Shaun Newman Podcast - #304 - Shane Getson

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Shane is the current MLA for Lac St. Anne-Parkland in Alberta. We discuss the northwest energy corridor, his vaccine side effect & his thoughts on the upcoming UCP election. November 5th SNP Presents: QDM & 2's. Get your tickets here: snp.ticketleap.com/snp-presents-qdm--222-minutes/ Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Brian Pectford. This is Danielle Smith. This is Glenn Healy. Hey, everybody. This is Paul Brand. This is Dr. Peter McCullough. Hi, everyone. This is Jamie Saleh, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Friday. You know, on Tuesday's mashup, I said, if you're enjoying the show, I was talking specifically the Tuesday mashup, I said, reach out via the number and the show notes and tell me what you think, tell me where you're listening from, and we'll go from there, you know. and I don't know what I thought was coming, but I thought, holy crap, there's a ton of feedback coming in.

I better let everybody know what's being said via the text line. So here's just a couple talking a little bit about the Tuesday MASHF, but overall the podcast. One was from Bonnie Sugar, she said, as I'm pickling cucumbers in our kitchen, that's a new one. I listen to episode 301, Susan Stansfield, and I'm over at the moon with your interview.

I needed this information today, and thank you so much. one is hi Sean and team Susan Stanfield mind blown mad ends straight fire so good forwarded to my husband to listen to the mashups five stars my favorites thanks for setting a table allowing so many of us to sit at it I've listened for coming up a year the real talk and rather unscripted format makes it genuine and with the random f bombs that made me hit subscribe love love love your podcast that was clean cito I hope I'm saying those names right I haven't read off anything from the listeners in a long time so Hey, it's Friday.

I'm having a little bit of fun today. Appreciate you reaching out. If you want to reach out, I'll do my best to try and get it either on the Tuesday mashup or somewhere along the podcast. Maybe it'll become a hallmark of Fridays. Who knows? I just thought it's super cool to hear from all you guys. So if you're loving what the podcast is doing, fire away on the text line and appreciate all

your support and feedback. We've got a good one on tap here today. But before we get there, of course, let's get to our episode sponsors, Upstream Data, Stephen Barber. he's a holiday note in Newfoundland right now. I was just texting with him. I mentioned that on the previous episode as well. Of course, if you don't know who Stephen Barber is,

go back to episode 163. That is a long-ass time ago, isn't it? He is the founder of Upstream Data, and since 2017, they've been pioneering a creative solution for vented and flared natural gas at upstream oil and gas facilities, a problem that has persisted the oil and gas industry since very, very early on.

You've got to check out their website, upstreamdata.ca. They were coming out with some new, cool products. I talk about the day I got to go in there and, you know, lay my hands on a couple of their, you know, in the black boxes and a couple different things. You can put them in, you know, your garage or your barn, your oil field site, your commercial site.

They've got a bunch of different applications for it. So just head to upstreamdata.ca to find out more. Rec tech power products for over 20 years. They've been committed to excellence in the power sports industry. They offer a full lineup, including canam, amskeed, spider, mercury, Evan Rood, Mahindra, Roxor, and with summer in full swing, you know,

I don't want to use the words winding down, but I just did it. So August is flying by. If you need any odds or ends, upgrades, maybe a little maintenance from a long summer of being on your given machinery. They're open Monday through Saturday, and for further details,

visit them at rectechpowerproducts.com or give them a call, 780877, 0.54-64 and they can get you hooked up. HSI group, they're the local oil field burners and combustion experts that can help make sure you have a compliance system working for you. The team also offers security surveillance and automation products for residential, commercial, livestock, and agricultural applications. They use technology to give you peace of mind so you can focus on the things that truly matter. Stop in a day, 302, 52nd Street, or get brodie your chemical call at 306-825-603-10. And Gartner Management, their Lloydminster-based company specializes in all types of

rental properties to help you your needs. I see the building is filling up. I just bumped into Wade this morning, and one of the empty offices is filling up. So if you're looking to get into a building, you need a small office such as myself. Maybe you've got multiple employees. Give way to call. Don't hesitate. 780, 808, 5025, and he can get you hooked up today.

Now, onto that tale of the day, brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals, delivering to your farm commercial oil field. locations for more information visit them at hancock petroleum dot c a he is the current uc p mLA for laxan parkland here in alberta he's the owner of major projects consulting company a civil engineering technologist and a private pilot i'm talking about shane getson so buckle up here we go hi i'm i'm shane getson the mLA for laxan parkland but we like to call it god's country and you're listening to the sean newman podcast well welcome to the sean newman podcast today i'm joined by mr

Shane Getson. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping in the studio again. Thanks for having me down, Sean. It's always a pleasure. And it always seems like there's some little mishap or adventure that goes along the way. We can never quite make things planned as they were once scheduled. So you want to pull that mic in, you can pull the entire arm over. How do you mean over? Oh, that's even better. Yeah, that way you can do it. This is good. Is that better? Yeah. Well, I, you know, since you came on, it was December, is when you came on into your first episode. And I told you this, and I got a lot of feedback on it.

You know, like, if you, trying to think if you were the first politician I had on, obviously Daniel Smith now running for the Premier, but she wasn't a politician. I mean, she was, she was a former politician, but she was in media, right? I think you were the first act of politician I'd had. And, gee, if you just topped on the podcast from that point on, you'd think all I do is talk politics.

I think that's what a lot of people think. Because obviously since December, a lot of things have happened. I mean, and it was only a week ago that I was, you know, on the ride over here from the airport, we were talking about the conservative leadership candidate roundtable I did. And it just seems like it's following me everywhere. But it all started, the reason I tell this is it all started with you. I got a ton of good feedback on that episode. People were just floored that a politician could come on and it actually be enjoyable to listen to

and have new ideas and hopeful ideas and all these different things. And so, you know, it's funny. It's, we've stayed in contact since then. I've done a ton of politics since then. And it just seems that it was meant to be that you finally make your way back here, plain troubles and all. But a lot has gone on since December, has it not? Yeah.

I mean, you try to talk about all the things that have taken place. We've had a leadership review on the politics side. You know, there were some different mandates and policies that came out there. Now we had the leadership review was conclusive, in my opinion. Were you shocked that he stepped away? At 51% did you go, hold a crap he's going to stay on? I mean, I don't know. Well, you know, and this is one of the things where you can't be off the record when you're doing a podcast,

so I'm going to try to tread lightly, and which isn't too characteristic for me, you know that well enough. So when you're looking at thresholds, and I think here's the two differences, is when you look at the liberals or the NDP, they're pretty homogenous. I mean, when they do stuff, it's they all kind of vote and they all act the same way. When conservatives get together,

um, usually if things are going well, everything's kind of steady state. When they're frustrated and they're upset and they're, and they're tired, then you get them showing up in droves. And that's exactly what we had seen. My concern,

quite frankly, was because of the, uh, the ground swell that took place that we wanted to make sure everything was above board. I mean, me from the outside is an MLA, looking at this. I'm just a member. I have one vote. It's the same thing when you have that

groundswell. So I think that the leadership was surprised by the results. I don't think a bunch of us that were boots on the ground for a long time talking to people and dealing with things and, you know, to your point in the podcast of being ourselves and being real and engaged, we weren't surprised. So conservatives typically have a higher threshold winning by 1.4% if the premier didn't step down at that point, I'm pretty sure. you would have seen the night of the long knives take place. There is no way that conservatives would tolerate only a 1.4% margin. It just doesn't work in our world.

Maybe the liberals, maybe the socialists. I don't know. They can kind of do whatever. Not conservatives, not Albertans. Yeah, well, I think I'll flip provinces on you. I think Scott Moe's comments he just had, I think it was just last week, was along the lines of, I'm not going to follow a minority government being propped up by a third party. they have no say anymore.

It's pretty much his words. I'm paraphrasing, but that's pretty much what he said. And I was like, oh, we're getting to that point, are we? And you're starting to see that in the West for sure. And there is. There's an inflection. There's a tipping point here. You know, it can either go one way or the other.

And I think if you look at what's taking place in the states and was down there for the last little bit for two different conferences. So I got a pretty good read on the West, western states as well in the western provinces. Because it's funny, ironically, in the last couple of years, the only place you can go meet people from your own country that you can talk to openly is down in the States. You know, so I can talk to the folks from Manitoba in Saskatchewan in Quebec when I'm down in the States. Try to get on the line here. It just doesn't work.

So I think that's part of the issue in Premier Mo is. Why is that? Well, it's not funny. Why is that? It's a goofy system. From what I've seen, again, I'm the new guy in the room. But it's a goofy system. Yeah, but usually, usually the new guy in the room can stare at something.

And, you know, if you've been there 50 years, you've just come to know that you can't do certain things. Let's put in context. You're not allowed to pick up the phone. You're not allowed to go anywhere. So as a private member, if you're in the opposition, maybe you have a little bit more latitude. But in government caucus, if you typically go through intergovernmental affairs, we are so, so regimented in the Canadian culture and custom that I've seen so far, it's ridiculous. And depending on if you're bringing the Ottawa style, so that federal style of politics,

here and the way you kind of run things federally, there's even more silos that are built up. So for me to pick up the phone and just call somebody, you're not really allowed to do that. Why? What's going to have? Well, the process is you have to go through intergovernmental affairs because you have two different governments that are speaking to each other. So it's very much hierarchical. You know how ridiculous this sounds?

Yeah, I know. I'm from business. So typically if I was picking up something in my prior life when I was a senior manager of planning execution that worked for Enbridge, we had assets all the way from Norman Wells down to Chicago, down into Texas. I could pick up the phone and talk to anybody that I wanted to. That's not quite the same here. So where you get a lot of the interaction, the informal interactions, that quite honestly is the best place for that and happen, is when they go to these conventions and when you go to certain policy meetings or when you do that.

Because then a lot of the pretences and a lot of the things that we've artificially built up in Canada from what I'm finding out, that all falls to the wayside. I can literally go rub shoulders with an energy minister from a different province. I can't necessarily do that here without going through the energy ministers department who reaches over to the other provinces, energy minister's phone line that then goes down to the energy minister that may or may not talk to our energy minister that may or may not get to me. So if you want to see how to accelerate things, get me on a plane, get me across the border, put me in a room, and I literally came back with two stackfuls of business cards, both from people from our country and across the border that want to do business.

So it has to get back to that. The U.S., way more casual in that regard. You can pick up the phone, talk to people, do those type of things. Canada, we've inherited this British-type culture from what I can see. And depending on the province and depending where they came from of who's running it, it may or may not be more formalized or along those lines, artificial boundaries and barriers. You're a brash guy. You know, you tow the line for the most part.

Why can't you just, what happens if you just call somebody up and circumvent the what feels like a really big bureaucratic machine. When you start talking the energy minister to the energy to the energy, all I hear is a whole lot of fat in there. What happens if Shane goes around some of the protocols and just is like, no, we're going to get this done? Like what happens? You can't.

It's not that your head will explode. It's just that you'll get blocked out. So depending on the receiving call. So if you're breaking protocols or formalities or procedures, yeah, then you're kind of going rogue. So who's your authority and what reason are you calling a minister? So what I did before, because again, you have to understand the game when you're playing it. Every corporate culture is different.

What I did under the energy corridors is I went through the energy minister, and then I went through the minister of transportation. So I raised my hand up, said, hey, these corridors are that. This is the good thing. Ended up soliciting the Premier's office, got a mandate letter, and then they put it under jobs and economy. So I literally had three ministers that all of those economic corridors touched within their ministries, and they kind of gave me the ball to run with it.

So with that, I could work within my task force group and also as projects outside of that, a couple ministers gave me letters and introductory letters to other jurisdictions. So Yukon, Northwest Territories, was tied them with them pretty decent and had ongoing communications every two weeks, would have formal or formal or informal or informal calls to find out what was going on. And then while that task force was taking place, there was also election cycles. So all of a sudden you have everybody in the Yukon changed out from, who I was dealing with before. So it's not like business.

It's not where you can just pick up the phone, get on the plane and do it, and then throw this whole COVID quagmire, travel restrictions and everything else in the middle. It's one of the most ineffectual times and periods ever. So my best three years in politics of actually picking up that economic corridors and talking to folks about what we're doing up here,

how we supply 62% of the energy imports from the United States, how the logistical challenges that they're having, how we're looking at food productions and, you know, basically pinch points on the fertilizer thing, talking about the geopolitical items with Russia and Ukraine and how that's putting a strain on food supplies and logistics and everything else, how you don't have to have the President of the United States running around fist-pumping Saudi princes to get their materials and their oils. That is the best place where you can talk to these folks, having a beverage on a deck, brushing shoulders with them in a meeting, and talking about North America, talk about North America first,

and then roll back from which jurisdiction you're from and how you figure that out and how you make North America self-sufficient. That was the best time I've ever had was in literally the last month and a half of doing that work as a private member as an MLA. So what did you learn that? Like I mean, obviously, I feel like

for us too sitting here, for the most part, everything you're talking about, obviously your side of it, but like me sitting here listening, a lot of my listenership was just like, yeah, this all makes sense. What is the, what is the, the different constituent, well, the different members or the different representatives, I guess, where you meet them at these conferences, they're all like, oh, yeah, this is great. So if they're all saying it's great, then what the hell is the roadblock?

Like, why are we stuck? Well, I can speak on the Alberta side. Part of it is, you know, and I've said in a couple different posts and everything else, too, if you're sitting there crying your eyes out of never being invited to the dance or no one's dancing with you, well, did you put on your fancy clothes and show up? Like, that's literally what's taken place. when I ran into former ministers from Saskatchewan and existing and former speakers of the house, one, it was down in Wichita, so it was the CSG conference.

And you're going to ask me what the acronym stands for, and I'm not going to remember. But basically, it's Midwest Legislators Conference. When I got an invitation to go to that, it was literally every MLA received one in their inbox. So I'm looking at this, and coincidentally, there was MKEC and Associates. They're an engineering firm out of there, Bryce Barkas, one hell of a good guy. He was my project manager when we're building a transshipment facility down in Eddystone, Pennsylvania. So taking a while from my not North Dakota, moving it down there. Bryce happened to be in Wichita.

I haven't seen him in, you know, forever kind of a thing. And this thing came up and I'm going, I should catch up and see what the guys at MKAC are doing, what's happening down there. If I get a chance to go to a legislator's conference and meet all these other senators and representatives across the Midwest, and there's going to be folks from Saskatchewan, Manitoba there as well, that's pretty damn good bang for the buck. So I gave an advisory note to jobs and economy and said, oh, by the way, I'm going to this. Now, it's taken place right during Stampede. So Stampede's a big deal for us. But for me, this was more important to go down there and find out what the heck is going on.

Now, I'll digress a little bit. When I'm talking about Bryce, here's a guy that I worked with, a brilliant engineer, civil engineer. When Trudeau got elected, he literally shot me a note, because this is prior to politics, shot me a note and says, looks like some long-haired liberal hippie just took over your country. When are you packing up and moving south? So if that doesn't start to resonate of what's taken place, keeping in contact with all those folks I used to work with in industry and seeing what's happening north of the border, including the convoy and everything else, they can't believe what's going on.

