Shaun Newman Podcast - #312 - Marco Van Huigenbos

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

He is a town councillor in Fort Macleod & was the spokesperson for the Coutts Border Blockade. We discuss the blockade at Coutts, undercover cops, his thoughts on unity & the UCP leadership race. November 5th SNP Presents: QDM & 2's.   Get your tickets here: https://snp.ticketleap.com/snp-presents-qdm--222-minutes Let me know what you think   Text me 587-217-8500

What's up, guys, it's Kid Carson. This is Alexandra Kitty. This is Danielle Smith. Hey, everybody. This is Paul Brandt. Jeremy McKenzie, Ragingdissident.com. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast.

Folks, happy Wednesday. Hope everybody's week is cruising along. We got a busy one on the go right now. So first off, SMP presents, Quick Dick McDick, 222 minutes. Tickets now on sale. All you got to do is check out the show notes. There's a link there. Go to any of my social media.

You can find the link as well. That's November 5th. For Thursday, Thursday evening, I got the Sean Newman show on the Western Standard happening for the first time tomorrow. So Thursday, September 8th, we're going to have the Sean Newman Roundtable happening, Sean Newman Show. It's going to air on both the podcast and on Western Standard. So we'll see how that goes.

That's going to be an exciting, I don't know, exciting development. Of course, then we'll have Friday. Friday show as well. So we got a busy tally going on this week. We're we're ramping it up. So of course today's show Thursday roundtable that'll air Thursday evening on both the podcast and on the Western Standard and then of course Friday's show as well. So before we get to today's episode, let's get to today's episode sponsors. Blaine and Joey Stefan, Guardian Plumbing and Heating, 2021 Lloyd Minster Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year, a team of over 30 who thrive on solving problems and offering the best possible solutions with over 24-hour emergency service available.

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Let's get on that tail of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum. For the past 80 years, they've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methadone, chemicals, delivering to your farm, commercial or oil field location. For more information, visit them at Hancockpatroleum.ca. He's a business owner, town counselor, and a spokesperson for the Coots Border Blockade. I'm talking about Marco Van Yugendbos. So buckle up. Here we go.

I'm Marco Van Yugendboss, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Marco Van Yugan boss. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Thanks, Sean, for having me. It's a pleasure. I tell you what, I get all sorts of names on this bloody thing. And yours is maybe one of the tougher I've had to stare at and make sure I don't butcher it before we get started.

I'm sure that's not anything new to you. Oh, and I haven't even told you my middle name yet. Do I dare ask what your middle name is then? So the full name, so it's, I was born in Holland, but the full name is your middle name is your legal name. and then they call you Marco or George or Peter or Tom. But your middle name is, you know, from our background is based on an aunt or an uncle combined. Like that's how they determine stuff. I don't even remember which uncle or aunt I'm named after.

It's bad. But Marco, Gurko, Marinas van, Yuganbus. Wow. That is a mouthful, sir. That's it. So let's stick to Marco. Sure, Marco. That absolutely works.

Now, for, you know, a lot of listeners, I start this thing out the same way every single time, you know, it's your first time on the podcast. Maybe people know exactly who you are, but I'm going to assume a lot of people do not know who you are. You know, we have people listening in from different parts of the country, that type of thing. Certainly they know a lot about Coots. Certainly there was a ton of people who listened to the podcast who were at Coots or Melk River. So I guess I go, let's just start with who Marco is. So wherever you want to go with that, and we'll start there and we'll see where we get to. Yeah, so fair enough.

So I'm a farm boy originally, and I'll back way up, keep it short, but immigrated in 1996 with my family from Holland and grew up just north of Fort McLeod on the farm. You know, lived a pretty normal life. grew up not lacking, you know, first job, school, high school, all of the crazy farm stuff. And ended up going into the trades early on, you know, got married, started a business, you know, my business is South Country Doors. It's about eight years ago. and I'd say in early, I'd have to back up here for a minute. In early 2015, or not early, late 2015,

I ran for my first term on town council as councilor, municipal council. And last October, I ran for my second term as counselor. So politics wasn't something that, we grew up with, you know, wasn't, you know, we'd sooner talk business or farming or equipment. But over the years, I'd say since the, you know, early Trump years, not even his presidency, but just, just the late Obama years, politics started to become a real, a real topic in, I think, a lot of households in southern Alberta and in, you know, provincial, maybe even federal.

in Canada, you know, politics down south, right? It affects us. We talk about it more. We used to talk about it more than our own politics. I do believe that's changed. I do believe we're talking about our own politics more than the American politics. So at an early age, got involved in politics, so 25, 26. And, you know, had a lot to learn and did a lot of that, right?

It did, I hope, more listening than talking. And then we, you know, we ran into the COVID years. And things from there change in politics, right? The just the partisanship, the non-partisanship. That part of it became very difficult. You know, work in the middle ground was not a thing. You know, compromise was a word. lost. You know, I know the definition of it, right? But so for an individual, it gets to a point

where, hey, this isn't, this isn't what I signed up for, you know, the federal level issues that made their way down to the municipal levels, you know, I came in to, you know, to, to, you know, put the town in a good financial position, you know, make sure we had working streetlights and good streets and, you know, a couple of good services, spray parks, things like that. And And next thing you know, you're dealing with all the social issues currently at play in the country. And it really very, very quickly, it made me aware of where I stood, not just where I thought I stood and what I thought, how I was raised in my morals, but publicly. You know, because there's been some issues where I might have played it safe. But playing it safe is a lose-lose.

for any politician, for anybody in any kind of situation with not necessarily opposing sides, but sides, but opposing views. And very quickly, I had to know where I stood. So very quickly, you know, built an identity in that personally and in my family. And, you know, then COVID hit. And people say, oh, COVID, you know, some people want to put it in a box and put it on top shelf and not talk about it, but we got to talk about this. And we got to learn from the mistakes that have been made and not blame people for the

mistakes that have been made. I've made them. Everybody's made mistakes in this regard. Nobody had the rulebook, the COVID rule book. But we also do see now that there are instances where we should have or could have learned. and unfortunately, there's individuals or parties or governments doubling down, and that's obviously led to some of the political and then, you know, the political landscape today, even provincially and federally, right?

So back to, you know, myself, small town politician, small business owner, small family, four kids, small family compared to what I grew up with. I have nine brothers and three sisters. So, and I'll be honest, I'm an uncle 60 sometimes. It's great. You're an uncle 60 times over? Yeah, 66 or 67 times. Oh, how do you?

Yeah. Okay, politics aside for a second. How do you keep every, do you know, like, A, how do you keep every name? Like, I have, I think we're going on with my three. I think we're going on for my parents, 14, I want to say, roughly. That's still pretty good. It's still pretty good, but I go, 14 is not that bad. I got that case.

Do you remember all 60 names? Once they get above a certain age and, you know, you start communicating with them as an uncle, then the name, you used that identity sticks. But if there's in a year, if there's three babies, yeah, there's no chance. There's no chance. I'm, you know, I'm not keeping track of it. Then the second question I got is what on earth do you do, like, do your family's go, you know what, guys, we're just not doing gifts. There's no way I'm spending a million dollars a year on birthday gifts.

Like, imagine the birthday parties. Wauser. You wouldn't even be able to invite any friends. Yeah, so there is a system, right? So I think with the cousins, so the nieces and nephews, it's the wives, it's the aunties that come together until a certain age. And then with the brothers, like mom and dad and brothers and sisters, there's combination. there's there's sometimes like i think march and april a big one there's like four or five birthdays

in a couple weeks and so you combine them um christmas is the in-laws new year's day is our family right that that's pretty mutual right every every family you can't make it to every every party because you do have two sides of the family but did you ever you ever ask your parents why they had that many like i i assume it it's part of their culture i i get that but like it well yeah ol was a lot. 12 is a lot and 12 is 13 sorry you know nine oh sorry yeah nine three sorry 13 13 it's it is a lot in today's world it's near it wouldn't be possible so i i i would i would draw the equivalent of eight being 13 in today's world with just you know some people draw the equivalent of two being 13 you know what i mean like uh honestly yeah no i understand i think four 13 some days but

But never specifically. But, you know, we immigrated with nine. And the culture, not necessarily. Yeah, I'd say the culture. Bigger families were a thing. I got an uncle in the area who's got 14. And so my mom's sister, actually. But in Holland, you know, seven or eight is pretty much the normal.

So, you know, they got to a point. And then we immigrated. and the older ones are working and helping. And, you know, people, when you think about it, it's more than what it would have been. And I'm not downplaying it. Trust me. I'm not downplaying what it took for my parents. But we grew up on a farm.

And if you're making one, making for five wasn't that much more, right? It was the fact that it's kind of like employees. If you got one, the second employee is the big one. But then three or four, it's just two more, right? you've already set the ground. You've built a base for that. And I don't think it's quite, it's not 100% of comparable,

but, the mentality is similar. The mentality is similar. And, you know, there's a set of twins in there. And then, you know,

the older ones, like I have a nephew who's older than my youngest sister. So it just, big family, you know, there's time. My mom said time, you know,

Mark, he could have been an only child. okay you know I maybe just I was I did think myself or because I I might have said why does everybody have to go right instead of now it's like you know when my single years is like oh where do where do I go for supper tonight this is great you know I got so many choices because I'd have married brothers and sisters right so where do you where do you fit in the where do you fit in the mix of 13 or are oldest youngest I'm six more six so there's seven below me yeah so there's still there's still two that aren't married

they're 18 and 21. They're at home. You know, they still live at home as, you know, they're coming to your place looking for a meal now. Yeah,

it's, but now it's great. You know, we've, um, with the family this size, you don't need a lot of friends. Um,

which is good because, you know, I might not have a lot of friends, even if I was an only child, you know, based on, based on my political views or, you know,

anyways, um, it's, it's, it's good. There's, you know, you know, when the going gets tough, you've got an army behind you too. So there's that as well, right?

So it's, uh, I think it's an interesting, an interesting perspective because, you know, um, uh, you know, we grew up with, I grew up with four older siblings. So five of us and I had friends with six and I, I certainly know different families that are, you know, farming background. I mean, uh, in the old days you had to have a large family, right? And as technological advances and things move along, cost a living. I don't need to go down too many. rabbit holes.

The, uh, it's just the family size shrinks and continues to shrink, right? And so, uh, uh, being a parent now on the other side, having three under six, uh, old timers tell me, enjoy those years. Those are the fun years, right? And I can just imagine talking to your parents, you know, having 13, um, especially now that the last two are 18 and 21.

I wonder how quiet and unnerving that is in their house. Like, I'm sure they enjoy it sometimes. But after having that much. chaos for so many years you just come to live in it right and then it gets quiet and I'm like I assume they must be taken up like skydiving or something to figure out how to you know reinvigorate the life so to speak well I that there's something to be said about that uh fortunately you know humans adapt well uh in general and uh it didn't happen overnight obviously that that you know one by one um some years maybe there's two but I I think

think overall it was once every two or three years there'd be another one or moved out, married. But there's a different level of busiest now, right? There's there's grandkids. Oh, yeah. You just said you had 60, 60 nieces and nephews. Imagine that house. You went from 13.

That was busy. Well, now you got 60. Come on. There's good structure there. There has to be. We grew up with good structure, right? It wasn't, you know, I, you know, even growing up, you know, time for. America, the moment lining this up, not literally, but it was like, hey, your turn, you know,

that was the way it went. And it, that was, you know, hand me down was a real thing. But, you know, not, not, not, yeah, hand me down was a real thing, naturally, right? Especially on the farm, right? You know, you're, you're out doing this, doing that, quadding, wrecking, genes, breaking bones, all of that. So there was a lot of, a lot of structure and a lot of overlap. but now there's even more structure, right?

You know, there's don't all show up on Saturday night, right? Call ahead, this, that birthday party. So I like to think my parents are busy, but they have the ability to retreat. And they're not old. They're both 61. So we got a large family for my parents being, you know, just I think they're turning 61. I think they turned 61. Well, I'll be the first to say, Marco.

I thought at 18, and I've had listeners, I had listeners call me out on this. I must have said a few weeks ago, 58 was old because I had a couple of 58-year-olds tune me in on that. And I laughed. I said, fair enough, boys, fair enough. Because I thought at 18, I'm 36. I thought 36. Oh, man, you were over the hill.

And now I sit at 36. I'm like, I feel, you know, I feel good. And when a 58-year-old says, well, just imagine what you'll feel at a 58-year-old. because I'm saying the same thing you're saying at 36. I'm like, okay, we got lots of great years ahead of me. So I got to be careful in my wording here because 61 definitely isn't old. And certainly if you attack life the right way, you can have a lot of good years. Well, I mean, I just played hockey with.

Think of this. A 72-year-old came out and played noon hour with us. And I swear he was moving faster than I was. I was like, that's pretty freaking cool. I know and that's not everybody but like yeah 60 is not it's it's you know it's not old like people are still working people are very active and then obviously many things are factors of lifestyle choices but I look at my parents and yeah the gray well I look at my grades and you know due to due to circumstances and a little bit of genetics but you know my dad my the funny thing is my dad is my dad is he always looked older, not from behind, from the sides and, you know, maybe from the front. At some weddings, my mom, my sister's wedding, so this is years ago. The photographer said, hey, can you, you know, to my sister, hey, can I get a picture of you

with your sister? She was talking to my mom. So you're talking to a woman who has had 13 kids, 13 children, and the photographer thought that my dad was. dead to both. And so, you know, it's just structure and not ritual, but discipline matters in life. And obviously, I'm not saying that cancer and such are 100% related to lifestyle choices. Sometimes it's in your genes, et cetera. But healthy living is a real thing. And that I see that evident. in our family, right?

