Shaun Newman Podcast - #365 - Garth Rowswell

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Garth is the MLA for Vermilion-Lloydminster-Wainwright. We discuss 2022 (COVID/Kenney/Pressure), his trip around Alberta meeting with health care to discuss issues, the new Premier Danielle Smith & his goals for the next 4 years: The War on Fossil Fuels, Health Care & Electricity. January 22nd SNP Presents: Rural Urban Divide featuring: Vance Crowe, QDM & Stephen Barbour.   Get your tickets here: snp.ticketleap.com/ruralurbandivide/ Sylvan Lake February 4th More info here: https://intentionallivingwithmeg.com/sovereignty Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

I'm Rupa Supermonea. This is Tom Korski. This is Ken Drysdale. This is Dr. Eric Payne. This is Dr. William Mackis. Hi, this is Shadow Davis from the Shadow at Night Live stream, and you are listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday.

I figured what better way than to kick off the new year without firing off five in the first week? You know? Everybody was like happy to have Monday off. I was in the studio Sunday, and I was. like foaming at the mouth. Let's get it going. Let's get it going. And then I did this silly thing because, you know, I'm like, well, you know, quick dick's in here, okay, advance. I'm like, holy crap, this is really coming again. Barber says he'll do it. Okay. So now I got less than 16 days to sell some tickets. And I'm like, oh crap, like that isn't enough time. Or isn't. I challenge

all you lovely listeners that maybe it is. There's a link in the show notes. We got Quick Dick. Steve Barber from Upstream Data, Bitcoin mining that type of thing. And Vance Crow, he's been a guest on the podcast multiple times, all going to be in Lloyd Sunday, January 22nd at the Gold Horse Casino. We're talking the rural urban divide. It's been a topic that's, you know, been a feature of many a podcast on here. It's been a topic around the water cooler a ton. And I thought, you know, why not get a couple guys with some different backgrounds to sit up on stage?

go back and forth, talk about some things. I mean, obviously everybody knows who Quick Dick is with his background in the farming sector. Geez, spit it out, Sean. And then Vance Crowe was like toured all of North America talking to different people back from his time in Monsanto. You know, like he's got an interesting background, an interesting view on things,

and is an excellent public speaker. I mean, like, to have them just work out as like, what's going on and then Steve Barber I mean he's been a fantastic podcast podcast guest blah blah blah blah blah blah it's been a fantastic podcast guest and so like his view of the world

and some thoughts he has I just think is an interesting group of guys to stick on stage and hopefully bring some of that flare and an interesting night over a topic that I think we're all like chewing on a little bit you know like I don't have the answers

I'm not sure these three do but I I would love to hear them sit, discuss, have some interaction with the audience, and see where it goes. So that's Sunday, January 22nd. If you're thinking about going, don't think anymore, just buy a ticket. There's 75 bucks apiece, or you can buy a table at 10 for 750. Of course, the tables get prime seating and then rush seating. You know, you get there when the doors open at 5 and you can sit where there isn't any, you know, bought tables. but my stress level rate now is at about a 10.

No, I'm like, why did I do this to myself? But I'm like, at the same time, I'm like, well, I didn't really do it. It just kind of fell in my lap. And it's like, do you take the opportunity or not? Anyways, took it. The other thing that you'll notice in show notes is intentional living with meg.com backslash sovereignty. It's an event of, it's a group of ladies.

That's what I'm going to say. You've known Carla Treadway, who's a lot of, been on the podcast and Sarah Swain. They're both going to be there. It's at Sylvan Lake, February 4th. It's about learning skills and building community. And somehow, I don't know how I fell into this. But anyways, they got a few men that are attending.

