Shaun Newman Podcast - #267 - Sundance Construction

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Jocelyn Burzuik aka Sundance Construction (her Twitter handle) is a military vet & president of Sundance Construction. We discuss the issues involved with clean drinking water on reserves and the government's role in this.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast⁠

This is Zubi. This is Brett Wilson. This is Brian Pectford. This is Keith Morrison. This is Tim McAlloff of Sportsnet. This is Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Daryl Sutter and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Wednesday. Hope everybody's having a great week. Battle of Alberta tonight. Ooh, baby. Let's go Oilers. Now, before we get on to today's episode, let's get to today's episode sponsors, the Deer and Steer Butchery.

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And if you're heading into any of these businesses, make sure you let them know that they are, look at this. My excitement for tonight is just on full display. right now. If you're in any of these businesses, make sure you let them know you heard about them from the podcast. There we go. 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, all things automotive for over 110 years. She has over 20 plus years experience in the Canadian military, president of Sundance Construction. I'm talking about Jocelyn Bershick. So buckle up. Here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Jocelyn Burr. President of Sundance Construction. So first off, thank you for hopping on. Thanks, Sean. It's great to be here. Now, I've been following you on Twitter. I think a lot of people have. So I get a first glance at how you look at issues and different things. That's what attracted me to bring you on. But for the listener, who maybe isn't on Twitter, has no idea about you, could we first start with maybe a little bit of your background and we'll go from there? Well, I own a construction company. I started my construction company in 2013 and I got involved in heavy construction.

And I was doing water, water treatment, sewage treatment, and I was working primarily on First Nations. And so I got to see a lot of the rough and dirty and the corrupt and the inefficiency of bureaucracy of government. But since that time, I really did this big, deep dive into advocacy in terms of First Nations, indigenous, Métis, just trying to bring people back into that idea of what is actually happening in the construction world. How does it pertain to indigenous issues? How does it pertain to the actual average Canadian taxpayer? and then I couple that with my long-term military career and my perspective from that on top of it

and former military. And then I kind of bring all those issues altogether. So I have a really nuanced approach to how I view the world, I guess you could say, is that because I am Métis, I am female, I am in construction and I do have a military background, I just see things in a different light. So, and that, that light is probably ethics. Well, what, um, what then sticks out to you is some of the major, uh, issues on that side of side. You know, I'm a moron. I say this a lot on the podcast. Right. I'm, I'm, I'm, you hear there's not clean drinking water and you go, how on earth is that possible? Let's just, I mean, we're spending trillions of dollars. Let's just spend the money and, and we should be able to snap a finger and boom, it's done. But I,

realized that we don't have a genie, you know, that's going to pop out like Aladdin, rub the mask or, you know, rub the lamp and all of a sudden you got clean drinking water wells and everything. I realize there's a bit more to it. But I also realize it's a water well and it isn't that, you know, this isn't sending somebody to the moon. And we're doing, you know, we're starting to do that all over again with Elon Musk. So what are some of the biggest issues? And please enlighten us. You know what? It's not the money. It is. People think is that and the Trudeau government and and governments prior to this always said is that let's throw more money at the problem. Let's do this. Let's let's do that. We need to, you know, put, you know,

$5 billion as a budgeted towards First Nation infrastructure. And this isn't a problem that is strictly tied to indigenous First Nations, Métis communities and their infrastructure. This is a problem we're seeing across Canada, but we're also seeing in Western countries in general. So what is the problem? Why do we not have clean drinking water on First Nations in Canada? We have it because our government is incompetent. It is a competence problem. It is a bureaucracy problem. It is, I didn't finish high school problem. It is, this is the actual issue that we're dealing with. So I am a construction project manager. I am also a claims manager. so that when engineers and government goes off track, I'm one of the people you hire to get your money when you don't get paid by the federal government or the provincial government on these projects because right now, since about 2014, all these projects are going off the rails and they're all going into claims and they're all being delayed by one year, two year, three years, which literally doubles the cost of a project and a project that starts in 220.

and is supposed to finish in 2021 doesn't actually get completed with substantial completion until 2022, 2023. This is the problem. Our problem is that we are so bogged down and municipalities see it and cities see it, but not to the same degree that First Nations see it because there's an extra added layer of this bureaucracy in here. So what's happening is that the, federal government has taken themselves out of the duty of care in this great big triangle of care to all the participants in the building process in a contract

process so any time you have a contract you have who's responsible for what and the person giving the money is normally sitting at the top of that chain that pyramid along with who the owner is in case of the First Nations it's the First Nation and the federal government but what happens is that the federal government took themselves out of that equation. They give the money. They don't track the money. They don't have any milestones to say us that, yes, treasury dollars actually went to this project. We achieved this time frame and this was the final outcome. These were the roadblocks. This is how much we spent in the end. Nobody's tracking it.

The auditor general has brought this up year after year, after year, after year after year. And instead, our government, and this is the actual department. So you have to separate minister and politician who are just as bad from deputy minister and these civil servants that have entrenched power within a department. These are the people that actually run our country. These are the people that say where money is going to go. These are the people that make the side deals in terms of consultants. These are the people that. that either track accountability or don't track accountability. So this is a problem.

This is why it's not happening. So when I started in construction way back in 2006, 2007, on a full-time basis, I saw projects that were delivered. I saw men on the job site that were competent. I saw engineers that were competent. and I saw a project start with shovels in the ground and we built things. We built lots. We had so much fun building.

And we could walk away from a project and say, hey, I built this water treatment plant or I built this lagoon. And here's the sewage treatment plant I built. And this is the sewage treatment plant I built that's not putting pollution into the waterway. But that's not happening today. today we have this this cascade of failure that I'm going to explain is that from the top down from the federal government down to the owner down to the consultants down to the engineers down to the general contractor and it just follows through and then the lack of experienced guys on a job site which we're getting into now to actually fulfill the project goals

and as that cascade of failures kind of ramp up and really start going like a huge tsunami, it doesn't matter how much money you throw at the problem. You're not going to fix the problem unless you clear the roadblocks at the top of the pyramid. Deal with the federal government, deal with the ISC, bring it down. And nobody can see the big picture.

And I have had conversations on the federal level with either minister or her political, political staffers or dealing with, you know, on the other side of that, on the conservative side, with the critics and Gary Vidal and I have had these conversations. And some people get it and they understand what the problem is. And you know, you're right. It's not rocket science. It's not rock and science. You dig a hole. Build something. It's not hard. And they keep saying is that people will contact me and they'll say, hey, Jocelyn, here's, I got this technology. We can solve this problem on the First Nation. Here's a great water treatment process. And the problem is, is that

it's not a technology problem. Canada has fantastic water treatment systems. We are leaders in water treatment. Our military is amazing at water treatment. But we're fucking incompetent. That's the problem. We're incompetent. We can't finish. We can't finish what we start. We can't. We can't do it effectively. That's our problem. And that's why billions of dollars are going to get spent. Canadian taxpayers are going to get hosed. First Nations are not going to get what they need because we're incompetent. There it is in a nutshell. And then everybody's left hating everybody. Yeah. We spent all this money. Somehow it comes back to the people. We all get angry at each other because First Nations are getting all this money and what are they complaining about? Meanwhile,

what you just said, you're like, oh man. We get mad at the, I got a buddy who works at the city, you know, as an engineer. And I get, I like to tease them when they do a road, you know, road construction, right? Because if they get it wrong, the townspeople let them hear about it. This is, this is interesting. When you talk about competent workers, let's, can we unpack that for a bit? Like, are we, are we talking not trained? Like, are we talking drugs?

are we talking just like brand new to the job and given like a bigger role than they they can handle? Like what do you mean by competency? And what are you seeing? So what I see and what I've seen consistently since about 2010 is that I have seen a decline in available experienced workers in our workforce. So right now our workforce on the ground and this is in sewer, water, building construction, heavy construction, industrial construction, unless we're talking automation, that's a separate category, but the big ones,

our workforce is aging. So we have not replaced our workforce. We have a very, very small amount of people going into the traits, and they aren't getting the mentorship that they need in order to become competent to run these projects and to fulfill these projects. And contractors everywhere scramble. So the level of a build quality that we used to have, even in 2010, has decreased in 2022 because there's a much smaller pool of competent men, our competent people, primarily men.