We grew up, you know, eating healthy, you know, the food, the food choice. It wasn't like pizza every night. It was like the weekends. It was either this or that. But, you know, staple diet, you know, potatoes, veggies and a steak or meatballs, you know, at least three times a week, right? So just things like that. And yeah, it's, it's, anyways, it's a good, a good upbringing, good youth.

And, you know, we're, we're. We're not a close, close family as in we're all over each other. You know, my mom and dad always said, hey, if you have a brother that you're not as good with us as the other one, when it's turn to visit him, just skip them, you know, because you got so many of them, right? But we're, you know, it's, it's good. You have choice there, right? Well, I don't think, you know, when it comes to 13 people, whether they're family members or not, uh, chances are you're not going to agree with all of them, right?

Everybody, you know, in society has their views and belief. and that certainly applies to the family as well. Large families in particular. Thankfully, we do. In the general direction, you know, we may disagree on certain things. Bringing up politics, you know, right around the time you're getting into city council is pretty much when I start to pay attention to politics as well. And I would agree 100% with what you said in that Canadians focused on American politics.

and we thought it was our politics, you know, if Trump wins or if Biden wins or Obama wins, that's a win for Canada, except it kind of is because they're a superpower in the world. But at the same time, we still have our country to govern. And one of the things that I've noticed in the last, probably COVID, you know, all the bad that COVID brought, one of the best things it did is Canadians are looking at Canadian things now

because they realize how much it impacts their lives. That's probably the best thing that happened out of this. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what, that's exactly what happened,

right? You know, Kenny would have been an awesome premier because he would have, you know, done well economically. It wasn't until the government stepped in and implemented such an overreach into personal liberty and personal freedom that people were like, shook awake and hey, you know, this is our prime minister, but municipal councils and provincial

governments, they control our lives. They influence us. And that has led to this involvement. And it's not all positive right off the get-go because people don't know where to focus or how it works. So you have a lot of organizations and a lot of movements and a lot of opinions. I don't think the opinion side of things will ever get smoothed out. But I think this goes back to something we'll discuss later, but it goes back to people are finding their own way in politics, in involvement. Like how or what? Like I get so many people that want to do something.

They don't know what to do. They just like, do I do this? Do I do that? Taking back our freedoms, taking back Alberta. You know, this. Like I know the groups and people don't. know what to do or do i do i get involved in in the c a board what's the c a board so you explain that and then the provincial board like people don't know so there is a huge responsibility right now by

the political peers and those involved in politics to to educate uh a population um that uh that that that just has been complacent like that would almost be our national sin we're so passive in regards to to what really affects us. And I think that is changing. And it'll probably die down eventually. But right now, people are very aware, very awake. That's a term. Some are too awake in my mind.

But very, very involved. I like to use engaged, right? People are engaged right now. And for not everybody, does that mean run for Premier of Alberta? I'll take the large thing. For some of it, it can just be an arena board, a school board, city councilor. Like, there's so many different things that have, you know, I think you can agree with this that have a lot more power than we both thought.

Like I just was like, what? And then you go, oh, and you're like, well, I better get involved in that. Well, now you've got to wait two years to get involved, right? And I think a lot of people are paying attention to what affects their life. And certainly what affects my life is different than what affects somebody else's. And you get the point. No different than you sitting in Fort McLeod to Lloyd Minster. There's a lot of difference between us.

But there's ways that anyone in those communities can get involved in a large scale or a small scale. But get engaged, get involved, start moving the Dow forward so that, you know, in the next time, and hopefully there is no next time. But the next time something like this happens, there's more voices at the table that can be like, no, we're not going to do that. That makes zero sense. Exactly. Exactly, exactly. And that's the part where the engagement portion is we've always, you know, we've always looked at a top-down approach, you know, Premier Prime Minister, they decide, you know, they're the boss. That, you know, that's almost, if you don't know how it works, that's ingrained in us. And that's human nature, right? We want to talk to the boss. We want to go to the top. We want to, you know, that's how we look at things. But in reality, it's the other way around. It has to be a bottom-up approach, not a top down, right? You know, like I'll look, I'll use this example. The grassroots guarantee, and you can't find it on their website anymore. It disappeared about a year

and a half ago off the UCP website. But the grassroots guarantee, that was what they ran on in 2019. That was that that that's how they communicated their, their, their, their, their, their government structure, their, their representation. You know, it worked. Unfortunately, it's not what everybody wanted. You know, I'm aware, I've talked to many MLAs and the minute that the election was behind them, there were those in positions of power who said, now we're holding the pen. Grassroots guarantee, it, you know, we don't, we don't really like it. It was a means to an end.

That's a means to an end. But we need to take that back. We need to stop looking at our leaders and thinking that there is a leader who will fix our problems. There's nobody. These are examples. There's nobody in this province, in this country, who can fight and fight or who can, who can reform AHS without the support of the grassroots.

There's nobody, not Daniel Smith, not Brian Jean, nobody on their own without the grassroots involved, without the membership, without proper representation, like our Westminster Department of democracy. People need to understand how that works. But without that working, there's nobody that can actually change anything, and that's our fault. We keep on looking at leaders and thinking they're going to solve all our problems. But in reality, it's, it's us. It's our involvement that will ultimately actually change and, and keep things, you know, keep governments accountable to, well, here's a thing that gives me

a little bit of hope and also kind of like unnerved me a bit. There was a CBC article talking about the UCP. And for any listener that wants this, or maybe just pull. posted in the show notes that way you can just see exactly what I'm seeing. But it's a, it's a map of Alberta. And you can click on any of the constituencies and see how much UCP membership has grown, um, increased since May. So that's only a few months ago. And so I, I always look at, I'll look at Lloyd because I find this fascinating. Lloyd for million wane rate. I don't know what the rough population, or roughly the population, probably, I don't 30, 40,000 people, since May, you know, before May, there would have been 513 or 511 memberships,

has increased 700 people. Now, on the one side you go, a population of 30, 40,000 people, only 500 people cared enough to buy a membership to vote who is going to run for Premier. That's kind of scary. But on the upside, 700 more people have decided it's time to get involved. and that is across the board in every constituency. Lloyd is not the highest or lowest in increase, but you kind of get the idea.

More people are getting engaged or getting like, I understand what's going on. Let's talk about this. So when I look at the UCP and I look at how they ran in 2019 and what you're talking about, I've said this to some of the front runners in the UCP debate. Like, listen, now that you've been on the podcast, you don't do what you're doing, right?

You get in and you start talking different ways. I went from being a guy who has you on and this is a friendly chat to what the hell is going on because you aren't doing what you said you're going to do. And once you're elected, it becomes about action, actually walking the talk. And I think that's what so many people are like, we're waiting to see what happens. October 6th is coming. I mean, geez, we're a little over a month out. By the time this is released, it will be a month out.

And you go, we're going to find out real quick if they can do what they say they're doing. if they're not, I mean, just look at the engagement increase across the board. It's every constituency in Alberta is increase in memberships. People are paying attention. People are paying attention. But like I said, that that's a good thing. But as a percentage, it's still like, oh, guys, really, that's it. You know, like, because you've heard so many people have an opinion about things government-related.

But here's an opportunity. like regardless of your your political political position you're you're standing you're voting for a premier right now ten dollars and you can vote for a premier and that part of it you know i'm i know a lot of people in tip in the independence movement i you know i don't can't say i know too many people on the other side of the board you know the nDP but um you're voting for a premier for ten dollars you will actually vote in the new premier that to me is is something that is so clear it's not oh it's ten dollars worth UCP yeah i get that i get that but for some people there there's the polarization of the politics to other political class as well yes and and that part is is frustrating that people

have positioned themselves in such a way that they they can't do what's best for themselves or for others because of a conclusion or a position or something they've said, right? They just, there's no compromise anymore, right? People are, this is the way it's got to be. And there's no, like this person is, is out on this view or out on that view. Nobody's perfect. But there are people who are perfect for today or for tomorrow, you know, in my view, right? And that's, I look at, I guess I look at it as, if we were in a company, you know,

me and you and the first year we did X. and then the second year we did X plus whatever percentage, right? We go, do we want more? Yeah. But it's increasing. If in two years it's dropped off, I will be depressed because I'll be like, what is going on? To me, I hope more and more people continue to, you know, start to pay attention, right? I agree with everything you said.

But I'm like, you know, how many people, you know, we look at the premier, how many people voted for their MLA or voted for you to become city counselor or voted for Bill to sit on, you know, I pick on my hometown a lot. Not really, but I mean, like Hillman is this tiny little hamlet in Saskatchew. So I grew up in Saskatchew, now I live in Alberta. And the heart of the community, we don't have a mayor. We don't have a, you know, our council, if you will, you know, we have an RM. But the heart of the community is the arena, which is a bunch of volunteers.

that I don't know, there's like pretty much if you show up, you can be on it. Think about that. Like nobody, and that is the heart of the community. That's what makes the community run. So on the smallest scale, if you just show up, you can be a part of something. To the largest scale, the premier, you know, you're right. The involvement from the community is small. But take in any of the lower levels.

And it literally is a microcosm of that. You want to be a city councilor? I'm sure it wasn't 50,000 people had to vote for Marco to become that. Or your MLA, I have. assume it ain't, you know, like, there's only so many people that can vote in that or want to vote in that. And so I think the positive side that I look at from an Albertan, or if you're in Saskatchewan, or if you're in Canada, for that matter, is our population isn't that involved just yet. So if you are involved and want to be, you can actually impact things like immediately. Whereas if you're in the United States and have 330 million people and they are politics,

I mean, they live and breathe it. It's way tougher. I'm not saying it isn't, it's, it might be as easy as exactly what we're talking about. But in Canada, it is that easy. It literally is that easy. And then there's events that are easier than others, right? You know, a million, 90,000 people voted in the last general election. We have 123,000 plus a couple UCP members.

You know, we'll be surprised if we have. 60, 65% voter turnout. We're probably going to have 55% voter turnout. So 55% of 123,000 are now going to determine who the next premier is. And three and a half years ago, it was over a million people that determined. Yeah, they're voting for their MLA, but they were voting for the premier ultimately as well because the nature of things is we look to who's the guy on the top. That's who we're voting for, right?

Even in the states, you're voting for your sheriff. You're voting for your judge. then you're voting for your your senator, you're voting for your, your, um, sorry, get the name, the house, your representative, you know. So it's, it's, there are critical moments where people can get involved and have so much influence, but they're just not aware. And that's the education part. That's the part where I've learned a lot of the last seven months, provincial politics.

Like, I've read policy and governance, like, up the UCP. party multiple times back to back due to frustrations I had locally and how can I address them. Well, there are triggers. There are pressure points in politics that people can use. You know, the SGM was one of them. 16,000 people. And we won't talk about the rural balance that showed up after the deadline, but 16,000 people got rid of a premier. I'm not going to focus on Kenny as an individual. I don't I don't hate in. politics. We got rid of a premier. We got rid of a previous federal cabinet minister and Stephen Harper government. Like, we downplayed it, but I know on the other side, people were

shocked because I also know MLAs who the day of, you know, because there was, there was not, there was, there was gatherings, right, to listen to the, to the results. And, you know, we all have to wait another 45 minutes for those results. So we knew something was going on, right? And I would have loved to be fly on that wall in that room. But there was MLAs. It was like, oh, he's got 70, 75%. I know an MLA down south here who was, you know, literally wanted to bet another MLA, a significant amount of money that he had this.

But he didn't, you know, he got over 50%. 51. 51. Yes. You know, save face. But, you know, that's not enough to govern your own party, right? That's from your own support. You know, that support needs to be 75%,

which it has been previously, right? Premier's, you know what's scary about that, Margo? Is the two MLAs are that, well, one of them, I mean, is that delusional. I mean, and I'm, I see it here. Disconnected. Thank you. That they don't realize their population is like, oh, I'm done with this. I live in a rule.

In the largest, UCP. constituency. You can guess who that is. Based on this, you can figure out who this is. But this individual, you know, great individual on many things. But on this, you know, he was a, he was a candy guy. And he was not listening to his own membership. He was not, he took those frustrations and thought, well, we, you know, he's got this, you know. And that's also what was being put out there, right? The media, this, that, the party. They changed the rules, how many times, right? They really, if you think about it, if you think about what it was supposed to be, Red Deer, right, May the 19th, I think I got that right, May the 19th. No, sorry, April the 19th in Red Deer.

That was the in-person. In-person, yeah. You know, it would have been a massacre for the political class, right, based on who was going to show up. Not people who are happy. They might. They're really happy and they really support Kenny. But it's people that were frustrated that were going to rent here. They were paying the $100.

Right. And sure, Take Back Alberta came out of this. Like people say, oh, Take Back Alberta was to blame for this. Then I say, but what was take back Alberta? They're frustrated Albertans who have the ability to organize. Who did that? You know? So the end of the day.