And we got talking, or they reached out and got talking to them, and they wanted me to come do a little talk on some of the work I've been doing with this men's group idea. and then obviously the podcast as well. So if you're interested in what they're doing, I would just say first off, go take a look at the website, intentional living with meg.com,

backslash sovereignty, or just look in the show notes. It's sitting right there. Click on the link. And essentially, it's a full day event, and Sylvan Lake, you decide if you want to go. If you decide you want to pay

and you want to go, use promo code S&P 50. That gets anyone who uses that code 50 bucks off, any tickets, a little kicker, back to this guy, you know, and I mean, I appreciate it. If you don't want to go, that's totally fine. I'm going to be there. I'm, like I say, I don't know how I got here. Like I'm just, it's one of those things again. So that's February 4th. So we got some events coming up that are

going to be interesting. And I'm excited for 2023 because I came out of the guns, out of the gates blazing. And the year seems to be tested my, my stamina already. Either way, I hope you, you'll either make SMP here in Lloyd Minster on January 22nd, the Sunday, or February 4th in Sylvan Lake. It sounds like each one of them is going to offer their different entertainment or learning values that I think anyone can, you know, get behind. Either way, there's some cool, ladies in Sylvan Lake. There's some interesting men going to be in Lloyd Minster. And I hope that I see some of you somewhere. And yeah, today I get to sit with our current MLA

and I hope you enjoy the conversation. I, well, you hear all about it. So how about we get to the tale of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants,

methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm commercial or oil field locations. For more information, visit them at Hancockpetroleum.ca. He's a member of the United Conservative Party and the MLA for Vermilion Lloyd Minster and Wayne Rain. I'm talking about Garth Rosewell.

So buckle up. Here we go. This is Garth Rosewell. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by MLA, Garth Roswell. So Garth, thanks for hopping in the studio. Well, thanks for having me first time here.

That's great. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, anytime I get to bring new people in the studio, especially the studio, because normally, you know, we do this, you know, the COVID world put everybody at distance. and that opened up a list of doors I never thought I'd have access to any kind of thing, right? But nothing beats sitting across from somebody, you know, and enjoying a good conversation, a cup of coffee. And I appreciate you making the drive-in, the tour into the studio.

You're the first in-studio of 2023. How's that? Oh, there you go. Something I done the first. No, I was saying to you before we got going here that, you know, when the podcast first started out, I focused a lot on community. And then, you know, as different doors opened up, you know, I've been able to interview people from across Canada, the United States, different parts of the world. And I've kind of almost gone full circle. I want to keep doing all that for sure.

But I also understand there's a real importance on showcasing some of the things going on in our community so our community can understand, you know, different things. And so when you reached out about coming on, I was like, yeah, it's perfect. Honestly, we should probably be doing sit down a year. in review, if you would, with the MLA. For all the, you know, the listeners from Vermillion and Wainwright and Lloyd Minster, certainly Lloyds, that's interesting, you know, on the border, right? Like I almost thought, wow, I wonder if Colleen Young should have been sitting in here with us, you know, and we could have had a little either way.

For the listener who is listening abroad, though, and wants to fall along and hear what an MLA has to say about there and everything else, they may not have a clue. Honestly, Garth, I don't know a whole lot about your, your upbringing your background and I don't want you, you don't have to spend an hour on it. No, but I think it'd be good to hear a little bit about yourself and we'll start from there and we'll see where we'll get to. Sure. Well, it sounds great. Yeah. No, I moved out here in 1990 and I was a traveler for a fertilizer manufacturer called Sherrick Gordon and I was looking after dealers here. And then one of them wanted to sell out and I toured a bunch of people through his place and one wanted to buy. So anyway, in the end, I said, well, why don't I? So I moved out here. I

opened up three locations. Where did you come from? Just north of Empton, Gibbons is where I grew up. Gibbons, okay. And, uh, on a farm there. And, uh, so I came out here and I opened up these, uh, these three places and, uh, in Paradise Valley, Mar Wayne and Vermilion. And, uh, so I did that for six years. And then, uh, UG came along and wanted to buy me out. So they bought me out and then I worked for them for four years as a territory manager, kind of northeastern Alberta and northwestern Saskatchewan is the area that I was looking after. And then I, when I left that, I decided while I was done, because it was kind of a, I was a small business guy working for a big company and, you know, you wind up into top-down type management.