And as they age out of the workforce, that experience, that knowledge, that hands-on ability to be able to think outside the box and solve a problem is gone. It is leaving us. and it's going to leave us in a huge deficit of physical hands-on experience and knowledge. So that's, that's, that's number one. That's, that's our field guys. That's our site superintendents. Those are the guys that actually put everything together. And then we get to the secondary problem of our, these middle managers,

they are project managers, site construction managers. And in 2010, I, had learned all about construction project management through the whole AIG crisis. I learned hands-on what it meant to bond a project, ensure a project, and be able to deliver on a project without penalty of the contractor. So I lived through the whole AIG restructuring of the industry. And that's when risk and risk management on these projects changed dramatically. So what I saw that all these new construction managers, new project managers, they don't know how to read.

I don't get it. I mean, my job when I was estimating a project is that... What do you mean they don't know how to read? Can you imagine, can you imagine jumping on board as a project manager of a project? Say you've been given a $10 million, build a new water treatment plant or build a new sewage treatment plant location. And you haven't, as that project manager, you haven't read the contract. You haven't read the general conditions that your company just signed attaching liability.

You haven't read the specifications that tell you how to complete that job to meet the performance. and you don't know how all the different systems, whether it's mechanical, electrical, building, combined and what schedule and how they fit together. So I am meeting project managers and construction managers who may have been site superintendents or may have just got these jobs. And I asked them, what does the front end of your contract say?

How does that contract tell you You're supposed to interact with engineers and do you know how to protest an engineer's decision? And do you know what your rights are under this contract? And do you know what the arbitration mechanisms are? And do you know how to do conflict mediation. And the guys say, no, I haven't looked at it. I don't know. And so they tell me, and I just had this happen, I had one contract, general contract,

tell me as I'm as I'm working through another claim, say to me, we are at the mercy of the engineer. And I said to him and I said to his boss, I said, that is one, that is a series of words. You never, ever let come out of your mouth, ever. You do not understand how to build. You don't understand a contract. If you say things like that, at a mercy of an industry. engineer. You're the builder. You're the 100% liable for anything goes wrong. The only thing you're at the mercy of is whether or not your men can perform. That's your risk. Engineers, you can deal with engineers. Know the work. Know the work. Know your contract. Know how to mitigate conflict. But that's not happening. It doesn't happen at all. It's like,

Like all these middle guys in the construction world, they have no clue. They have. You get a handful of really good ones. But by and large, they're so inexperienced that they don't know how to go back to an engineer and say, hey, this is out of my scope of work. Let's price it. Let's go through the change order process. Let's document it and let's get it done. And let's do that in 72 hours so that we don't lose.

the time on the project because the first line in every contract for a builder in Canada, time is of the essence. Very first line in every contract, which means is that the contractor is on the hook for liquidated damages if they don't do everything possible to complete their project on time. But that's not happening. So that's a competence level. And that's why when I say these guys obviously don't know how to read, it's either they don't know how to read or they're not been given the time to actually read their contract. I mean, and like say, look at look at, look at lawyers. What lawyer is going to let you sign a contract if you haven't read the contract? You know, you have to read your contracts. You have to know what's going on. So it feels it feels like a foolhardy to not read something, sign on the dotted line and then.

get hooked on to a giant deal like that. You wonder if it's, you know, I have no, like as a business before you sign a contract, you should read everything or you should hire somebody to, certainly if you're not, you know, versed in contract law and all that stuff, hire somebody so that they can break it down for you in and Cole's notes. But you wonder if it's almost like a symptom of the world we live in where every website you go to at this point is like, do you want to read the contract? No, you just click the yeah, okay button. And you click this And we've just gone from reading everything to signing over, you know, all the privacy rights and everything online. And you wonder, has that translated over?

I have a hard time comparing Facebook to signing a million dollar contract, although somebody somewhere is probably going, but you probably should, right? You probably should be reading all those details. Yep. Yeah, this is, you're right. It is a symptom. It's a symptom of this decline that I keep seeing. I keep seeing this decline in every industry. It doesn't matter if it's construction.

It's other industries as well. Other government procurement will see the same thing where people get in over the head and they don't understand the contract that they signed. I've been to court. I have fought projects in court. I have fought the federal government. I'm still fighting the federal government. I'm still fighting the provincial government in Manitoba on these very safe issues.

And why have I been successful? and not lost my business and not lost my home or anything to date because I read my contract and I understood my scope of work and I understood what my rights were under the contract. But not only are project managers not doing this and not reading engineers and government hired engineers or actual physical employees of either the federal government or the provincial government, they're not reading either. They get this cut and paste document that they sign for the federal government or they sign for the provincial government. And they have no clue what it says either.

I actually had an engineer in Winnipeg when we were in a battle. We were in a claims management meeting. And he was telling me what was in his specifications. It was in his general conditions. And he says, the contract says, you need to do this. this, this, and this. And this was for a First Nation. And I actually quoted him verbatim, open it up because I knew that this was going to come up. And I quoted him back his own specifications. He got so mad at me because I was right. He threw it at me. He threw his specification book

across the table at me. And he said, you're too aggressive for a woman. Because that makes any sense. Welcome to my world. Welcome to my world. Is it a... I just want to try and unpack some more. When you get going here, I'm like, oh, this... Everything seems so simple on the surface, but as we all know, the more you dig into things, the more complex it gets.

Is it... People just don't want to work with the government? Is it like, what is it going on here that... Or is a government job too cushy for an engineer that he doesn't want to read? Like, I don't know. I'm just throwing... things out, hoping something sets you off almost, because I'm curious, you know, it seems like you got a wealth of knowledge in here. And I go, it can't be every construction company can't

have this problem because otherwise, then the whole industry would be really, really flawed, I would think. So I'm wondering, is it directly tied to First Nations? Is it directly tied to the government's projects? And you're not in your head. So let's unpack that then. You deal the government, you're saying it's directly tied to the government's incompetence, essentially. Yes, 100%. The government has created a series of bureaucratic milestones of these bureaucratic delays all the way through. I do a lot of private industry work, and I actually prefer to work with private industry and private individuals rather than government. Why? Because I'll get paid, because government doesn't pay their bills.

Government isn't paying their bills. No. If you want to understand how flawed our construction industry is, you have to see how many contractors go out of business every year because they were too small to fight the government. They didn't have enough fight in them to be able to take on the government and actually get paid on their contracts. Contractors especially trades guys,

like mechanical, electrical and the small trade. they get beat up every single day and they go to business every single day. So, okay, I hear that and I go, I know why you don't have competent workers. If I was a worker and heard those stories, I'm like, I'm not touching that one to 10 foot pole because I need to get paid. Because if I do all this work and then don't get paid, I'm just speaking for myself personally. I got a family and bills and kids and like, I got stuff that needs to get paid. If it ain't even paid, that might be the biggest story of it all.

There is supposedly all this money going there, but they're not paying. But they're not paying. It's actually a lot of the money gets bled off even before it gets down to the general contractor or it gets held back and clawed back in different ways by the various government agencies. So what happens is that the only people that can bid these jobs are the big contractors that are on a revolving door. So they are racing from contract award to substantial completion, bleeding cash throughout the process, racing to the next job to get the mobilization cash,

to fund the cash flow from the previous project, fight for the whole back and the clawbacks throughout the process. And no project happens on time. So I deal with subcontractors right now that have, not been paid hold back monies in 18 months. They haven't, so substantial completion was 18 months ago and they haven't gotten paid. And that's 7.5% or more of their project cash. And they paid their guys and they pay their materials and they paid their overhead.