One of the things Daniel Smith has done well, she went around and talked to all those constituents from all the different. constituencies and they all came out in droves. You know, when you look at the numbers of how many people actually own UCP memberships, even from my own writing, the amount of people that come up to listen to politics right now with the UCPs in particular because they're, you know, they're going to decide. It's pretty wild. People are upset.

They just are. I don't blame them. You know, it's just like, yeah, the last little bit has been over. and above what anybody ever wants, and especially out in the West, because they want government just to stay in their lane, leave me alone, let me run business. You're going to tax me. Fine, I'll pay the taxes. Let's move along with life. Instead, the opposite is, is come to roost here in the West. And that isn't a, you know, I mean, geez, that isn't, we're, we're, you know, I grew up in a family farm. That's what we're built on, right? We're going to take care of our

stuff. We're going to pay our taxes. We're going to move on with life. You're going to start a business, you're going to do these, you're going to, you know, everybody's entrepreneurs and innovation and everything else. And, yeah, somewhere along the line, that got really thrown to the, the curb. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And the unfortunate part is this frustration. It's there. It's becoming more evidence, you know, the actual, you know, the, the, there's events happening in the political realm, you know, actual dates with actual turnout and actual results, skewered a little bit, but, you know, we've got one coming next week's Saturday, right?

The federal side, what will the numbers actually say? You know, the media is going to say it's a close race between so and so, but it's going to be a blowout. I think we know that. And, no, that's my personal view. I could be wrong. But there's a huge frustration provincially, federally, but the governing class is downplaying this frustration and stigmatizing it.

They're labeling it. You know, they're calling it names. They're putting it in a corner. They're calling it a 10%. And that's unfortunate because it's not. You know, there's maybe a 10% who actually take certain actions on their frustrations. But there's 50% of the population or more. That is frustrated.

And that will show up once or twice a year at events, political events or political dates that matter. Others will do more. Others will take further action based on character and based on, you know, how they've been affected by government in the last few years. But the biggest, biggest issue in politics right now is there is a frustration by the membership, by the, by the population that most of the governing class or class, most of the governments, most of the governing body is not taking seriously. And that's very unfortunate because until that is done, we're not going to see true representation.

So I think we're where it's started, but provincially, there's hope on the horizon. Federally, it's how do we connect with federal, right? Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about where we sit, me and you specifically, is in a month's time, you're going to have a new leader. And then they're going to have the short runway. I talk a, you know, hockey guy. I talk about Jay Woodcroft a lot with the Evanton Oilers, right?

He gets the job right before they're, you know, towards the end of the last season. He has the opportunity to, you know, get them in the playoffs and then, you know, see how he does to earn a job, right? And I, so what ends up happening? The Oilers go on like a hot run, become one of the best teams in the NHL for that stint of his coaching. And then they get in the playoffs. They not only win around. they beat the provincial rival, then they lose in the, you know, the semifinals, the conference finals to the eventual cup winner in the Colorado Avalanche. I look at that and I go, whoever is the name that comes out October 6th has the same runway, the short little runway.

But it's going to be through flu season. I mean, we don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that people are going to get sick this fall. I mean, that is not rocket science. But they've all, you know, like some of them have been pretty vocal on no more lockdowns. I will not implement vaccine mandates, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, if you've been paying attention, you've been paying attention. And they're going to have the short runway where they're going to have to do a multitude of things. Because not only do they got to follow through on what they say, otherwise, conservatives are going to lose their absolute and uncontrollable shit.

But then on top of that, they have to find a way, you mentioned, and I think right off the hop, was unify a group of people that are kind of, you know, they've been getting battered for two plus years. and then on top of it, then they have playoffs. And playoffs comes in May when, you know, the U.S. or the, sorry, the provincial election is where the NDP are foaming at the mouth, just ready to go. They would have nothing more, in my opinion, than to have Jason Kenney sitting there because nobody trusted him anymore. Whether right or wrong, nobody trusts him anymore.

That comes from provincial. That's not even UCP members. That's just in general. And so now you have this ability where you could see the new, leader come in in October, do a great job, defeat, notly, hands down. I, you know, like, just walk in and blow her out of the water, in my opinion, and just carry on. on. I mean, you need voter turnout. You need all these things. I agree with all that. But the runway

is there. And they've been campaigning now for how many months, right? Like since May. So they have this long runway where they've been the focus of news every single day. And then you're going to get this short window of opportunity where they get to be the focus of news every single day again and then playoffs. That's my thoughts. Yeah. And that runaway, it's very unfortunate. It's as short as it is. You know, if we don't take off in terms of your explanation here, I'm not going to point

at voter turnout. I'm not going to blame this. There is a group of individuals who have played games, who've changed rules, who've delayed, who've done many things in regards to this SGM and this leadership race. that have resulted in us having a premier on October the 9th. And last year when the 22 CAs, you know, voted on the motion to call for an SGM, the provincial board had the obligation.

They were obligated to act on this right away. And you would think you'd do that for the conservative cause in the province. regardless to who the leader is, that should be the focus of the board. Unfortunately, they focused on who the leader was and maintaining this leader's position and through motions that hit the floor at the previous AGM in October, where they tried to raise the threshold

on what would trigger an SGM to changing the rules of the race, halfway through the race. But it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked, but unfortunately, we've had less time now. We have a shorter runway for our next premier because we got a form cabinet. We got to have a throne speech, right? And that's unfortunate.

And I look at the opposite way. I guess I'm just green to this entire thing. And a nice green view from it. I go, Markle, great. I love it. I go, whoever gets in has this little window. And a little window, in my opinion, might be better than a long window. Because they get to defle it.

I just look at it. I see all the positives come. I hear exactly what you're saying. I think over the last two years have we seen even in Alberta actually shorter than that. You talk about the April and Red Deer and how that all goes switched to mailing ballots and all these things and all these changes in real time. You're like, this is wild. It didn't work. I mean, it didn't work.

And so they're scrambling, whoever they are. And by the sounds of it, you understand a little better than I do who they are. But I think everything they've tried isn't working, right? it just doesn't work it and I go that's because the population is is becoming galvanized to where I hope and I hope I can push upon the audience if you're a UCP member in Alberta do not not vote in this upcoming election go vote and I'm going to do my best to make sure that instead of 55% turnout it's 85% turnout because I think all the people who are in politics go yeah like I mean 50% turn out that you know that that's probably realistic and I go have you

looked at the numbers of the increased amount of population that's in part of this, you don't think they bought a UCP membership to show the fuck up and vote? I do. I certainly think that's exactly what they intend. I certainly think they're not going to just go, ah, whatever. And I think, I hope positively that that underestimation is a good thing because people are going to show up and vote. And then I think the short one runway, good, because politics in general sucks. And politicians find ways to fuck it up over and over again. And that is some by design and some by just like, I don't want to say anything. Well, you get the short runway to be a person and actually get in there and lead.

And if you do that, you're going to win the next election. Hands fucking down. Pardon for all the F bombs here folks today. But I'm like, I'm just tired of the old games. The old games are whatever. We're going to see hopefully in Alberta, and I could be naive and green, and that could happen. And that could come to Roost in May. but I look at this and I go, I see something different.

All I see is positive. And I think what we're going to have come out of the UCP party is the next leader and the next premier for years to come. And that's what I hope. That's where I'm at. I'm very positive on the UCP Alberta front because I just look at it and mainstream media is going to say what they've been saying for how many years now, right? The old political games, they're trying. It ain't working. I mean, it just ain't working.

And so I look at this with everything positive. Yeah, and that's, I appreciate that view. I really appreciate the passion here, right? So the way I look at it as well is this involvement, the higher turnout, even if the membership was 200,000 and 50,000 or 50% show up, that's 100,000. But that's that much more than the last time. the the the population has lost trust in our governing body they've lost they they they they don't want to show up because they believe they've come to the position that it doesn't matter anymore because for two years no matter what we did we weren't listening we weren't listened to that's true that is true we feel we feel we have no way to influence

anymore and that that trust that that mentality of I still can get involved and it actually matters has to come back and it is coming back and because I still talk to people out waste your time and I know where they're coming from it's it's coming from a place where government does come from a government does yeah well and on top of that journalists aren't holding them accountable anymore you know no and so you go but that's changing too all of this is changing. It's all changing. You know, the media will change in all 10 seconds, right? They're going to flip when they know it's no longer profitable and not just profitable to be, to hold a position. But the trust in media is dying faster than politicians. Actually, I don't know. They might be on the same trajectory at this point. Well, they are intertwined. So a hundred years ago, I keep bringing this up. So for the listener, I really apologize. But I don't know if I apologize. It's on top of mind, I guess. Almost 100 years ago. It was 1930-ish.

I can't remember the exact year. But anyways, the Premier of Alberta was William Aberhart. I'm just going to fact-check myself on that. I hate the stupid fact-track, but I want to make sure I get the right name. William Aberhart, Premier, pretty sure. I'll check his years, too, just so I'm... Okay, William Aberhart, 7th Premier of Alberta, 1935 to 1943. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is back then,

they basically were telling journalists to stay in line and they jailed some of them, right? That was in Alberta. That was 100 years ago. And I just go, so where you're at right now is they've come in line with one another back when there was, you know, Pulitzer's one for speaking out against your government. Now we have this like unison where, you know, you're right. People have lost faith because politicians get to do whatever the fuck they want. They're never held accountable. and on top of it, the media just kind of chides along and doesn't say a whole lot.

But now I see politics changing right in front of my eyes. Not everywhere, but it doesn't have to be everywhere, in my opinion. And I'm seeing meaningful change in media. Geez, we get to have a conversation. I'm not saying that I'm the CBC, certainly not. Not saying I want to be the CBC to be completely honest. But you get the point. But there's more and more avenues like this where these conversations

are happening and are starting to become public knowledge, which is now forcing different changes. And I look at politicians, and I've said this to Daniel Smith, and I pick on her a lot, because she was on the show a lot. I say, if you ever become the Premier and you don't do what you're saying you're going to do, I'm going to be on you like White on Rice. The gloves are going to be off because I've listened to a lot of what you said and agree with a lot of you said. But it would be the same as Travis Taves, who's been on here, or Todd Lowen, or Brian. And Gene, they've all come on and said all these great things. If they don't do what they're saying they're doing,

I think the population and journalism in general has the right to hold them accountable to what they said and what they're not doing. Yeah, correct. And then that part, the accountability part, has been lost and needs to come back. You know, you can be friends. But don't forget that if your friend, how good of a, on a personal level, How good of a friend are you if you don't call out your friend on something that, that, you know, let's say they do something wrong or this or that and their life is going, you know, their things are going bad for them?

How good of a friend are you if you don't address it? And I don't mean, you know, beating the crap out of them. No. That's the last resort, right? That's real frustration. I've never done that. But I mean, politically, if you see a politician's career, a premier's career going down the drain because they're lying.

They're not doing what they said they were going to do. They're making the wrong choices. They're alienating their base. They're calling their base names. You know, that's what actually happened. That's a concern. How can you, as, and now I go, as comparable, how can you as cabinet and as caucus not call this out and see it, you know,

address it? You could be friends with the premier, which a lot of people were. And I guess that's the, the, the, the, the connection somewhere along the line there's that that that connection of power where if you do that you're reprimanded you're punished for it that's happened as well those in power who did the right thing were punished Todd lowen grant hunter they all lost position and influence but I give it to them I give them credit I don't you know I don't agree with everything with on either of the individuals and it's just two there's more but

they were prepared to do the right thing. They were there to represent their constituents, their constituents, which is, which is the bottom up, not the top down, right? Premier said, oh, we all got to list. That's, that's what was happening. No, that the bottom up, the membership is concerned, the population is concerned. People are looking to their MLAs, looking to the CA board, so then communicate with the provincial board, who then communicate with with the Premier, and through the MLAs, through

caucus through cabinet to the premier that never happened right you know you remember the cline years if the caucus didn't approve it didn't make its way to cabinet that was how it worked that was the proper approach from the people through their representatives to the governing body so the accountability part that is critical and i'm glad you've had those discussions with daniel smith you know i i don't want to talk about her too much but i know her very well and um you know, I politically friend, but I will speak up when I'm concerned. You know, there's been things in the last couple weeks that have concerned me. And I've made my possession clear.

What's been concerned you in the last couple weeks? Well, now we're really going into detail. But so without knowing the details, I've expressed concern on some of the endorsements. you know, these people held a position, they held influence, without knowing the full story. You know, how can we, how can these people get involved in this campaign to assert to this extent, you know, endorsements, things like that. There's, at the end of the day, it also goes back to, if you get involved in the campaign, you want your candidate to win.

And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to speak to my involvement in the campaign. But I believe Daniel Smith, I know, like Daniel Smith isn't perfect. She'd be the first to say that. I'm not perfect. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. That's the perfection of human beings, I think, right?

Yeah. But there is she, I believe she is perfect, you know, for what we need right now on the issues that are first and foremost. You know, the issues of four years ago, they're still there, but they're not one, two, and three anymore. They might be six, seven, and eight. They're still there. They're still critical. But there's been, there's issues like autonomy from Ottawa, government overreach, COVID issues that have kind of come in first place, second place and third place. And those are issues that Daniel Smith is equipped to lead on, to fight.

