Shaun Newman Podcast - #284 - Todd Loewen

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

He is the current independent MLA for Central Peace-Notley. Todd has put his name forward for the UCP leadership race. We discuss his thoughts on the past 2 years, being one of few MLA's to sign a letter denouncing another round of COVID19 measures back in the summer of 2021, building trust back with the public & questions from the listeners.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast⁠

This is Brian Pekford. This is Julie Penessi. This is Zubi. Hi, it's James Scha. This is Cabee Richards. Hey, everybody. This is Paul Brandt, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Friday, July 1st. You heard that right. Kids are out of school. Happy Canada day. Enjoyed a long weekend. Be safe. Enjoy it with some friends and family. Get to the lake or wherever you're at.

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delivering to your farm commercial or oil field locations. For more information, visit them at Hancockpetroleum.com.ca. He's a Canadian politician with the member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Central Peace Nautly. He was elected as the United Conservative Party and now sits as an independent. I'm talking about Todd Lowen. So buckle up. Here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Todd Lowen. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Hey, no problem. You're happy to be here. Thanks, Sean. Appreciate it. You know, Todd, I say this to every political.

person who comes on here, that once upon a time, as you can see on the wall, I was everything hockey and everything else. And so forgive me that I don't go and know your playbook and every detail and stat you've ever had. So I think for myself and the audience, I'd love to just hear a little bit about your story and what led you into politics back when you're running in 2008 and obviously finally elected in 2015. I guess I'm just, you know, for the for the starting point. Let's just hear a little bit about Todd and we'll jump off from there. Okay, sounds good, Sean. Yeah, so I first ran in 2008. And what had happened is in 2007, I kind of lost confidence in the current government. I had a small business and there were some changes they made to the,

you know, regulations and things. And I thought, you know what, these regulations changes are affecting my little business in a negative way. And I tried to make some constructive, and brought constructive ideas forward to how to fix it, make it more appropriate and better for business. But I just got brushed aside. And so at that time, I thought, okay, I have to do something, might have to do something different to the next election because if it's affecting my little business this much,

then I could only imagine expecting other businesses even more. So when 2008 election came along, I decided that I can't vote for the governing party and I can't vote for the liberals or NDP. So what am I going to do? And so at that time, I found the Wild Rose. And I guess it's kind of a bit of an interesting story there. I called the Wild Rose Party at that time and said, okay, you know, I'd already reviewed

their policies that looked good, look like a good conservative platform. So I ask, you know, who's running in my area, I want to donate in a campaign for that person? And the conversation was about that quick. And the next comment that came back was, we don't have anybody in your area. Would you like to run? And so that was a bit of a quick turnaround for me on that. And I, at the time, I said, if I can't find somebody in a week, I'll run myself. And I honestly believed I could find somebody else to run.

I sincerely believe that. But after a week, I couldn't, I hadn't found anybody to run. They haven't found anybody to run. So I guess I had to put my money where my mouth was and step up with a plate. I ran in 2008, lost, a state with the wildose party kind of helped build consistency associations across the province. and then ran in 2012, which was election that we were kind of expecting to do quite a bit better,

maybe we win. But I didn't even win my seats. And interesting enough, at one point I think it was 35% ahead in the poll, but still lost in 2012. And then, of course, ran again in 2015 with the Wild Rose won, and that's when he were elected. That obviously was a bit of a tough time there, and then ran again in 2019 and won then.

Did you always, you know, you mentioned you kind of almost stumble into politics. You look at it, you go, I don't like what's going on. So then you, you know, you put your hat in. So this wasn't something that, you know, 10 years prior, you're like, you know, if I ever get to the point where I'm at in a stage of life, I would run for politics. No, I've never considered it before my life. Never. I just, you know, I voted.

I was politically active. I watched, you know, watched the news, kept track of things. I would have considered myself. I was active in politics, donated, bought memberships, that sort of thing. But I had never considered actually running himself before that point. Well, then tell me, at this stage of my life, I'm sitting here watching going, this is a bizarre time, whether you're talking the world stage or even Alberta, right, to have a premier step down.

And, you know, on top of COVID, on top of just, on top on top it just never ceases to continue on so to speak when you were when you were first getting involved in politics does it even relate to now you know I you know I always say that I got involved in politics because it was frustrated with the political system

and every step I've made further up the change in politics I've become more frustrated instead of less so I don't know if that kind of answers the question there but it's we are an interesting times and you know it just seems like every every year in politics is something new comes up that we've never seen before well take me back then to a year ago when when you sign on to the letter that you know everybody in alberta certainly knew all about uh you know it was big news back then um you were part of the party then and then you know you get pulled from it and become an

independent and uh it's almost man a year ago feels like 10 years ago kind of thing. But what drove you to put your name on there? And maybe just, I don't know, let's just, I'd like to just hear a little bit about the turmoil that was created after that, because you're one of two, I believe, to get really ostracized from the party. Yeah. So leading up to that, I guess maybe I'll take you back to 2019 election, you know,

We won that election. At that time, the premier wasn't very popular. And I thought it was just a micro-fixancy, but it was other coefficients you know, couldn't use his picture, couldn't use his name in our advertising in 2019 election, which of course we did win. But it seemed like after that election, there was maybe a bit of a honeymoon phase where people all of a sudden were a lot more positive about the senior and what was going on. But it didn't seem like it lasted that long, maybe about five months.