So, and not that I hated it, I learned stuff while I was working there that was really worthwhile learning. And, but you know, it came to the end and I reached out and I left there and did a thing called Farms.com. And it was, it was an online, I'd say consulting. We did agronomic consulting and market for primarily grain farmers. And it was finance out of Memphis, Tennessee. And we were charging by the acre and I was the Western Canadian manager. And it was interesting because our goal was half a million acres in the first year and we got 410,000 and they couldn't give it away for free in the states so they wrapped everything up and shut it down and so here I am unemployed right and then so I went in a car I went to work for a company called

Edward Jones investments it's a financial company and I spent 17 years working for them and came to the point where I was done in the financial industry and politics I would always be involved in the background helping other people, but I never put my name out front before. And I said, well, I'll do this. If I win, then I'm an MLA. If I don't, I'm retired. And so I felt like I had nothing to lose.

And we had a very competitive nomination process. There was six of us, and we went five rounds. It was very, very close, right through the whole thing. Really good people, and they helped me when we were done. So it wasn't adversarial. Everyone just laid out what they wanted to do and in a way they went. So that's kind of in a short thing. That's where I was, that's where I came from.

Kids, family? Yeah, kids. I got two girls. One actually just moved back to Vermilion. Okay. And bought my acreage and I moved into town. That's interesting. So there's a lot less work to do.

And they've got it now, which suits me quite fine. And then I, and she's a, she works in the financial industry for a national bank. Got to be happy to have the dog. daughter back on my bed. Well, we are and they just had a baby that's just over a year old and another one coming in June. So they're, they're, so I'm a grandparent finally in the big picture. And so that's nice. And then the other one is out in Squamish, BC. Okay. She went to, she went to, oh, Norquest in, in Eminton and got her LPN, worked at that for a while and then she went to upgrade to an RN. And the best place to do that was BC.

IT and she met a guy out there that does live edge furniture. He makes live edge furniture in Squamish. And so that's where she's living now. So interesting. Tell me about your journey into politics. I'm curious about this. I was saying to you, you know, I've said this a lot on air, you know, up until I had kids, so pretty much 30.

And one might argue it coincides awfully close to Justin Trudeau getting in, to be very frank, right? Right. I think for me, I started paying attention a little bit, and then a little bit more, and a little bit more. And then, of course, everybody who was following the podcast over the last year knew, you know, like I got to host a portion of what you did in Vermilion, right? Yeah. I was very honored that I was entrusted to sit on stage and guide something like that, especially with what we, I think, all knew at the time, was one of these five is going to be the next Premier of Alberta. Of course, that's happened. But for me, I'm like, am I just at the right age? And all of a sudden something clicked and you start paying attention to politics.

And then, you know, you start, you know, analyzing everything and going like, holy crap, what's going on? Is that the same for Garth or is Garth had a different way of, you know, putting his toe into the political world? Well, like I said, I was kind of, I was there. It was an interest of mine, you know, and I watch, like I didn't watch. lots of NFL or whatever, right? Like, but I like talk shows and I liked the weekend, you know, like power and politics or whatever. Sure. So I enjoyed watching that kind of stuff.

And I, you know, I'd form an opinion and then I tried to be informed because, you know, and I tried to get both sides of the story because, you know, you don't always get that if you're in some kind of an echo chamber somewhere. But, and then I helped with Danny Hozac, who ran for the Wild Rose Party here, like he ran twice. And I was his campaign manager both times and tried to get the seat here for them. And so we went to the AGMs and we got involved in policy development and that type of thing. So that was, that's where it was at. And so it was just an interest and never intended to be a politician. but then when this thing happened and Kenny came to try to unite the parties,

every time he came out to Lloyd, I went to his events and whoever else came out this way. And, you know, just, and I said, well, geez, I kind of like this guy. Like, he's got a plan and he executes on a plan. So with that, I thought with him as leader, I'd be comfortable giving it a shot. And that's what happened.