So like I said, there's, you know, even individuals inside the Daniel Smith campaign. And I'll touch based on that a little bit later. I had concerns myself. But I'm, don't touch base on it later. Touch base on it right now. Yeah, because we're right here anyways.

Yeah, so I'm going to, like, quickly. So there's been some controversy, controversy around an individual, and there's been some pictures that have surfaced on this individual.

And I'm concerned right off the hop, too. Who is this individual? And why is he associated in a certain capacity with the campaign? And who is this? this. This individual is Mike Butler and I don't want to talk about Mike, but I want to talk about the general view. The reason I ask, Marco, is I'm going to have an audience, including myself going, who the hell is he talking about? Because maybe people know exactly who this is and exactly what I got to be a little clear on that. I shouldn't be vague. So the individual is Mike

Butler. I've met him. You know, you were at the debate. We, I think I got introduced you officially after, but I was sitting right beside him right at the Daniel Smith table. And I, um, I didn't know any of this information. I knew the position that he held publicly inside the campaign. And I had my concerns when some of this information came out. What is the concerning information with Mike Butler? Sorry, I know you don't want to talk about him. But now I'm like, wow, we better explain exactly what your concerns are.

Correct. So there's some concerns as to his political standing and his affiliation in previous years and his positions on controversial issues. that different political parties have taken a different stance on. So he's been affiliated with, through media, not video, but through pictures and such. He's been connected to NDP campaigns, liberal campaigns. Unfortunately, that was only a half-truth. And the campaign has taken a lot of heat over this based on,

you know, because we're in the leadership race. So we're infighting technically. The party's infighting. Like memberships are at each other based on who they represent and who they support and who they want to win. That's the unity aspect that we will touch base on later. But the information come out was bad, bad, bad, bad. It looked bad.

It was bad. Unfortunately, it was only half the information. Yeah. So it was a broad side. Just to hop in here quick, just so people have an idea. So it's not your word saying. And here's from True North. True North says the National Telegraph on Sunday reported that Smith's campaign manager from northern Alberta,

Mike Butler, is a former provincial and federal NDP and liberal party candidate. The article includes a photo of Butler's business card, which includes his name, title, and phone number. And that's the big story. And then Daniel Smith came out saying we will not engage or participate in this kind of cancel culture tactic. She said in a statement, Albertan's from all walks of life. backgrounds have volunteered their time and efforts to move this to this movement and we welcome them. Correct. So it goes back to, you know, individuals in opposing leadership campaigns, taking this and running with

it and weaponizing this information and this individual's background, but only taking half the truth, the half that obviously works for them. Yeah. Unfortunately, you know, I've looked into these, these, this information, because if it were true, it would be concerning because the campaign's job is obviously to promote your candidate, but it's also to protect your candidate. You know, you don't put your candidate in contact with people or individuals who have priors or who have, like, political priors or who have bad rep or because it draws negative. negative influence. You want positive, right? Mitigating a negative is still a negative, right? So did in my, in my response to this, I thought, hey, did they screw up on this? Is this something they need to step back on? Because one thing politicians haven't done over the years is admit

mistakes and apologize. And I always, I always respect somebody who admits to a mistake and apologize. So I thought, hey, if that's the case and that's something we need to do, it would also look like you're pandering to the opposition, like the opposing campaigns, which is not good either because then, you know, everybody can influence. But unfortunately, it was a half-truth. You know, this individual, the position he holds, and I'm not going to, people can look into this themselves, but this individual has worked in the political realm on all sides. You know, I had some pictures that were shared with me with him with Stephen Harper, you know, because there was one with him, Steve.

So he had a picture with Stephen Harper. He had pictures with Kenny. He had pictures with one of the most conservative talk show hosts. Either way, it's lost on me. So I got all these pictures. And I thought, good, there it is. There's the whole truth. There's the fact that this individual, and people need to look at what an individual,

what their role is in the campaign. People who are on Daniel Smith's campaign aren't there to decide on policy. They're not there because they're going to be second in command in government. No, they're there. They're getting paid to do a job because they're probably either really good

at bringing people together, raising funds, strategy, etc. So they're there under strict instruction to do things in the campaign. Their personal views don't tie into a campaign. And that's the part I want. wanted to focus on is that people have made it about individuals. This is about a candidate.

This is about positions on a candidate. But affiliation by individuals with other things shouldn't disqualify them from being involved in our conservative movement. You know, Big Ten Party, that term's been used inaccurately many, many times. it's almost a scary term. I do believe in moral governance, moral law, things like that, representation. But to cancel culture, which is essentially what this is, cancel culture, and Daniel Smith mentioned that, cancel culture is unacceptable. You know, we don't get to decide who wants to be a conservative.

Obviously, their views are going to align with what conservative views are. But inside the conservative movement, there is a lot of different views. And, you know, the part I focus on a lot is, you know, we probably agree on 85 to 90% of those views. It's the 10% that we can divide over to no extent. And we've seen that over the years, right? I would say you don't have to be a conservative, Marco. You could just be a person living, an Alberta resident. I bet you we all, I bet you we all agree on probably, I'll go a little lower than that.

75% of most things, right? Do you see people being murdered in the street? No, why? Because we all agree you don't do that. And I mean, I'm being a little bit, you know, tongue and cheek here, but you get the idea. I would say 75%. And then as you get into different walks of life, you're going to get to that 90%, 100%, like 90% 100%. Sound like I'm on Anchorman. You know, it works 60% of the time every time.

Anyways, you get the point. Regardless, I get what you're saying. Like, I think all walks of life, a great. on a lot. But it's some sticky issues, which comes with personal past, comes with family, comes with work, religion, way of life in general, where now you have some issues that we all, I would say one of the things that's been really missing in our world, not just Canada, but in our world, is how you talk to someone who doesn't agree with you. And I'm not saying I'm great at this. I think I'm learning. I think I'm working on it. But I think me saying that is probably

better than 99.9% of the population. And I know there's a ton of people that are doing the same thing I'm doing, but I just think so many people don't even want to go into those realms because it's uncomfortable. Because it's like, I don't agree with what you're saying. But I can walk away from the table not wanting to cause you harm in that type of thing. And yet this cancel culture persists. And that's what we see instead of pushing up the good, which I think is debate and sitting down two people at a table and having a discussion and seeing where that goes and good ideas, pulling out the good ideas and moving along with them because majority of the population, I think agrees on a whole hell of a lot.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree 100%. And I just want to bring a perspective into this here. and I hope your viewers take this and think about this. You are who you are based on your upbringing, based on conscious that was instilled by parents, teachers, possibly church if you're religious. Now, let's say you're born into family or into a community that is, that is, and we're going to use the political terms here,

that is NDP or liberal. to step away from that at whatever point on whatever issue, when you're raised in that, when your family is that, when that's ingrained in you, when you truly believe in that, to step away from that can be such an identity crisis for an individual. So who are we to cancel this individual when they have made possibly the biggest decision in their life?

You know, families divide over politics. unfortunately. Politics is polarizing. So you have an individual. And this individual, he also, his part of his career was that, you know, lobbying, all of that. That's the real story. He was essentially a gun for hire in a sense. He's good at it. He's a great guy. But if he were, as an example, if an individual were of a certain standing politically for them to come to the other side. And, you know, we like it when they come to our side. That's great. We want, we want, you know, we want people to come to the conservative side. But when they do that, that can be such a fundamental crisis on identity, on what you believe to be right, on what you believe government is for, on what you believe society does,

which laws are moral, which aren't, that who are we as individuals to read an article and to judge this individual on that, right, to make this assumption? I've learned. learn through the years that what can be achieved by communication, by sitting down, by coming to an understanding, by not always agreeing on everything, but to understand a person is so critical in politics, in business, and even in family, we can take an article, draw a conclusion, that's my position. That's not how things work. That's not how things. We can never accept that as as a way to approach people and issues. We have to communicate.

And back to communicating, you know, that was a critical thing regarding the 18 days why I'm actually on the podcast. We're here to talk about these 18 days. But communication with the role that is public and that we can speak to was something we did. Something I did. And we're completely switching over here.

Yeah, no, I think we can wrap up. We can wrap up this political set of thing. Communication is key. It's key in everything. So to the listener, Marco was, I don't know if it was head spokesperson or just spokesperson for. There was only one. So the spokesperson. The spokesperson for the Coots blockade.

So that's the role. We'll keep it. I don't want to incriminate myself. Let's keep it to spokesperson. Spokesperson. What we know. Yeah. Well, and the thing from this side is, you know, I think Marco back in the day was thinking, you know, I don't know if I'm going to

to make a name for myself in city, a counselor position. I highly doubt you were going to be sitting at Coots, talking to the RCMP. You know, when you Google your name now, you know, I'm aware.

Honestly, it's nothing bad, in my opinion, but I come from a walk of life that went to Ottawa. So, I mean, I've seen all the reports and everything there.

But you are in a select company, you know, you type in Coots and, uh, Marco and your name is, is everywhere, you know? So I guess,

when it comes to communication, let's hear about Coots. You were there the entirety. You have an inside track on that. I certainly, you know, from where I sat, the 13 arrests, I think it was, the weapon seized. I think there's force still being held.

You know, talks, well, you know, conspiracy to murder is no light thing, you know. So when we come all the way full around, yeah, absolutely. The whole point of having you on the podcast was to talk about Coots. You know, it's funny that it's taking this long. But that's what I love about a good open conversation. I think that's what the listener enjoys too. They got a good feel for where you're sitting now.

So let's talk about Coots. Yeah, so just back up a little bit, Coots, my, you know, my participation, my, my actual being actually involved in Coots. wasn't planned like premeditated weeks ahead. It wasn't a thing that it wasn't a thing we said right. There was a flyer that went out

regarding the slow roll the week of the week of the event, right? As in, you know, Saturday the Freedom Convoy was going to show up in Ottawa and we were, not everybody could go to Ottawa. So Alex Van Herk, for those who don't know, it's a good friend of mine. He was also participating in the Coots blockade.

And we had followed, you know, Tamara Litch and company in, because she's from Edison Hat and in her involvement in getting this freedom convoy moving, you know, the trucker mandates was the last drop in the bucket in regards to this. So we followed it. You know, we followed it from Vancouver Island to the weekend where it hit Calgary on Sunday, rolled through Calgary a little to the south, rolled into Medicine Hat on the Monday, and further, right, by Saturday it was in Ottawa. So they kept on rolling.

And we had said, well, you know, we want to be part of this. And it's not something I told my wife or even, you know, it was, I wanted to go and I discussed with Alex. You know what? We'll leave Wednesday night in my pickup and we'll catch up. not knowing what Ottawa would be, right? You thought you go spend the weekend, go home. No, like that wasn't planned on their end either. Like, what does this actually look like?

Right? These events were very organic and the blockades and such developed as they happened. Once they were there, there was definitely an organization and planning. But initially, it wasn't sure what it would be. same as Coots, very organic, right? So on that Wednesday, we started to hear about this. And Alex had made the call to one of these individuals who had put out this poster just like, hey, what is this? And he phoned me back.

He said, yeah, this is a real thing. And I said, yeah, no, like, I'm probably, you know, Ottawa's a distraction. I got a three-week-old baby, you know, that conversation is not going to go well. So let's just not have it. Let's just go to Coots, right? Coots is an hour and a half away. So that works a lot better than driving across North America to go to Ottawa. So ended up going down to Coots with a huge part of Southern Alberta on that Saturday.

If you know the area of Milk River in Coots, it's a 15-minute drive. Well, when you have a two-lane international highway just full of trucks and supporters, You're talking thousands of people, and that's what it was. The turnout was phenomenal. Convoy, slow rolls came from every community, you know, southern Alberta. They came from High River. They came from Calgary, Vulcan, Fort McLeod, Tabor, Medicine, Act. They came together just in Lethbridge and just south of Left Bridgeton Highway 4,

and the convoy started, right? So it's, you know, and I'm going to speak just more to the events of Coots and such. And at any time, just butt in, right? Because it's 18 days and I'm going to try to speak to things that I feel are good for people to know and obviously interesting as well. But I might debunk some of the narrative that the media is put out there because, you know, I was there. I know 18 days. I left. We had a family weekend plan in Mountain Views that's just outside of Waterton months ahead of time.

and the only time I left, so I was able to go back and forth, right? Like after the Tuesday, the Wednesday of the first week, they effectively blockaded anybody from coming to Coot. So there was the back roads and you would have to hike up a hill. So there was still a method to come in and out, but not, that would be on foot. You'd have to park two miles away and huff it in. And it, you know, it was cold weather for half of the blockade. And I mean, bloody cold.

It was minus 30 for a good part of the 18 days. So that wasn't that wasn't ideal for for anybody to just say, hey, let's go take a drive down Coots and see the boys in Coots. No, they, they created a blockade. But I had the ability to transit that blockade. I was able to go back and forth. I guess that came. That was a perk that came with the job.

We'll see if it's a perk once. This is all said and done. But that's, I was able to go back and forth, you know, meet with the political side of things provincially and even federally. But I only left in those 18 days. I only left once and that was we had rented this big cabin, my wife's family, and that was the second weekend, so the last weekend.