By the fall of 2019, I was already getting a lot of. complaints within my constituency. And at that time, you know, that was long before COVID. The biggest complaint was standing up to Ottawa and representing Alberta on the, on the national stage and standing up to Justin Trudeau. And so people were already being frustrated by the fall of 2019. And that continued on all the way in to, of course, COVID March 2020. And so that's that's what I've seen happening. And I guess all the way through that period, that 2020, with the flip-flops in COVID and the actual, you know, saying one thing and doing another, which just increased the frustration from my constituents. So I was actually, you know,

going back into my constituency and taking, I don't want to call it abuse, but there's about the people that were expressing their concerns, rape concerns in the direction of the government and of the premier. And so at that time, you know, I guess I had a choice to me. But, you know, as an elected representative, it's my duty to represent the people that I represent in my constituency to the government and not the other way around. And so I, you know, things have progressed the point where I just felt that I had to do something. When I looked back to a year ago and looked back to the letter that I wrote from Massacre to design, I stepped down to the caucus chair at that time. I, I, uh, leading up to that in the last month or so, we've seen more tip thoughts from the, from the government. We've seen, uh, caucus meetings canceled and canceled last minute and, and a really, a real reluctance to, to listen to MLAs.

And at that point, I felt that I had to step, step out and do something different. Uh, you know, I'm, uh, from a small town here in northwestern Alberta, uh, just, um, just a, uh, just The people that I meet on the street that I've lived in this town for 50 years, they're my friends or my neighbors. After my careers down in politics, I'll still be living in the same community. And living in the same community, I'll be looking these people in the eye every day as I go through town and shop and go about my daily life. So I just felt that it was my duty and my obligation to bring their concerns forward and try

to make a difference. Let's pick up where we left off to the listeners. and we had a little change in venue just to make sure the audio hopefully comes through a little smoother. But Todd, you were taking us back to a time, I believe, of your earlier days in politics back to 2019. I think I heard in there somewhere that you said when you campaigned for the UCP, you couldn't use Jason Kenney anywhere in that. Did I hear that correct? Yes, that's for sure.

Within my constituency, he was very unpopular. And I thought it was maybe just by constituency or maybe just rural Alberta. But it's interesting enough, as we sat in government the last couple of years, just talking to other MLAs and cabinet ministers from Calgary, it was actually the same in their constituencies too. So it just showed that there was, I guess, you know, maybe not a strong light for Premier Kenny right from the start. And I kind of led into the fact that, you know,

it seemed like there might have been a little bit of a honeymoon stage for the first few months after the 2019 election where people started saying, you know what, I didn't like it about competing, but, you know, I think he's coming along and things are looking good. But that didn't last long. By the fall of 2019,

I already had constituents complaining, you know, quite a bit about about the Premier and his actions and particularly how he represented the Alberta with Ottawa and with Justin Trudeau. So why, you know, when you fast forward now, Jason Kenny stepping down, leadership race.

You go, Todd goes, I think I'm going to throw my hat in the ring. Was that an easy choice? Was that a difficult choice? Was that the only choice in your mind? Well, when I wrote the letter in May 13, 2021, I had no intentions at that point of seeking leadership or running for Premier. And I never had at that point. At that point, I was an MLA and I was enjoying that job and enjoying representing my constituents. But so I had never thought of that.

But as the, you know, after that time period, and probably maybe six months ago, again, I still haven't considered it. But it just seems like in the last six months that we've seen what's happened, you know, we were looking forward to Jason Kennedy stepping down and then kind of looking at who else was going to be running and that sort of thing. I just felt that I would have something to offer to the race. I think there's an opportunity to bring the conservative movement together in Alberta again. And I believe my views and what I've done resonates with a substantial number of Albertans. And in order to bring them back to the conservative fold and in order to get things back together so that we can go to the, into the election in 2020 and have a chance of reading the NDP.

We need to bring everybody back. And that's my hope that we can work on rebuilding and getting things back on track. You know, it's a short little runway here, you know. You get this election and then, you know, by next May, there's, you know, like that's, it's pretty much, I joked about Jay Woodcroft being thrown in for the Oilers, right? Like, you had a short one runway to make the playoffs. Then you make the playoffs. and now you've got to really do some work.

Well, you look at what you're up against, whatever it is. And it's going to be a short little runway to get voted in, and then another runway to get voted back in. You think you can bring everybody back together, because that's been something that's been talked about a lot on the news lately, has been about how divided the UCP is. Is that a correct statement?

and do you think you could be the guy to bring it back together? Yeah, I think it is correct. There's been a lot of division, and I think we've seen an immediate change, I think, as soon as the funeral step, every step down. And we need to continue that and continue to build the trust of all burdens. I think that's one of the main things in this September election will be trust. But I do believe that I can do that. And it's something that has to be done.