And so what's happening is these guys are getting crushed and they're funding their businesses through debt. consolidation and they're funding their businesses through massive markups to try and claw back the cash in other ways. So this is this escalating cycle of increased costs that are happening. And general contractors who have multi-million dollar projects, they don't pay their subs in a 30-day window according to the contract because they're not getting paid. So if they get paid, they're supposed to get paid by the federal government or the provincial government every 30 days. The federal government or the provincial pay them in 45 or 60 days or 90 days or 180 days. So flows downhill.

The general contractors use their subcontractors like a line of credit. And they push all that through. And so it is breaking the backs of our most educated, experienced, just these guys that have a wealth of knowledge, they're pulling the pin and they're leaving the industry and they're saying, I've had enough, I've lost enough money. And so as they talk about housing shortages, and they talk about not getting projects done on time,

and not having a certain level of competence, It starts at the top. And remember at the beginning of the show, I talked about a cascade of failures. This is part of the cascade of failures. So number one, does the federal government pay their bills on time? Absolutely not. Do they not, do contractors not get paid at all? Absolutely true.

I'm one of them. Right now, between the province of Manitoba and the federal government, government, I am owed millions of dollars in unpaid contracts on First Nation projects that went south because of incompetent engineering and incompetent bureaucracy. And they left a whole bunch of contractors, including myself, holding the bag. And I had to retool and I had to restart. And I had to sell equipment and I had to fight and I had to remortage. And I had to do debt consolidation. but I said, you won't get away with it. So I prepared my own summaries of defense, and I sued both of them.

It took me four years to get, just to get the federal government to give me standing to sue them, because you can't sue the federal government just willy-nilly. You have to prove you have standing under a certain precedent of law to even be able to sue government. We're not allowed to sue the government. I'd do the same thing with the provincial government. I'm still in court with the provincial government for a project on which they hired an unlicensed, non-certified professional engineer for the province of Manitoba

to review my shop drawings and told me I was wrong when I said that their elevations are wrong. I know that water doesn't flow uphill. I can see it. but when I tell them that, hey, I can see something's not right here. I can see these elevations look wrong. And they said, put it in the ground, Jocelyn. And if we're wrong, it's on us.

And I was like, it's wrong. So I formally protested the engineer's decisions, finding out he's not actually an engineer, licensed in Canada, anywhere to practice. We got to stick there just for a second. Why? How's that? possible? As a possible? Because the provinces don't follow the rules. So this is the number one thing.

And this is my guiding principle is ethics. If I have to follow the rules and if I have to follow the legislation, then so does the provincial government. And so does the federal government. But the government has said is that the rules are not for us. Rules are for you guys. Rules are for the little guys. Rules are for We don't have to follow the rules. You know the hardest thing about, well, I don't know, maybe the most enlightening thing about this damn podcast since I started it is I would say episode one, I really trusted our government.

And I was like, I live in the greatest country on the planet. And la-di-da, I'm going to go have a coffee, play some hockey, and be all things Canadian. And now we sit at like 264 or 5 somewhere in there. and I'm like, the word incompetent comes up a lot. I don't use the word trust anymore. Rules for them and us differ comes up an awful lot. And, you know, I go back to just COVID and a lot of the things that came up there.

What you're talking about is on a whole new level of like, I just, I guess, I feel like, Josh, I just, I probably mirror part of the population. It doesn't really, you know, here's about clean drinking water and goes, that seems really strange. And I don't think anyone can really argue with that. And I feel like that's why politicians bring it up. Oh, we got to have a clean drink tomorrow. Absolutely. Like, but I'm going, this should have been done 20 years ago. Um, like, let's get the right people on it. Let's pay the bills. Let's move on with life. And we'll all be better for it. Right. We can focus on new problems because it's not like no problems are constantly being created. As we both know, things constantly are being created. But right now what you're telling me, man, I'm like, oh, this is, this is a, this is, I thought it was going to be, you know, dip it in the little, the little puddle on the, and I just fell face first into the biggest pothole under the sun. And I'm like, oh my God. Right. Like this, this doesn't sound fun at all. It sounds like, why would you even get involved? Why, why, why, why doesn't Jocelyn just go work for private companies and move on with life? There you go. That's what I. did. I still have to sue the government and I still have to get my money. That's what you did. You moved on. Yeah, I moved on. I have a background in water treatment and switch treatment. I'm probably one of the

few indigenous women in Canada that actually works in this industry. I love working in these communities. I still advocate for these communities. I still try to solve problems in these communities on my own die. I don't get paid by First Nations normally to do advocacy work. It's no cost to them. Somebody calls me, various councils will call me and say, hey, I've got a problem. We've been asked by the federal government to sign off on this project, and we're not happy with the end result. We're not happy with the regional director in them forcing us to sign off on this project. Jocelyn, can you help us?

And I do. And I go out there and I look at the, I look at the performance checklist and I look to see whether or not everything was signed off correctly. And then I put together a rebuttal for the First Nation and send it off to, you know, the regional director for ISC or send it off directly to a minister. And then it goes nowhere. I write a lot of letters. I write a lot of background documents to let a First Nation build enough information to show. kind of like neglect like split lake and lets them go to court sue the government and get a billion dollar settlement. I do that normally for free so that a first nation can successfully

sue the federal government for delay and neglect. And if I could make a career out of just helping First Nations, you know, tear the department down, I would because it is so incompetent. That's how strong they feel. You mentioned two years that through this 2010, 2010, 2014. Yep. Obviously, 2015 is when Trudeau gets elected. So is there any significance to that or has it been a tire fire for? 12 years? I saw a decline. Like, you know, so when you're looking at statistics, you can kind of see

this decline coming down. So I saw the decline and I saw the, this decline through 2010 to 2014. I saw kind of like the decline in incompetency. But up until that point, if I took findings to the federal justice department, they acted on them. And I was able to get resolution and I was able to to solve projects. 2015, the very same Justice Department now wants nothing to do with following through some of these things, especially when I bring evidence of fraud. When you defraud the federal government and you spend treasury dollars not as intended, that should be a big deal.

You should be going to jail because had I done that, or if I don't pay my taxes or you don't pay your taxes. You go to jail or they seize your home. But then evidence of of those types of those types of things happened since 2015 and I saw it overnight like it was overnight that that change. I couldn't believe it. And I can use two separate examples. Same situation both went to the federal justice. One in 2000. and 13, and I've settled in 2014, and then one in 2015 going to 2016. And in that case, I actually took all of the information, and I sent it to the PMO's office as a whistleblower. And I sent it to Carolyn Bennett as a whistleblower.

You know what? zero response. Nada. Nothing. They said, we'll look at it. From a regional director gave me that. No response from the PMO's office. No response from Carolyn Bennett's office.