So literally for me, it was almost jumping over the wall to go talk to people and to see how things are on the other side of the curtain, where we've been kind of held back, meeting the legislators from Saskatch, when they showed up with 20 people. Manitoba had, I don't know, several delegates, two of which are current ministers, and it was Minister of Energy and Minister of Transportation. So we're sitting in this one conference room. There's like 2,000 people serendipitously,

and I'm sitting beside the Energy Minister from Manitoba. We're listening to this very democratic group, Democrats from the States, talking about how they're going to make this next evolutionary leap to green energy and have electric vehicles and put up these stations and Biden's got a trillion dollars and we're sitting and I'll sit in the room anyone with a technical background that's trying to figure this out going okay we just looked at your energy grade it's it's not going to be sufficient you put two or three

teslas in each block you're building out the entire infrastructure I don't have enough power for you you've got rotating brownouts right now and all of a sudden you're going to make this big evolutionary leap you technically can't make it happen so I'm sitting there and I'm kind of you know muttering a few things under my breath this guy sitting beside me starts doing the same we end up brushing shoulders and turns out he's the energy minister. Now the consequence of that is when that Travis Taves reached out to me, this is going back seven months ago, seven, eight months ago, because Germany was looking for gas. They went through Christopher Freeland, who reached out to Travis, who reached out to me and said, okay, can you make Churchill work? Like, Germany needs gas. That was through the task force. So I had heard that Travis

had talked to the energy minister. Travis is like, studious, like he grabbed that 150-page report of mine was tearing into it at two in the morning, and I saw him doing it next day. at 10 o'clock, we're sitting there and he's grilling me on it. And he started to, what he told me was reaching out. So I had no way of verifying that. Sitting down at Wichita a month ago, and this minister goes, somebody was talking about corridors, Travis Taves, he says, your finance minister had reached out to us. He says, there was some MLA working on. And I'm going, yeah, that's me. And the ministry says, okay, we're going for lunch like right now, as soon as this thing's done. So this is how we can meet and do business in those formats and in those styles that are

informal that gets away from all the pomp and circumstances set up artificially. That's the best place that you can do that. There's an appetite for it. And quite frankly, I think Alberta coming back to that, showing up to the dance, a lot of this feedback that was coming from the guys in Saskatchewan and Manitoba were actually observations with me. They're going, you're not the typical guy Alberta sends here. Like, who are you? What are you doing here?

Why are you here? And I'm kind of, well, you know, what do you mean? Like, you know, I've got a third eye or something like that. go, no, this is the type of representation that Alberta should have had. Where have you guys been? And then I explained my background and what I was into before, and then I'm a new politician. And there's a massive appetite for this right now.

And if we don't jump on it and don't capitalize, we're literally going to be boo-hoo in a corner, our mask hair running down our face and crying that no one pays attention to us. We just got to show up to the dance, take our best step forward, and break down those barriers and talk to people like people because they are. So are you any closer? You know, if you go back to December, We talked about this energy quarter.

I think, you know, and I, and when I, you're in March, when you came up, it came up again for the SMP presents, which, you know, it's funny how the time seems to be flying by, you know, and I think back on it. But, you know, it's been, that's like nine months since we first talked about it. Now you, are more inroads being made? Obviously they are. Is it leading to like, you know, you should be paying attention here in the next couple months? Well, I would suggest it's not by chance that you've got Pollyev talking about X. You've got Daniel Smith talking about economic corridors. You got Travis Taves talking about economic corridors and even minister or former

minister Raj and Sonny talking about economic corridors. So not to toot my own horn, but I've managed to do it anyway, but I've managed to to work through that cumbersome system where everyone's got a really good idea and all roads lead back to what I've been working on. So it's not by chance, Sean. That's that's a lot of hard groundwork and behind the scenes grinding out in the corners to make sure that the right people are at least taking the high points. So I believe honestly.

and the folks from Saskatchewan picked it up and so the guys were in atob. You made me choke on my coffee. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm going to toot it anyway. I'm not going to I'm like you, so don't die on me. Yeah, so that's part of it. And there's the frustration of being an MLA, but you really, you can't. If you want to sit back and just show up to the rodeo dance and you want to show up and ride in a car and a parade and do all those little glad-handing things that everyone

seems to just love and lap up on Facebook and everything else, you'll never get that done. But if you're willing to grind it out, go in the corners, do those type of things, the hard work and behind the scenes, it's going to become pervasive and that's how you win this thing going forward. And then developing alliances, quite frankly, where you've got to make sure there's something in it for somebody else. And you have to make sure there's an honest sincerity to it. When you're talking about economic corridors, it's not, again, just about a pipeline or a railroad

track. It's about the next seven generations of wealth building. How do you pull and bind things together, not separating us? What do we have in commonality? So what do you have? What do I need? What do you got? What can I trade? How do I get it there? What do you have? What do you need? What do you got? And you start talking about what lights up on the other side of the equation. So, you know, you really are building partnerships and making sure that those long lasting partnerships carry out through generations. And that's how you pull this thing together. Stop fighting amongst ourselves. Get past these stupid little silos and barriers and protocols and put up, put a pathway between us and let's get things happening. And that resonated with Democrats, Republicans, conservatives right across the

Western states. So it's a win. Yeah, good things are coming as kind of what you're you're alluding to. Oh yeah, if we don't. And here's what, you know, in the states, it's funny because, you know, one of my grandpas came from North Dakota way back when and his family ended up moving up to that Grand Prairie country. So when I tell folks when I'm down south the border, if they're wondering what Alberta is, you know, it's Texas North. So that's an easy one. You can kind of fill in the blanks there.

Diverse economy, you know, hardworking people and everything else. And when you look at our makeup, when they're kind of figuring why is Alberta different than a lot of the other provinces, especially when you go further east, well, because you look at the cattle trains. It was literally the train station. And when you go down to Wichita, that whole Santa Fe Express, you know, everything was moving back and forth. It was herding and droving cattle.

So that's why we have a ton of first immigrants, first founding fathers out here, if you would, in Alberta, high propensity of U.S. Cowboys, that whole type of Western spirit thing. That's pervasive. So when you get us together and we start breaking down those barriers, we can make a lot happen in a short order. But you have to have that ability just to get off your high horse

and drop the pomp in circumstance. And the folks in the states get it. And when I talk about this inflection point, I'm talking about North America. So when I go into a room and I introduce myself, hi, I'm Shane Getson, I'm an American. And then the Canadians will spin their head in the room and I go, I'm a North American. I'm from Alberta. I'm in Canada. And I'm right north of Montana.

And we're Texas north. What do you got? What do you need? What can we work on? Where are your challenges? And here's what we do. How big of a wrinkle? You know, you got all this great stuff going on.

How big of a wrinkle is the federal government, not only in Canada, But in the United States, when it comes to economic corridors, getting things put through, working together with the Americans, heck, working with the Manitobans and Saskatchewans, you know, like provinces, I was saying about Scott Moe, like the more and more I watch this, you can see that everyone's starting to talk about autonomy, right? Now, whether that's from, you know, I give my hats off to Daniel Smith's Sovereignty Act, whether or not it can be done, that remains. But everybody's adopting a lot of what she's been talking.

about and it's starting to spread. Now maybe it was before her I don't you can argue with me on that but the autonomy all that you're starting to see all the provinces starting to be like man it'd be a heck of a lot better if we were like the United States where each state has a little more ability to govern itself. There's a lot more talk of that but you still got the wrinkle of you got a federal government that you know we can get into getting out of this country getting into it which is wild at this point I think right but you got you know you got buy in his first, what, day or two, just canceling pipelines and everything else, you got all this, like that's a giant, you know, you're playing the game, that's a different, well, I don't even

know, is that a different card game that just can, like, they got the Joker and can lay it down, and the game's over? Well, you know, it's the game of life. So when you look at east and west, we're different. Every province is different. There's no question. Is there a natural trade corridor pathway with the Pacific Northwest economic region? include the Midwest and that? Absolutely. I mean, you've got border towns, heck, some of the

borders out there, one side of the church, you sit in the left side of the church and the right side, there's your border down the middle. I mean, literally, well, you're literally sitting in the border city, right? Like I know all about the, um, used to play hockey in Fort Francis, Ontario and they had a bridge separating them from international falls, right? So everybody went across the bridge to grab whatever they want in the American side. It's a common corridor north and south where we get mixed up is east and west like honestly it if we were to redraw the map and if we were to look at logistics yeah i can get you the northwest i can do those things and utilize the arctic i'll get you all of into europe as well and that's why the northwest passage becomes the new panama canal

you know we've talked about that yes yeah so we have to get our heads around that to your point with with biden canceling the keystone excel pipeline point in case that's been a political football since 2009 so the fact that that administration swings from one side to the next now the fact that They're missing about 850 to a million barrels a day, and they're having to go out and fist pump Saudis and do all these things and looking at the pump prices. Yeah, that kind of the fit hit the shan there, didn't it? It kind of blew up on everybody. We're all sitting there going, I told you so, but the worst thing you can do is jump up and down and pound your chest and say, I told you so. Make it about the North American footprint.

Make it about the energy security. Make it about sovereignty and tie in together. Give them a bit of an out. They'll come to it on their own accord. When you're talking about the green future and everything else, they're pushing, okay, where do you get your lithium from? Oh, okay, we got some choices. You do hard rock mining. You do a nice big salt baths and pond extraction.

So you take all your salt basically and throw it in these settling ponds. And then you get a bunch of kids scraping it up and doing everything else in the third world countries. Really, really great. Or you can do what Alberta and Saskatchewan has and it's oceans of that sitting below our feet. You use the oil and gas technology to be able to extract it. No one's the wiser. You basically have a little SAGD-type facility set up. There are a little gas plant type idea.

You extract it. and you run the saline through there, you're extracting out the salts that you need and everything else goes back down hole. And when you start talking to the Detroit automakers, the guys from those senators from down there, they want to come up and look at what we have through oil sands, and I have an open invitation for them to come down

and see their governor and talk about that. Biden with the Keystone Excel, point in case the A2A rail line never got closed. That border crossing is still in effect. So the U.S. knows strategically that they need to tie in with the lower 49th, that they know they need to make. make Alaska no longer an island, but they know that when things start going up there, they've stood up First Brigade Battalion, so their first paratrooper troop that's in Arctic

conditions, that's to counter what Russia's already done in Siberia. So these things are real and they're active. So when you're talking about which administration, the biggest grown up in the room in anyone given time is the military complex in the U.S. When you start talking about what really makes the wheels turn and where you have to go on supply and security and everything else, that's really where you've got to start thinking. So these administrations will swing back and forth. But if we keep talking about the, the unsexy things like logistics, energy, communications, security,

that literally is our linchpin of why we should be at that conversation at those tables. And as soon as we approach it that way, lights go on. Everyone sees that. All the electors can get behind that. In one words of a senator, now you have to, a senator from Philadelphia, Democrat, right off the set of Sopranos. So when I'm talking to this guy, and really I did a project down in Philly. So this is coming directly from a vice president or president, I should say, a Matrix.

There was down there in an industrial company. And I was trying to wonder how to deal with these folks, because there's a different culture, literally. And there was a guy from, Jeff Long, actually, is from Oklahoma. He had ran for British Petroleum, a Tank Farm down the East Coast. And we were out there talking about this transship facility. And I was getting my butt-hand. to me, quite frankly, because you go into these meetings and these guys are aggressive, they're nonstop. And Jeff says, you got to, you got to actually come out and swing at

him. He says, you're kind of like us in the Midwest. You know, you only get in the scrap unless you need to. He said, with these guys, you've got to come out swinging around at the start. He says, they won't respect you otherwise, and you've got to put them in your place. Like, holy crow. Then I talked to a guy from Matrix, that president, and he says, oh, yeah, he says, we're like that down here. He says, we'll throw iceballs at Santa Claus, not because we hate Santa Claus, just because he's in Philly. So when I'm talking to these senators, I come out of my skates right away. And, You know, what are you doing here? I'm here to let you know of how much energy you get from us.

What do you mean? 62% of your imports come from us. You've got your president running around again, you know, the whole thing of going on this desk pot to her to secure oil. I said, why are you buying it from the commies and the socialists? Why aren't you getting more from us? You stop our lines. We're trying to get it to you.

If you would have done this four years ago, you wouldn't have this issue. And then, you know, green energy and talk about all the lithium and everything we're doing, the hydrogen expansion. And he goes, you know what? We've got to do business with you. We've got to park that other stuff. We can agree to that 80% of the size. if we got to stop talking about the gun issues,

we've got to stop talking about, you know, the road versus Wayne thing, let's just put that in the parking lot, let's talk about. And I said, right, North America, because that's what we are, boys, all together, absolutely. So that's the type of thing

where you have to know your stuff and be able to break it down in the simplest form so other people can get it. Not the big speaking points, just basic key points. You sound like a salesman. Yeah, you are. And what I mean by that,

I made a career as a salesman, so I have a lot of time for salesman. And one of the things I learned in salesman, learned in sales is one of the best traits you can have is listen and then solve the problem, right? Everybody's got problems. Absolutely everybody. I got problems. You have problems. And if you've solved the problem, you become valuable. And what you're doing, at least this is what it sounds like, is you're creating value for what you do. And then you're getting them, well, they're all going to push for it because that makes sense. And it's an interesting way to play

the game, Shane, I guess is what I'm getting at. Well, and you have to. And sales, again, people don't know we exist. It's not because they don't like us or they just don't know us. So you have to go there and tell them exactly, solve their problems, go in with it, knowing what the solution is and give them three or four different options. So you can either get your stuff from elsewhere, you can lose your security, you can send your kids over the die in the desert, or you can get it from us and you've got the third largest known deposit on the planet that you'll never have to send a soldier to defend. Yeah, so it's sales. And it's, it's, it's sales. And, And that's the former industry I was in. When you're running major projects and doing those things, you have to bring along stakeholders internally and externally to meet an objective and a goal. You have to motivate an entire team. You're spending hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, you know, millions of dollars a day easily, that they're going tens of millions of dollars going through the door on these things.

If you don't have a vision and you can't deal and move with the changing environment, invariably you fail. So yeah, you have to pitch, get people behind it, have a common cause, get them excited, and build up the team. it's no different than winning goals and putting the puck in the net. Is it all a bunch of individuals? Or you all wearing the same jersey? Do you have the hype behind it to get the fans in the seats?

Do you want them cheering for you? That's what you want to do. You know, it's such a cliche, but give them the best, give them the sales pitch, so they just go send your sales pitch out. So back to your economic corridors? Yeah, it's not by chance. There's four or five people talking about economic corridors now that didn't before. So it's coming.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's our way out of this. And when it starts hitting in different areas, and you build that ground swell, and it's everyone else's idea too. Yeah. I don't have to be at the front of the band. I just need to be in there playing with it.

I can orchestrate. I can do whatever. And enough good people will round it out. It's our way out of this. It's our way to that western autonomy, quite frankly, northwestern autonomy of tying it in, tying in our trade routes, building up the cash reserves that were very much depleted.

So I'm going to go back to the federal government. what wrinkle they throw in. You're saying it's going to be such a good idea that even Justin Trudeau would sign off on it, or you think you're going to need a conservative government in, because you bring a peer. Yep. So you're thinking you're going to need federal government sign off on it anyways.