We've had the opportunity to see in the past what happens when we're, we're not all together. And actually, you know, Norso, we've seen in the past what happens when we had lost Albertant's trust. And so I, you know, I can say I think I represent a wide swath of Albertans that's been frustrated for the last couple years. And I think we can work on this and get this back.

What do you, I'm curious, with your background as a Wild Rose guy and then coming across the UCP, there's a lot of that group of people. that certainly didn't feel like their voice was heard at all once the two joined. Or, you know, I mean, obviously the Wild Rose is still there, but a lot of people kind of went back under the unity thought process, right? Let's come together. What do you have to say towards those folks that are worried that no matter who gets put in, they may not be heard?

Yeah, no, and I think those are valid concerns, and I understand what, what they're thinking when they're concerned about that. You know, when we look at the, you know, kind of the division in caucus, the vision in the party, and a lot of people like to put it, well, rules versus PC, but I actually think it's more, there's probably a little bit of a rural urban divide. And that has to do with the, you know, the constituents of the different MLAs represent. So I, again, I think that can be brought back together. We need to be able to work together with everyone. We need to be able to listen to everybody's concerns and make decisions that are that are good for all of all opportunities. And I think

we can do that. We've done it in the past. We've had a big tent part in the past and I think we can do that again. And, you know, will it be easy? No, of course not. But it's nothing that's worth of easy. We'll be working hard and I believe that it can happen. Let's say October 6 comes. Todd Lowen, new Premier of Alberta. What would be the first thing you would want to do as you stepped into that role? Well, I think the first thing that we have to do is be more collaborative. And, you know, when we're, when what we've seen in the past is a bit of a leader-centric party and a leader-centric government.

And we need to change that and include more. people in decision-making process. MLAs have been elected by their constituents to represent them in government. And so when they're not listened to and they're not included in a decision-making process, that I believe is where things start falling apart. We need that sort of collaboration going forward. I think that's one of the main things is to include more people in decision-making process, listen to Albertans more, and start the process of rebuilding a trust with Alberts. So the big thing, if I heard that correctly, is really trust, trying to reestablish that the government works for the people. Would that be a clear way of putting it?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because we've seen that lack in the past. We need to get that back on track for sure. Well, I got a, you know, I had Daniel Smith on a few weeks ago and I plan that, you know, you're one of the names that come up. and then there's obviously other names that have been put in for leadership. And so what happens is, is people here you're coming on. And then, you know, a cascade of question comes through. And so, you know, I started off by just trying to give you a good feel of people,

a good feel of who Todd Lone is and what he stands for. And then I almost kind of want to hand the reins over because to me, I'm just one person and I certainly don't have the insight of all different areas of Alberta. And I just want to, you know, sit back and kind of have some of their, questions come through and see what you have to say for yourself. No different if I was listening to you on somebody else's show. So there's been a ton of questions come through, as you can imagine, and a lot of them have come over the last two years, right? They've been waiting for somebody to address some of these. So I'm curious if you're put into the position, here's some, here's some

questions and we'll see how far we get and that type of thing, Todd. But one of the ideas is where does Todd stand on the idea of the QR code and the social credit system? Yeah, we need to cancel that right away. There's no use for that. I know we have concerns about how we are able to deal with a federal government that may require that for travel, but we should never have to be able to use that to go in restaurants in Alberta and be able to do business in Alberta. That was a failed attempt that I don't even sure what the attempt was there, to be honest,

because it didn't accomplish anything. It was the discipline with Albertans, if we restrict the Albertan's rights. And we need to cancel that program with the QR codes. Again, we have some issues dealing with the federal government and travel and that sort of thing. We don't want Albertans to be stuck in a, you know, stuck and not be able to travel and move around.

But again, we have to set an example like here by stopping that demands for having that year and over. You know, the, the QR system in general really divided a country, really divided the world. You know, here in Alberta, how do you fix that? How do you bring people back together when they've been so pitted against each other for so long? And a bunch of the different things that have went on, how do you fix that? I mean, that's a big question, but I'm curious your thoughts. Yeah, one of the first things is we got to quit calling, you know, calling people names and accusing people of being responsible for COVID and everything else.

We've seen that happen in the past. That's one of the first things you can do. But again, we've seen where people have been had their jobs threatened. People have actually lost their jobs. And we look what happened to the healthcare workers last fall when they were, you know, threatened they lose their jobs at the end of October than the end of November, than the middle of December. And that was cruel and inhumane treatment to those workers, those people that we called heroes through the whole pandemic. And then we treated them in such an inhumane way. I can't imagine living life where you don't know if your career, your chosen occupation, how you feed your family, could be lost at any given time.