I got to ask then, you know, what you saw in those meetings, did it equate to what you saw in the political sphere once you're elected? You know, I'm jumping here, but I'm like, I mean, a lot of the rural countryside didn't think Kenny held up any end of his bargain. And, I mean, obviously you have a bit of a different view being underneath them and working, you know, I don't know, is it a long side underneath? he thought you tell me well yeah and you know I'm like he came out with his his platform like there's a lot of work put into that platform I personally didn't have a lot of involvement in it

because it happened before I was even nominated you know and I wasn't in the process but like that was beside him on our caucus meetings so his goal was to deliver on what was in the platform and and he kept a running total of how how many promises we've kept so far and how many more we want to do by the time the term ran out. So I think he did that. I think the one that wasn't in there was COVID. And I think COVID was, if it wasn't for COVID, I think he'd be a very popular premier in the country. But I think that's that and how that evolved over the two years is what caused him all his troubles.

But for the most part, I think he did what he said he was going to do. You know, when you bring up COVID, and I, one, everybody by this point has known my position on what went down and everything else. And I've interviewed, you know, people from all across the places. I've always stared, you know, I look at leaders, government leaders. And I'm very pleased, I think, is a lightweight to put it, that Daniel Smith is now your new boss. And once again, I don't know if it's new boss. I don't know, whatever, you get the point. The new boss of Alberta is maybe the way I.

should put it but like you know in the middle of COVID you had the way Jason Kenny ran things he had the way Scott Moe ran things you had the way mr. Ford out in Ontario but then if we changed countries you know everybody stared at DeSantis yeah and certainly in the United States there was other people other than DeSantis he stands alone and heck he might be the next president of the United States on the way he did things you know I always said and maybe you can shed some light on this because I mean Shane Getson have had this discussion more times than not I said basically you know everyone says until COVID but to me a leader is defined by those moments by like

holy crap I didn't see this coming and how are we going to react and how are we going to do things and everybody points to the summer of Jason Kenny everything is open yeah and a week later public pressure put on them everything's closed and we go into the dark and the dark and it gets darker and then Ottawa happens. Essentially is how that, you know, six months kind of plays out. And as good of a leader as Jason Canning may have been, he will be remembered for that stretch of time for the rest of time. And I, to me, I look at it and I just go, there were people at that time screaming in high heaven, and you probably heard a lot of them, you know, being in an MLA, I can just imagine the emails and mail coming in and everything else. But there were

different people in different spots of not only our country, our country was, you know, Alberta and Saskatchewan were some of the freest. And I know people will hate me saying that because it wasn't quite, you know, equated to that. But in our country, that was two of the provinces that tried doing things and there was a list of things that went wrong. But I mean, you know, DeSantis was sitting there. You had the lady in South Dakota, I always forget her name. Noam. Thank you. And I don't know. You're the man. One of the, the group that lived through it and I've me and Shane have had this talk so many times you know it's interesting to hear a different perspective and maybe a more local yeah well for me I got

hell no matter what the decision was every time from both sides and I always tell a story there was one decision I forget what it was or when it was but a decision was made and and I had a phone call to my constituency from an individual calling me a hillbilly for not for not going far enough on the restrictions. And then I had another person phone me and called me a tyrannical Nazi for going too far. Right. So there was these, like there was, there was these camps, if you want to call them that, at kind of both ends of no restrictions and I haven't seen a restriction I didn't like and wished you'd go further. That represented a smaller portion of the total population in my view. The biggest cohort was everyone that said, well, you know, there's some stuff I don't like, there's some stuff I'm okay with.

I believe that the government's making their decisions based on the data they got and doing the best they can. And that was the least vocal. Yeah, the sound majority. Yeah, they didn't talk. They don't talk and they, and but, you know, they, you know, the, but the other two ends were, were, like, I heard from them all the time and we'd have competing, like I know one decision we had was to, we were going to reduce a restriction, whatever it was, it might have been related to schools.