He's already talking about it. If he wins the election, then this becomes a slam dunk. Or do you think it's going to be a track, in them enough with the world's problems going on that even Justin Trudeau would be like, you know what, this could work and we're going to sign off on it. Yes. Yeah. So when I'm reaching across the boundaries, when I look at the Canada Infrastructure Bank, I did

a CIB 101 with them. So basically did an interview and then told them to give me a presentation on what makes their projects, which ones that they look of highest interest boil to the top. So it's not by accident in my report that we've changed some of the wording of it or we've trying to change a little bit of the branding or the nuances of the verb usage so that it would pile to the top when somebody from CIBC looks at it. When it comes to whatever narrative that the liberals are taking this week, I've got little kids that are going to be starving to death in Africa if I don't get them food. Ukraine cannot make their contracts unless we can get it out there.

You're looking at ag production at the same time you want me to reduce my fertilizer contents, which I just can't get it for pragmatics. I've got Germany running around. trying to sign 10-year contracts right now because within 72 hours, that's so close they're tight and their supply is this winter. 72 hours, they have riots in the streets if they have no gas for 72 hours straight. They're at that point where they need to secure their energy. It behooves us, regardless of whichever party happens to be sending down in Ottawa to turn a cold shoulder on our NATO members and our G7 partners to not put power and light and heat those

little kids in the middle of the night. So how do we get that? What do we have to offer? It's not all of our technology. We've got a buttload of energy out here, and that's what people know us for. And why, for heaven's sake, are we allowing our trading partners to go to the socialist countries to get their energy products? So we have to put it in a package that they understand. So it meets their green narrative.

It meets, you know, the kittens and puppy dogs and kids and all the, you know, high points that they want to look at there. Let's make sure we practically get it there. there's so many things that we can get towards if you allow us to work the problem and come up with the solution. The issue I have mostly with the liberals in that type of narrative is they're throwing these darts on the board, but they don't know the actual process of how to get to those milestones or those goals. And I believe that that's the frustration of a lot of really good politicians and premiers from Western Canada that are saying we're not listening to this anymore. We're going to have to do the practical things and the solutions because you guys aren't going to make it happen.

But I believe the corridors, regardless of the administration, it's our in best interest. Through the provinces, we can work at the provincial level, really good together. Even the folks from Quebec, I couldn't believe we're like peanut butter and jelly. We got along down south, fantastic folks at the provincial level. Federal politics is where it gets in the way. But I think if we have that groundswell and we start putting these things in action, they can fall bass backwards into a win and that'll be on the federal policy level. You know, when you talk about it makes zero sense on.

the fertilizer and all these different things. All my brain does is go to Close Schwab and the W.E.F. And what they've been talking and how many people are young global leaders across the planet and everything like that. And what they're talking about and I can't sit here and, you know, maybe I should have had eight quotes for you, Shane. So I could just be like, well, this is what he said today. And that's what he said that.

And whatever else. And I always go like one man has influence and certainly seems to have a lot. lot of influence. And when it comes to that total emissions or what's going on with the Dutch farmers and you just go down and you just see what's going on, you're like, how much does that factor into like what you guys are staring at coming down from the federal government and everything else, knowing that Justin Trudeau and Freeland and all them were part of it, are a part of it. It's pretty frightening. You know, if you had to roll the shot clock back three years ago and talked about W.EF, I would probably, yeah, whatever. It's another one of those things they meet over in

Avos and whatever. Well, it's no different than probably at no, and I'll let you finish, but it's like when I first heard about it, I was like, oh yeah, like, I mean, I can pick a conference and if I go to it, you know, I mean, you can pick up some ideas and, you know, just by being there doesn't make you, you know, whatever. This is probably a really bad analogy, but you know, Epstein, Epstein's Island, right? And it's plain and everything about that. Don't even get me on the record, dog.

Well, me and my... It's only what was read in the paper. Me and my brother's got an argument, and I was like, just not been going to Epstein Island, but like bumping into Epstein. And all of a sudden, if you even shook the man's hand in the course of 20 years or whatever, all of a sudden you were an awful human being. And I'm like, I don't know, that seems like a stretch. But, but if you go to Epstein Island 20 times, 25 times, no politicians have done that,

not Shane Getson, but maybe there's something there because chances are if you go that many, times, I think we can pretty much say you knew what was going on, and chances are you frequent it that much. You're probably doing some of the nefarious things that happened there, horrific things. Anyways, so I rewind this back to the WF, and I don't know if Epstein and WF is Zach same. I'll let my listeners decide that one. But, you know, you go to a conference. It doesn't all of a sudden make you a WF, but you go to it every year. You start saying exactly what close Schwab's doing. Close Schwab's talks about having people in all the governments and all this and all of a

sudden that becomes pretty terrifying. And I think a lot of people are staring at that going, what's a guy in sitting in the MLA shoes think about all that? Well, again, if I was going back three years, I wouldn't have given much credence. Three years, a lot's changed. So when you started looking at it was, you know, 71 and Klaus was this prof. You know, what other philosophies of Kanoa out of Germany in time that have maybe had a negative impact, you know, a whole Marxism thing that was part of it, right? Eugenics, you know, that kind of

came. I mean, there's tons of things that get hatched out in this, this environment. So when you look at it in context, you know, wouldn't it be easier if, sure, if you had major corporations that could do it, if you had the individuals that came up and came up with the best ideas, you pay your paid to play for that as an individual, you can pay into it or corporations pay, I don't know, 500,000, $600,000 a year, whatever it is. And then you can talk about all this stuff. Yeah, because you're unhindered by that whole democracy thing. That is kind of frightening. In context and itself, okay, whatever,

have your little club meetings and do whatever you want, sure. But when you've got that much influence now that's been growing since 1971, quite frankly, it's a little disconcerting, Sean. The truth be told. So how does an MLA deal with something that that's that big? Never been on a plane, never knew about it, never heard about it, But you all of a sudden start putting things together. If you've got a bunch of actions that are taking place, it's no longer coincidence, right?

Yeah. It's not like the black cat crossed my path. It's like a herd of cats. I'm going to crossing your path. So when you start looking at some of the elements of how you make social change, how you make these gains, you have to also look at what's the reason and why is the timing taking place. So when I'm talking, I'm going to go back to it, economic corridors, I can get my head around that because that's something I can touch, feel, smell, do all those things.

A big global conference with all the wealthiest people in the world and the head of these corporations. And when you've got companies and corporations like AHS involved, you've got sitting members that are, I'm not sure if Freeland is a director or something like that. To me, that's a conflict of interest right off the start. You shouldn't have anybody else there that's like that. Now, especially at a director level, as part of that formal organization,

now to your point, if you happen to show up to these conferences, or if it is becoming the boogeyman in the room, then you'd better have eyes on because the worst thing you can do is not be there and see what the heck is happening. The scary part is who's there as an observer and who's there drinking the Kool-Aid? So a lot of the things that we're having to hit on,

quite frankly, I think we're on our back foot, we're on our heel on this, and we need to put what we can change, what we can control, which partnerships that we can align with, which trading partners that we trust, that are outside of potentially the corporations, but within the jurisdictions of people

that are like-minded common goals, those type of things. That's how you start to do it. The other team's been playing this other game for a long time and we're losing. But I think a lot of us are waking up and smelling the coffee and all that stuff and getting in. So again, I'll come back to folks and your listeners. Don't sit on your hands,

give people a shot that are out there and maybe if somebody makes a misstep because it's just a misstep, don't tear everybody down and burn everybody down with it either. We're playing three-dimensional chess here right now. Always interested, you know, you said, you can have any which way, any questions you want. I love what's good about a good podcast or a good, you know, conversation

is it can kind of go in 12 different directions. And when it comes to WF, it's, I think it's, you know, we talk about different elephants in the room. For a long time there, nobody would, you know, and I'm talking corporate media, wouldn't really talk about certain things. Well, that was, that was an honest. It didn't exist. So there's the scary part.

I mean, even you and I had conversations and you're grilling me. I'm like, I don't know, man. I haven't looked into it in that degree. So you, you know, he kind of gave me the gears. Well, you should. Okay. But also I get probably similar to you. And anybody who's sending me messengers or messenger on Facebook.

Like, that's the last place I look. If I get a chance at four in the morning, I'm going and looking on that. because I've got an office and phones and you know everything through the channels but when there's one news story somebody goes hey yeah we should send this to Getson yeah let's send it off to him I'm getting about 50 to a thousand so how can I physically keep up do my job and all those other things if I'm gonna read every nuance but when people I trust when there's folks that that are you know I want to say it in this context fight in the right fight when they bring my attention to it I

definitely pay attention to it so you know back to you Sean yeah I'm a little more averse at it now and too many things for coincidence right now they're taking place yeah well I I'm glad that I can beat you up in a friendly way where I'm trying to you know throw things your way that are are important not only to myself but the listeners right like I just I I I know exactly what you mean because I got listeners and they're phenomenal that send me I don't know how they keep up with it right so many news stories in a day and uh uh i do my best but like i get tired like i really enjoy peter mckella because peter mckella i swear to god he uh reads as if it's breathing

like he can just do it all the time and like just report after report after report i'm not that way i get like i read i read like 10 articles in a day i'm i'm tired like there's my brain's trying to soak it in, trying to decipher what I like, what I don't like, you know, and it just, anyways, so I feel for you there because I can imagine the amount of stuff that comes your way, and I just sit in a podcast chair and the amount of stuff that comes my way is like astronomical. And actually, it's more so than just reading things now. It's documentaries, it's interview, you know, podcasting has become, you know, when I got into it, it was a huge thing.

Now it's like on steroids. And there's so much good content there. But I even sit here and think about this. Somebody has to sit down, probably put it on two speeds so they can, you know, get through me being slow and whatever else. And they do that. And then there are people listening like 10, 12 podcasts today. You're like, oh, well, good on you. Because I just can't do that.

I need to really soak it in. I listen to things on a higher speed at times. But I guess I just sympathize with you on trying to evaluate all the information that comes across one's desk. and I'm sure as an MLA you get more so than a podcaster does. Well, I guess it depends, and I appreciate that, Sean, because again, you can only soak and consume so much information and also, quite frankly, try to disseminate the red herrings from it too because somebody put something down, like for me to take that,

and if I have to take and run with a ball, the amount of research that has to go into making sure that it's valid, that it's true, that it's fact-checked, not to use fact-checking as a thing, because it's not, we know that, but to actually validate it, go through that background to cross-reference it and see if there's other peer reviews and those type of things. Because again, once I take it and I have that little logo on my shirt when I'm carrying it forward, it kind of, it's kind of a big impact.

Well, one of the things that doing the podcast has done for me is like, so, you know, I probably, I mean this in the best way to anyone who's held on since the very beginning, but I'm pretty sure I flipped my listenership over the course of a hundred, 150 episodes. I did 100 episodes where the goal was Don Cherry, Ron McLean. Everybody knows this story, right? And then over the course of the next 100, it transitioned from hockey focused sports to starting to get into COVID to like, okay, we're not going to talk about anything else. And I remember saying this until COVID has dealt with. And not just like the fact that nobody's talking about it. So by the time, you know, and I'm slowly, you know, the reason I reached out to is because I saw the video you, you talking about the injury. And I certainly want you to talk about that for people who've never heard about this, Shane. I knew about it via Texas. I didn't realize you were going to talk about it personally, openly, I guess.

But for myself, I've really dug into like everything COVID, right? And when you get that focused on something, you start to disseminate bullshit from like, holy crap, this is going on, this is wild. This is, you know, that's what led me to Ottawa. was by that time, I was like, there's no other way. Like, nobody's listening to reason anymore. It has to get out of the way. And so now my focus for all the listeners, I feel for them at times, you know, where I go,

is been Alberta politics because I'm like, that's the next thing. October is a big day. Yep. Because that's going to decide who faces Naughtley in May, and that's going to decide the next four years for where I am residing in my mind, right? I'm an Albertan, born and raised in Saskatchewan, now living in Alberta. And so one thing I have over any politician is my day job allows me to focus like entirely on where I want to go and learning about something so that we can let's get through some of the bullshit. Doesn't mean there's going to be some bullshit come on here because there will be.

Some people for that matter may think you're bullshit. That's fine. That's what they get to do. They get to listen to decide for themselves what they like, what they don't like. And every day is like that. And that's the cool thing about sitting here, which leads me that was a long, a long rift. Plus, again, I'm trying to keep up.

It's all good. It leads me to, you know, one of the things, after having you on, we've stayed in pretty close contact. Well, I'll let you tell it, because I saw the video of you talking about it. I was like, holy crap, I didn't realize Shane was going to talk about

his vaccine injury. And I'm like, well, a lot of people really enjoyed the first episode you were on, and I'm like, the only thing I can do is extend an olive branch to, A, talk about the quarters again, because I think it's, it makes complete sense. That's why everybody's talking about it.

I appreciate when you talk about reaching out and how you're attacking politics. I enjoy it. I know in a world where people don't feel like they can trust anyone. At times, I feel like I can trust certain people, and I've really enjoyed your take on things. I know you went to Coots and things like that, and so I know where you stand on a lot of things.

The vaccine injury shocked me that you were talking openly about it, because I was like, oh, I thought, you know, I obviously didn't say anything on air about it, but I knew about it and I was, you know, I've reached out and everything else. So maybe you can share with the listener a little bit about that part of, you know, your journey over the last few months. Yeah, well, I appreciate that. So, you know, part of my style, too is I still don't think of myself as a politician. This is a project to me.

So you've got the Sean Newman podcast. This is the Shane Getson project. It's SCG projects all over again. So the project that I jumped into politics is because everything was going sideways in my chosen industry and policies that other people are making that obviously had no depth or experience. So maybe that was the early precursors or seeing the ripples of other, you know, groups around the globe starting to make those changes. So that's when I jumped in to try to help out. So how does a guy that runs major projects and involved in pipelines

convert to a politician? It's kind of like what you're doing with this podcast. You reach out and you talk to people and see what's going on. And I've always used that whole question of what matters to you. Like me the first five top items, here's why I think of the precedents. How do I fix this? What are the problems? What are what's going on?

And that's literally it. So when I'm getting out there and talking to folks, they're telling me what the issues are. And then I'm trying to find the top ones from everything else. So when the whole COVID thing came up, you know, we've talked about that briefly. And hopefully your audience understands this.

There's a caucus confidence. there's a cabinet confidence. I've given my oath and my word to secrecy on a bunch of items here, like literally hand on heart, swearing on the Bible, to be able to have the information as an MLA at the time of dealing with a lot of the COVID issues. And we didn't have full cabinet confidence in a lot of the items, but at certain levels and areas, we were getting briefed pretty much at the same level on it. Now, did we, were we involved in the decision-making process?

Not as much as we should have been. I've had lots of comments and commentary and how the pick was set up and how it should have been refreshed and you have a cold eyes coming in. A lot of that comes down to, for the length of it, I don't think anybody in their right mind would have sworn and allowed and voted in the house to allow this to be protracted for two and a half years. There is no way. we were all thinking it was two, three months, maybe six months at the utmost and we're out of this thing.