Now, I identified during that letter, and I've posted that actual physical letter on social media and the documentation that I submitted with it, I am a female indigenous contractor working in sewer and water. I was working on two separate job sites where two things were happening. There was physical contamination of ground source water by sewage and hydrocarbons, and that was impacting the only well in the community. So we were already getting water results that were being taken separately through health

Canada and Environment Canada that were demonstrating this. I took physical photos of it. I said is that this needs to be cleaned up. It needs to be addressed and we need to deal with remediation. You know what they said? Leave it in the ground. Where was this contamination located? About 20, maybe 30 feet from the only school in the community

and right between the only well in the community, providing anything for the daycare child family services, the band office, and the individual homes. The whole whole is... Why doesn't that make national news? Because, honestly, the people that run these departments, politicians, media, they don't care. They honestly don't care. These issues are a human rights issue, a basis. a human rights issue and they're happening. We can give reporters all kinds of information. Now, in this particular instance, I sent that information, all the documentation,

lots of documentation too, CBC Marketplace, CBC Indigenous, CTV, CBC, period. At that point in time, I sent it to Charles Adler. I sent it to, oh my goodness, CTV, APTN. Then I also sent it to National Post. I sent this stuff to Globe and Mail. It was Fife directly that I sent the package. So I went to every single media outlet in Canada. And I said, here you go. Here's a package of the information showing the extent of what's happening and this, this huge breakdown. And I'm not the only one to do this. We had most recently a chief from Peggw. us, Hudson. Chief Hudson, he actually, again, reiterated almost the same thing, and he talked about this breakdown in the communication and the breakdown of these projects, the procurement and the delivery of the projects and the performance. He broke that down over a series of 15 years of projects. Then I think it's Nistaga from Ontario. The chief from that community did exactly the same thing. Martin Falls did the same thing.

Atta Wapisket did the same thing. Split Lake did the same thing. And who's been the only one that's been successful enough in being able to fight back? Well, most recently, Split Lake. And that's because they have a fantastic, very strong-willed female chief, Doreen Spence. She is a real fighter. And she takes the time to go through the information.

She's been fighting this in her community for years and years and years and years and years. The only communities, First Nation communities that I know that have been really successful in my region and being able to fight back and have some leeway with Indigenous services would be Cross Lake. Cross Lake is what I call a warrior First Nation. They fight. They know the Constitution. They know the legal precedent. They know how to fight this tooth and nail.

They've been fighting for, you know, in court, basically for 90 years. They know what their rights are under Canadian law. They fight like mad. And then the James Bay Creek. Well, that would be another group that has been successful. But other than that, I mean, our First Nations are spinning their wheels. They're spinning their wheels because they have limited impact. I have seen where community members in council meetings and where there's media present

have brought in water from a local home and said, you drink this. You know what they do? They sit back, grab the bottled water, you take a sip, and they just look at the water. and I sit there in these meetings and I'm like, I just want to get up and I don't want to walk over to these to these people sitting across the boardroom table and I just want to slap them. I just want to I just want to slap them because it's like it's so it's so arrogant and it's so rude to actually look at somebody in their community that has got H. Pallori or they have some type of communicable disease or they have a waterborne illness. And now they're dealing with intestinal cancers and they're dealing with kidney failure because of the long-term exposure to waterborne illness. And so when we look at Manitoba, the rate of cancer in indigenous communities, first nation communities, going right up the middle of the province from the interlake straight to northern Manitoba, it blows every other demographic out of the water.

in terms of the long-term health impacts. The rate of cancer is unbelievable as to what these communities actually see. So here I am. I'm just a lowly builder. I build stuff, but I get exposed to these communities and the problems that are ongoing. And I try to deal with this. And I try to bring this out into the media. But nobody wants to really talk about it.

We get, you know, the little bit of, that little bit that'll come from maybe the free press, or we'll get a little bit of coverage that will come from APTN or CBC Indigenous, a little bit. We don't get the big ongoing stories where the media stays on top of us. The most in-depth conversation I have had about these issues, rebel news. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, Rebel. They actually asked the questions and they dug into it and they read the information. And they don't know what to do other than try to broadcast it. But are the rest of the media doing this? You know, is.

But what is- Is Gordon-Cinella talking about this issue? But what is the rest of media talking about? They're more worried. And I think it's kind of a, we're in this funny place right now. And once again, I don't act like I know everything. You talk about being a lowly construction worker. I think you're pretty special thing because I'm a horrendous builder. So you got me beat there.

I'm a lowly podcaster. I sit in a room and I talk to individuals and I try and spur on conversations like this because this is what's needed. I think people need to understand that I need to understand things, right? But right now we're so worried about, I don't mean me and you. Like as a society, we're so worried about. I'm going to pick on the Emmington Eskimos, right? The Eminton Elks.

We're so worried about it, a name. And I'm not saying that isn't a, sure, it's whatever you want. Personally, I don't care. I look at what you're talking about and I go, now that's an issue. Like, that's an issue we should be solving. People don't want to be called this, that, the other thing, I get that. And I certainly sympathize with what a group of people want to be called and making sure they're, they're labeled the right thing or called the right thing.

Geez, whatever. We're, I see how I'm dancing around it right now. But like, to me, what you're talking about, I'm like, but this is the real issue.

The real issue is like people don't have clean drinking water in Canada. Like, that just blows my brain. And actually what you just talked about with the school and the sewage tree. Like, one of the big pandemics of back in the day was, contamination of drinking water in Europe. Like, that's what it was.

Oh, wait, that isn't good. No, that isn't good. We've known that for a long time. And here we sit and we can't figure that out. Well, we can't figure it out because from what I'm understanding, all the competent workers, including yourself, have left because you're like, well, the government ain't paying me. So why would I go fix that problem?

And I go, so why? So now, I guess now where my brain goes, so if you're the government, why aren't you paying that? Because that's what you literally talk about everywhere. That's what all politicians talk about. We got to fix a clean drinking water problem. Well, then fucking fix it. It's pretty simple.

I mean, it's not hard. This is the issue is that it's not hard. What is? But it is hard, obviously, because somewhere along the way, something got confusing here or, you know, because you didn't say it was, if you'd said when Dress and Trudeau walked in, it got, it was overnight and done,

which you did say it did get worse, but 2010 was still Harper. So I can't just place all the blame. I want to place all the blame, but I'm not going to because he's done a lot of stupid things. But it was before that. So like right now, I go, so this has been 12 years now of like a decline into like oblivion. How do you fix that? How do you, how do we change that culture overnight so that you bring back the people and fix the actual problem and move on with life? One of the, one of the things that I saw Harper do that actually helped and why I was able to. to see resolution in projects. He had anti-lobbing laws and he had a five-year cooling off period that he did. And one of the MPs in my area, actually James Bazan, actually worked with that anti-lobbing regulation that Harper brought in and followed up on information that contractors were

giving MPs in regards to government consultants that were jumping into. bed with engineering firms. So this gets into another idea of where the control is and how do you fix this. That sense of accountability and the cooling off period and anti-lobbing under the Liberal Party that they've been in power for the majority of this time is that Liberal Party contributors actually have their fingers and all these different pies in regards to engineering firms, big engineering firms, Essency is a great one to talk about. But it's not just them.

Oh, that's a nefarious problem, isn't it? What you're starting to lay out there. Now we're talking about Canada infrastructure bank. Now we're talking about monies that aren't going where they are. So people always talk about from the big end of it. So this project has a budget of,

you know, $10 million. Sure. How much money actually gets to the general contractor? It might be only $7 million. maybe it might be $6 million. And where did that other that other $4 million go? That went to consultants.

That went to third party managers. That went to what I call the cottage industry that is attached itself to government and to various departments. And they get the bleed off. They get the flow through through these additional layers added into the process. And they're the ones that slow down the process of a build. and these are the guys that sit on stuff, but they also get paid to do nothing.

They get paid to do nothing. They don't solve problems. And do you think, I'll come in to set it up to do it. Do you think Jocelyn, they sit there and go, oh, yeah, I earn this money? Or do you think they're just like not good people? I know that's a really hard question.

But the reason I ask is literally, 222 minutes who's on on Twitter. Me and him started doing this little 20 minute, two minute headlines. We picked from all the headlines across Canada, the world, it doesn't matter. And what it's really, you know, I don't really think I paid that much attention to the headlines.

And over a course of a month, we've been doing it. I started paying attention to the headlines. And the amount of people getting busted right now for taking bribes and everything else is like astronomical. And I'm like, I always go to twos. I'm like, how do you get those jobs? Like, how does Sean Newman get a $2 million kickback to sign off on a water, you know, a water well, let's say.