So I left on a Friday, no, I left on a Saturday night. From Milk River, you can cut through the whiskey gap. It used to be, went through prohibition and stuff. It used to be used by, you know, rum traders and things like that. It's called, and there's no service there. So I was able to cut across an hour and a half. I spent the night. It was the only night I spent outside of Coots, those 18 days.

And the next morning I was back already. So I was there from the beginning till the end and very involved in things, obviously. I don't have to worry about incriminating myself. I got 100 pages sitting right here on a big part of a. investigation by the RCMP and I guess here here's a comment that that that's here's a piece that's that's here it's part of their investigation summary of investigation and evidence gathered there's two articles and at the end of the day it comes back to these four individuals still and deal that's what this this investigative this hundred pages is on it's really focused on the

undercover work the RC&P did toward them and such. But police determined, they believe there was a leadership group, and there was. Not appointed leaders, but when people follow somebody, others will say he's a leader. This person didn't, wasn't a leader. This person might have had influence. So when a person has influence, good or bad, others will call him a leader. So on a legal standing, it's unfortunate that you're now called a leader because they're going to look for the leaders because they're not going to press. They can't press charges on how many people were participated.

Like the Milky River Blockade, the weekends, the two weekends, like, and I like to call them the weekend warriors. But, you know, the sport was phenomenal. But we're talking thousands. Like there's estimates of 30,000,000 people coming through that event over the course of two weeks. you can't they all participated but you can't charge all these individuals so they're going to they look for key individuals they look for all the blamesials right and um because i believe the the guns and such were a separate thing it was they were involved in the in the blockade they were there they ate with us all of that but the rcc looks at that as a as a distinct group that was

looking to do something i'm going to use their narrative but it's still the investment into the complete blockade that is that is starting to wrap up in certain elements and we're starting to see charges getting levied against certain individuals and that's people said you know you guys got off on that and I always knew that we were we went down there and this is this is the frustration we went down there so we've talked about myself a little bit so what they've painted the brush they painted us with is not who I am and I'm not going to talk about who I am. I think the viewers and yourself will can determine who I am. I'm a pretty pretty reasonable diplomatic guy. Um, involved in politics, family, business, small town, no priors, you know,

no criminal record. Um, my, the questions, you know, that, that I have to the government, that are still aren't being addressed to the governing bodies, provincially, federally is, why were guys like us? Because they're saying the guys that were down there were all crazy, redneck this, that fringe, you name it. But is that if the fringe is me, then that's good. And then the fringe isn't bad because then you're part of it. You know, it's guys that think along the same lines are part of the fringe.

But why were we there? Why were we there to start with? You know, they want to look at this whole investigation and take this event 18 days and it's illegal, you know, the Traffic Safety Act, or sorry, the Critical Infrastructure Act and Traffic. Safety Act, you know, they want to slam us with that. They want to wax over the head. But the biggest question, and that's what the EMA is looking into as well, not outside the MA, but the report that's coming in February on that the commission is working on,

and my involvement with the commission as well is why were we there to start with? Why were blue collar, even white collar, why were blue collar all burns, Canadians, law-abiding, hardworking, family, family-oriented Canadians. Why were they driven to a point where this was a lot, I don't know, last resort, but this was a resort they felt they had to take. Knowing, knowing, because I was never going to lie to myself, knowing that there would be legal ramifications. Why were we there?

But nobody wants to talk about that part, right? And that in the coming months and in years with the legal side that's just getting started, that is because we were there. There was a blockade. I had struggled with being involved in that, being an individual who really, who respects the rule of law and believes in the rule of law, being involved in something like this. you know so that in and of itself was something i i really had an issue with and i jordan peterson has a line in i think it's his new book and i'll butcher it a little bit but you'll get the gist people should follow the rules and just law until the laws are no longer just and what happened to everyone at that point in time was finally

people had had enough. They just did. And politicians and everyone else can be scrambling, but that had been brewing for a full year. And so my hat's off to all the people who are like me, family-orientated, just want to go work a job and worry about, you know, I don't know, whatever happens on the weekends and nights and be around your family and your kids and do your business and everything else that put that all to the side and went,

well, this doesn't all get to be like life doesn't get to happen if these things continue on. Life will look a lot different, not only for myself, but probably more importantly, for our kids and their kids. And so I just want to touch base on Jordan Peterson's quote in his book. He probably drew it off of something prior to that, which is from Martin Luther King Jr., right? in 1963 when he was jailed in Philadelphia, in the civil rights movement down there, he wrote to clergy, black clergy, et cetera. And this for me struck home and really helped me in understanding this.

Because I got questioned, like, how can you be there? How can you do this? I had to come to terms with that. You know, because I had to believe in it, to participate and to be willing to take, legal consequences for something that I need to believe in that, right? You don't, you're not, I'm not saying anybody's going to jail, but if, if you were to, you know, you want to make sure that you believe in the cause. So it goes back to this and

this is quote, one has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. And, you know, further it, Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. So that quote really hit home, really meant a lot to me. It's that, like I said, I touched based on my upbringing. I grew up morally under the Bible. I grew up well.

We were never lacking, you know, we went through private school, all of that. but we went on holidays. We went to the swimming pool. We went camping. We went, you know, I went to Holland with my mom. We had a lot of family. We could do those things. October last year, when I decided to rerun for second term,

at that time, the AU, Alberta Urban Municipalities Association had just happened. It's coming up again in September in Calgary this year. But I didn't attend because there was, it would have been a huge burden as an unvaccinated member of municipal council. So for me, the biggest decision I made in the last year was to rerun and to be involved in the political class knowing at that time with where we were heading, right, pre-coots, pre, you know, knowing that the next four years could be absolute heck. as an unvaccinated individual who had personal views and personal beliefs,

which I felt were being infringed on, like to be involved in that. I could have stepped back and said, you know what, I don't need to go to these meetings where, you know, I have to Zoom meet or where this or I can't go to this event and properly represent my community. That was a real struggle for me at that time. So my personal views on this were, You know, we got some serious problems in the province. And there is no representation and we're being run by health departments.

Excuse me. But getting involved in the coupts blockade, because, you know, they're going to say it was organized. And they're going to call people organizers. But it wasn't organized. It wasn't organized. And I know what happened. And there's things that the RCP, know, no, they have a lot of information.

So you talk about being at Coots for the 18 days, 18 days? 18 days, yeah. What are some of the biggest frustrations you have then, the misconceptions of it? You know, one of the, one of the things that, well, there's two things that I've probably repeated a lot about Coots. It was an illegal protest. And violence was, I mean, they rated it, right? They never had anything quite like that.

Ottawa, there were certain different scandals. They tried placing on Ottawa, you know, we can probably list those off. But when it comes to Coots, a legal blockade. And then on top of that, all this, all the four individuals, right? That's kind of what overshadows the whole 18 days is, is a group of men that, you know, conspired to kill an RC&P officer is kind of how it gets labeled. Marco, what, what, I guess, I don't know, are those the, big frustrations or wherever you want to go. Yeah, so back to the illegal blockade. In and of itself, you know, I've had many discussions with the individuals who participated

after the fact. And they said, oh, we had every right to be on that highway. And I always shook my head and I laughed. It says, no, no, no, no. Like, I believe in the rule of law. You know, it was an illegal blockade. That is what it was. That in and of itself is big.

you take the whole story and it was a cry by individuals and a lot, right? You've seen the turn out. You've seen the involvement. It was Coots, you know, it was Ottawa big, you know, capital. Coots wasn't the biggest blockade. Ambassador, it was way bigger financially. But Coots took the limelight as in Coots was where it started. Emerson, Surrey, Ambassador.

or they all, you know, there's no contact, but they all fed off of the Coots. Well, and I mean, and then just carry on with that, like cities, right? You go Regina, Eminton, like everywhere. Like this spread and you go, was that organized to use one of the terms you've been saying. It's like, that's almost laughable, right? Like everybody saw it was going on and went, this is a great idea. And that only spread across Canada. That spread across the world.

Now, back to Coots. I know. Back to Coot. So it's like said, it was everybody fought was fighting their own battle, right? Everybody, there was, you know, there was no contact. COVID. That was, that was the biggest thing is, is the families weren't allowed to gather. Kids, you know, couldn't communicate with each other due to being masked. So it was a breach in, in the biggest aspect of our society, the inability to communicate, to communicate, feel, et cetera, with others. But that frustration through the freedom convoy, the start of it was, became, became a public thing.

People could participate in things where others were sharing similar concerns. Like, you know, it wasn't a political class. It wasn't all those are only conservative. They were only, no, it was people frustrated. I met people who, if I were to guess, their political standing, it wouldn't be the same as mine. But they came from Calgary to support this because they had an 11-year-old boy who was turning 12. And when he turned 12, he couldn't participate in sports or any other recreational activities because he had to be vaccinated. And I heard hundreds of stories like that while I was down there.

So it was a part of the population from all sides, from all parts of the, from all parts of the population that now voiced their frustration publicly and made a public fight out of this. So this illegal blockade, that's what it's identified as. That is what, you know, block on the highway is. Without bringing into the, without discussing the circumstances that led up to it, you're getting, you're just getting a half-truth, you know. Back to or we'll talk about what really took the attention after the fact, what really muted the message of Coots, which you know, you've probably heard right at the time.

The media portrayed that we were infiltrated by a criminal, by a aggressive element. element and our message was lost. It was. You know, that Monday morning, the message of Kutz on many aspects, you know, the peacefulness, like among the individuals participating, the relationships with the RCMP, our goals, our mandates, our requests, all of that was lost because it became it became all about guns and it became about a narrative that has truth to it, but isn't true. and that's been you know for me coming out of coots that was a huge struggle what when when you say it has truths in it but it isn't the truth expand on that thought for me so you know if it

weren't true period it'd be pretty tough to to build a story around it but um there were things said and there so you know guns you know there's there's many stories out there you know they're plants there this or this or that no there was guns there this is southern Alberta since what you know

I know this the governments want to ban guns they want to be in their minds guns are bad already but legally we are still allowed to own guns you know and this is southern Alberta you know this is

my brother had a gun in the back of his truck on the way to Coots my dad phone him and says hey like that's not a good idea so he you know took the gun it was in a case it was legal he took it out

you know, at an event like that, you probably, you know, don't show up with guns. You know, that's what I would recommend to anybody, if I were to write a book about rules of protesting, don't bring guns. You know, that's probably a good thing. So, but 18 days, you're in the country, you're, you know, small hamlet of coutes, right? It's, it's coyote hunting season. So there was guns. You know, and people will say, what are you talking about, Marco? No, there was guns because there's a point where I thought all these.

God, there's no way, this is this is not possible. But there was guns in the vicinity of the blockade. There would have been guns on farmyards. There would have been guns in residence in coupes. So there is a truth that that's an example of the truth. But you take that part of it and you tie in intent and you have, you got a big story, right? Now, there's another truth that ties into that. People down there were frustrated, correct?

There was events that happened during Quds that would have frustrated people. I remember even in the blockade, I say organization. When I say organization, I'm just going to, that's like a reference to blockade. Even inside the blockade, there was different elements, right? There's different views. You know, some people, they were, they're. angry with the government. How can the government do this?

Emergency measures, mandates. I won't go into detail too much, but force this, do that. People have lost livelihoods. People can't go south anymore. Truckers. So there was anger. So when people are angry, they say things. They express themselves.

I had to work with that too. I'm the diplomatic guy. I'm the guy that I know there. on occasion there was guys that, you know, I'd be talking to the RCMP publicly, which I tried not to do, like, I mean, on the street or in public. I usually did it, you know, in my truck or, you know, just away from people watching or listening. And occasionally somebody would yell something, you know, at the RC&P. Their frustration was directed at the RCMP.

Who was there? Who was front and center in our way, in front of us? It was the RCMP. That was our contact with the governing body. It wasn't like even in Ottawa. It's not like anybody got the opportunity to talk to Trudeau. It's not that Kenny came down to Coots or to get a meeting with us. No, the RCMP was not the enemy because they had a job to do.

But for others, it was the only contact they had with the governing body outside of the individuals in Coots. Right. So some of that frustration was directed at the RCMP at times, right? Things were said that that came from a place of emotion, of deep emotion, right? The stories of loss and we're tragic. You know, the episode that comes out right before you is Ryan Olson. So people will most likely listen to that. He was a guy who was in every meeting per se in Ottawa.

Very quiet guy is not a household name. certainly compared to a lot of the names that came out of Ottawa. He has a very interesting perspective because he was there for it all. And one of the things he talks about is something that you're mirroring on a provincial level, and he's talking to federal level, is not one politician from any party came and met with them. And they tried. NDP, liberal, conservative, you name it, they tried and not anyone would meet with them. And that's a frustration because politicians are.

supposed to listen to the people to find out what they're frustrated about, right? Not just read about it on the evening news. And so one of the things you're talking about is on a provincial level, that happened all over again. Maybe not to quite the same extent, but to a lot of the protesters, that's how they felt. Yeah, so I did have contact with individuals in the government, you know, a previous transportation minister. She's now running for leadership. I did talk to her.

I talked to other MLAs that were in the UCP. Federally, I had some members of the opposition, obviously that are from southern Alberta, come and meet with me, me and others. But nobody, like there was, you know, there was attempt by those outside of the blockade who supported the blockade, who were on CA boards.