And so, so again, that's some of the things that we can do to regain that trust and stop that division. We can't be accusing people. People have a right to choose medical treatment as they so choose, and we have to respect that. Would you be in favor then of maybe an investigation into some of the things that have went on in the last couple years? Because I know you bring up the health care workers. I got police who listen to this show. I got a lot of different people who are putting some very uncomfortable. I don't know if that's the strong enough term, but you kind of get the.

idea. There's a lot of people put backs against the wall, still might have their back against the wall. Are you in favor of doing a deep dive and trying to get to the bottom and the root cause, if possible, of what on earth transpired, not only, well, in Alberta? Yeah, absolutely. This needs to be done. We need to have an absolute thorough independent investigation on the COVID and COVID response in Alberta. You know, we can have the same thing federally. I think they're working on some of that now. Some investigations going on right now. But we need that here in Alberta for sure. That's what we have control of here. And we need to find out what this response has done. We've seen a lot of issues that have developed, you know,

drug overdoses and everything like that have escalated through this whole pandemic and through the restrictions. And we need to find out what the cost was, the society, the people's lives, to, you know, just a myriad of things that are negatively affected by the response to COVID. I think the response to COVID, the effects of the response to COVID will be, we'll be seen far after the effects of COVID itself. What was the, you know, what was the inside of these conversations like in the middle of COVID? And, you know, over the last two years, I just as a guy sitting on the outside, no matter what side of the fence you sat on at the time of the conversations,

going on and no matter what position you held, they were uncomfortable. But you guys were at the, you know, you're the elected officials. You got constituents screaming at you, Todd, going, get us out of this. And then you walk into a room and I'm sure the diverse conversation that went on while being in that room, well, there will be books written about it, I suppose. Yeah. So it's interesting in Congress, a lot of those caucus chair. that time period for the, you know, up until I was removed from caucus.

I was caucus chair. So I chaired to those meetings. And it was interesting to see that more often than not, the majority of caucus would want to go one direction and the pre-year go the other direction. And so that was, that was frustrating to see over and over again. But, but I think maybe what's... Why do you think that is? You know what?

I honestly don't know. I really don't know. It was frustrating to see. And sometimes it was almost a, you know, a lot of times we were advocating for a regional approach because rural Alberta had different opinion of how they feel at this rather than urban Alberta. Sometimes even the urban MLAs would be on the side for doing something different and it would just never happen. And I honestly don't understand why it was, I believe that that would have dramatically changed the view of this government at this point. we would have been in a different, quite a bit different position than we are right now.

I feel like this goes without saying, but I am, I guess, you know, I want to make sure a lot of people want to get lots of things on the record. So I might as well have you say it on the record. But I assume if your leadership group of a province is telling you something, you're not going to be the guy, well, well, I don't know. I guess what are your thoughts, Todd? Because, I mean, sometimes you got to stand up against the waves when you believe in something. but other times, you know, you got to look around and go, well, it's time to listen to what my advisors and the people and what their constituents are saying, what a province is saying. Exactly.

You know, that's an NLA's job to bring the constituents' concerns to government and not the other way around, not the government concerns to the constituents. So I think that's, that was overlooked. But when we look back, I've heard stories of Ralph Klein when he was premier and how he operated his caucus meetings. And my understanding was that he wanted to have two-thirds caucus in favor of anything before it proceeded. And there's a story in what time where caucus was pretty divided on a certain issue.

And so he just stood up and said, you know what, I'm going to the casino for a couple hours when I come back. You guys have it figured out. And so that's the kind of trust that he had in his caucus as far as making decisions, because when he walked out of the room, he had no more influence in what the decision was and I think that would be a, that's the kind of. way I think it should be handled. I think we need to be able to listen to MLA because they are there to represent their constituents and bring their concerns forward. If we're not listening to them,

we're not listening to Cal Burton's, which again is not a healthy way to run again. Yeah, I can certainly attest to a lot of people who listen to this. And just they weren't heard, right? I think, I think no matter what they did, no matter how many petitions they signed, no matter X, Y, it just seemed like nothing got through to him. Yeah, yeah. And that was, we've seen the frustration. You know,

a lot of times it was the flip-flops. It was moving to go post, you know, restaurant owners, you know, build a deck so they could have outdoor dining and then all of a sudden, outdoor dining shut down all the time

to get their decks built and everything. And so that was just some deep frustrations. And these frustrations, they're not just frustrations. They're actually, they change people's lives. People have lost, lost their homes, lost their businesses, had families divided over these issues. And so these defects are wide ranging.

It's not as simple as simple frustration. How about, and I know we've all certainly heard an awful lot about this, but it is probably the number one question that gets thrown my way for anyone coming on here who's running in this is the World Economic Forum. Some people don't want to address it. Some people are, you know, left, right, center. At this point, it's pretty mainstream idea that Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum have influenced not only the Canadian government, but deeper, deeper, deeper into just government in general. What's your thoughts on the World Economic Forum? And what can you do to ensure that it doesn't, you know, to once again, for the average person, they have trust that it isn't,

destroying Alberta and what they stand for. Yeah, so I just stated out front, I have no ties and I've never had any association with the World Economic Forum. So I just want to put that out there first. But I just want to say that the World Economic Forum, they have their own agenda. Some of it's publicized and that's that's bad enough if you look at that. But we don't know what else is going on with them in the background. But I have no interest in having any association with them.

We have Alberta here that we can make our own decisions. We know what's going on within what Albertans want to see. And we don't need an organization from outside the world, come into our province and try to make influence what we do here in Alberta. We can make those decisions themselves. We can contact people around the world to get advice if we need so. We don't need an organization like that. influencing what we do. And again, their agenda doesn't line up with our agenda. It's strange time.