And then how do I feel good about that after? Because I literally haven't done anything. How have I, where in my brain did I go, I earn that? And I'd love to say it, it's just rate towards indigenous communities, but it's not. Like, this is like across the board on tons of projects. it's like we as a population we just kind of like and i i don't know i'm once again i'm speaking for myself it's like things were good or whatever they were and you just kind of didn't pay attention i didn't really want to get involved in politics i don't really love talking about it's kind of like a

taboo scummy subject and then once again covid hits and they try and take over every part of your life and you're like no this whoa and now the more i dig into things and i feel that like I'm just like scratching at the surface, the more you realize, holy crap, like this is, this is deep, widespread. This isn't just, and I can't figure out if it's a bunch of cronies at the top, just, you know, pulling strings or what this is. Because I don't know how you get that job, Jocelyn. I can't see from what I'm hearing from you.

I don't think Jocelyn's sitting there going, okay, I'll take the $2 million and we won't finish the project and we'll just put it wherever you want and who cares. and yeah, yeah, it's not a big deal and carry on with life. Like, what the hell? It is. It is top down. It is. There's a top down flow through.

So, for instance, like, here's a good example. The company I was working with before I started my own company, we come up with a really new innovative water treatment system. So it was a portable system. Believe it or not, I used that technology for Manitoba Hydro. And I built them two water treatment plants with that same company on budget, on time, installed no issues and they're still using them today. We took that technology and we said, hey, we gave it to CETA and we said, we presented our idea

and said, hey, we have this idea where we could go into different parts of the world and we could deliver in a rapid way, we could deliver completely potable safe drinking water that is contained within sea container units, dropped them on site and be able to do that. And we were told us that even to get to that point where we could present the information, we would have to provide a $200,000 finder's fee to the intermediate between CEDA and us as a contractor. And I'm sitting in this meeting and I'm listening to this. And of course, I'm just like I'm just the, I was just the designer and the estimator at the time. and I'm listening to my boss talk through this. And honestly, my comment was, I said,

what the fuck is a finder's feed doing in this process? Everybody kind of looks at me like I've got three heads. And I just said it. I just said it. I always say it. I never hold back. So I did. And they looked at me and that was, that was it. That was the end of being able to provide a really fast, rapid delivery of water treatment systems that would provide for communities that were in distrust. That very same technology could be used in a pinch in Canadian First Nations. When we get into a watershed ministry, we get into flooding and everything else where we could go to a backup well. We could provide potable water where we could even just put it on to a pump or truck and haul it out to people within a community. And those individual units that I was talking about,

$103 million. One system, ready to go, drop in place. They can be built in about three months. Away you go. So when people talk to me about the technology and they talk to me about treatment process and they talk to me about all of these different things, and I kind of look at them and I just want to say to them,

I say, you haven't got a clue. You don't understand where the roadblocks are in the system to be able to make that happen. And, you know, I have gone back and I have, so I've met on the federal level and I have discussed with, with federal members about infrastructure. I've talked about housing, how to solve housing problems, how to create communities that are off grid, communities that are using less overall materials, but the high efficiency in the, in the builds that we're doing for two-thirds of the cost of a traditional business. build, giving them something that is turnkey beautiful and high quality. And again, on the federal level, I get looked at like I have three heads. Like, there's no way you could do this. And I say to them, I said, I've already done it. I've already done it. I've already proved the concept.

I've funded it myself. I already done. I'm in the process of building a subdivision right now that is off-grid capable. The world goes to help. My subdivision's standing. It's got its own power. It's got its own heating. It's got its own water. It's got its own sewer contained. It has backup power in terms of solar panels

and backup generators for each and every home. Something happens in Manitoba. My community and my people living within that community are 100% safe. They got everything that they need while the world crumbles around them. And I did this for less money than a traditional build. So can you believe that I can build a 1400

square foot home, high efficiency, two bedrooms, backup power, off-grid capable, attached garage, R-50, R-60, everything included, sewer water, you name it. I can do it for 320 and under per home, giving them a completely independent living on a lot that's say 140 by 150, people think I have two heads. However, I've done it. I've absolutely done it. I'm doing it right now. I'm doing these types of builds right now.

And who's funding my builds? Individual people that want to be able to be independent, live off grid. if something happens in the case of emergency and have some type of long-term stability. These things are so possible. It's so realistic. And I don't have to go and spend $100,000 on engineering to be able to come up with these types of solutions. I just need somebody with a shred of common sense. And I need a government, whether it's provincial or federal,

to have some level of political will because you say what is the problem? The problem is political will. It is not the, if we had the political will at the top to fix these roadblocks, the roadblocks could be removed and we could put the care back into the process to make sure these things happen. So instead, people like me that are working outside the box and we think independently and we think about long-term-term stability. We're moving out of the system,

and we're moving strictly into private industry because we can't afford to work with government anymore because they are just that clueless, but it's political will. It is 100% political will. So if Justin Trudeau were to say today, I want to fix the problem, and he were able to expend,

the political will to make it happen, it would happen because the departments can't change without a political mandate. This is entirely 100% political, which leads into the cascade of failures where the bureaucratic roadblocks that we see all the way through and the bribes that come off and the paid consultants that get all the money for doing absolutely nothing down the road. And then it comes back to the general contractors that are just trying to raise. race one project to another to try and get enough of a bill completed so they can get enough money so that they can continue on. And when the general contractor finally falls out of, has no steam, it can't keep going, then the company folds, it goes to auction and then they start all over

again. So that is a cascade of failure that are construction industry and the engineering lobby in Canada. That's where we're at. And that's what I battle every day. So we got at least another three years of it Because we both know Justin Trudeau ain't fixing this problem Like it just it isn't happening I mean he's had more than enough time to fix it at this point And he ain't fixing it

And I got told a while back That we lack leaders with vision On how to fix things and how to like You know move forward in society It doesn't have to be all the government's out to get us or whichever side you want to pick, right? Like, I mean, we can have a leader with vision who has will, I would use the word fortitude, right?

Because you're going to face critics no matter what you do. But we haven't had anyone stand up and lead like that. When you talk about roadblocks, do you know of the roadblocks that need to be cleared or is one of the roadblocks just having somebody who will actually talk about it and follow through? I actually, believe or not, I gave the federal government a high-level solution to the roadblocks. I actually gave them a detailed breakout of that. If you were with ISC, where do you tackle the problems and how do you start restructuring each individual group within the department? And how do you restructure that in order to challenge and hit these roadblocks? I gave them the cold notes on how to do it.

I've been thinking about this for a number of years. I understand the roadblocks. I know where those roadblocks are. I understand the team of individuals you would have to hire to push the roadblocks through. And the response that I got in December 2021, because this is a conversation I just had. And I have the emails to back it up. So Patty better not say she doesn't know about it because she sure as the hell does. I gave them that.

And they said is that there was no political will to do this at this time. So I guess my big hiccup here is I am Méti. I've been in the industry a long time. And when people like myself are Melissa and Barkie or other women, Indigenous women start talking about these issues, and this is something that has happened consistently for years, is you get this pile on of saying how we're apples, red on the outside, white on the inside, and that they take our message and they take our drive to make change, and they say is that you're just no better than Whitey.

You're just no, you know, that's, that's response we get. Sometimes we get responses. And I've got emails and that where I've been told us is that where I'm just not Indian enough to be able to solve the problem. So what does that even mean? The problem is, is that within this, this last, but since 2015, the idea of identity politics has taken over to such an extent that identity politics has more of an impact or it means more than actual solving a problem. So the government defines. This goes,

this goes back to what I said earlier. We're more worried about what to call the problem than actually fixing the problem. Oh yeah. And you should, you talk to indigenous people that have been speaking out about this on a regular basis from the beginning. You know, I've been advocating here for since 2008, 2009, when I really got into this on this level. And I have consistently seen the same thing. I was treated better prior to 2015. I was treated much better prior to 2015. After 2015, I was treated like I was complete garbage.