Things are back to normal, you know, in the context of all the special powers, call them, whatever you want that the governments have used. And quite frankly, a lot of them have grown addicted to special powers that they've had. So being an MLA is, first it was a learning curve jumping into it, trying to take your skills and attributes that you bring from other industries and apply it. knowing who you are as a person and then swearing those oaths and vows. And if you do swear something, like it means to me, my word is something. If I shake your hand, it's something to me. Take away everything else that's all a man has left is his word. So that's how I go into this.

I wish our federal government would, certain people there would take that same, you know, lying on oath has become something that is almost like nobody's truthful anymore. No, I think Colbert nailed it a few years ago. I mean, what are we looking, truthiness 10 years ago? was kind of a catchphrase. The issue, again, Sean, I think, is when you got to back the card up, people are paying attention to politics now. Get involved. You know, I've talked about flexing your democratic muscle and getting people involved. That's how bad on us. We've allowed other people, lesser people, to fill those roles for a number of years. And if everything works well, that's great. You can put it on autopilot. Unfortunately, some of the Pinocchioes out there

have been actually making the rules, not just going along with them. And that's where we're seeing it. So in the context of COVID, I have to go back to at the start. So back in 2019, 2020, COVID went through my household. I had a bit of a blip. I was down for about five or six days. Two of my daughters were similar. They were down for about a week.

My wife and my two oldest, they were sick for a long time. Like we didn't know what the heck this was. respiratory issues, brain fog, my son passed out the table, and these are kids that did Ukrainian dance. And I mean, they're in tip-top shape. My son now, you know, he's 18 years old and 6'5, like he would have made one hell of a dude defenseman. So he's the one I met at the SMP. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, big kid, right? Yeah. You know, healthy and everything else. So when they get knocked down and have those issues, and my wife's background, she's a dentist, but her dad was a doc, ran a hospital for 30 years, and her mom's a nurse and, you know, kind of goes through the loop. So tons of really good

access there. Everything was lining up at, you know, quack like a duck, walk like a duck, it was a duck, it was COVID. That's what went through our house, we had it. So being a farm kid and having some degree of common sense in regard to epidemiology and virology in the context of inoculating your herd and dealing with those type of things, I could quickly rationalize why we had to kind of slow things down for that bit, like that one month where everyone kind of just paused it. you had the main corridors were kept open, the main services and goods and everything else. That was literally to figure out what the heck was going on, stop moving, stop spreading it, figure out if the facts are real, what information was coming out of Europe if it applied to us.

And then we started a whole thing in testing. So all the way along, I'm from the outside edge and not trusting everything that's being fed because a lot of it, some of it was making sense, but a lot of it really wasn't. So again, in those boardrooms and those caucus rooms, asking all those very, brash questions, if you would. If you think I'm brash on the radio, those boardrooms are sometimes things rhyme with truck in there. I'm very brash because the industry I came from, if there's a critical element, if we had a pipeline strike or if you have H2S on a site and you kill a bunch of people, yeah, it's kind of serious. So that's the same way I looked at this.

And when I told my colleagues, this is the first time of my career where the Westray mine disaster doesn't seem to apply to me. So as a politician, I'm making decisions that are affecting people's lives and livelihoods. And if there's a wrong decision here, I typically I would go to jail. Like that's how serious I take safety and compliance and all those things, because that's our industry. That's where we come from. If me as a manager, if I look away from something and people get killed on the site, I'm going to jail. I know that full well. And so is the CEO of those companies. So it's from that lens that I had that same type of scrutiny in those rooms and asking people to make decisions based on risk models, based on information, best data, and then forecasting

it out. So when it came to last fall, I couldn't believe the whole restriction exemption program was being contemplated. It wasn't through law. It never came through the house. It was a through a policy. And quite frankly, some of my colleagues that were pitching it thinking it was a good idea. I was very brash about that. I called it the Maiden Alberta apartheid solution. What the heck are you doing for an uptick on a percentage of vaccine uptake that has really little consequence on the overall spread or viral spread or everything else?

Like it was the wrong demographic and everything else, not even talking about the effectiveness of the vaccine itself or lack thereof. So when it came to the fall, that was coming through and my family was never vaccinated again. I became the lab rat. My wife did her own baseline for serology. I did my baseline. I was going in for my pilot's exam on October 22nd.

So I held right off until then. And my concern was at that time how hard the opposition and the mainstream media was going after a bunch of us to declare our status. You know, I didn't have a QR code. Well, why not? Well, you're not vaccinated. Didn't tell anybody. Even my own colleagues didn't know what my status was or what was going on. So again, I thought, honestly, in my wife, you know,

know, she's, God bless her, but she hates me making this decision. I made the decision not only from my own family, so they would have a voice, but for my constituents, so they would have a voice as well. So then after getting the, you know, passing my medical clean bill of health, and then went in that afternoon, literally my constituent office that's the Onaway Heritage Center, it's a vaccine site. So I went in there and rolled up my shirt sleeve. Yeah, ball cap on, t-shirt on, you know, not let.

looking like the MLA. And when you talk about people's privacy when it comes to medical things, I was never in the doctor's office before. I mean, if something was gashed and gouging, it was very rare, I went and got stitches. So pretty healthy all the way through. Most boring thing, I don't take any medications or anything else. I just, you know, you work hard, play hard, do those things, keep healthy. And I've been pretty blessed with good genetics, I guess. So never telling anybody my medical history, it just rubs me the wrong way. Why in the heck should I tell you what I've done so I can buy a hamburger. Why are you putting these artificial things in place? Why are these restrictions being put in place? It's inconsequential when you look at it,

the personal protective equipment. Again, H2S, I can put a Scott pack on. I know I'll get out alive. Looking how many people have those masks on sideways and dirty and like touching. It was just making no sense. So I go to roll up my shirt sleeve, back to that. First thing the nurse does, not keeping quiet, oh, what are you doing here? Why? I can't believe you haven't had one yet. Well, thanks for sharing that with everybody in the waiting room. You know, so there's how accustomed people that became about talking about their vaccines, because that's been happening for that long. So now even your medical professionals are losing their professionalism part about patient confidentiality. So there was the first step. So that night I get home and my wife's

looking at me and it was in my left arm, you know, the shot. was in my left arm. And I was sitting for supper and she goes, how are you feeling? I said, eh, a little bit off. And she goes, well, you turn in about six shades of green. Like, why don't you go lay down? So then it was the next two days. I was, I was literally in bed sick, like sick. And then work was back on Monday morning. So then the policies internally changed to that point. They wanted a negative COVID test to be able to come back to caucus and to meet with people. So here I am scrambling, running around, trying to find a rapid test or something to do it. last minute, this is getting dropped on.

So this is where it starts becoming socialized and normalized, that this is what you have to do to even sit as a MLA in your own caucus. So I literally, folks down at Synergy Aviation, because they were Transport Canada regulated, they had a bunch of these things I went and grabbed it. So I'm literally sitting here taking this test, doing it, proving it's negative, taking my stopwatch, showing the time of it, handing it off to our people in there,

and they weren't going to let me sit with my own caucus because I didn't have a negative test. this is how pervasive some of those things became. So I basically told the unelected individual that was going to limit my exposure, my, you know, going in there that they'd better go talk to the whip and he'd better figure out where his next paycheck is coming from. This is how bonkers that this was getting. So now you want me to not only prove to you, but you also want me to give you my vaccination status

to sit along. This is how goofy this all of a sudden began. Well, I think if you work for, if you're just the common man or woman, they know everything about this, Shane, because a lot of people lost their jobs, a lot of people got pushed in situations they did not want to be. A lot of people, including myself, got put into situations

where they're asking for things and sending emails and you're like, this has gone way too far, but the thing is, you mentioned it, it got so normalized that nobody, you know, I don't want to ask, but I'm still going to ask. And we still need this, and we still need that,

and you need to do this. Like, that's, I, I, I have a, I think I have too many listeners that have, they're just like, everything you're saying, they went through times. Agreed. And it's not for sympathy. What I'm trying to say is it was bonkers for everybody. Yeah.

Not just the common man at home. So when you look at a lot of these policies that were put in place, this was my concern coming from my industry. Again, if I was going to start segregating people or doing it, if there's a certain industry, you would do it, and that's OHS, OHS. I mean, go back to those rules. All those rules are written. blood literally or there's been an incident. There's been some incident that's taken place. Somebody's had harm or caused him and that's part of it. So interpretation is a big deal when it comes

to that. But here's how the hype was out there at this crescendo in this time. So a lot of folks were mad because I got vaccinated and a lot of folks are mad because I didn't tell them about it. And then a lot of folks are mad that I didn't come out sooner. Like, fellas, until you walk a mile in the other person's shoes, I am not a doctor. I am not going to tell someone to do something medical otherwise. That was where I stuck to my guns. I did not believe in the QR system. I did not capitulate on that belief. I paid for every single test when I went back into that house to make sure that I was safe out of my own pocket to do that. So then I get this stupid shot. This is how goofy it's becoming. My own colleagues in there that I thought were good, you know, fair and conservatives

were, I don't drink and whatever, Kool-Late at that point, thinking more about political consequences or maybe they honestly did believe that if we did this, it would save everybody. Again, common sense and logic. So about a month into this, my right arm is seizing up. Like if somebody just barely gave you a tap in the arm, it was like driving a spike into it. My arm was crunching and moving at the restriction. Had this massive thing in my jaw.

One of my daughters, you know, bumped a volleyball and it bumped into my side of my head and it was as if you took a sledgehammer and walked a person with it. Like it was just, it was wild. And then started getting chest pains. Went in and had another serology test done at that point. So baseline versus first and second. And telling the lady at Icor actually, and the lady that ran it, she goes, well, first shot. I said, yeah.

She goes, well, don't even worry about it. Like, the highest I've seen in here for, you know, 14,000 people is maybe 90, 85, 87 for anyone to have the first shot. Don't even waste your money. I'm going, well, just bear with me. So it came back as either 195 or 197 out of 250. So obviously I've had that before. It was spiking up on everything. So then December 22nd, I'm starting to get chest pains and aches and my knees won't work

and hips and can't sleep at night and can't sleep on one side. It's just brutal, man. So major autoimmune type functions, disorders, anything when who's had arthritis gets it or ladies out there have had childbirth issues and have issues with their hips and everything else afterwards. I mean, this is what people have told me. It's kind of like what I was going through. went and saw the dock again.

My dock couldn't believe the differences, orders a litany of blood work and tests and everything else. Blood work came back okay. Looking at allergies, nothing came up from that. But I've got this arm that seized up and gimped. I can't even brush my hair. I can barely raise this thing. The chest thing turned out to be partially collapsed lung,

lower left lobe. So I did these deep breathing exercises and everything else. No medications are working. more blood taken from me at this point than anything else. Blood test after blood test after blood test. I've never been in the hospital before. And then we get through Christmas, January rolls around. All of a sudden, I'm developing this rash on my legs.

And it just starts being massive rash, starts coming out on itching and pain. And so that was pretty fun. And then about a week following that, my face starts swelling up until, you know, if the listeners have seen it, literally it looked like I went 10 rounds with Tyson with no prize. money. My breathing was not bad at that point. Like it wasn't tightening up where I couldn't breathe. End up in the emergency room in Sturgeon County. We were in there about 9 o'clock at night on a Saturday. And coincidentally, the security guards there, I'm kind of asking you how is it going tonight. And he asked, well, what are you in for? And I said, this seems pretty busy. He goes,

well, you're the third person in 20 minutes with some type of allergic reaction. Like, this is weird. I'm going, yeah, isn't it? End up in finally at six. in the morning when I finally see the emergency room doc, she shoots me up full of, you know, an intravenous Benadryl, she's trying to look at things. She can't figure it out. It's not making sense to her. And she goes, there's nothing I can do for you.

You may as well go home. She says, but I'll try to get you into a dermatologist to get a referral. So I end up talking, actually, then it was the next day, on Sunday I ended up in the Stony Plain Hospital. And I end up just leaving, like the inefficiencies in that hospital of their emergency room ward.

I was supposed to get some more blood. My doc had wanted that, my personal doc. They put me on a stat, which should have allowed me to go to a regular clinic and have it done. Ended up over and they merge. Their internal policies were all bass-acquards, to say the least. I was literally sitting in the chair after two hours, literally sitting in the chair with the lady that was going to do the blood work, and the head nurse comes in and kicks me out of there so I can wait for another six or seven hours in an emergency room before I can go back to that same chair. Like these are the inefficiencies and internal policies that I'm very happy.

I'm on the minister's advisory committee, so there's a lot of insight that I've had through going through the system. I ended back home. I left. I just couldn't handle being around that anymore. Face is puffed up like you wouldn't believe, and it's hurting.

And when it was at its height, it literally was cracking the skin really hot, plasma's oozing out, like it was absolutely gross. And ice packs was the only thing I could do. Got to hold my dock on Monday morning. He prescribed prednisone. So my wife has worked with him before being the dentist in the town and he's the doc.

So they had a really good working relationship ship. Gave me a heavy course of prednisone for three days. That acted like a Murphy switch essentially for the immune system, so it stopped attacking my own body. And it started to come down. It wasn't getting any worse. And it was a month, basically, of ice packs non-stop on and off every half hour to try to bring it down. And then one week later, after being in the emerge, that's when the Edmonton convoy was taking place. So I literally had my son with me, took my gravel truck down to Atchison because that's my area. Wanted to scout it out first and it was just full of a bunch of really good, frustrated, patriotic

people. I can't say any other way, Sean. It was like a weight had been lifted off of everybody's shoulder proudly waving our nation's flag again like it meant something and that we were going to take our country back. That was the sense and the feeling. And regardless of vaccination status, it was about enough of our rights and freedoms being taken. So got a sense and a tone of the crowd. had my truck, I drove it in there, and I had my son sitting in the passenger seat with me with an

EpiPen because I was having problems breathing at that point and had to have the window open lots. And I made it through. So the opposition went after me hard again, and my own party really wasn't saying anything back. And then that's when I took to social and responding back to the papers and said, okay, you want to know my status? Here's my status. Here's the other side of the story. How do you like them apples? That was basically it. I had enough. Enough of the benefits. politics, enough of the policy, enough of all of this stuff, this is about humanity, this is about being a person and an individual. And that's when that video went viral, basically. I think there was 400,000 hits from all across the world, people understanding and feeling the same way,

and quite frankly, looking forward to the Canadian truckers, which basically started out in Alberta to go down and try to make that change in Ottawa. And then you talked about the issues down of Coots. I never went to Coots. I did have lots of pie in that little coffee shop north of Coots in the town just north of it, though, let's put it that way. And meeting with folks down there to understand what the issues and challenges were. Initially it wasn't about blocking the border. It wasn't about any of that. It was just people frustrated. Good folks, just frustrated and tired, had enough. And trying to be a voice for them as well. And again, Grant Hunter and myself were under non-stop attacks, non-stop in the house by the opposition in the papers for how dare we,

you know, talk to people and do that. Again, coming back to our style, you have to get off your high horse, you have to go talk to folks, you've got to meet with them on a one-on-one basis and be a human, be a person, and understand truly so you can be their voice. So then February, there was this lady doing, she had reached out to my office and heard some of the things I've been speaking about. And I was tabling in the house while this was happening in the fall. There was 63 testimonies from health care workers at the time, anesthesiologist, doctors, paramedics, nurses, the whole, you know, health care workers and old folks' homes as well and all those type of things. So some were on the record that they had their names. They were talking about the issues that were

taking place in AHS. They had talked about some of their own vaccine items that they'd seen and their own personal status. I continued to table these stories in the house to make them part of our public record in history. And that's one of the reasons why the documentary lady reached out to me. So she shot that video in February. And at that point, I just finally, at that point,

got a clean bill of health in the sense that I wouldn't be at more risk by flying my plane with that lung issue. So that kind of got back to a steady state where it was good. Still having a lot of the aches and pains and those things. I know how much, you love flying.