And I, I was getting a flow, a big flow from people that wanted more restrictions. restrictions and then I had one from a person that says don't fall back on that and that is made a statement that well, you know, most of the calls are getting right now are coming from people that want more restrictions. And then that got out and then there was a competition and we got, you know, not by us, but the word went out. Phone or MLA because or email him or whatever because this is what he's hearing. And in the end it was about the there was about a number. equivalent number of people from both sides in this constituency arguing about that decision. So it wasn't where what I saw and what people in their own pods or groups don't see is the other side of the story.

So for example, like I when I met with groups of people and the ones from the one area said, look, they were against masks, they were against restrictions, they were against vaccinations. and they said, like, and they were just against all that stuff. So I say, so on a summary, what I've heard today is no mask, no vaccinations, no restrictions, and whoever dies dies. And they said yes, right? Two different times, two different groups I met with said yes. And I said, well, I can't agree with that. On the other side, I had people phone me up and say, look, if they're not vaccinated and they get sick,

they shouldn't be treated. Right. Well, here's the thing. And I said, well, I just don't agree with that. Everybody in the world was having that conversation. Those two groups met behind closed doors and had it out. It went all the way from those groups, all the way into friends,

all the way into families. Had that same conversation all the way across the board. There was just things that made zero sense. And one of them is like, well, then people just die, right? That's, you know, and you go, yeah, well, yeah, no. It's like, well, no, but there's different countries. And I know you can't answer this. I'm, you know, getting a, in order for the emergency authorization of a new vaccine to be out,

they had to say there was no proven drugs that could help alleviate blah, blah, blah, blah, early treatment. It's just nice box it there, early treatment. Right, I mean, Peter McCullough, and people can love or hate Peter McClellan. They can love or hate some of these names, but there was these different names on there. They were going, listen, look at India, Ivory Pradesh, look at what, Look at what these different countries are doing. As soon as you have an alternative allows early treatment, then you don't need the vaccine.

Or sorry, don't need the vaccine. Then the vaccine isn't allowed to be used because it has to be the only option. And so I think what the frustration of the one group was is like we have one solution to everyone. We're not no longer looking at ramifications, long terms data, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, was just plowing full head on. And once again, you're just a representative of a group of people. And I think probably one of the things I struggle to understand, and you can probably shed a better light on this,

is you want, in, I don't know, my lifetime, have dealt with something, been a part of something, that nobody, I shouldn't say nobody saw coming because there were people that definitely were watching this and everything else. But for the majority of the population, nobody was predicting this. Yep. As a representative leader, I think you hope you get the four years where you win a, you know,

I don't know, a whole bunch of awards. And, you know, it's not easy, but, you know, like, once again, you're not having both sides of the population. People talk about politics and how people are never happy. Well, they were certainly never happy through all this. I'm one of them. Like, I mean, I was vocal. Definitely interviewed different people.

I was probably one of the upset ones. But I wasn't upset that I think people should just die. I just went, why is it just one solution? Why can't we, you know, me and Mike Kuzmiskis once upon a time talking about this? Let's put up a whiteboarder. Let's bring in really smart people. There's people that are checking all these things. But as soon as it went against some of the things that government was trying to do, or at least that's the way it looked.

It got shut down. You got shadow banned. You got pushed. And you're like, what are we doing? That was the tough thing from, I like to think I'm maybe, you know, closer to the middle than people will give me. But at the same time, I know a lot of people think I'm, you know, pretty far to the one side. Yeah. That's the hardest thing for me.

Yeah. And, you know, I don't know if anyone got it perfect, you know, but it's, but decisions are made based on the data that you had at the time. Like when it first came out, of course, the models and we can look back and say, well, shouldn't have listened to them. But the models were 30,000 Albertans were going to die. You know, we can at the time, right? And that's when Bill 10 came out. and as a result of Bill 10, and actually the NDP pushed back on that and said,

this is an overreach. But at the time, if enough MLAs got sick, we had no method for passing legislation unless you were in the legislature. So what Kenny did was, and I was part of that group, to review the Alberta Health Act, and it had never been reviewed in full before.