You know, I've had emails where, you know, the idea of that, you know, can't have Jocelyn on a project because, you know, she's too aggressive for a woman, or she's going to ask the hard questions, or she's a bit too combative about the process. It's not that I'm too combative or I'm too aggressive. I believe in the ethics of the contract. I believe in following the spirit of the contract. I believe in providing a build that allows that First Nation or that community or that owner the ability to be able to use the end product for the costs that they were told by engineering.

So what's happening is that instead these First Nations are getting these great big water treatment plants and sewage treatment plants and other infrastructure that is so top-heavy in energy use and inefficiency and environmental resource use, that they can no longer even afford to maintain or provide power to run this infrastructure. And so they got, First Nations get put on the hook for all these costs that were kind of just slimmed over, like, you know, skimmed over. And they didn't understand what they were getting into or chemical use

or that they would have to use so much chemical in order to be able to treat their water and systems, those costs have gone from, you know, being, you know, $30,000 a year to now they're spending $200,000 a year. Now they have no budget. And they're stealing budget from housing and they're stealing budget from the school or from health care in order to try and meet the demands of water treatment. So, you know, all of this is happening. So nobody's focusing on on the real issue.

issue, the liberal government, but the liberal party in general. And I, and I kind of look at this because I grew up, you know, watching like Kretchen and Paul Martin and watching these guys and actually having some level of respect for them and understanding where they, they were financially in that, not having a terrible overview of our perspective of them. I always thought that government in Canada, whether it was conservative or liberal, they were always going to be fairly consistent. And that there was a, you know, it was never. going to be terrible. But now I see the end point of that is that as we get further along down the road where the idea of who controls the Liberal Party of Canada actually has their fingers in so many different pies that real change and real progress can't happen. So in order to maintain control, identity politics becomes a weapon of choice. And we see it in the U.S. and we see in the UK in Europe. The idea that identity politics is weaponized in order to divide people and keep them not focused on the real issues, which is basic human rights. A basic human right is access to clean drinking water. It is not whether or not, you know, you have the right to be

called this pronoun or that pronoun or anything else. Basic human rights are access to water. Water is life. that is important. And that's what I see. One of the things I saw in Ottawa was they tried painting it. And I've gotten in this argument with Ron McLean about it. But they tried painting it as like,

I don't know, white supremacy or like these bunch of like, you know, misogynistic. What's the, you know, there's a coin phrase they use there. But what I actually saw, and I've never seen it before in my life is I saw every province

every color and creed First Nations were all represented actually I saw some cool flags that I didn't even know existed in history and turns out they're pretty you know some of the first flags of this country and you go it was beautiful because everybody

I felt like especially in the early days I think for the whole thing I shouldn't say the early days but in Ottawa everybody went and it was the most united i've seen a group of people now the cause was was everybody felt that for two years and and the hope that was brought from it and everything else but i wonder when you when you talk about uh using identity politics as you know kind of almost war propaganda and really targeting it once again i just go like sitting here in

Lloyd. We got reserves around us, right? And it's different here because, well, immediately, because of the oil industry and how much money and revenue comes to different bands. I don't know all of them. But in saying that, I talked to a guy, this is, geez, I don't know Josh. So maybe six, seven months ago. And I'd asked about solutions, you know, like how there's so much divide between, well, here specifically between the reserve and the city or white and native, right? Like there's just a divide. And I go, how do you fix that?

And people need to come back together. They need to start talking, not listening to what the government's saying. Because when I sit here and listen to you, I go, that's, really tough because you expect them to just solve the problem. That's their job. Like if I'm, you know, if I'm, if I'm, I assume if I was a politician, that's what my job would be. It's like, okay, let's get our people all together. Because when we're together, then there's less crime. Then we're looking out for one another. And I'm certainly not, I'm, I'm sure in different areas, right, I glaze over the fact that are there some bad natives out there that do some bad? Yeah.

Are there some bad white people? Uh, yeah. I know, we certainly know about that. Like we know about all of it. Instead, we're focusing on a problem that isn't the real problem. And I come all the way back and I'll finish my monologue here. What Ottawa did for me was one of the many things it did for me, was it showed how powerful a country can be when the people actually come together under human decency and actually caring about one another. And I'm like, when I hear this water problem,

it's just reminded me that maybe a guy should take a drive and go meet some people and see what their problems are and actually get to what the problem is instead of letting bureaucrats decide what the problem is because what their definition is and what our definition is aren't exactly the same clean drinking water sure but the perception and the look on it is completely different it is and these projects is that the First Nation most people don't realize is that they get a capital budget, they get an operating budget, and they get a capital budget. So what happens is that they don't get a lot of say in these projects that are being delivered and how they're going to be delivered and how they're going to be built and who's going to build it and that they're a flow

through. But if we could instead come up with the idea of listening to the individual communities and saying, what do you need? How can we support it? And move, to self-government agreements with a managed budget by the First Nation, where they're allowed to actually engage in resource development and having a say over how resources are utilized for their community. That's the solution. And you're right, people can solve problems. People working together can solve problems. When you go to a First Nation community, and that you will meet some fantastic people. And you can sit down with elders and they understand or council members, not all

them, but a lot of them. And they understand. They understand where the problems are. They understand what it would take to fix the problem. They may not have the technical background to do this or the legal background to do this, but they would like to hire contractors that they feel they can trust to deliver this. and they would love to be able to engage in contracts to be able to do this.

And when a First Nation can do that, when they can engage directly, it's like with Gold Corps or an oil company or in different ways, without the interference of government and environmental NGOs who choose not to listen to the majority of First Nation people, that is where solutions come from. First Nations working in cooperation with the, the local province, the local companies, private industry, they can solve a lot of these problems on their own,

and they can solve these problems for a heck of a lot less than what is flowing through the federal government, which may not even reach them. You know, just because $5 billion is announced in a budget, it doesn't mean that that's actually flows through. Maybe only 60% of it actually flows through on the timeline that it says it would be, and it actually takes four years or five years to spend that,

that budget. So the numbers that we get out of the federal government, they aren't real, they aren't valid, they have no clue as to what's actually being delivered. But people at a local level working in cooperation with local government and local industry, that will solve problems. I mean, here I am. I can put a water treatment plant together. There's a Cadillac of water tree plant for $5 million installed up and running, ready to go, and do that for a department of the provincial government here in Manitoba as a design build and get it done in six months. And we have First Nations that have no access to that. That's astounding that you cannot get a private industry solution to the people that need it.

for a decent amount of money. And I got to say, I made profit. I had a good profit on that, that $5 million package, paid the bills. Things were, I was good, I was happy. And I have a project that I will always know that I did good work on.

But you're, you're, it's funny, you know, you do all these conversations, you listen to a bunch of podcasts, everybody, centralization sounds like such a,

you know what? we'll consolidate. We'll consolidate everything. That way we have one solution or multiple solution, one point person that can go out and solve this problem. And then the problem is, is that one person, how can you possibly, it's not a fault of the person. It's not even, the idea is just a little bit flawed in that how can you possibly care about, I don't know, how many communities across Canada are there that need some TLC a lot? I mean, And so you're talking, once again, in a different way about decentralizing. Just allowing the people that are of the community know their problem.