You know, I've talked to Greg Hill and Matt Sattler, gee, freedom to fly, gee, I don't space him for a second. And they talk about, you know, like, it'd be like me losing my voice or something, not being able to podcast. I think by now the listeners know certainly how passionate I'm about sitting and talking with different people. In the short time of knowing you, Shane, you certainly enjoy flying your plane and getting up in the air.

and that's a huge passion years. I assume that was terrifying that, you know, that could be pulled away because pilots have lost the ability to fly. I certainly know that from Greg and Matt. Yeah, it is. You know, I kind of sit up in the video there. The worst thing you can do is clip of pilots' wings. Like, that's devastating.

We all know it comes. Like, you'll lose your medical eventually one day. But we all take care of our health for that reason. Like, it's one of the best, it's like being a lot of, on God's doorstep. So once you've been on God's doorstep, it's pretty tough to go be kicked to the curb again in that context. So yeah, it means a lot, freedom to fly, freedom to travel and do things. You know, that's been taken away from a lot of folks, myself included as well. Prior life, I used to be jumping across the border all the time. You know, my wife had brought

the stat to me there at one time. High to my career, I was only home six days a month. I was somewhere else all the time in an airport or different area location or running things. And you get accustomed to out of the freedom of movement and to restrict people's movements of freedom and have that taken away from them over what we've gone through lessons learned. You know, John Hopkins came out and usually they're pretty benign on their reports when it comes to these things. They absolutely said that this was the wrong thing to do. We have the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Folks go look it up. This is a really great think tank group out of the States, Woodrow Wilson Center. They did but one year into COVID, and this is what I discovered. Chris was from the Wilson Center and presented to us, and I sit on a, through the CGS group for that Midwest Conference, I sit on not only the Energy Board, the Council, therefore, them a subcommittee, but I also sit on Canada-U.S. relations. So the Woodrow Wilson Center presented to us of all the things that we did wrong.

And essentially it comes down to, we had all the mechanisms in place after 9-11 to deal with security and risk issues and to mitigate risks and to, you know, basically, scrub people and watch them when they go through board. We have all the people in place. This is paraphrasing at the end's degree, but they essentially said you took all of that off the table and you put it in the healthcare community

where there's zero risk tolerance that don't understand trade and commerce and goods that will never get to zero risk tolerance. There is nothing along those lines. And when you did that, you took away the authorities of the borders, you took away the authorities of the states, you took away the authorities of the provinces,

and you had a mismash of information that was contradictory at best between all jurisdictions. And we're living through those ripple effects now. So as a unvaccinated, unclean person, you know, coming through with this, we've created a caste system. My colleagues, even when I had to share with them when they finally, you know, was dealing with some of the folks that were out there fighting for our freedoms, flying flags

from their trucks, some of my own colleagues at the ministerial level didn't really I didn't realize I had issues, hadn't seen the video, I didn't realize there was challenges. So I shot them a text, you know, pulled over and parked safely on the side of the road, shot him a text of what I visually look like and then had to explain to them by our own policies, folks, I'm still not exempt. This still doesn't count. The specialist when he saw me told me absolutely, you know, a month and a half later, this is absolutely a vaccine injury. He says, your face swelling up, that could be, you know, something else.

he says it's not a 100% definitive. And in this case, he says right now the scrutiny under, it has to be 100% definitive. He says, but absolutely the things in your legs. And then he talked about, not that he should have been talking or could have, but at this point, you know, patient confidentiality, talking about other, that I wasn't unique. Let's put it that way.

And even some people that were really close to him, 23 years of age, hemorrhaging out and almost dying, healthy young lady having issues. Like this is out there. So right now with the timing and doing that document, entry and getting this message out there. You've got a couple of leadership races that are taking place, provincial and federal levels. You've got a ton of scrutiny that's on these docs right now.

AHS is having to accept them back. You talk about the freedom to fly crowd. 200 Air Canada pilots were kind of pushed out in the cold. They brought them all back. I've had a number of frontline workers, professionals, docs. I've had police officers, firefighters coming forward and thanking me and shaking my hand, telling me about the similar things and similar challenges and issues they've had and ongoing things. There's a stigma now attached to it because of this whole anti-vax moniker that was put out there

wrongly to try to manipulate people, that now if you've done your thing, you made your choice for whatever reason, you've got a complication with it, which happens with every vaccine, by the way. Now those folks can't even bring that forward because then they're labeled as something else. So you've had the majority of people that went out and got a vaccination shot, God bless you for doing what you thought was right. And God bless those who didn't. Like, again, as a politician, you might get mad at me and not taking a position. I'm not the medical person. I told everybody to make your own mind up, go research, sent them all the papers, one side of the thing to the other to make your own mind up. But now you've got folks that are injured and we're not dealing with it.

So if we're going to bury our heads in the sand, there's going to be a major wave that hits our health care system and people dealing with ailments. And if we're not talking about how to fix the problem or that there is a problem. It's terrible. Like we cannot, it's inevitable. We're going to have to deal with it. So start talking about it. What I want folks to do, like honestly, bottom my heart, Sean, take the oxygen out of the room on the emotions. It's way too easy right now to keep ramped up, but that's what was used to divide a bunch of people. You get them emotionally engaged and ramped up. The logic button turns off. We have to get people back to the place that, not to forget about it ever the worst thing that we can do is forget all the good or the bad

mostly bad things that we went through for this but you got to drop the emotion off forget the i got you moment the aha or you deserve it let's talk about the true things out there what are the issues the underlying complications and how do you fix that going forward um we've got to amend some fences here there's going to be some that folks won't come back to there's some people that did some things that are inexcusable so don't get me wrong there but all that margin and that border, those boundary areas, drop the emotion out of it and start working through it,

reach out across the table and shake somebody's head and figure out how to go forward with us. So that's why I brought it out, was to make sure that this didn't fall off the fence. And the timing on it, I think, was good. I had a gentleman reach out to me across the pond, literally from the UK. He was a former member of the European Parliament,

and he's putting together a global group to talk about these things, both elected and non and docs and pilots and you name it, whoever's had some challenges here, both with the implementation and then the adverse effects. I literally had a guy from New Zealand. I know a guy who's a rocket scientist now. I wouldn't be able to say that before,

tongue and cheek. I know a guy's a rocket scientist. And this gentleman had the exact same things happen to him than I did, like right across the pond. There's been tons of folks talking about their shoulder injuries, their jaw, their rashes, everything else. I'm one of the lucky ones. Really lucky because it's going away.

There's folks out there that have, their lives have been changed forever and not in a good way, that are having lingering items. So if we don't figure out how to fix this, they'll have that for the rest of their life. And that's an absolute travesty. You know, I was getting attacked by one for not pushing that kids should get it.

Right now, and I think I'd said this, that you're, when you had us down in Lloyd for your open house there when I was on stage with Danielle and the two other, the lawyer and the other doc there too. Eric Payne and Andre and Henry Murray. Yeah, absolutely. Great gentleman. And, you know, good on you for having an open forum or we could speak like that and and have folks come out.

So when you look at the vaccines that were designed for COVID classic, you know, again, tongue and cheek, put it in context, it was designed for a certain timeline and where it was at, if you keep pushing that stuff forward for where the current strength. brains are at, they're highly ineffective. And I think the numbers that I'd use back at that point was like 12% of efficacy, and that was coming from Pfizer's site at the time. So if I've got something that is only 12% effective, and the big pitch is to limit your, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, unintended consequences, your symptoms, it doesn't really stop it, all these things. But on the downside, you've got all these risks, you know, including heart disease, like myocarditis

isn't just, you know, a little twinge. It's heart disease for the risk. of your life and limiting your life. If you start looking at it at a 12% efficacy to only make your symptoms down, quite frankly, if you're healthy, you're going to live through it. I think we've all seen it. We've already had the variance that's gone through the herd. Good. There's going to be more that'll come, probably. Let it go through the system. But if I keep flogging the same stuff with all the downsides, I'm not comfortable with that, and especially with kids, kids bounce back from this really quick. So if I'm going to give a kid who's, you know, three to 10 years old, heart disease, over what?

Like this makes no sense. And I think the same pitch, and I'll say it on your podcast here now, if I was to sell you, and again, coming back to the salesman pitch, if I was to sell you family planning devices, and let's say it's good old condoms out there that were 12% effective. And my big pitch was you need more layers of protection so that, you know, you can reincrease, your chances. Who in the heck would buy a perforated condom to do their family planning? You know, I'm going to tell you that that's the best thing since sliced bread. Like, come on. So yeah, I'm about done. That's why the gloves are coming off. You know, it's interesting, Shane. A, first, I appreciate you sharing it. One of the things that I think is starting to gain more light. Like I had Adam Conrad was a fishing guide from Saskatoon.

He came on and talked about his, you know, he was having to have, I hope I'm not wrong on this. That's a long time ago now. Geez, but he was having to have hearts. He'd went to the emergency room like, it was like crazy. Like four different times, had to put his heart back in rhythm a bunch of different times, right? And that came. His father, you know, it looked like died from the vaccines as well. Like it was a really sad story.

And I feel like as time goes on, obviously more people are, feeling like they can talk about it and not be you know kind of publicly shamed for what to for speaking up about something right it's it's it's interesting and watching you i go gee this is a turn of events uh from the first time we talked uh obviously not in a good way for yourself and uh don't mean that way just that when i brought up covid in the first time around with you and certainly we talked about uh the little suva boy who who had uh you know passed out on the bus and that was part of it. But when I talked about COVID in general,

you're very much of, I'm pretty sure we're going to get through this and we're going to move on with life and whatever. I think that's what a lot of people are thinking. It took Ottawa, and even then, right now, I'm not sure if we've moved on with life. The summer certainly feels great, but a lot of people, as you've mentioned,

up until, what was it, June, still couldn't travel across our country and they can't leave and they can't, everything else. So I guess what I'm applauding you for doing, coming on the show and doing your video and everything else talking about it, you represent a lot of people. And the fact that you were, you know, I was saying this to a friend. Like, I now know five people.

I consider you a friend. You're the fifth person I know that has had, in my opinion, serious complications with the vaccine. Four of them don't want to talk about it. You know, they just want to move on with life and carry on. But more people need to understand how many people it's been a bit of. affecting because a lot of people just sweep it on the rug and move on with life. And it's to that point, right? So I was at a golf tournament and one lady there has an autoimmune

thing and she was clear for years, got vaccinated. All of a sudden these things are popping up. Coincidence, I don't know. But when I said, you know, the stats that were coming out of Germany, there was a study that was one in five thousand doses that, you know, there was going to be, there's going to be a repercussion. And she says, well, that can't be right. I'm like, well, why is that? She goes, I don't know 5,000 people, but I know 12 people that have had issues. So a lot of the things the docs couldn't report on was the side effects. And that one doc was so frustrated. And it's not just the one.

There's a number of them. It was so frustrated that put it in the context, he says, it's like driving past and seeing this car crash and inflaming people in an intersection. And you can't call it a car crash because you weren't there when it happened and you weren't in the driver's seat. So he said, so there's no car crashes? And his frustration again was every vaccine has an issue. This is the only vaccine we've had where the reporting isn't trying to bring out the issues to the forefront.

So again, you've had a lot of leading questions around that. You know, I was on a different call with, oh, shoot, I'm going to miss his name out, but the gent that's really famous out of the states. And they were pushing back towards the politicians being the issues. And I challenged them. I said, this isn't the politicians' issues. partially. I said, you know, I can't agree to that. But mostly, I said, you've had these boards in place for years. You're the ones that has the college and physicians. You're the ones that have picked these

people. You're the ones. These are the ones that are looking over top of you. I said, and silencing the docs. Yeah. I said, and what's going on here? And I said, why is that? And he says, follow the money. So again, when you've got a system that is predicated on, on this big financial model or people that are wanting their resumes to be this or that, they're, they're, losing touch with what is real. And here's the inflection point, Sean. If we don't have a rational conversation, take the emotions out of the room, we're doomed to fail again. This is a massive failure in how we issued policy for those reasons. We've got to address this. We have to clean house, quite frankly, to make things right. And if we don't deal with it rationally, and if we don't

put people there that are really trying to do the right things, I don't know where this goes. and that to me for my kids and my family and the people I represent in this province and across Western Canada, I don't know where this goes. Like me jumping across the border, I have, by the CDC at the time, I've got diplomatic community.

CDC doesn't care if I show up there or not. I show them that I'm in MLA. I'm going on diplomatic reasons on behalf of the government, which I was in both cases. First time I went down, Delta Airlines is looking at me going, well, do you have a vaccine exemption? Do you have a QR code? No, I don't have any of that,

but I am a diplomat going on. I just showed him a picture literally of what happened to me and the guys I snapped at him. Oh my God. Yeah, no problem, sir. You know, help you through. And I said, oh, and by the way, here's my serology reports. Yeah, yeah, on the plane way I go off to Wichita. Coming home, completely different story.

Where's your exemption? Where's your arrive can? Well, I did the arrive can thing. Oh, it says you have a medical exemption. Well, you don't give me any options to tell you what I'm doing. All of a sudden, this, you know, 30-something security guard or boarders guy is trying to help. meal, but it's a square pig round hole. Takes me into the back to this other room where some federal people are there.

I guess I'm trying to skirt around the connotations of it. Would not even talk to me. I'm standing right across the room. I'm listening to this guy try to advocate for me that just met, saying he doesn't need to quarantine. He's had all these. No, no, no. Yes or no?

He has to quarantine. So there's the difference between going from, Alberta leaving, you know, the provincial state going into something that's federally controlled, that you have to be masked up, you have to 100% be under the scrutiny, you 100% have to fit within this box, this whole, or won't let you leave the country. That was pretty eye-opening to me. Moreover, when you come back, well, we're going to make sure that we're calling you every day. You have to quarantine. Well, that doesn't line up the quarantine act. Oh, and by the way, it doesn't line up with the provincial ones. So as soon as I step foot out of that federally controlled

building, I'm back in the land of the free. The harassment that goes on with us, the second time when I went out, United Airlines, because of Transport Canada, so again, my Canadian government, wanted to have 72 hours in advance my medical exemption, which I finally got, and I had to go through about four or five doctors, not the one that actually gave me the original diagnosis, the specialist, because he was too afraid of losing his license and having, I don't know, the medical Gestapo come into his office. Like, I'm getting pretty tired of this. People don't want to, think it's real when these docs are having nonstop investigations coming to their office, nonstop from their own boards. It's happening, folks.