You know, when you said you first walked into politics, the deeper you got, the more frustrated you become. Do you think at the top of being the premier, you think that you'll be less frustrated or do you think the frustration will continue? Well, I hope that things will improve for sure. I believe that I can, you know, that I have an opportunity to make a difference. If I didn't, I wouldn't have wouldn't put my name forward. I think a lot of it has to do with, again, I probably keep coming back to this, but trust. We need to be able to have trust in our elected officials. We need to build that up and we need to show all burdens that we are, you know, strong and we, and that we can listen to them, listen to everybody, be collaborative

and not fight all the time. It seems like in government we spend most of our time fighting these zones around us and I think we have a chance to be a little more collaborative than that. How about net zero? Net zero

has been a hot topic of late and I, wow, it's been a hot topic for a while. A lot of people stare at in Alberta, how can we ever achieve net zero? Why would we ever want to achieve net zero?

with our industry and everything else. What's your thoughts on net zero and moving towards that, away from that? Well, I think with net zero, I guess there's kind of two ways to look at it, you know, kind of on a personal level with your own home and everything. And obviously that should be your choice and how you want to take care of your home. But when it comes to net zero as a province, I think there's many ways that we can work towards net zero. but I think there's a lot of times we see the attempt to get to net zero is all about

taxing and all about making things more difficult and everything. So we need to, I think we need to be able to analyze those things. There's lots of different things that can help us, you know, reduce our emissions, if that's the desire. There's lots of different things that we can do to get things back on track. And, you know, we don't want to be, you know, ignore these concerns, but we do have to do some things a little bit different, I think. So, but, but again, there's, I think there's a myriad of things that could, couldn't be done to help reduce emissions and try to, you know, be more accommodating on some of those things. But, but again, we need to make sure that we're not hurting our burdens.

We're not, you know, using, using these things to, to punish our burdens, like what the carbon tax is and things are done. So would you get rid of the carbon tax if you could? Yeah, for sure. I mean, especially in rural Alberta, I've been really all across the project. All it doesn't punishes us for driving to work, heating our homes. You know, we have to drive their grain and they're paying a price for that, too. You know, I brought it up that, you know, as I work my way through the people putting their name forward as candidates for leadership, Daniel Smith had brought up, you know, like whether it's BC, whether it's Quebec, if a federal

mandate comes down, it just doesn't work for Alberta. Why can't we be like those other two provinces and literally just not follow what they're saying? Is that something you agree with, disagree with, have your own thoughts on? Well, we need to be protecting Alberta's interests first. When we look at all these other issues and other, you know, what's happening across the country, I think we need to stay focused on Alberta's interests and we kind of resist the temptation to go down rabbit hole that don't benefit Albertans. Yes, we have to, we have a sort of association we have to do within Canada as a nation,

but again, we need to focus on what's right for Alberta's. How about independence, Todd? A lot of people, whether it's autonomy, I mean, independence kind of just in general, but autonomy has been talked about a lot, you know, a police force, pension, etc. Is that possible? Do you want it? Yeah, we need to start working towards autonomy here in Alberta. When we look at what we campaigned on in 2019, we've seen a lot of, we made a lot of promises.

We talked about all the things we're going to do. And what's happened is we've continued to just talk about these things. We need to be able to start doing these things. When we look at our association with Ottawa, we've seen Ottawa come in with, you know, for instance, Bill 48 and Bill 69, the response from the Alberta government was a strongly worded letter, no real response.

And we look at the, you know, tech mine being canceled to the federal regulations and interferes. Again, not a strongly worded letter. We look at the stabilization funds that we were supposed to get. We never got them. Again, strongly worded letter. We need to start standing up and we need to, we can use Quebec as an example of a province that's done a lot of things that didn't create constitutional crisis, but got the point across to Ottawa and they reap the benefits of that.

And we need to start reaping those same benefits. We need to move forward on some of these things. forward on some of these things. A lot of people say, well, these things like a pension plan, that's leverage. Use that for leverage in deal with Ottawa. Well, if you have no intention of ever using it, it isn't leverage. It's just a

talking point in virtue system. We have to start doing some of these things. Albertans, I think, are expecting it. They're tired of what's been happening between us and Ottawa, and we need to start pushing back. When you talk about

standing up to Ottawa and writing a letter obviously isn't enough. What would you do that is standing up? Because standing up is just a general, like we should all stand up to Ottawa, but sitting here I go, okay, so what should we do that? What, what, like, when things don't go our way or we believe we've been wronged, what does standing up mean to Todd Long? I think, again, let's say with Bill 48 and Bill 69, had our response been, okay,

If you're not going to back off on that, we will be doing our own pension plan. And that way there would be at least a political price to pay for what Ottawa is doing. And like I say, some of these things we need to do anyways, whether it's influencing them or not, because it's beneficial for all burdens. But the more independence we have from Ottawa, the more autonomy we have from Ottawa, the more autonomy we have from Ottawa, the stronger we are. Again, if we could look at collecting our own taxes, that would be a huge benefit. to all burdens and put us a little bit more in the driving scene when it comes to how our taxes are spread across the country. I feel like, and I don't, by all means, correct me if I'm wrong on this.