Now, there's going to be some issues that come with that for sure. But, I mean, overall, if you give the power back to the people, which they won't want to do, that'll be a lot of money out of a lot of people's hands, I would guess. if you did that and allowed people who care about their community, know their community, know the problem, to solve their problem, it might be more healthier for all that. And you hear that across not just this, like we're talking a ton of different issues, come back up to the centralization theme of like consolidating everything to one office because that'll make it smooth and all the questions can go there and it's a point person. The problem is it doesn't flow back out the same way that it should, or at least not. And the theory is a well-oiled machine, but actual, like, putting it into place doesn't, it doesn't go that way at all.

Yeah. And it's 100%. It's certain that you need, you need kind of like a centralized regulation, maybe, but not delivery. Delivery has to be independent. It has to be, it has to be flexible. It has to be able to happen really, really quick. You have to have a system of delivery, and that's, that's not happening. I don't understand why more people don't see it.

We don't need more government. Government doesn't fix problems. So you don't want government to have a digital ID where it's tied to everything you do? Yeah, I'm still dealing with the whole idea that, you know, I lost a career because of my vaccination status and I can't leave the country and I can't, I can't do, can't do. anything that I used to do because of that. Well, how is, how is, you know, I sit right on the border of Alberta, Saskatchewan. And Lloyd's an interesting place because, although I live in Alberta, we follow SHA rules for, it's this really weird kind of spot in the world.

How is Manitoba currently with, with COVID, everything you just talked about? The provincially, I think COVID is kind of done. You know, you see some people with masks and that's your choice and they do it all by choice. But on anything that impacts us federally, you know, that's where the impact is. The province has freed things up to the point that they can. So for the first time in two years, I was actually able to go into a restaurant the other day. For Mother's Day, I was able to take my, my husband's mother who is like 80, some odd years old, we're able to take her out for her Mother's Day brunch. And that's the

first time in two years that we were actually able to go into a restaurant or go into a movie in two years or any of those different things. For two years in Manitoba, we weren't allowed to visit anybody in hospital. So when my son got burned badly, I wasn't allowed to even be in hospital. He wasn't allowed to have anybody in hospital with him. So the provincial part of these mandates are gone. And so life is a little bit more normal. But again, I mean, for somebody like myself, I can't get on a plane, can't get on a train, can't cross the border. I got an invitation this morning to attend a conference in California for emergency response. Some of the things I do about providing clean water and an emergency. And I was asked if I would be willing to fly to California,

they pay for me to go and I would be a part of the seminar. And I was said as that I am sorry I would love to be there. I would love to have a paid trip down, but I'm not allowed to leave the country. I'm not allowed to go anywhere. And that's with a medical exemption. So the whole idea of all this stuff is just it makes absolutely zero sense to me in how in how our governments operate, what they see is important,

what they don't see as important. It's just, it's such a mad, it's just such a mad way in which they operate. Nothing makes sense. And when you get people like myself that are actually trying to solve problems and give them solutions and say, hey, maybe I can't solve all the problems,

but I can put you in the right direction and put you on the right path, and give you support to do this. And it's just deemed as not important. And so there's this big collective sitting at the top. And I don't think it's the bulk of Canadians. I think the convoy probably proved otherwise is that we have a very small group of people at the top

that kind of manage things and tell us what direction our country will go into. But the majority of the people see things in a very different light. And we want solutions and we want to manage things in a more adaptable way, but we're not given that opportunity. It's crazy. Yeah, I can't speak for everybody. I just, I don't think there's a utopia you can achieve.

I don't know if that's humanly ever possible because there's always going to be problems to solve. I just want government out of my life. when you reiterate not being able to travel, not being able to leave the country, that type of thing, not being able to go here, there, everywhere. There's millions of people across Canada that share that sentiment. And the thing is, is like, at this point, there's no reason to have it still in fact, like zero. And yet the government holds on to it and try and actually, you know, talk about other things going on and try not to address it. meanwhile they're they're hindering the movement of a huge portion of their population and that's really strange to me you know as this continues on you just think well you know one of the ways my

brain rationalizes it and i'm not saying this is a good way to rationalize it you're like well it took time for it to come in it'll take time for it to go out but it will go out and yet here we are and it won't go out and they they keep talking about the latest the science still shows and you're like, and what science is that? What science are we paying attention today? What debate are you shutting down? What don't we talking about? Because like it's becoming more and more evident that they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to remove the restrictions, which is weird, all right? Like beyond weird. And here we sit. We're going to move into the summer with restrictions still on. And I know a ton of people who've driven across this country to go watch

your kids do XYZ because they're not allowed to fly, which I always, you know, I try and take the positivity out of them. I'm like, well, I mean, you'll get to see the country. It's a beautiful place. Lots of great people. But it's still messed up. You can't fly. You can't leave. Well, think about it this way is that in Manitoba, when this whole pandemic was going on, the construction industry was exempt from the COVID restrictions. So while my neighbors were massed, My neighbors were, you know, locked down in their houses and not to allow to travel freely and not to do all these things. I'm outside building and I'm not wearing a mask. I've got no restrictions in terms of following the public health orders.

Why was that? I didn't know that. Well, so. COVID doesn't, COVID doesn't enter the worksite? No, apparently not. Apparently not. Apparently not. So that was one of the things here is that.

There were certain industries in Manitoba that were exempt from the COVID restrictions. So I can tell you that for the only time I ever wore a mask during this entire two years was when I entered a grocery store or entered a hospital or something like that or a business that had a mask policy. And that's it. So with my, but my own work site, my work offices, they were exempt from, because we're of the that we're in, we didn't have those same restrictions. What we had instead was the existing health and safety legislation,

which just set us out a certain amount of protocols that we would have to follow to make sure that we kept our worksites safe, which we always do. And so our guys did that. And my guys, my guys worked without a mask for two years and they, they, they didn't get sick. We didn't, I didn't have any guys actually get sick until just September of 2021 when they finally got, some of them got the, the, the delta and they lost two days of work and they were back at it after that. So, I mean, so this is here, here I am. I'm looking at this and, and I have government officials telling me on one hand, you know, I can't, I can't, I can't go. to all these different places and I can't go on a plane

and I can't do this and I can't do that. But sure's the shit, I can go into their house and I can do renovations on their house without wearing a mask and I can go put in a fence or we can put in a pool for Mr. High and Mighty out there so he can go

suntan naked with Johnson hanging out in his backyard all summer long. Well, the rest of you guys are locked up. Doesn't make sense to me. Really? Well, you've made me laugh for the first time here in an hour and a bit. Yes, the rules for us and not for them is.

I didn't realize the construction industry didn't have to abide by those rules. That's interesting. No mandates, employer mandates either. It was the industry willingly without a requirement was the one that started instituting these mandates, these employer mandates, even though we were exempt from any requirement of it, and that's because they were getting kickbacks from government. They were getting subsidized to do the employer mandate. So here in Manitoba, I have been openly a free workplace where I have said is that

I will not discriminate against you based on vaccination status or any other status and that I will allow people to come work for me as long as they're competent. I don't care what background you are. I don't care your medical status. I don't care anything otherwise. If you can do the job, swing a hammer, you can work for me. But I was one of the few. I was one of the few to do it vocally.

I was one of the few to actually go on to CTV and have those things and have at the beginning of the whole thing where human rights lawyers, the University of Manitoba actually said the same thing, is that, yeah, it's probably discriminatory. And she's probably right. And we don't want to put ourselves at risk of violating people's charter rights. And I said is that I will not discriminate against anybody in any sense.

And so here I am. You know, I'm watching how things were so lopsied in terms of charter rights and restrictions exist for one part of the population, but they don't exist for the other part of the population. that made no sense to me. You know who else was exempt from any type of COVID restrictions, even though some of them chose to wear masks in public? Local government, municipalities, council meetings. They didn't have to do anything.

Public coming in would have to mask up and everything else. But there was no requirement for them to follow COVID policies. They did it. The ones that did do it did it because they chose to. but they were exempted from it, just like our MLAs were all exempted from here in Manitou as well. They put on the show, but they didn't have to. They were outside the public health orders. Well, isn't that just lovely?