Well, listen, once again, I just go, people have been following on a podcast. Literally, I go back to Andrew Liebenberg, was the first doctor who sat right in your chair, right where you're sitting, and shook for about two hours while he talked lightly about medical ethics. Yeah. Right? About informed consent, and he was terrified that he was going to have people come after them. I know full well. And I think I, you know, people who are listening on this, Shane, they certainly know full well what's going on. All I got to do is go listen to all the doctors that have been speaking openly and see the harassment they've taken for it. I mean, I just bumped in Eric Payne in Calgary. I got all the time for Eric. And he's the doctor

was at March, right? And he's still getting harassment, right? All these, all these months later. And folks, you know, kind of whitewash it and want to forget about it or say it didn't happen. No, it did. And it is. So I don't hold any, I don't begrudge that specialist for not wanting to give me a letter, even though he said it was. But putting it at writing is a different thing. I had another doc. And I'm not going to give you the doc's name because I reached out through some of the docs I was helping for the last six or seven months and said, I've got to go to the States.

I can't get a damn exemption letter. Is there anybody out there that you guys know that can have? help me out. So he put out the call and there was three or four docs that would be willing to step forward. So again, on the right over here, I was telling you, the system is wrong. I've been the guinea pig all the way through this, that when you have to go by the name game of people that are willing to do it, and the docs that I ran into that were willing to do it were almost at the end of their career. They don't have to be there. But they're also apologizing for the rest of their colleagues who aren't doing the right things. So that's pretty wild. So getting back

to the airplane, I've got my medical exemption letter. Well, now you need 72 hours notice, but I'm going, well, I don't need it through the CDC. Like I don't need, oh, no, no, transport Canada. And again, the Canadians that are receiving and dealing with it glaze over. Oh, so sorry. Yeah, I wish I could help. You're not. The American people, when I'm leaving and going there, they see my face, literally

how my face looked. They're empathetic. Our people are so used to it now. They're used to stopping people. They don't care. take a different plane. Don't leave. It doesn't matter to us.

Holy crow. Coming back in, the second time I came back in, the gent was probably about maybe four years older than I was. Didn't ask for the same information. Didn't really much care. Welcome back to Canada. But coming back to that turnstile and seeing how we've set these systems up for the bioscans

and everything else coming back in. And I mean, I traveled during the 9-11 years, going back and forth in the States when you're in heightened emergencies and everything else again, prior life back and close when we were dealing with terrorists taking over plane smashing into buildings and doing jihad stuff like pretty serious for safety of trying to control those variables we've got more scrutiny and control now for a virus of which you're pushing a vaccination at this point that isn't inconsequential to doing any health why are we putting these controls in

place the one thing that made the hair in the back of my neck stand-up was coming back in through Edmonton and the nice plexiglass chute that was set up. So when you clear the customs area and you're walking into the terminal building that is set up almost like bulletproof glass. At the height of the terrorist threat, we never had that type of control or channeling or pushing people through. And being a farm kid, I've put lots of stock through stock racks and through shoots and everything else. Un-eary feeling. That was on the Canadian side. Nothing like that the American side. So again, folks, federal policies versus provincial policies. Did we make missteps? Absolutely. We do a fulsome lessons learned. You're going to see why and end some of the

challenges. What I would propose is you put, again, bookends on allowing that in the house six months, no more. You've got to come back to the house to get any more approvals on it, put this thing to bed. You've got to refresh your cabinets and your pick meetings and you have to have outsiders come in. That's just human nature so you can not all, you know, positive affirmation of your decision process. You have to have other checks and balances in place. But that just that feeling, that oppressive feeling and coming back home to see my wife and kids and seeing how sad they were. And I'm going, I get it. I felt absolutely free jumping into Kansas. Things were normal again. Coming back home, just felt like this massive cloud that came over top of you. Sitting in

Atlanta airport and flying around all across the States, no masks. Coming up towards that Westjet counter, put your masks on. It's instant. instantaneous, even in the airport, they're asking you to mask up while you're taking that flight. Some little Air Canada employee while I'm in Calgary, finished eating a bite in the Calgary airport, just walking over to the restroom, didn't put my mask on. So this individual is pushing somebody else around, talking, whatever, walking in this crowded room, and you can kind of see the occasional persons that aren't putting their masks on noncompliant.

They're kind of giving you like the motorcycle wave, you know, drive past each other in the highway, and you're going to give that. So everyone's kind of doing the nod that's doing that. This individual goes out of their way from Air Canada to tell me to put my mask on. You have zero authority. You're sitting in an airport. You have nothing. But you're just loving the power.

All of the airports in the states were open with the exception of Los Angeles County. In Los Angeles County, they 100. So in Los Angeles and LAX, they 100% want this mask compliance. They still want this going. I would hazard to say that there was probably about 40% of the people down there that weren't compliant. I walked past a big group of security guards, there I'm thinking, I'll go, here we go. Not a word, not a lick.

Come back to Canada, there was maybe about one or two percent that wouldn't wear their masks. And again, we're allowing this to happen. So push back on the federal policies. Things don't make sense. You know, in Premier Mo's words, you've got a propped up government from that little socialist alliance has taken place.

Not much interested in that. Not much interested in having rights and freedoms taken away. And again, the way that we start working together is talking openly with this, understanding there's both sides in the equation, people have injuries or issues, and what we're doing right now does not do anything to mitigate the health risk that says everything to do with what you're compliant in and allowing yourself to go down this path. I think Nancy Reagan had said it back in the 80s when it was coming to drugs. Just say no. I certainly love getting you in the studio. I'm a little talkie. I apologize.

Well, that's all right. I get to be free to jump in whenever I want. I'm enjoying listening and hearing some of the, you know, for a lot of people, they haven't left the country, right? You have a different, certainly I've started interviewing a ton of people from, you know, the states across to the other side, you know, Australia, New Zealand over there, that type of thing. And just hearing some of the different stories, right? And so I think it's refreshing to hear a little bit of what's going on, not that it makes, you know, not that it's refreshing in a way to go you're not crazy that this isn't how the rest of the world's acting you know i literally just interviewed kid carson he you know um me and my brother were talking about

he's like i didn't learn anything new and i'm like no but it was it it basically cemented that media didn't want their personalities talking about anything right he made a joke about wearing a mask to an outdoor softball game and got reprimanded for that gets booted for talking about the Canadian convoy, right? It's like, you know, that was a conspiracy theory eight months ago, and I know, you know, how long does it take for a conspiracy theory to become fact? Is it like three months, two months, six months, whatever you get the point. Having Gig Carson on to talk about his experience and being, you know, a morning show host in Vancouver and hearing it, having Shane talk about, you know, I put a lot of stock on what you stand for and where you've been and everything

else. Hearing you talk about a vaccine injury and what you went through. Like, to me, that's just like, oh, man, I can see you. You're a real person, if that makes sense. Anyways, just before we hop to the, you know, letting you get out of here and back in your plane and everything else, you know, you can't rewind the clock and do anything different. But if you could, would you, you know, would you have been like, you know what, don't put that needle anywhere near me? Or are you like, you know, it's just, well, on the front end, if I was a civilian, I wouldn't have done it. Like, and again, my wife is looking at me going, like, what, why are you doing this? And not that it's bravery or nobility or anything else, but I'm in a position right now that for good or bad, I signed on

for it to be the voice of people. the ones that voted for me who didn't and who didn't vote at all. And we've got to change that last one, by the way. More folks got to get involved in this process. I think more people are. Yeah, because the apathy, that's where we got to right now at this point is because people are apathetic. And the system was set up to succeed, but we've got so many individuals that have hijacked it.

So you got to get off the bench. You've got to give us a hand here. But even coming out and talking about these things and presenting it, lots of strife at home. Because again, I guess they like me. They don't want to lose me, which is good. But the risk and the challenges and the stress that goes with that, yeah, hell, if I wasn't a politician, I wouldn't have done this.

If I was running projects and doing those things, no, I wouldn't have, wouldn't have done this? Wouldn't have taken the risk? Wouldn't have wanted to lose my wings, you know, based on all the information I had, knowing that I had it. No, it doesn't make sense. Again, Farm Kit doesn't make sense. Why would go re-inoculate the herd when they've already had the natural virus that went through?

Like, okay, blue and black. Is it going to wear out? No. This is it just going to mitigate the risks? Well, okay, I'm not in the risk category anyway. So, no, I wouldn't have done that. But to give people that voice, okay, maybe it's knocked 10 years off my life. I don't know.

But I think it goes with, again, that oath that I swore. A number of oaths. I took that serious. I swore on a Bible and I swore. for my countrymen, to do the right things for them, to put my things secondary to that. And I take that serious. That's, it's an oath.

It's my word. Well, I appreciate you making some time for me and doing this. We always end with the crude master. It's, you know, it's had its variation. So it's the final question. I use Heath's words. I've been doing this now since pretty much April. When I had him on,

he'd said, if you're going to stand behind a cause that you think is right, then stand behind it, absolutely. What's one thing Shane stands behind? Northwest Canada. 100%. So again, I think there's a bunch of things I stand behind, but I got a belief, Sean.

Like, I, you know, Martin Luther King said he has a dream. I've got a belief. I got a belief that we have yet to realize our full potential. I got a belief that this is the story. strongest region can be on the global stage going forward that literally is going to help glue together North America. It's going to help glue together our NATO partners. It's going to glue together what we have for the next seven generations. I have a strong belief that we have a bigger role to play. I believe that we have to step off the bench and we have to reach out

for it and make it happen. I believe that when we work together, when we're not allowing ourselves to be divided. We're an amazing power, powerful country. We can be that, again. The constitutional challenges that we're having is only because it's a 42-year-old constitution. It's never been challenged in court. I know that freedoms aren't free

and all the other cliches that go with it. But I believe that at this inflection point, if people, the people out there that you talk to and that we talk to, if they get involved, that's how this country was made and that's how Northwest Canada tied in with us. and those corridors and everything else. I keep coming back to that because it is vastly integral. Once we do that, then we can build up our stock, we can build up our cash, we can build up our

population, we can build up our authority. You want to talk autonomy. The autonomy isn't separating and becoming islands. We're already there. That's why this is failing. When we're all divided and fighting amongst each other, that's what they did since 2014. They have divided, had us fighting, categorized us into 50 different shades of whatever they're calling it, and we're going along and apologizing it. We're apologizing ourselves. We're apologizing ourselves. Be unabashedly conservative. Be unabashedly socialist, if you want.

Even if you want that, I don't know why anyone would. But be yourself, and do not be afraid to speak up and sell yourself or to sell our corner of the world. Or to reach across the aisle, shake somebody's hand, and make a deal on something. Park the other 20% of the fluff that's got us divided. but deal with the 80% that pulls us together. So I honestly believe that this region, this is going to be the cure for a lot of the ailments that are out there right now.

When we stand together, when we dare to dream again, when we become Canadians, at least in this corner of the world, that's what I believe. I believe it's worth fighting for, and I believe that's why I stepped up to try to do those things for the next generations. Well, as always, I appreciate you coming in and sitting with me.

I've certainly enjoyed, you know, the last couple hours and, well, I look forward to bumping in you again, Shane, and hopefully the listener, you know, has hung on for the interview. I know they do, but, you know. I didn't realize the time. You were going to ask me, I think, about some political races going on. Do you want to talk about the political race? I'll give you as close to hitting the lines without going over the lines that you want. So I can try to navigate that. I'll tell you what.

I'll give you a, I got no problem with that. Well, then before we get to the political thing. I got to ask about Brian Jean. Because since, in the last, what has it been? I can't remember when that was, but I certainly read their article. Everybody read the article. And if you didn't read the article, it basically said, Brian Gene, you know, loses votes every time he opens his mouth.

And it almost came to fisticuffs between Shane Getson and Brian Jane. Is there any truth in that? Well, firstly. I don't know how, A, I don't know how much you can tell. So firstly, there's caucus confidence, right? Right. And everyone has to understand that Brian, Brian Jean brings his own personality to the table. I hardly knew the guy. Like, I mean, he got voted in. Like, everybody else out there to politics, I had a different opinion of them that you'll get from social media or from podcasts or you'll get from, well, maybe not podcast. Podcasts are pretty true. But you get this context. You know, and I kind of said in the house there before talking about the other politicians, they're kind of like paper dragons. You know, you kind of fear them until you realize. they're just little cardboard cutouts.

I kind of think that's honestly, I had a different perception of him based on a cardboard cutout. Seeing how he operates in his style. Yeah. So it rubs you the wrong way? Yeah. Let's put it in context. So hockey leagues, right?

You know, if we're talking the big chair. Okay, so if I've got a problem with the current management, so Jason Kenny, 51. 0.4% not a large margin of popularity. You know, we already talked about the knife, the long knives and those things that conservatives would have cleaned that, clean that up. So if, if people have problems with his management style, I've got someone who is a career politician who was from Alberta, because he is, he's from Calgary, Saskatchewan, actually

originally from, and this is, this is Kenny, so if I'm going to do a contrast or comparison, so from Saskatchewan, small town kid, goes to Calgary, becomes a politician, ends up as a member of parliament, down on that end, it becomes a cabinet minister in a couple of portfolios under Stephen Harper, who I've got a ton of respect for. My bank account was pretty good during the Harper years. Like things were rocking and rolling, kind of made sense. I liked it. We managed to navigate through economic collapse that was taking place south of the border than we skated by it on this end because, again, we had a guy that was an economist from the West and had all those right attributes, I think, to get us through that time.

So if I've got somebody who's a cabinet minister at that level, comes back to the province, gets into political or provincial politics and doesn't have a very good run of it for not because he wasn't the smartest guy in the room you know there's a lot of smart people so he's not a he's not a dummy he's a smart guy he's been savvy enough to do all those things cabinet minister brings all that back

now if I look at a contrast I've got a guy from Alberta who went down to Ottawa who was an Ottawa politician who never made the cut to become a cabinet minister comes back to Alberta takes over after what happened with Danielle I'll, you know, prematurely trying to merge the parties without getting parties consent.

We know all that happened. Comes back, does this stuff, gets a new party, loses, has his members basically abandon him, walk over to the new guy who was Kenny at the time, and then comes out of the ashes to do it over again. So if I've got a guy who has basically the same pedigree but wasn't as smart and didn't have the loyalty from his first group, I was going to jump into the chair. Yeah, I would say I would have some hesitance towards playing that guy as a first stringer out on the ice. People have to make their own minds up,

but as far as what happens in a caucus room, so there's, the way I kind of put it is, in the boardroom, you don't leave much in your back pocket, you put it on the table. That stuff is supposed to stay in the boardroom. So what frustrates me is when people leak things out the door. But as far as, let's put it this way, I've never endorsed Brian.

nor would I have endorsed one. But I'd like two or three other ones. He wouldn't be the guy I would put in the clinch game to run it. You know, you haven't listened to the candidates roundtable, but I make a joke in there where I'm like, I give Todd Lowen and Brian Jean, I think it is. But it was all of them.

It isn't just anyone. I say, I'm giving you 30 seconds, but I know what a politician's going to do. They're going to turn it into five minutes somehow, right? They just chewed, and I laugh. I'm like, so did it come to blows? Did it come to this? And you give me like a two-minute story on Brian Jean, but there's, you can't talk about it.