I feel like there might be two platforms that, and not just, you have to forgive me, you're my second interview on this subject. So I look at it and I go, what I hear from you and when I hear from Danielle, and I'll be curious to see what I hear from others. is if you get elected in October, we have to plan to win in May. And if we win in May, then we get to enact things. The other is, if I get elected in October, I'm going to enact things immediately so that I get elected again in May. I hope I said that right. Do you think you can get elect, well, do you want to enact anything on day one or you want to just build trust and try and sew this back together for May. I think a first thing is building that trust,

because that's what's going to set us up for the election 2023. I believe the election 2020 will be on trust. I believe all burdens are sitting there. They're waiting for somebody that they can trust to do what they say they're going to do. And so I believe that's going to be the number. one thing right off the back. But how you gain that trust is by doing the things that you set your real future. And that's, and that's what's going to have to happen. Again, I think there's a huge

amount of frustration with government when it comes to, again, dealing with Ottawa. But we've seen a lot of frustration, a lot of stress and anxiety and actually hurt due to inflationary measures, There's inflation within Alberta, across the country, obviously, but those inflationary pressures are causing grief within families and homes and businesses. We need to start working on getting the economy back on track. I don't know who thought that we could shut down the economy for two years,

and there would be no negative consequences. But we're suffering from that right now. We have a problem. We complain a lot about the federal death, that Canada is in over a trillion dollars. But we had $112,000 of debt here in Alberta. We're spending $2.7 billion a year in interest. We're spending 10% more than the NGPstead,

and we let our hair and fire both their extravagance, expenses and budget. So we need to start the raining things in a bit and getting things in line, start paying off that debt, and start making things better because that's that money that we're paying interest, this is going to help all burdens. this one's probably more for me than anything i one of the things as a young guy and i mentioned this off the hop with you uh i didn't pay particular well i mean i was at a country and everything

else for a while but when i got back and had kids and i assume you know when you have kids you start thinking about different things and you know um what party you're heading to on the weekend but uh you know one of the things i've i've really i just have a hard time understanding thought and maybe you can explain this to me. Maybe you wonder the same thing is a lot of politicians have a hard time admitting when they're wrong, right? When they've just gotten something blatantly wrong. Like it's just like we need to go back to the drawing board. We need to look at these in different ways. Why is that so difficult for politicians? One. And two, if you were to become the leader, although it might signal the end of your career because the way social media runs right now is I fully

understand why you can't say, oh, I was wrong because of what it might do on social media and everything else. And yet, out of a leader, that's exactly what I would love to see, right? I'd love to see somebody who just admits that, you know, sometimes I'm human and I make mistakes. It's okay to admit that. I think it's a very good quality as long as we learn from that and move forward. So the question, I guess, is why doesn't it happen more or ever? And two, if you got in the position, is that something you think you can pull off? Yeah. And I think why it doesn't happen is that I think some people believe that admitted you made a mistake is that shows weakness. And I actually think it's actually the opposite. Many of you make a mistake actually shows strength

that you're willing to take responsibility and be accountable for the poor decision or poor action. And as far as myself, you know, I'm far from perfect. I know if I become premier, I'll have made mistakes. I think that's inevitable. But again, we can look back to Ralph Pine's years again, where he made several mistakes for long in his political career. And he apologized and moved on. And I think Albertans respected that.

And I think they'll continue to respect that. But I agree that it does seem to be hard to find a politician who will admit that they've made a mistake. I don't think it's about a feeling that it shows weakness, but I don't think that's the case. Yeah, I just, I don't know why Kenny comes to mind so many times where he deflected and he never just say, we got this one wrong. All right, like, or we thought this and we moved here. And I mean, only when it supplied Amel for where he was heading. And to me it felt, well, I don't know, I just, but we sit on the border of Alberta and Saskatcharine, obviously, live in Alberta, but right here in Lloyd Minster, right on the border of Saskatchew, the two borders.

Sorry, I'm muddling this up. But the whole reason I'm saying this is I got to watch Kenny and Moe both kind of like dance this weird dance of just like, listen guys, we just, let's go back to the drawing board and move forward so we can make some things right because there are people hurting. And instead, the divide grew and grew and grew to where we're at. And I just, for me, particularly, I listen and I go, I want somebody who can sit up there and be strong enough to go, listen. I thought this is what it was. We sat, we talked, we listened, we kept, and this is what happened, and we were wrong. And so we're going to go this way.

And I hope that's something that all the candidates can embody. It'll be very easy to talk about. But when you're actually there, something very different. Yeah. And, you know, with the pandemic, it was a perfect opportunity because, you know, especially from the start, nobody knew what to expect. You know, we could look back to March 2020 and, you know, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, we made some decisions in government early on that were very unpopular and very damaging. And, and but we, what was frustrating is we realized very soon, within a month or six weeks, even, we realized that those mistakes were made that it took us months before. we find we change things. But you're exactly right. I think I think Albertans would welcome somebody like that that would be able to, you know, be humble enough

to admit that they made a mistake. And again, I've made mistakes and I'll continue to make mistakes. I hope that I could, you know, have that strength to be able to admit him long and carry on. That's what I intend to do. Which modern day leader is somebody that you look up to? that you admire what they're doing.