There was pressure for Kenny to come down and not address the blockade, but to meet with the protesters, the blockaders. And in my interviews and in my involvement with the commission now, because the EMA, it's built in the legislation of the Emergency Act that there has to be an investigation into the act when it's implemented because it's such an overreach of power, right? literally eliminates the charter. So the,

on a sliding scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 100, you know, on a, you know, everything's great in the province in the country and people are doing things and it's just natural. It's just, you know, it's 2018, right? Now it's 2021 and you got a blockade, you got this and you're, you're, your things are ratcheting up to a place where it's justified to enact the EMA, right?

Somewhere along the line, you're going to want to establish lines of communication. You know, and I say this with a smirk on my face, but somewhere along the line, you're going to want to phone the protesters and the blockators and say, guys, can you please move? You know, you're really in the way. Like, come on. That never happened. That never, ever happened. lines of communication were never opened up with those in power to discuss terms,

to discuss things like that. And people say, well, you don't negotiate with terrorists. Trust me, they always negotiate with terrorists. It's perceived publicly whether they've met demands or such, things like that. That's not what it was. But Coots and the request, Ottawa and the requests, demand. asks. They were federal and provincial asks. The municipalities had been, members had been asking this for months, weeks already. This wasn't, oh, great idea. We're the first guys out

the gate with this ask. You know, please, please, please remove the mandates. Please this, please that. No, it had, these asks had been out there. They had been communicated. The events were a result of these asks being ignored for how long. And even during the events of Ottawa and Coots, the disconnect remained. The governing, the political class, the governing bodies did not communicate with blockators and protesters. I know an MP from Southern Alberta who was in discussions with organizers from Ottawa.

And there was different groups there, right? Ottawa was a different animal than Coots. There were different, you know, different factions, different factions, it sounds extreme, but different, different followings, different individuals who were in contact with these MLAs and who were in contact with federal ministers, ministers and the cabinet ministers,

who had to go to the, obviously had to go to the prime minister's office, etc. But there was opportunity to make a deal where they would withdraw from downtown Coots. They wouldn't withdraw from the city altogether, but they would withdraw from Parliament Hill from downtown

downtown Ottawa. Sorry, downtown Ottawa. Did it say downtown Kuzz? Downtown Ottawa. Yeah, they had, the organization wanted to do that. The blockade, the protesters wanted to do that. But it ended.

These ministers took this up the chain and it stalled. It never went anywhere. So when the question comes up, why was this not acting on? So in my mind, this comes back to a, a, to the fact that the EMA was used as a political tool,

not as an actual tool in regards to stability in the country. There was opportunity to de-escalate. You know, the, the, the, the media saying the RCMP requested this commissioner, requests of the EMA, all of that. That's, that's already been debunked. Nowhere did, did the, the, the, and, and Ryan Olson, in Ottawa talks about basically the day before that's enacted. They're having pizza with a bunch of different people within police and that type of thing

talking about a bunch of different things that were going to be really good. And then the next day, he goes, you know, you sometimes wonder if they knew it was coming. But the next day it gets enacted. And I mean, basically destroys everything they'd worked up to. And then you and then you tack on to that. Everything is coming out right now as they interview all the, the people surrounding the emergencies act and you're bang on, right? Like nobody was asking for it.

Nobody, you know, I'm sure they wanted things to move a little faster at times, but overall things were moving in the right direction. Correct. So in the timeline of Coutes, and we had our reasons as well, but when we open up the highway, one lane and when we obviously worked with the local schools and stuff as well to in the community to get the blockade on the right side of the intersection so we weren't effectively blockading the community as well right that took three days the media said it took forever and it never happened but very quickly you know we we shovel people sidewalks in that

community like we were you know we handed out food all of that and so very quickly we open up lane we did something we said hey this is what we're willing to do it wasn't until the tuesday the announcement of the second week when Tuesday we got this phase one phase two or stage one stage two stage three with a lot of maybes from Kenny that we felt that it was so little and so much you know maybe so many uncertainties hinged onto onto these these stages that we felt we had to apply more pressure to the situation and we again locked down so but I just I so those are those are things that that we did as well it the blockade was a tool used to talk to to a government to to you know not even a government that's big but to to a cabinet to a to a pick committee to 10

individuals 11 possibly no 10 yeah 11 the premier's 11 that hadn't been listening it was the last resort essentially like you know I don't want to think about any other resource a person would have to take that that's not even that's not in us like we've blockading like I wake up some morning and think did I do this this is so not in us some people will protest the whole life some people are anti-government like I remember the little group little gathering that state of milk river weeks after you know I went down there once just to you know like what's going on and just to check in or whatever and you know some people you know they'll protest something their whole life but that's not us you know like I said we're we're we're

law-abiding, contributing members of society. So when you've driven that part of society or a certain part of society to such an extreme extent that there's a lot more questions that beg answers than why were you guys at, why were you guys participating in a legal blockade? So, you know, back to this, this truth and the events of Quds and there are truths. You know, the RCMP had undercover officers in the blockade for a number of days. And they got in contact with some of these individuals that are still in jail and have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder among others. Murder of RCMP.

So serious charge. But they in all of this, there are. things said by these individuals out of frustration but there are things said that are almost pulled out of them by these these these these two under covers were two girls I'm aware that I don't somewhere in the back of my mind I can picture it but I haven't I'm just going through media from can you give us some of the things they said Marco is that possible so I like I said so um um okay so um we're talking about two individuals and a shipment that is being brought in.

So I dealt with shipments all the time, food, fuel, and trucks send down 10,000 liters of diesel. We're talking semis on the highway running nonstop when it's minus 30. Like we're going through shipments of everything. And how it's being brought in by said individual. It's based on wiretime information. So these two UCOs, undercover officers, were connected with these individuals

that are in jail because they were all four of them were bunking together and such but they weren't they didn't show up together they they were aware of each other previously like they but there was they weren't friends two of them were two of them weren't so they're just through kutu you made the connection there's connection made it very quickly you're on you know they're there for the same reason there's a lot of trust builds right away so these undercovers uh became connect and that was our goal to really look into these individuals as well right so they were working with

these individuals to bring in the shipment of of supplies you know I had stuff brought in too I said hey bring this and this and this and this and put in a bag and can you give it along with so-and-so because he's coming and then I'll pick it up here like that's a short story of it

RCMP says there might be guns in that package now the media reports that there's possibly guns in that package is like and that's enough evidence so you know here the the undercovers jokingly asked if there was a bomb in the shipment. Because if it was, she didn't want to be involved.

I'm word for word here. The two men laughed and said it was not a bomb. But that's the information that gets presented in the courts. But who mentioned bomb first? Who mentioned bomb first? The undercovers mentioned bomb. So you have a hockey bag with stuff coming in. And when you create a narrative of what could be in that bag,

when you say bomb, everybody's up. Everybody's like, that's 10, that's serious. But that's the narrative they created, right? So another thing, and don't get me wrong, they did say things. There are things they said that I'm like, guys, oh man, like not smart. But there's probably things I said too that. Here's a question for you. that just I'm curious on your thoughts is are you thankful there you know as much as you look at the

undercover officers and go they led them in certain things are you thankful they were there uh and the reason I say that is like do you think they prevented something bad from happening or do you just think there was never anything going to be bad happening well based on um the events of the blockade you know the excavators got disabled we opened the border we closed the border on the Sunday of the last Sunday

the events of Sunday and then the Monday we announced we were leaving and you know the arrests and stuff we were as positioned as we were ever going to be the highway was closed you know we even had that the RCP had to drive by the bunkhouse to get to their their headquarters. Didn't make them very happy, but that they had to because, you know, we had the ditches lined with equipment and everything.

It was just, and we're talking equipment. You don't move any of that, right? So we were as positioned as we were going to be. And the feel on the ground with the RCP was, had always been very courteous. You know, you've seen some of the videos of Milk River and the relationships. Yeah. I'll go back to communication.

I had a stellar relationship with, with the CCMGs, the CCMG's, their community conflict management group. So these individuals are trained to deal with situations like this. So there's two groups. They overlapped half a day, and they were there for three days. So they rotated and out. So that's who I dealt with on the hourly, like nonstop. So the relationship I had with them,

I'm not talking buddies. I'm just saying in regards to the situation was phenomenal. We, when we were going to close the border, I phoned them and told them, I said, we're going to close the border. That's how it happened.

There was this communication 100% prevented. Um, uh, serious situations between, because they were very like these officers, there was, there was huge organization down there on the arts and peace side. Nobody,

like no officer. They literally, nobody goes through unless it's from the commissioner, from like through the blockade unless. So eventually they did see me coming, but they still always had the radio at it. Like an officer, they were literally robotic to a certain extent of what their job was there. Checkpoint A, checkpoint. They just doon, dung, dung. But in a situation where, let's say we were to close the border and they weren't aware of it. And also the truck fires up and starts moving, there could be a serious escalation of a, of a, of a, of a, of a.

situation in that location where an officer now has to respond based on his training and his instincts without taking orders because there's no time for that, right? He's, you know, you know, so you can have an escalation spiral out of control. That never happened because they always knew what we were going to do. Now on their end, they didn't tell us everything, obviously, but we always communicated with them. Yes, we are blocking the border, but other than that, We are listening to you guys. Public safety was a huge concern. You know, one time there was some joyriding with tractors on a closed highway, right?

Because it's closed, you know, 15 miles of highway. That's so a bunch of these farm kids went joyriding with tractors. And nobody thought anything of it. But the RCP responded with their vehicles and just in front and on behind. I had a sergeant come in pretty heated. And he said, quote, Mark, will these fucking tractors need to stop? driving down the highway.

And I remember looking at him and says, you're right. It's not why we're here. We're not here for this. We need these tractors as those are our tools to counter the pressure by the RCMP. But they don't need to be driving. We park them. So what happened was we parked them. And the keys got pulled and the keys got put in a bucket and they went to the bottom, bottom drawer in the RV.

because what if an officer who is the law is used to being listened to. So the RCMP officers aren't necessarily trained to to deal with disobedience on a scale, you know, that a blockade would be because we're literally disobeying them and they want us to go and we're still not listening for 18 days in a row. So there could be characters, there could be emotions inside the RCMP on an individual level where an officer is like, screw these guys, they need to freaking listen. So he's going to enforce. What if we get a situation where something happens with a tractor and a cop car and somebody gets seriously hurt?

That's not why we were there. That would take away from the message of why we were there. So all opportunity to ensure public safety of participants of the RCMP were taken very seriously. Like that was a big part of my day to day to make sure that scenarios didn't have, like that circumstances prevented escalation other than. than our core objective, which was to be on the highway and to block the border. Other than that, it was a lawful, peaceful blockade. So back to do I feel, am I glad? His question was like, am I glad that they were there?

The question was, were you thankful the undercover officers were there, in essence, because they may have prevented something bad from happening, like escalation between, basically just what you said just in you know and their perception that there was going to be something carried out on our CMP officers do you think that it was going to escalate to that I mean that's hard I don't believe it was going to escalate to that I do believe there may there may have been individual views of participants I know this there's there's any that came up to me that were extremely frustrated Marco this bullshit you know you got to do like this and this they need to listen to us who are you know that their frustration is based on

events prior regarding maybe they couldn't see their dying mother in the hospital, right? Like that's not something that I'm going to downplay, but it's something I had to deal with. Those are frustrations inside our organization that I had to deal with. Those are real, real emotions. And who am I to downplay that? I never downplayed it. But there was such tremendous strategy needed internally as well as externally, right? So was there a concern for that?

100% every day from the minute I was concerned for for rogue, rogue elements. It's pretty natural, right? There's rogue elements in the RCMP who don't take orders to it. Not rogue to that point, but there's, you know, the one Nazi flag on in downtown Ottawa doesn't label the whole group, right? The media made it out to be that way. But we had good structure and we had good control.

for us, communication inside the group as well, was critical. And I was obviously very diplomatic in addressing concerns inside our own organization. So could a scenario like this have happened? I don't know that. We'll never know. So I'm going to say yes. It surprises me that in Ottawa, considering the violence, considering the force used to remove the blockade, It surprises me to this day, and I'm thankful for it, that a trucker who lost his job, lost his income, lost, whatever he lost, did not make a last stand. Think about it.

Barricaded inside a truck, they're coming out of you, they're going to smash you windows. I am very thankful that there was not an individual who decided this is it. This is the end of the world for me, who made the last end. Because people, there's individuals who were at a place like that. the government had segregated and divided society to such an extent that there are individuals who felt, who felt, yeah, who, who they're backed into a corner. Such a bad place. They had no. They were backed against the wall.