But I'm laughing because I'm like, you've turned 30 seconds, maybe even 10 seconds into a two-minute story. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Did anything happen then? No, there was a very direct conversation and nothing that was in the paper the way it was written there. So I think there's, well, the one thing that was frustrated me, so you'll get it. they said I was flabby and old. I think that was the comment.

I mean, I'm wearing a T-shirt today. It wasn't, it was by chance. But yeah, no, I think, I think the person that summed it up, there was, you know, if, if. And then this is the funny parts of Brian. Now we talked about it afterwards. So one of our, there was this button floating around that said, my money's on Getson. And last day of the session, Brian said the same thing. So take that for what it's worth.

No, there was nothing quite as exciting as the tablo. made it sound, let's put it that way, as there were an exchange of opinions and beliefs, and does sometimes things get a little passionate? Yeah, and I think Brian's record can speak for itself. Well, what do you think of the current leadership debate? I don't know, you've got seven people running, buying for leadership here in October. I keep using Jake Woodcroft analogy. It's the only thing that makes sense to me, you know, my background in hockey. You sit in this room, you get it. Jay Woodcroft, when he got hired, I looked at it and said, wow, what an opportunity.

Nobody thinks he can do it. And if he does do it, put him in a playoff position, and then do a decent run in the playoffs. He'll have a contract. He'll be the next head coach to the others for X amount of time. It's his to lose almost. And then what does he do? He comes in. They become a superpower for the end of the NHL season.

and they just ran over teams. They get into playoffs. They squeak by the L.A. Kings. They destroy in a really weird way. Their arch nemesis, the Calgary Flames, and then they run into the Colorado Avalanche. Which was a juggernaut. Which was a juggernaut.

Greatest defenseman I've probably witnessed in Kel McCarer, which is wild because he played for the Brooks Bannets in the Junior A League, right? Like, just wild. But what happens? He gets a new contract, and we'll see what his next few years. Bring. I know. I'm watching politics. I'm really like, as my audience knows, I'm like glued into this, right? I've interviewed five of the seven. Got those five on a roundtable in front of an audience to do exactly what I wanted to do. Now, I don't know if that solved the problem for anyone. But whoever it is that gets elected in my mind is Jay Woodcroft. Because normally when you get elected to be premier, you got four years. And you're going up against, you know, the NDP.

and the liberals and whatever. This time, you're getting, going against your fellow teammates, one, and then when you get in, you actually get a runway of like, essentially your runway is a full year of running for Premier, right? Except you get, what, what is it, like six months? Oh, we're down to the short strokes. Whoever gets elected right now, though, gets this short little runway to come in and do whatever they want, which could mean nothing.

like let's just hold firm here we're not going to do lockdowns we're not going to do this we're just going to and let's see if we can beat not only that way or you could come in and make a whole bunch of stuff and see what happens I don't know I have the right answer shame you know I'm like I've said it on the point I've had all five and I think when I think of like Travis Taves

even Todd Lowen for that many maybe even Rebecca Schultz it's kind of like strategy we're going to this is where we're going to go nice and slow and even Brian Jean for that matter and then you got Danielle on the other side Everybody says it's bluster, but she's going to come in, Sovereignty Act, whatever. And I just look at it and I go, what a wild time to watch politics and for myself to be like glued into it because I just use the Jay Woodcroft analogy. Either way, they're trying to get elected for the big job for another four years in May.

And they have this like really interesting window. When they win, they get an window to approve to the Alberta public. They're the right person to move forward with. Anyways, that's my spiel. Well, no, and it's a great one. And it's a great analogy tying it in because, Literally, we'll be in overtime. This is where it goes.

But maybe I'll jump back, not to try to make this word even, my name means, but where I've got a bit more insight is because I've worked with most of these people for three years through what could arguably be some of the most tumultuous times. You know, we've seen a ton of thing in politics. This is apparently not normal from what other politicians had told me

that sat in the chair that I was in before and for the area was in between. The not normal being a non-confidence vote on the leader, him stepping down and now having a run right before an election? Economic crash, a recession, a pandemic, a extremely hostile federal party, even eclipsing what Trudeau Senior did. I mean, yes, it's a pretty wild time. Yes.

And then have a complete 180 on our largest trading partner and then, you know, an invasion. Like this is kind of a big deal. So with that, I've got a different line of sight. Not only are people picking. the leader of a party, they're also picking my boss. My wife, again, knowing, hopefully folks are getting the read on who I am a little bit of how serious I'm taking this position. A bunch of folks asked me why I'm not running. Because, again, it's everyone that's got their own flavor.

The reasons why I wasn't running is my health. So now I think people understand why there's no way I could put in the time and the effort. The other one is I know what that chair means. folks that covet that chair. I don't know that they necessarily know what that chair really means. What does that chair mean? Oh, that chair means the end of your life. It's literally anything that you do or have her personal life is gone.

That is completely gone. No matter what decision you make, it's the wrong decision. Just ask anyone in the room. That chair means the hardest working, most painful thing you've ever done for the least amount of money you're ever going to get in your life. That's what that chair means. Anybody who understands what those positions of power are,

if they truly understand why we hold the mace with gloves, there's a reason, there's the context and the connotation. Anyone who goes in those positions cannot do it lightly or think it would be a fun thing to do. It's not. It can be one of the best things to do. You have to make sure you've got a team around you. The ones that were idealistic and went into it with, I don't know,

rose-colored glasses, or maybe they thought they were the only person. person for the job and there wasn't a team behind them. They've been shown otherwise a number of times. So that's that's that chair. I would have put my name forward if I didn't think there was decent people doing it, understanding those consequences and basically saying goodbye to my family for six years. So again, my family knowing that I used to be only home for six days a month, I literally would have said goodbye to them and risked losing them, quite frankly. And we would have done that. surprisingly my wife was the one that asked me are you going to run this is a lady who has stayed away

from politics doesn't like it knows it's a means to an end you know said it's the worst job I've ever had kind of thing because of all the things in public and otherwise and my personal story of doing things that I wouldn't have done if I was a civilian so understanding that the great thing about the leadership race is that people out there now know that our bench strength is deeper than one person. That key man principle does not apply, nor did it ever. However, that's how it was painted, whether rightly or wrongly by the media or the individual themselves.

So now you've got some very competent, strong people out there and folks from the outside. So in Daniels case, former leader came out there, broadcaster, earned her chops in the last couple of years, definitely went through the ringer a bunch of things. hopefully, you know, I'd want to say older and wiser, but wiser, because you never say a lady's older, you know, one of those things. Had a chance to get to meet her on your show and then a few other conversations as well. Solid in her skates. I'm not one that that shies away from the Free Alberta strategy.

In fact, I was on that show a number of times. A lot of the items can line up. Rebecca, solid, came out of that Bradwall administration over there. Most of her career has been in politics, you know, tongue and cheek. that's not the best thing for me personally. Some folks really like that. Brian, we've already talked about Brian. Todd.

Okay. Nice guy. Do you really know what that chair means? Personally, I think Todd's motivations are different. They're not as altruistic as they might appear in the else. And again, I've worked with these folks, a number of them from the last three years. So again, if there's things that he wants to say or do realistically, okay, to your point, six months, what are you going to do?

And quite frankly, there's folks that go out and play shini hockey, and then there's other ones that make it to the big show. I don't see certain individuals ever making it past the pond hockey on the farm. Like honestly, that chair understanding what it is and what it means in those levers. So there's a handful of them that I like. There's three, I think, that could make the cut that we could work with, that I could personally work with. if those other ones made the cut,

I don't know that I would put my name in for running this again and doing that. I honestly don't know. But if there's three that make it through the final round and get in there, yeah, I could throw my hat in the ring. And again, understanding that I am not going to watch the province go down, you already know what my belief in the Northwest Canada, I don't believe that if you allow, or not if you allow,

if those other individuals got in there, that it would ultimately just turn it over to the left. And to put it in context, there's five, I upset it in the house on record. There's five individuals from the NDP that I can work with. The other ones, I don't speak freaky-diki socialist. I don't get it. I cannot understand that they're too far gone. They're ideologues at best.

They're fanatical at worst. You know, when you start getting them talking about extinction rebellion and jumping up and down, supporting the ones that are going out and smashing up right-of-ways and burning things and doing all that. And it's just, you've been labeled essentially internationally as a, quasi-terrorist group. This is the type of things. So out of the five that I could work with, the NDP opposition, two of them are no longer running. So they're being replaced by more radicals. So this is how critical and paramount it comes to me. That's six months. Six months is a big deal.

We all want to have more authority in our province. We all want to make sure that we flex our constitutional muscle that we do that. There's certain tax and timing of when you can do that. And I think the two front runners understand that. I think where they differ on a lot of those is really coming down to the strategy of it. When you've got a big pile of go get bent money sitting in the corner, you can be a little more assertive in these other areas. So until you make sure that you've got some of that rattled up, you want to be careful on the wording of it, we have to understand that words matter.

and I'm going to put it in context of how relevant that became. So I'm down on that conference down in Wichita. There's a senator, literally, from Minnesota that's putting together two resolutions that are coming out, non-binding, but resolutions from this governing body. Nonetheless, I'm sitting on the Canada-U.S. Relations Committee. I've got a member of parliament from Ontario sitting to my right, and then this senator that's right across from her, she was going to put in some language that was very strongly worded and misguided, quite frankly,

about First Nations, residential schools and those type of things that would have literally granated everything on my end. I literally had the Pope coming up in the 26th, literally coming out to my constituency to be able to try to get forward with this truth and reconciliation to do the right things on behalf of the Catholic Church and everything that took place in residential schools. Her words could have derailed all of that. if I wasn't happened to be in that room at that time to talk about what we could do, how I could change the language in which she let me.

So our ardent Democrat took it off as a working group. There was four or five of us from Saskatchewan that joined me as well for that. Reworked, reworked language on those two resolutions. Ultimately, it was the folks from South Dakota that were most against it, but the U.S. senators worked it out. That group brought in four or two resolutions. If we start messaging those type of things, if our words in the context, and if people don't understand the context in which we're speaking about autonomy,

if we're talking about Free Alberta, if we're talking about sovereignty, if we aren't careful on the word usage in the context and the connotations, there's a massive ripple effect that takes place outside of our province with our international trading partners and with the investing communities. The biggest things that made people flinch in Canada was when Trudeau, wrongly, evoked the Emergency Act. It was going to get slammed down in the Senate, but the biggest pressure of making fancy socks pull that back off the table was the investment

communities. You can't trust this. You're going after people's finances. You're reaching across borrowers and boundaries. Those things matter. If we use the wrong words, we sound like we're separating. We sound like we're doing these things. Everything that we've done to pull it together to have these open conversations,

to get people excited about what we're doing, that can evaporate. And we can be left they're holding the bag. So what I caution are our leaders, potential leaders, doing is is to don't don't get down shooting shots at each other, understand that there's a bigger game here, maybe don't get so fixated and go for the small battle win here at the end. We've got a ward to win. And for me, that's that strategy of moving the ball down field. The benefit I think between Travis and Danielle is both of them are going to stick around. We're going to have some really strong people as part of this. Daniel's not elected as an MLA. I would assume that she would

pick an area and should be able to get elected. You know, it's one of those things. Travis is still in there. And I've seen the guy work for the last three years. I've seen him take the beatings and go through that and be a voice and, quite frankly, be someone that I could trust, knowing my background, both personally on the medical side and for what we worked with. Staying at the table and weathering the storm, it's not an easy thing to, it's like that scene from Batman. At the very end, he's become the bad guy because they need him to be the bad guy. but he's really the good guy because the good guy there, he went rogue, and you can't have that or you lose it.

Sometimes you need to be that person that takes the beatings and you can't talk about it, but you're doing it for the right reasons. And I have a ton of respect for that. It would have been easy for a bunch of us just to go and stand on the outside and throw stones. Now you're testing my dark night knowledge because I am a fanatic. And I can't remember. It's Harvey Dent who says the line. Yeah, so I think he becomes Two-Face at the end.

and it's, you know, Commissioner Gordon, and now, you know, everyone's getting our thing and Christian Bail at the end, and he, uh, they can't, can't let Two-Face be the guy. They can't see that. Yeah, either, uh,

no, dang it. Come on. Where'd you go? Either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. That's what you're talking about. Yeah. And the fact that, um,

sometimes you're, you're doing the right things and you have to be the villain at the time. So with a lot of us, we became punching bags, literally. You know, the roly polies are taking the hits for everyone's fears and concerns and everyone's mad and I get it and rightfully so and that was our role to play taking those hits and doing those things and try to influence

and again the biggest thing the net gain we got at us we're going to have a new leader so now we're going to be able to get policies and influence and we're going to be able to work stronger as a caucus than we ever have um you know i heard some radio announcers in edmonton going the foregone conclusion that rachel rachel nutley as they put it that rachel's going to get in power like that's invariable. It's a foregone conclusion. Well, I don't think so. Don't count us out. Actually, I, this is what I don't understand, train, because once again, as I point out over and over and over again, me being really new to like really digging into this. But at the same time now for, I don't know how long, I've been really laser focused, shall we say, especially on Alberta

politics, because I've been really falling, you know, I've been paying attention. And to me, I don't think there's any foregone conclusions. I don't think anyone thought Jason, and Kenny, A, was going to lose the vote after he pulled it from in person to vote in. As soon as he did that, I thought everyone went, uh-oh, like, here we go. It was a lot of concerns of the process for sure. When he got 51%, I know everyone, like, the surround, wow, it would have been madness, but he did get a 51% whether it was fictional or not. That was the number.

It was real. And so you go, so then, huh, he's going to stand and he steps down. I think everybody was like Florida. Holy crap. So I don't think anything is set in stone. I watch this and I go, wow. So now we have seven people. And I think, I personally think,

the next leader was on the stage in Vermont, meaning is one of five. And I leave my listeners to do what they always do. They are very on top of things. They're going to vote for who they want to vote for. And we're going to find that out come October. And then October to May, you're going to find out what that's all about.

And I think come May, whoever's in, I personally believe, is going to be the next premier again for the next four years. That's what I believe. I don't think anything's set to Rachel Notley. Everybody, in all,

prayer, knows what you get under that. In all fairness, it was an Edmonton broadcaster. So, true. Yeah. So typically with the province. Amitton isn't an NDP. The place is it?

Well, there's a lot of good folks there still. Oh, absolutely. And I don't mean if you're NDP, year, but at the same time, I just look at... Edmonton votes conservative federally, but they vote socialist provincially. And if you look at their council members, their makeup municipally, it's also hard left. Edmonton's a bit of an enigma, but whether it's through people's occupations or their propensity for going

for the orange and the blue oilers jersey, I don't know, I think they should look more blue, quite frankly. But it's a bit of an enigma. And typically when Alberta succeeds, you've got Calgary and the rural that really pull it together. That's typically what it is. So again, I hope you're right. It's not a foregone conclusion. The best thing that happened in the conservative party was Jason Kenney stepping down. It didn't matter if he'd done a lot of things right, a lot of things wrong. I literally asked that question on Twitter and it exploded. What did Jason Kenney do wrong? And I mean it exploded for like two weeks. I bet if I look at, right now, it's still people throwing answers in, right? The best thing he did was get out of the way.