You could look to DeSantis or Christine Nolm as some pretty good leaders on the U.S. side. There's, you know, it's always hard to pick a leader that you want to, you know, to emulate or somebody want to look up to because they all have weaknesses.

And when you pick somebody, the first thing that everybody does will look at their weaknesses. You know, you look towards that. Well, how about this, this and this? It's a little hard to, I guess in human nature is that we're only looking for false rather than strengths. But yeah, I think there's several people around the world that have been strong and have done the right thing. And I think we can look to several of them and hopefully gather the best of each of them and use them to try to look at as far as somewhat of a role model or somebody to look after.

Let's go down the opposite path. The opposite path is Todd doesn't win, okay? Let's paint that picture for a second. Will you support the new, if it isn't you, would you support the new person out of the candidates you're seeing that are popping up? Yes, absolutely, absolutely. No, I have to be, you know, trust that the process and that the people of Alberta will choose somebody that they feel is the best representative for them.

And I'll definitely respect that and work with whoever that is. Again, it's bigger than just one person, this whole process. You know, being a representative of the people, the people, you know, we always want to call the political leaders, but actually there should be called political representatives. We have to be conscious of representing the people and not just always the thinking of leadership. But again, I'd be happy to support whoever the people of Alberta

I choose. I basically have a party, UCP party, whatever they choose and work towards making things better all across the problem. You think, you know, when you talk about representing the people, there is a strong rural urban divide. Like I think I've mentioned it multiple times on here, 83% of Canadians live in cities.

right? So like you kind of get a sense there. From your eyes where you sat, like, is there a way to represent everyone? Or is that the most difficult challenge known to man when you got four point, however many million people in Alberta, let alone, you know, like, and then you divide them up to each different area. That's a difficult task, Todd. How do you pull that off? It is a difficult task. And even the last election that, you know, I was elected with 75% of the vote. And a lot of people think, well, that's great. That's a huge win. But I realized that that means one out of four people who will probably not support anything out of here. Because it didn't support me an election. They're probably not supporting, you know, my political views at all.

And but when we look across the province in the last election, it was, you know, that was a, that was a well i guess 63 seats is a pretty good standard of win but i think it was 56 or 57 percent of the population voted for the uCP and again that means that 43 percent are not going to be happy with almost every decision that's made and and i think we have to realize that and have enough humility that when we're making decisions that we need to understand that uh that There's a great number of people that won't feel represented by that decision. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and again, we need to be able to bring everybody at the table. I, I think the majority of Albertans, and when we, we're dealing with different groups within Alberta,

I think if there, most of them would be happy or maybe they'd be satisfied that at least they felt they were listening to. At least that they, you know, they had a chance to, to, to, uh, have their say. and even if the decision didn't go exactly the way they want, at least if they felt like they were listened to, I think that would make a lot of them at least a little more satisfied than that would be right.

That's the challenge all politicians face at this point, right? Is how do you represent such a diverse population when it comes to such large issues that, you know, whether it's, on purpose or just a consequence where we're at in society with social media and everything else.

It is divided. Like we are, you know, there's no piece, you know, there's no, even somebody listening to you, they may go,

check, ooh, I like that, check, oh, I don't like that. Can't vote for this guy. He's got one thing I detest.

That's out, right? And I go, I don't know if there's such a thing as a you know that night and shining armor who rides in and has all the checkmarks i mean i think we'd all love that but i don't even know what that looks like no i don't think any of it's few and i guess maybe politics is the art of compromise where we have to but on both sides as politicians we need to uh you know be able to compromise and just you know be able to come up with a solution

that it may be best for the overall but maybe not individually the best for yourself and i think as the people of Alberta, they have to do the same. They have to go to the valve box. I'm sure they're thinking, okay, I wish this was a little different, but this is the best we can do and put that check there. So maybe that's the best way to describe it. Well, let's slide into the final five brought to you by Crude Master. If you're going to stand behind a cause that you think is right,

then stand behind it absolutely. What's one thing Todd Lowen stands behind? I guess when I look at the politics in general, I guess there's multiple things. I've always been a fiscal conservative, I've always been focused on making sure that the tax period dollars get spent as efficiently and effective as possible. I think there's a, you know, we look at situations like in our health care and education, post-secondary education, there's so many things. that we need to work on and get fixed.

I, you know, it's hard to pick just one. But again, if we, and maybe we, you know, we talk about freedom and freedom of speech in particular. If we have freedom of speech, then we can, you know, at least be able to argue for anything that we want or at least protest and do those things. But if we don't have freedom of speech, then we really don't have anything.

in a democracy because everything else will be taken away from us and we can't say anything about it. So I don't know. Maybe I'm not sure if that's the, that's kind of the direction you're headed with that question, but there's a couple things here. Well, before I let you go, I don't want to take up your afternoon and it's been an interesting, you know, we pulled it together after having some tough audio at the start. But is there anything else you want, you know, like we kind of jump from subject to subject and everything. else. Is there something else in there, Todd, that you're like, I want to make sure people know this about me or about where I stand, you know, because it's, like I say, it's a short runway between here and, and, you know, this election in October. Yeah, so I guess supposed to say anything kind of imposing, you know, say, you know, at almost every event I go through, somebody always asks me, you know, why do you, you know, what makes you so special that you think you should be the premier of Alberta?