They couldn't see any light in the world and could have pulled out any sort of thing and taken matters into their own hands to put it, you know, pretty much frankly. It would have been very unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah. you know when you when you have nothing left to lose like when you know if if things would have continued to a point where society where we wouldn't have done this at this time and things would have escalated further for another year COVID wise mandate wise there would have been less to lose people would have been more that they would have taken more extreme measures because

what holds individuals back on on on on serious responses is based on family and and and your loved ones and the fact that you want to live in a society that that includes all, you know, and that we can participate in. But when you've taken that all away and you've put people in a position where they're not part of that and the government's still telling them you can't be part of that, that's huge. Like that goes against human, the laws of human interaction and human nature, right? And nobody wants to talk about that. But that part of it, it was a real thing. I had these conversations with with extreme frustrations not people who are saying oh we got to do this based on we got to you know we got to dig trenches no that never ever happened that never ever

happened but um back back to the undercovers i do believe they had a role to play 100% you know they they they they did investigate these gentlemen there were things being said Unfortunately, the narrative is taken out of context, and they've charged all of the individuals with possibly the actions of one or two, because as an example, they're sitting at the wrong table. And that's my fight, is that, you know, some of these charges of the 13 initially have been stayed. Joanne's being Joanne Pearson, you might have heard her, she's being persecuted quite extensively in regards to being involved

in going out on the highway the wrong way on a closed highway the one time. So the RCP has these tools and they haven't said you know you were part of this because you're trying to get home and there was a blockade and when they broke through you drove with.

No, they're leveraging serious driver. driving offenses and, you know, charging her to the full extent of the law, you know, and giving, you know, they're coming forward with a plea bargain that puts her in jail for two years for a dangerous driving offense and prevents her from living within five or ten miles of the border. That's, that's completely ludicrous. Have you ever heard of anybody going to jail for dangerous driving? So, um, there are truths. Yes. The truth is that that is dangerous driving, but you've got to take the whole truth, right? Because, If the truth, if you only take part of it, it's skewered.

It's not factual based on the events and how things go. So some of this is things I'm not aware of. Like some of these situations were obviously things they were doing themselves because people had 18 days and I wasn't watching every participant. But some of the stuff I was involved in, I was aware of the details of an event. And the RCMP has it wrong. They just have it wrong. So the courts will determine.

you know, eventually it's just, I think, if justice is to prevail, I think the gratification of justice may be long lost by the time that it, it, justice comes through, right, based on how long, how our legal system works. So that's unfortunate. So, you know, it just, like I said, there's not a lot I can say about. Well, here, here's a couple things, a couple things come to mind because, you know, when you talk about, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, four individuals and everything, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not like it's forgotten past. It isn't.

But one of the things that the night I met you was going on was one of your good friends, Alex, and I can I pronounce it the wrong way the first time. Alex, Van. Is it her? Van Herk. Van Herk was arrested, taken into custody. You care to shed some light on that one? Because he's now out.

And I think that'd be very relevant for people to hear because, I mean, it literally just happened and if I wasn't standing beside you I would have had zero idea this was going on and I assume Alberta for the most part has zero idea this went on yeah yeah correct it you know I was at the right place that night to to share some of this you know Rachel from True North was right there so I was in the lobby I think I missed a very good three-course meal unfortunately but I'll back up to to the events of that day so I was in Edmonton with legal with my counsel to where I was being interviewed by lawyers representing the commission from Ottawa and at and physically in Edmonton.

So that's why I was in Edmonton and I combined it with the debate, right? Because I'm I'm almost five hours away from Edmonton. So it's not, I wasn't driving five hours just to go to the debate. I know you drove at least two, but five is different, right? So that's why I was in Edmonton. I had opportunity to do it via Zoom, but something as critical as the, The interview with the commission was not something I was prepared to do with Zoom. And also, you know, the legal side.

My counsel, it was being funded by the democracy fund. So that was obviously very appreciated. And they have requested standing at the commission as well. So I was there for that reason. And as I was walking into the interview at about 1 o'clock, I got a call from Alex. So Alex, like I said, he's a participant in the blockade. He's a good friend of mine.

He's a farmer. He's a self a farm of cloud and quite involved, less involved politically. He's definitely, you know, I think he's bought his USB membership, but very involved in some of the freedom movements. He got a call because he had got charges stemming from the Grace Life Church event that happened last year, March, with Pastor Coates. and if you recall the the RCMP under orders from AHS, put a fence around that whole compound and prevented the people from attending church.

From attending church. Think of how far we've come. I mean, anyway. That's right. That first weekend, there was a pretty sizable turnout to this, this location by protesters. Alex being one of them. I remember him asking me, hey, Mark, are you coming?

And I thought about it. And I never did. I'm in a way thankful that I never did. Not saying that I would have been doing the same things that Alex does. We're best friends, but we're not. We do things differently. But he, he was,

his, his, I'm going to, I'm just talking about his personality. he he the the unjustness of it all is I think of his his uh maybe Dutch term but he took that very serious you know being religious you know they're blockading like they they're literally preventing this church from gathering and this pastor is getting charged with having the church open because it was a it led up to this right it wasn't just three-day event no it was months and months

and I don't agree with yeah no I don't know all the details and I'm pretty sure that there's two sides of the story, but there's a fence around the church. There's a protest. Alex is there. And he is caught on camera. And the courts will determine this, whether he's putting the fence up or taking it down. One of the two, because he's holding off to the fence, which is public information. So he's either helping put it up or take it down.

I guess the RCMP officers on the other side of the fence will have to testify to that. but he got charges from that he got mischief under 5,000 and um obstruction of officers charge along those lines um and he uh they've they've called them on it they've asked them to come in on it and he always felt that the political the the COVID landscape was changing and it was in his best interest to delay as long as possible before dealing with this and he's probably not wrong. But I had always advised them, go in, deal with it. But he had a bit of an objection with the fact that they take your fingerprints.

And if you then are convicted, they get uploaded to the database. So we had many arguments, but I was like, buddy, it's just fingerprints. But he just something in them was, they can't do that. They have no right. So he was, he's like, hey, I'm not doing it. So he never went in. The RCMP never made any real attempt to deal with it. Like I'm pretty sure if they would have pulled them over in a traffic stop somewhere in

last bridge. and they would have pulled his name up, they would have seen, hey, you're standing warrant, you're coming with us. Never happened. So it never got dealt with. After the fact of this,

of last week Thursday, after Thursday, we now realize that the investigations in the coupts are at a point where they're laying charges, because there have been no charges laid on any other individuals other than the week that the blockade disperse

and those individuals. Um, so he gets, he phones me as I'm going in and he says, hey, Marco, it's swats on my yard. So when I say the yard, he's got a farm. It's big. He's, he's, he's not, he's not home, right? But he's aware of it. And I remember telling him, I says, I was like, oh, boy, they're after you now. Like, this is it.

And I remember advising him. I says, Alex, don't get arrested. people are going to be like, oh, Mark, what are you talking about? I said, don't get arrested. I says, because there's always strategy, right? There's always strategy in how you respond to these things. I said, if you get arrested, the record states that you evaded arrest and that they had to come and get you. And that, you know, you resisted arrest and that'll be critical in the courts and determining who you are and your character and all that.

Right. I see how this works. I see a lot of stuff here that they're saying and they use that. I said, you need to get into form of cloud and you need to turn yourself into the low attachment. You need to take back the control, or not the control, but you need to let the record state that you turned yourself in.

Those are two critical things. Many of it, he comes from a big family too. Many of it, and they're, I think his family is overall 20 years older than our family in a sense, but many of his brothers advised him not to do that. I'm very thankful he

thought about it and did exactly that. He turned himself in. He was informed that they were there for charges stemming, stemming from the Grace Life Church event. And that all he had to do was come in, it was fingerprint friends, do this, do that. And he would be released by supper.

He went in and he went in with a bit of an entourage, you know, about 20 people went. in and, you know, just support, right? Just, hey, you know, Alex, like, what are they actually going to do? You know, there's a bit of mistrust. And I'm in this interview and I'm coming out of this interview and I'm hearing that Alex is still still in jail. And now there's additional charges.

And I was in the interview with his lawyer. So I'm in Edmonton with his lawyer and he's in jail in Fort McLeod or in just in the attachment not in jail right he's he's there um by five o'clock so you know the VIP portion of the debate started at 430 i don't know if you were yeah you were part of that yeah you were there yeah um i was i showed up there with a good friend of mine david parker and very quickly i was dealing with this and i ended up going into the hallway and started taking calls from individuals down there and alice himself even reached out and i became aware of an additional charge the charge of mischief over 5,000 serious charge stemming from Coots. So the RCMP had communicated that

as he was going in. And he said, well, I still have to deal with it because this is serious. Like Swats got the place like this is that they're here now. Like this is not going to, I can maybe get away for another 24 hour, but they're going to get me. Like this is not the Wild West anymore. Right. So that was thankfully his conclusion as well as mine and he went in. Um, the RCMP had communicated and this is serious crimes out of Erdry that is down here. They had communicated that there would be that there were no conditions. When he's in there and he gets, he, you know, last night I was with him, we had a big event for McLeod and, um, I've talked to him many times. He phoned me the minute he walked out that night.

But he, um, he said, I went up to actually. go and sign, you know, the document. And he's like, I've seen your name. So my name. He's seen my name as one of the conditions. So one of the conditions was that he have no contact with me. I emceed his daughter's wedding the weekend before. My first job was for him when I was 13.

When I moved out, they were like a second family to me. Now as adults were equals in a sense. but we were just like we're best friends like it's not even that we were both involved in the in the in the blockade we're both at coots it's it's a request it's a condition that even if we agree to it we cannot actually commit we cannot actually accomplish small town business intertwined family intertwined it's a scenario that that i see played out with tamara and litch so Alex signs and we run into each other in the post office, we agree to this condition. So when we break it, they're going to put him in this case him, but I know what's coming. So they put him away for good because he broke his own agreement. Correct? That's how I work with Tamara Lynch, right?

So he's seen that. And what he actually physically did is what he told me yesterday. He says, I took three steps back, dropped the pen and said, where's the cell? You know, like, I'm going to jail. Like, I can't sign this. it took a bit for that to come out to the public, people gathering outside to myself. I heard something about a condition.

So I right away thought, oh, this fingerprint scenario. I was like, oh, Alex, is this really a hill you want to die on? You know, you got to do this fingerprint thing. Ten,

50 minutes later, I got a call from the lawyer, from Martin, who was on his way down to back home to Calgary, who's dealing with this, he said, no, the condition is that he has no contact with you. So I was caught off guard completely.

I was like, this is ridiculous. This is unacceptable. And it was. The RCMP, I don't believe that the RCMP officers, serious crimes, SWAT, who's implementing, who's enforcing this arrest, wasn't aware of this condition. It was on the document.

And if they were, it's a sneaky move by the Crown prosecutor, throw it in last minute. Either way, he can't sign that. I know he can't sign it. I couldn't, I can't sign it because it's not something we can do. So it puts us into serious problems down the road. So this, this, this, the public becomes aware of it. People start responding.

I get True North on and Rebel News on, on the story right away. I felt that was at the right place to be dealing with this. I'm thankful. wasn't in Form of Cloud because it would have just, you know, it's our town, you know, Well, think about it. You know, you always think of like these, these little moments. Why was I sitting where I was sitting when X happened? You were sitting in a place where all of Rebel News was.

You already mentioned True North. I don't put myself in the same category, but I don't not put myself in the side of, you know, we would have never met if it wasn't for that. You would have never met. And I came home from there going, I just got to like kind of witness in a really like four broken conversations, how a guy was arrested to how he was released with a group of people up front putting pressure on them to release them. And you go, we can get into why you were there at that point in time, surrounded by probably some of the most influential people in Alberta to have conversations with to put pressure on it. And then, I mean, you bump into me as a maybe a cherry on the top. I don't know what I am.

But regardless, you get to hop on here a week later and you go, yeah, that was quite the timing, right? Like, that was almost perfect timing for something to happen to have a repercussion or whatever, a bounce back opportunity, whatever we're going to call it, where you get True North Rebel, Sean Newman podcast. I don't know if I get to put myself in the same category as that, but regardless. us. Yeah, no, I agree. So, because even, like, just before six o'clock, I thought, well, if I get, if I leave now, I'll be there at 11. And I, because part of me wanted me, I wanted to be there. I was concerned again for, because for, for what could happen and, you know, keeping things peaceful. So I'm in contact with, with family of mine, who were there supporting, right? And family of his, lawyers, lawyers are asking me. And, and, and this part.

is again, and I kind of laugh, and there's no criminal charges are coming out of this. I'm going to tell the whole story on this. So I kind of laugh. It says, I know why they don't want us to talk. I know why they want to cut communication between Alex and myself. Alex is in jail, and I'm in Edmonton, and this still happened. We were still able to get this done, right? So it goes back to guys, we're keeping this peaceful until we became aware.

And it remained peaceful. But the support was building, but no, no equipment, nothing like that. It was just good, you know, it was just people coming out in front of the attachment and just, you know, hanging out. I think that the point where the RCMP realized, like, oh, boy, what's going on is when one of his brothers who has a porta pot company showed up with a trailer with porta potty. Because that signals a long-term commitment to being in front of this attachment. you know we had people from you know even the mayor of form of cloud was was there they had unrestricted access to their attachment for emergencies etc but the concern was that they would try to whisk Alex out of there to either left bridge or such that was something we were trying to prevent

because any kind of leverage or pressure we're trying to put on them was possible due to being a small town small attachment all of that but you bring Alex into the city and that just put him away until he does agree to sign these conditions which is legal which is justified on their part that's that's they're allowed to do that and if he signs and breaks him

he's back in jail again based on how the justice system works right so the issue really became the RCMP had repeatedly lied to the public lied to Alex lied to myself on on critical things you know

be released by supper, no conditions. With these conditions, if you know how the legal system works, is it automatically triggers bail hearing. Thursday night, lawyers phones me, says, if he signs now, we might get a bail hearing Friday. If not, it's Monday. So now he's in jail till Monday. Because he's going to get released on bail, right?