I don't know how many people were like, I can't vote conservative again if he's the leader. And instead, now he's out of the way. Yep. You're going to have new blood in there. There's a possibility at somebody who, you know, I bring up Danielle Smith because right now she's the front runner. Yep. Like she has found a way to position herself at the top. And she had, wasn't a part of government.

I got a theory on that. Sure. Yeah. You've got somebody who has name recognition because she was the Wild Rose leader before. You know, did the premature merger with Prentice right before that. We all got the NDP. So however that worked out, I don't think she was a scapegoat by any means or shouldn't be made the scapegoat.

That was just consequences of the time and decisions. Then she's been on the radio for the last two years. She's a known entity. And if I do a contrast with Travis, who is this guy? Okay, he was never in the media. It was never in the limelight. he did all this amazing stuff behind. The leadership at the time really swallowed up any limelight

that was out there and took most credit for most things of any given time. The guy keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't go out and seek attention, doesn't do those things, just grinds it out and gets things done. So in a deficit position in the public eye, you've got somebody who's trying to get out of the blocks and out of the skates. At the same time, you've got the opposition who thinks he's the worst one that they would want in place because they know they've worked with him as well

for the last three years and seeing how this guy's, operates both in that house and through government and through those departments that, you know, they also have a lot of connections in. So the first thing they do is they branded him with Kenny 2.0 because they know that immediately your right side is going to hate him just because he was associated with it. Everyone can remember that he was part of pick. They forget that there was two other people than in the race that are right now. Travis was only one of two rural MLAs that were at that table. Who else was else that was on, that's in the race that was on that committee? both Rebecca and Rajah?

So again, these are decision makers that have been in the table the whole time. So immediately they... I would say then, to answer that question, nobody sees Rebecca as a threat. I think Rebecca is a lovely woman. I don't see her as a threat. And I don't see...

I think she's... Like, there's... It's... at this point, I didn't agree with the way the Western Standard did their frontrunners debate. I at that point want to hear more from all of them. Because I keep saying, you know, at this point, I don't know a whole lot about a lot of them, right?

That's why they all came on the podcast. Five of the seven, you know, I haven't had, in fairness to everyone. I haven't reached out to the final two. My biggest push was to get all five that we're going to be in Vermillion. If all seven were coming, I would have down in my damnedest. Because I want them to have a little bit, why, you know me. I want to learn.

And then I want to vote for who I want to vote for. Well, and that's why I like, you know, in rightly or wrongly and behind the scenes of trying to promote to get people to actually pay attention to you. Because, you know, again, you know that I pushed pretty hard on that to make sure folks that were, that maybe hadn't heard of you before that should pay attention. Because it's your format and because it's non-conventional that people can actually get a read on the horses that are in the race. And to me, that's the biggest net benefit. Again, coming back to having some good ponies in the race. Understand where they're coming from.

know that they're not 180 degree polar opposites on everything. There's only a few marginal items that there's differentiation. Each bring a different characteristic. Actually, that may have been the most interesting thing from the night I sat with them. You know, at one point I just had to be like, you know, you all agree on almost everything. You dislike Daniel's approach to it, I would say, is the biggest thing. on Travis and Rebecca for that matter the biggest knock on them is they sat

on the committee and people don't think they did enough and I would tend to agree with that from where I sat now I don't here's the thing I don't understand so I can't comment on Raj and Rebecca but I definitely can't on Travis the thing I don't understand about politics I don't I don't understand how it works and I don't think

I just don't understand how it works I can't speak for anyone else. So I have time for that argument on Travis and Rebecca. I have time for Todd because he stood up in my eyes and voiced it openly. And then Brian Jean, I don't know, at times is a wildcard, right? He attacked Daniel Smith, but actually, you know, when you listen to his argument of what he's going to do with the Constitution and everything, it's pretty much exactly what Daniel Smith's talking about. And you're like, I don't know, that's how the night went for me.

Travis seems like a stand-up guy, and I think he's going to be great in government. I don't know if he can win. I don't. And the reason I say that isn't because I don't think he's the right, wrong, whatever. It's because whether the NDP brand him or not, everybody's saying it. Everybody thinks he sounds and acts like another version of what we've already had. So sometimes we're a product of our environment. So if you have a new time, first-time policy,

So myself included in that mix and I can take Travis and that as well first-time politician and especially when they're cabinet ministers So I'll give you some insight in this. So Prior life I'm in Enbridge picture it, you know young up-and-comer at Enbridge I'm a contractor. I'm not a I'm not an employee which was a bit of anigma as well in that organization One of the benefits from being a non-employee was that the vice presidents that I worked for and the director could basically drop me on any project or any portfolio at any given level and I would still execute. So again, I wasn't hung up anywhere on trying to climb, you know, the perceived

corporate ladder. One of the most interesting training sessions, and I would, as a manager, they would bring me into these things. So I was a senior manager planning execution and an acting director at one point over there, you know, a number of years ago now. I came into a room and it was all of a bunch of directors, senior managers, and a couple of vice presidents. We went into a at this nice big office tower and it was another training session and it was about you know consultation public relations typically I just pull up my card and here's the PR people you guys deal with it well the translation for that was actually acting lessons we had actors they were teaching us how to act so we could convey

ourselves better so we could carry the message better the corporate message and everything else body language voice oflection recording us so we could see what we look like when we're presenting giving us arguments that we didn't believe in but had to pitch it anyway, training us. When you're a product of an organization, if there seems to be some similarities between everybody who just came through this current organization, it's because they've been trained by the same media people at that level. So literally some of the afflictions, the points that they're making, and it jumps off the page at me as well, simply because I had that prior training and looking at that product or that environment,

you can tell different corporations by which corporation they're from or which company from just because they have a certain company culture. What you're going to see, though, I believe, honestly, I believe, is you're going to see a change when this new leader is picked because they get to do a little bit of a branding on it. Is there some stuff that smells like whatever was stuck to your shoe from the Jason Kenny years? Yeah, because they're just, they just came through it. I think the word you're looking for is shit, but anyways, I can see it. So yeah, there's a bit of that. And you'll even find it when you have conversations. Like when you go home and you talk to your wife or you're on a trip or something or you're in a certain locker

room. There's a certain affliction and voice usage and everything else. Even our accents start to change sometimes depending on where you're at. That's, I believe, what people are seeing and reading. Does it read true and genuine? I don't know. Does it frustrate a bunch of people? Yeah. Drives me bonkers when I hear some of it too, but it's that fallback because you can see they all came through the same damn media training for the last three years. So I think what'll happen is once you know, all of that gets settled and everything else, you'll get to see those people put their own branding and their own style on it. And the thing that I'm really excited about is so far, all of the front runners are talking about utilizing their caucus the same way that Brian Pickford

talked about going in the Wayback Machine during the Klein era when I was talking to the guys in my area, how they used to function as a team. When I talked about corporate culture and how you, as middle management and managers and directors influence where you're going with the company and the corporation and those things, all of them have been resolute on that. So I think that folks you have to park some of those other items, and it's going to be tough because we've all been very frustrated with the management style and some of the things that took place under the management, but you have to give those folks an honest, honest, genuine fair shake.

And when loser draw, we're going to get a new leader, and I think the right ones are going to be there. I don't believe those other three, I hope, that those other three aren't picked on emotion, because quite frankly, again, Sean, and you can see it in my eyes, We get the wrong ones in the team. I'm out. I am not going to follow a burning ship down.

I am not going to do a 180 and smash and grab and do those things. Do you care to share what three it is? I think I've kind of led around the edges. I think you have. Yeah, like, again, if you're playing pond hockey, that's great, but I'm not strapping you up and putting you in the big game. Who's going to follow that? You know, the first guy that jumps out of the airplane.

Yeah, have you ever been in combat before? Have you ever had to make those decisions? I'm not going to trust my life to that. Why would I trust my kids' livelihoods? So, again, don't vote on emotion. listen to what people are telling you. Well, the nice thing for at least the people who've been following the podcast, they got to hear each and every single candidate have an hour, roughly, one-on-one.

So that's their opportunity to say whatever they want to say. And then they got to hear them, sit on a stage and do the candidates' roundtable, right? No times. I mean, we had a time limit of, you know, I can't. And I like that format, because honestly the debates, whatever. I tell you what, Jane. It's tough. When I'm, the, the hardest thing about politics right now, whether we're talking federal or we're talking provincial, is the debate style drives me insane.

Because I, you know, like, honestly, I don't learn. Sure, there are some things you can learn out of it. I'm not saying that there isn't anything. But a lot of it is, is what they say for sure. But some of it is just starting to understand what they stand for. Mm-hmm. And when you ask a candidate, 50 different questions in a night, ranging from health care to public spending to energy to all this thing, all they're doing is using the Rolodex to give you the 30 second minute answers, whatever it is. And I zone out.

Like, I'm just like, oh, whatever. Like I, I. Yeah, and if you've seen one debate, you've seen them all. That's right. And that's the risk that most politicians, when they jump back, and I'm going to say most, jump back into that convention. It's how they've been trained. Here's how you do a debate. Here's how you do it.

We've got to break that paradigm. So I like your format the way you do it. I like when people come out to events in person. As an example, as the MLA, I held a pancake breakfast. We're going to have the air show this weekend. It got canceled. But we're going to keep doing these pancake breakfast, raise money for kids with cancer in Kansas, seniors group and Kopa for kids.

Had the horsepower for Hope guys came out, big kudos out to them. They brought 25 different exotic sports. cars came out. These are guys with big hearts and ladies that are helping kids with the cancer raised like $500,000 for them so far this year. We had about 300 and some odd people. I allowed for like 200 people to show up for this pancake breakfast. We can kind of advertise for a week. 300 plus came out. I got to give away some, you know, some good community awards under the Platinum Jubilee Awards for the Queen, recognized people in the area that were kind of nominated or usual suspects that are never, never out there, but they're just always there.

I invited Travis to come out. Not a Travis Tave's bandstand jump up and down party. It was the MLA doing it. But I invited my colleague, the MLA from Grand Prairie, to come on out to this thing. Advertised it, that's good. His team made sure that it wasn't Travis Tave's event. It was my event as the MLA. Presented with me, talked to those people.

There was like a receiving line that was stood up to talk to this guy. coming out to live events, having to see the interactions between your colleagues, looking them in the eye, and listening and talking to them, that's where you get the best read and the best sense. And, you know, you'd asked about Danielle, people have been able to do that for the last two years. I don't see a ton of difference with those two individuals on where their heart is at. I see a ton of difference when it comes down to strategy and timing. And you have to understand Travis is a, he's an accountant, right? Well, and that's, but he also grew up in a farm running dozers and pulling a scraper. I just found that out the other day when I went and talked to him the other day because I was out running my dozer.

So you've got grassroots people that don't fit that typical political mold, even though they've had friggin' media training for the last three years. Don't discount them. Don't be a keyboard warrior. Get off your couch. You really want to make this thing work? Go out to a Sean Newman podcast event. Go out to something as nonconventional. Like, I don't know, little local pancake breakfast.

just go talk and eyeball to these folks. That's the only way you're going to know because this is not going to be the typical thing. And the disruptor, why Kenny didn't get his 70% margin is because people disrupted it because they actually gave a darn, got out there and got involved. Don't let that momentum go. We need to pick the right leader.

And I think we've got two or three we can pick from. Pick the right leader based on the long game, not just on how you want to tear it down right now at this point or because they're telling you what you want to hear rather than what you need to know. I would agree. And I think a lot of people are getting involved. Actually, I know for a fact there.

I love it. It's awesome. Whether we're talking to schools, uh, community council, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, politics. Just paying attention. All levels. School board trustees, like you want to see, um, you know,

and a friend of mine that was prior military and served a number of times in Afghanistan, caught up in them with us walking for soldiers event and, uh, was heading into the colleges and then ended up spending some time in his, his kids classroom before the COVID curtain came down. Um, in his own,

words. He says, I've been through indoctrinations before. I've been through them. Out of country, everything else, we get endocrine. We definitely know what we're doing. We get switched on for a certain perspective of doing things. He says, that is what's happening in your schools and universities. It's not education anymore. It's indoctrination. So hence why, we had tons of pushback on our policies and where we're trying to bring out the new platform and the new curriculum. A couple things that are massive pillars when you talk about all those other influences that are taking place. And if you don't like the WEF, then you better figure out team blue versus the other team, quite frankly, not to put too much of a point to it. Two big things that they'll control and want that are absolute pillars are

education and health care. I need help. We need help. If you want this to be real and representative of what the country thinks and what our province thinks, get involved with school board trustees, make sure you're in those kids' classrooms, see what's going on there. Get tied in with the universities, know what's going on there. Municipal elections count. Honestly, they really count. Make sure if you don't have a candidate out there that you don't like, jump up yourself. Get involved, provincial and federal.

We need all cylinders firing right now. We need some decent people to do it because much of us, we're going to mile out. We're not going to keep doing this or the rest of our lives banging our heads against the wall if we don't get traction. So to your point, Sean, I'm glad people are listening in. I'm glad they're invigorated. Don't lose it and be the typical Canadian,

get all rowdy for a couple days and then go back writing, you know, strongly worded letters. You actually got to look at our brethren to the south. Get involved and keep it and keep engaged. And make sure your kids are involved too. Make sure that they know they're not helpless. A bunch of the things of why I believe the differences are between the states and us. When I spoke to that one senator from South Dakota and he asked how it was going and I unabashedly told them what was going up here,

I said, well, we didn't do that in South Dakota. He says, but quite frankly, they're doing something you don't like. Don't do it. This is policy makers and lawmakers that are saying, don't do it. That's the difference between us and the states. The states will dig in and go, what are you going to do? Here? Oh, I'm scared.

Somebody might give me a bad nasty gram or whatever. We've kind of got this thing. Don't let it go. Stand up. Hold your ground. Make sure that you're involved with other people. I mean, listen to all perspectives. Obviously, I'm not saying not to do that.

But the only ones that are going to make this happen is you. If you don't like your politician, jump in and do it. tag, I'd be happy to get out of here and somebody else can jump on the ring because I can only do it for so long. And I can only do it if you're also there with me. The other thing I ask you to do is be like Montreal Canadian fans. If we're doing good, cheer us. If we're not boo us. But make sure that we're still your team.

We're trying to do what you can. I need that line of sight. You know, we were talking earlier. We've got tons of eyes and ears out there. Feed that information through absolutely. But don't just burn it down because I happen to be standing next to the person. that's the one that we changed out. Remember that there's a lot of good folks

giving up a ton of their own lives to try to do the right things for the right reasons. It's not a cliche. And after a while, you carve them out, you're just left with the same old, same old, and good luck. We're not going to turn this thing around. Well, I appreciate you coming to Lloyd doing this. And, well, we'll see what October brings here.

And, you know, like time's rolling on. It's going to be some exciting, interesting months here coming up. I'm interested to see what happens. Certainly, I follow along with you and we keep in touch and we'll certainly continue to do that. But thanks again for getting the plane up and running and over here, Shane. It's always a pleasure to sit and chat with you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Sean.