And so I've had a chance to kind of think about that as a, you know, muddled around through the answers. Because that's one of those things where, you know, as a politician at some point you're going to have to tell, try to tell everybody how great you are. And for me, that's a hard thing to do is to, you know, you know, I often joke that it's like, yeah, the greatest thing about me is how humble I am. And so, I mean, but it's so it's hard to, hard to do that. But I think there's nothing special about me. I have this normal area.

And I love Alberta, born and raised in Alberta. I just want the best for my kids and my grandkids. I've been blessed to have a good life here in Alberta. And I just, again, I just hope that when my foot of a career is done, that I can walk down the street and look my neighbors and trends and family and I say that I've done my best and I'll understand that too. So again, I think it should be a great opportunity now to do something good in Alberta and, you know, somewhat changed direction of where we've been and maybe change things politically so that we can be a beacon around the world as far as a place that's a fiscal responsible,

taking care of the people within the province and being responsible and a trust for you get in. One final one for you after that now. you got my brain spinning. You go back to the letter, right? And it was one of 16? Well, there's kind of two letters that we talked about there. There was a letter where 16 MLA signed that was basically asking the government not to keep changing the goalposts on COVID nutrition.

So there's that letter which I sign and which I helped get other MNLASA signed. And then there's a letter that I wrote to asking the Premier to resign and where I designed as caucus chair. So there's two letters there. Okay. So my question then is, in a time where nobody wanted to poke their head up because they knew exactly what was going to happen,

why did Todd Lohen poke his head up? Just exactly how I described. When I was going home in my constituency, the vast majority of the people I was talking to actually overwhelming a number of people that I was talking to who said, you're not representing us. We're mad, we're frustrated, we're hurt, and you're not representing us. And I would say, you know what, we're in caucus and I'm arguing, I'm doing my best,

and they're saying, we don't see it, we don't believe you. If you don't stand out, then we can't trust you that you're actually representing us. And so that's why I decided I had to write the letter, I had to show the people that I represent, but I was representing him. And of course, I understand that, you know, just like I said earlier, one out of four, is not seeing things my way right off the start. But the vast majority of the people are talking to were concerned about the direction, and I felt that I had to step forward and say those things.

Well, I tell you what, I appreciate you being open about it and honestly being one of the ones to stand up, because I would say whether you knew it or not, that's walking into the line of fire. That's not a characteristic that a lot of, you know, that had to have been just slightly uncomfortable, even though you knew you were doing right by the people you represented. You knew you were walking into the spotlight. I get the sense that you don't, it's not like you're looking for the spotlight.

More of, you know, maybe a call of duty, so to speak, is like, this is what I'm here for. I got to stand up for what my constituents believe in why I'm, you know, why I'm elected in the first place. Yeah, it was honestly a gut-wrenching decision that really was incredibly hard. But again, that's why MLAs are elected is to make decisions and make tough decisions and do what's right. In the end, I believe I did the right thing then. You've seen now the premier step down. So I guess it took a while, it took a year to kind of get the point across and make it actually happen. happen, but, but, you know, we able to stop going in the constituency,

listen to my constituents that were so frustrated and angry and hurt. And so I, you know, my gut-wrenching and my discomfort with what I did, fails in comparison to what they were going to. Well, I appreciate you giving me some of your time, Todd. And all the best here, as you, you know, best of luck as you, you know, you hit this short runway with the rest of them trying to, you know, I, think I always bring this up here and I'll bring it up again. July 20th, you need to have a thousand party members signed.

July 29th, you need the 175,000 plus the 25,000 of good conduct deposit. And then, of course, October 6th is when this all goes down. So it's, like I say, as we sit here, this is released on July 1st. So happy candidate, everyone. because you do the math on that. That's not a short, like that's not of this long runway. It's a short little season, short little spread to get people to hear your voice and others to get their voice heard as well and then a vote.

So I'll be paying attention and I just wish you the best of luck as you hit the campaign trail. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And just again, apologies for the internet connection earlier. And then I noticed in the background, I don't have some strange shadows going as we talked. So I have the screen a little bit there. So anyway, there's been an interesting discussion on the side,

but the discussion we've had is been great. I appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you and have this discussion. And you're exactly right, Bill. It's a short window of time, but when you're campaigning, it seems like another three months of this is going to be a long, long haul, but there's a lot happening. And it's an important thing. This is democracy in action.

It's time for O'Hurtons. They'll be choosing a new premier, which is, that normally only happens every four years, but this one's coming up a little quicker. And so it's an important decision to encourage as many albertans as possible to be involved in this political process,

get a membership in the UCP, and support your candidate and have your say in this process. Thanks, Todd. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Sean.