Yeah. So that's why my view has been this way from the beginning is that if I was able to work in my industry without public health orders and I was able to do it and not putting anybody at risk, not having my workforce get sick, not killing grandma, and work in a primarily the demographic where we worked was older couples, people with money who are paying for renovations. You know, it made no sense to me. You know, so it's like I couldn't see, I couldn't understand it, is that we were living in a bubble of normality within our industry. And everybody else around us was just caught up in this other, this whole other thing.

And people were losing their minds. And job sites were happening in First Nations. They were masked up. The guys were out there. They're laying in pipe. They're digging in. They're not wearing masks. They're not doing any of those things.

It wasn't a requirement for us to do that. So then when I see the rest of the population, then I see this whole Maddie with truckers. And I see the whole idea of all these things. I'm like, this was not about science. It wasn't about health. It wasn't about anything like that. And because I'm a safety office as well, I'm a national level of construction safety officer.

And I've been trained in PPE. And I've been trained with PPE with the military as well. And then I look at all those things. And I'm like, cloth masks. Yeah. They're good for one thing. Wipe in your arsehole. Put them in the garbage.

That's it. Well, you've, this is why people need to continue to talk, ask questions, because when we don't do that, then we have, while we have what we went through. I mean,

being locked away from everybody was not good for anyone's psyche, let alone anything else, right? We're social creatures. So you need to be around people. And being terrified that everybody was going to kill you, was in a unique feeling. And even it went through my body at the very beginning of it because you're like, geez, like, I don't, you know, I got young kids.

And the way they built it up, you didn't know. And certainly if I was maybe a little more attuned to what was being done, maybe I would have been a little more skeptical. But at the beginning, listen, I have no, like, I don't have any, I was bought into it. I was green as green when it comes to politics. And the longer I do this podcast and start to talk to people, start to hear their stories. I'm like, oh, man, this is, this is, well, an onion, you know, a little bit of Shrek here. It's got multiple layers. It just keeps going and going and going.

Well, before I let you go, we got to do the, the Crude Man, the Final Five brought to you by Crudemaster. Shout out to Heath and Tracy. I started using Heath here. I interviewed him a while back. He runs a trucking company here in Lloyd. And he'd said, if you're going to stand behind a cause that you think is right, than stand behind it absolutely. And it's something that from every episode, there's usually a sentence or two that I get out of somebody that sticks with me and I chew on it for a while. And this is one that I've thought a lot about. And I'm curious, what's one thing that Jocelyn stands behind?

The honesty, and this is something that has been the guiding principle of my life. And that is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. everything about that document guides every aspect of my life, all of it, right from military service, to the idea of what I do in my community, to how I run my business, to how I interact with people on a regular basis. There is one guiding document or one guiding principle that guides my life in every single way. It would be that. that that is it and that is what allows me to fight for first nation communities it allows me to carry on the advocacy for for drinking water it gives me the the will to fight government

because in terms of freedom of speech i am absolutely against our ministry of truth and our disinformation and our fact checkers and and everything else so when things come down to it if there is one single part of my life that that is absolutely that I'm rooted in right from the core outwards into how I raise my children to my grandchildren. It is, it is that. It is, it is that document because, you know, I look at communities and I look at individuals and we have nothing. We have no protection. We have no ability to live our lives on our own, the way we choose unless we have the support of a document like that. I wish it were stronger. I wish it was adhered to. I wish that it weren't eroded the way it's been. But I mean, that's it. That's what

brought it to me. And the question is, is, where did I learn about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Military. The one institution in Canada that instilled in me, The absolute love for the charter was our Canadian military 22 years ago. As a brand new officer cadet and a young woman, that was it. As a new mother, that is what, that's what hooked me. That's what made me love my country. That's what made me love the people. That's what made me love everything about where I was.

that made me love the fact that I was Métis, that I was part of a group of people that were willing to stand and take up arms and fight a rebellion for things that were right and true. You know, the military taught me about the Canadian Charter, and I feel like every single one of our institutions has forgotten about how important it is. You know, when you, I hope in time, when we look back over the last two years, one of the positive outcomes that could have not been foreseen is how many people are, have read now the charter and understand how important that is. Because I can stick my hand up and say, I, as a history guy, I read it back when I have no idea. But I think, you know, it's kind of like, kind of loosey-gousy.

I have right to move and right to this and right to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then this happens and you go, oh, that's why it's important. And, oh, there's people who actually move from all over the world to come to Canada because of that document. And you go, that's a pretty important piece of paper that I agree with you. You wish it held, you wish it had a little more like the Americans, where, but they, they, they, they bled for that sucker. And in fairness, the last two years, I would say a lot of people of, it's a different type of war that's going on right now than, then bullets and bombs and everything else. It's a psychological war that's going on.

A lot of disinformation or whatever information. I mean, it's just at the end of the day, we're finding out, I hope, one of the positive outcomes of what's gone on is everybody's starting to understand how important that document is, right? I think so. And, you know, the worst part of it is that, you know, in Canada, we talk about, you know, our rights and freedoms and what a strong democracy we are. and we like to slag the Americans a lot

and Canadians like to look down our nose at Americans a lot. But we have to remember is that the Americans were 170 years faster in getting out a document that has stood the test of time with their Bill of Rights and their Constitution. And they've been able to keep that document

kind of at the front and center of everything that they do in the United States it took Canada. It took Canada to the 80s to finally kind of get their shit together long enough that they could actually pull it off. And it almost didn't happen. And if it wasn't guys like Brian Peckford, it never would have happened. So the whole idea of how important this is, I mean, you know, people have just got to hang on to it because I can't afford to lose it. Because in Europe, people talk about how important rights and freedoms are and everything else.

but they don't realize is that those rights can be taken away at any point in time. They're not in Europe, the idea of democracy and freedom of speech and freedom of movement and all those things. Those are something that can be taken away at any moment within the European Union. There's no guarantees on any of these. These are privileges granted by government. In Canada and the U.S., we actually have documents that make them as rights. So in some ways, we're a little bit further ahead.

In Canada, we lost a lot of ground. United States, they have something that's a little bit tougher. But, yeah, fundamentally, if you've got to say one thing is going to guide your life, it's got to be either like a charter of rights and freedoms. It has to be something along those lines that underpins everything, everything you do in life. Well, I appreciate you coming on and giving me some of your time. I certainly look forward to it. And it's kind of taking us a bit of bouncing around each other's schedules.

But we finally got it done. I do appreciate you giving me some of your harder and timed. And well, who knows, we'll see what comes in the future. But thanks again, Jocelyn. Yeah, I would love to come back on. And at some point I'm giving you some updates on some of the train wrecks that I'm working on in terms of projects. Just so if Canadians could look at,

what crosses my desk every day. I think that they would be extremely angry and I think that they would have some really hard questions. But I tell you is that I'm more than willing to be an open book and I've always told media that if you ever want to look at what I see and see some of the issues and wonder why I throw coffee cups occasionally, you would understand why. One morning with me looking at my desk, looking at my emails, looking at the, he listened to the conversations and you understand why my, my sons are as independent as they are. Well, I tell you what, we'll see what we can do here in the future. Appreciate you giving me some of your time today.

And all the best here and the days to come. Hopefully better days are ahead for all of us. I hope so. So you guys have a good day over there and hopefully it's, hopefully things improve. you as well okay thanks Sean hey thanks for tuning in today guys hope you enjoyed it uh hopefully you uh

you are tuning into the battle of Alberta tonight oh boy I got a full on bet with my college roommate and uh I can't wait for the oilers to lay it to them so we will catch up to you guys Friday go out there kick some ass and we will uh well we'll catch up to you then Thank you.