interesting interesting man and I'm excited for it but let's get there first go out rule the day we'll see you guys Friday