He's not a flight risk or anything like that. But that's a little different than being released before supper. So there was some serious frustration with that and anger with the RCMP, Small Town, Formal Cloud, RCP officers, you know. And they were, I wouldn't say they were, they weren't the reason. They were just their helping enact the arrest, et cetera. Well, I mean, Van Herk in the story says it was the support of the people out there. the depat, oh my goodness, outside the detachment,

but pressure on the crown to withdraw the conditions. He praised the officers saying they fought hard to have the conditions withdrawn. So like by all accounts, it was all positive of all fronts, except for some of the things that got slid in, like you say. And then all of a sudden the crowd forums, and they probably, I don't know, I mean, geez, they were, I assume,

you know, the idea was you arrest them on the farm, you whisk them away or you know, you take them away. He signs the conditions. you've taken, you know, they've identified, obviously, one of the spokespersons of Coots and his best friend is being a little bit of a problem trial. And they're going to try and find ways to make that more difficult. And instead. Exactly.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the RCMP now, the concern with the, with the RCN on the ground and obviously the officers from serious crimes that were in for McLeod was what this could be. And those concerns are, well,

those concerns are legitimate because what this would have been by the next morning, and it's not of my not of my doing, but what this would have been the next morning would have been big, it would have been a thousand people. And there was no, you know, when something like this becomes public, the RCMP, the crown takes a position. Now it's public. Now they, now they're held.

Now they have to follow through. But the public took a position, took a standing right from the beginning. And it was growing. By the, by the hour. There was 50 more people. And when it became apparent that they had no intentions to release him unless he signed those conditions is where we said, this is where we need to hold them accountable. They cannot. I understand how it works.

When you have no support, when you really can't afford to take a day off, you have no choice but to sign conditions the RCNP proposed on you. Communicated or not, slid in on the last minute or not, you have no choice. You might have to go home. You might, your kids might be at your grandparents. Thankfully, we have that support in our small, in our rural areas where people come out because we care. You know, we care for each other and, you know, big families help. But like I said, my family alone is a small army. But it was the injustice of how they laid these charges and try to implement them that triggered this response.

we didn't we didn't push to withdraw charges the charges we understand where they came from we understand that that goes back to previous conversation we know something's coming but it was the injustice of the condition and how they tried to implement that that we weren't going to let happen we weren't just going to take that sitting down so we responded and i'm not going to speak to to my involvement in that i was in edmonton so that you know we'll just leave it at no involvement but um equipment showed up. We said this is where we stand. This is wrong.

And thankfully, in those four or five hours, there was a lot of political pressure. There was a lot of pressure from the RCMP to prevent a serious escalation, not like a peaceful one, but a serious, you know,

also you've got your town that increases by a quarter of the population because you've got a thousand people coming from BC, Saskatchewan, etc. So they made the right choice. Unfortunately, this Crown prosecutor isn't so happy about it because he really wanted this. He imposed these conditions. And I got to hear the next morning that he was quite pissed.

So for Alex, it's good. Unfortunately, it concerns me a bit about, because I've been informed that. that I have charges coming from my, from my role in Kutz. And I was supposed to see them, based on what the RCPs communicate, I was supposed to see them today or yesterday or today. And on Wednesday they phone and says, actually it'll be a couple weeks yet.

And it just getting this, this report here as well and reading through it, in regards to events in the comp, in the blockade. These four individuals are obviously being the highlight of the investigation at that time. But just the only name

that I keep on running into is that of my own. It concerns me that the charges are determined. That's what they've communicated to me. So, I got a wasp buzzing around my head. I thought I saw yellow.

You see that? I got my window open, no screen in there. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have a big wealth in my head. I write it. So that's a first for the podcast, say. I was joking with you beforehand about, you know, different places, microphones, all that stuff. Use this evidence to kill something.

But I've never seen a was come flying into an interview before, right, buzz, you know, fly by the head. That's pretty good. Watch out. Watch out. I have to get this right on camera now. You know that, right? People are going to, everybody, all your viewers are going to laugh if I miss and gets done. Good.

A little butter. So I guess going back to... So you're waiting, you know, as we want... I'm now waiting for this to happen. And I told Alex, I said, I told me that, like, yes, I said, you know, I'm going to be dealing with all your shit. He says, now they're mad at you. And I'm going to get the, I'm going to be the one that has to pay for it. Because you're, you know, your scenario is kind of done to this point.

And, uh, um, just a little worried about something. things we've definitely were taking proactive measures you know lawyers have reached out to the prosecutor we've reached out the rcpses and i said the day i left i tell you what marco when when you know more we'll uh we'll keep our lines of communication open um because absolutely because i mean we can all on its own well that's right and the thing is is uh we've been going for two and a half hours now and i look at the clock and i just go you know i am i opposed to five hours no but i mean at this point, I go like, there's some topics, you know, that as more information comes to light, I think you'll be better, you'll have better tools to talk about it. And one of the things

that's probably hanging over your head is exactly what it's going to be. And, you know, the fact that it was supposed to be out today or tomorrow and then all of a sudden they go, oh, it'll be a few more weeks. It feels almost like a tactic in itself. Regardless, before I let you go, And I would just say, when things come to light, you just reach out and we can do on this side, okay? But before I let you go, we always finish with a question. And I'm really starting to wonder if I shouldn't start with this question, folks, because I feel like it's becoming increasingly when I have people such as yourself on, you get what you stand behind. But the question is, we'll start here. It's a crude master final question.

Probably should be the crude master first question. Maybe that's what we'll go. Anyways, a shout out to Heath and Tracy McDonald. they've been supporters of the podcast since the very beginning. And the question is simple. He said, if you're going to stand behind a cause that you think is right, then stand behind it absolutely. What's one thing that Marco stands behind? One thing.

Boy, that's the tough part of the question. But in general, for me, regardless of political standing, right, because we touch base on that and we touch base on my views on that, regardless of political standing, I believe, in the freedom of expression, personal autonomy, and the role government plays in society. And obviously, COVID is still first front and center in our lives, the effects of COVID. For me, it's ultimately justice. there's there's parts of this of events through COVID that you know taken out of context showcase illegal activity showcase or represent things incorrectly this this first and foremost goes back to the government on the the improper responses and like said we're not here to

we're not here to point fingers at them you know many people did many things wrong. I did things wrong. I held views. But for me, the cause that I stand behind is is getting society back on track in regards to the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, what we've lost in the last two years. And I'm not talking about necessarily the freedom. I'm talking about the ability to interact as communities, the depolarization of families, churches, schools. Like we have, and it'll take years, but we have a society that has become so partisan

and so polarized and so positioned on things that weren't even issues, that didn't even matter. I always talk the red combine, the blue combine, and the yellow combine. But those are real things. Those are those, those, those, the pain, the hurt that is still happening because, you know, politically, you know, the healing that's needed as a country and as a province and as a community and even as families, like, you know, there is so much anger, individual anger. But there's so much, you know, there's terms like societal anger that is being directed in all directions that we need to address and deal with. And, you know, without going back to the cause, to the mistakes, I'm not talking prosecution. Some people want to prosecute everybody.

But these, even those in power above us, they were in an impossible situation. I do believe that. And I'm not saying we need to prosecute them, but we need to hold them accountable. Otherwise, we're prone to repeat. But never mind repeating. We need to go back. We need to address what happened.

Like these candidates are looking, they're saying they're going to have independent investigations into protocol, COVID protocol, COVID responses. is, you know, HHS, there has to be accountability. We've got to bring accountability back into the system.

If we don't start at the beginning and we only start halfway and try to fix things, we're set up for failure, right? So the biggest thing for me is obviously the same problem will persist just under different leadership. Yeah,

like obviously I feel that there's certain leadership that can work, do this better than other leadership. And those are individuals and they do have a political standing and they are part of a political party, but this comes from all sides. This comes from, you know, it's unfortunate that, that, you know, I look at this event

in Grand Prairie Monday. Elliot, Elliot McDavid. Yeah, like I've met Elliot McDavid on many occasions. Do I agree with them on everything? Absolutely not. I just, I'm just so disappointed in a lost opportunity. You know, if it would have been you or me there, we might have been looking for a competition, let's say we went after it because we are that that is allowed we are in a democracy but i just

i'm just so disappointed in the choice of wording and the fact that you know he he he responded from a place of deep deep emotion but he he had an opportunity to engage with an individual and and strong words would have been necessary and and deserved and you know that's that's reality of it but unfortunately his choice of language has discredit at him everything he said everything he represents everything he's been involved in but that also comes from the other side and that's where the other side because it's tough to it's tough to applaud his actions it's tough to publicly say you know good on him you know but we don't know his circumstance we don't know the loss and the pain and the hurt he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's

endured but at the end of the day i do know one thing in that he is fighting for what he believes is right. Now, the actions is probably, the tactics is probably where I agree with, disagree with him, but his goals might be similar to yours and life. He might be on the same, he might be on the same road as all of us. Exactly. Just in a different lane. Yeah.

So it's just, it's the fact that the opposing side has so much to gain from the continuation of the, from continuing the defensive politics. The rhetoric that it's a bunch of male, angry white males that are misogynist, white racist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he fit the profile. And they were waiting, along with all of media, for one, to step out of line, just like they were in Ottawa, just like they were in Coots, just like there are everywhere. Because that's what they do to form an idea. The problem is, is I think at this point, and don't get me wrong, because I agree with everything you just said on L.A. McDavid. I'm just so far gone and past the media at this point reporting on one side of things and only

pushing up when it's an attack on a liberal, you know, that's all they do. At this point, I think so many people have just checked out. They're just like, whatever. I'm just like, there's a ton of people ask me if that's a fake video. And I'm like, I don't think so. Like to me, I don't think it's a fake video. He's already had a response video to all the hate he's really. received on it.

And, you know, just, there's so many people that are just checked out. They're like, I've already, I'm already done with all this. We're moving forward. And these are the things that are going to come into play over the next year, well, in the next month in Alberta, and then the next six months, eight months, year, two years, and people are falling along. Either way, Marco, I've really enjoyed this. Like, I do truly mean it.

You have my number. So as things start to progress or whatever, degress, if that's a word, I don't know, regardless, you got my number. Let's stay in communication here as we move along and the podcast on this side of things will certainly do my best to keep people informed because I think, you know, one of the things I look at the chance encounter just as much as anyone else. Are me and you going to agree on everything? No.

Are my listeners going to agree with you on everything? No. That's what I love about it. But regardless, something happened in Alberta that I didn't hear and I can't read every news article and listen to every podcast. So to hear it firsthand, to shed some light on it, to hopefully, you know, let other people hear it as well and go, oh, and start thinking about some different things. That's what we do here. And I just appreciate you giving me some of your time this morning.

And I assume somewhere down the line, our paths will certainly cross again. I do believe that. Yeah. I thoroughly enjoyed this as well. I had a lot of information come, you know, come to my attention even in the last 24 hours. So it's like, what do I share? And I think we went, it was very organic, but we didn't go down too many rabbit trails.

I think there's a lot that we can definitely discuss going forward. And there will be developments, we'll call it that, that are happening. And I really just appreciate the opportunity to, you know, that's back to the cause. And I'm going to keep it real shorter, is to get the other side of the story. And that's what your podcast is, right? Because there's media. And in my interaction with media as the role I took and even Friday, I had the New York Times reach out again. And I've been talking to them quite a bit.

They're doing a big piece on Coots in the political climate in Alberta. So I've spent hours with them in the last month or two. But the comment from this individual, and she's not from Alberta. And she's just like what she said really makes me think. And it's about me. but it's she says after hours and hours of discussion and I even met her she did come down here and she says you are not who they say who I thought sorry you are not who I thought you were and who she thought I was was based on the information she gathered you know I mean me wearing a red

jacket and a ball cap and you know in the wind and weather I'm pretty luff I'm a redneck redneck in in in that context but it was bloody cold and all of that too but I'm who I am, but the media had got it wrong on that one already. They portrayed us all to be crazy redneck, fringe, you name it. And then when we actually have these interactions, people are surprised at who I could be and who others may be. And that is my, that's how I'm going to end.

It's like, look into things, you know, to your viewers, you know, don't make a determined, don't draw a conclusion off of an article shared from halfway across the country. That's, that's, that's going to be the breakdown of the, that's going to result in the breakdown of society. You know,

go to the source, look into things, you know, use, use CBC and rebel to draw your conclusion in my, it's kind of what I would say, right? But I really appreciate you having me. I do believe we'll,

we'll be in touch again unless the RCP makes it a condition that I don't go on the Sean Newman show but I'll promise you Sean I'm not signing that. Wouldn't that be a bad your honor? Hey listeners? You know, I've been removed for YouTube for Chris Barber interview among others, but Chris Barber was the nail in the coffin. Wouldn't that be a condition?

You're no longer allowed to talk to this media source. I tell you what, at this point, that would be a badger honor, I think. But regardless, hey, it's been an interesting couple hours. I appreciate you, you hopping on and give me some of your time. And certainly being open to talking about everything. And we've certainly done the gambit. Absolutely. Perfect.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Sean.