And out of that, like since 1910, in the Alberta Health Act, the government had the authority to mandate vaccinations. One of our recommendations coming out of that was to get rid of that. And we did. And then the extra powers that were given to ministers to make decisions were, and that was there because if you can't sit and make legislation, and you have to have the power to make, make, you know, your own laws. So our recommendation coming out of the thing was, well, if you're going to have that, then let's say within six months you have to put it through the legislature and get it approved, right? What came out of the recommendations or what leadership decided to do was just get rid of built-end totally

and take away all that power and then make it so we can vote virtually in the legislature. And we did do that in the spring of 2021. So, so, you know, there was some good stuff based on that. And, and, you know, we can go in hindsight and second guess decisions and why didn't you do it like that person, you know, and then there's always reasons, comes from the other side, says, well, yeah, but this, right? And so you get into this statistical debate. And I just think they made decisions best they could.

We had our input in caucus, like we would give our opinion. then this priorities implementation cabinet committee would get together and take feedback from health services and the experts there, and they make a decision. And that's kind of how it all, that's how it worked. I know certain people are going to want me to hold you here the entire hour. I do want to say, you know, I'm actually really interested to explore a whole ton of things with you. Because one of the things you talk about getting rid of that power and different things like that,

I'm like, I think that's super interesting for people to hear. Some of the positives maybe, some of the things have been going on that maybe don't get talked about enough. But I will say one of the struggles, you know, when you talk about, they talk to, we talk to the health experts and stuff like that. We saw, and I can't talk to doctors. I'll talk to media. Yeah, true. We saw what happened when people talked differently. They got removed from their jobs, you know, they got, like,

It was a full court press on anyone who spoke differently. And so, you know, when you look in hindsight, it's like it's pretty clear. And to me, to this day, it's still very clear. If you talk differently against what's going on, you're out of, I mean, like, in media alone, all I need to bring up is, is Kig Carson out in Vancouver, radio station, just talked openly about a couple things. Or Heather, I hope I'm getting her name right, Prozac. I think it's Prozac. Don't somebody out there screaming at the radio right now because she's the lady from Calgary.

Went to, went to Ottawa. All she did was just film it. She thought it would be great for the radio station. I'm not hoping to get her on here actually to just talk about it, right? And they removed her from it. They told her you have to get that off your Facebook page. Now that's Ottawa. That isn't, you know, but we all know what Ottawa was because, right?

And so it's tough because for a lot of us, we just see like there was one solicitation. that was it. We're going to do it at all costs. Even though there was two sides clashing, I can't imagine the conversations that went on behind closed doors for yourself. And I don't mean with the politicians, I mean with your own constituents.

Because one of the things that was, you know, my wife's a teacher. Right. And schools were not immune to this either. Right. And I have family, vaccinated, unvaccinated. And the conversations I went there, It got so personal instead of taking that all out.

And it bled over from everywhere because both sides weren't heard, or at least in all of our eyes, that's the way it looked. Actually, I don't even think I want to say that's the way it looked. That's the way it was. It was just like if you talk differently, you were banned, shadow banned, removed from your job. I mean, all you got to do is look in Alberta and unvaccinated nurses, CNRL employees, like the list goes on.

Yeah. I mean, I just had guardian plumbing and heating boys in here, Blaine and Joey Stefan, talking about not being able to get work with Agco. Now, maybe this has changed, folks.

I want to point that out. But they were on here before Christmas talking about how, you know, there were still things. If you're not going to follow the vaccination protocols of being on site and blah, blah,

you know? And it's like, it's still very, very real for people. And I mean, and I'm not even getting into the people who have been vaccine injured and all that.

I mean, for me, the toughest thing, I probably, there was a lot of tough things. And you know the one I'm about to bring up. Because you've talked about it in legislature. It was Hudson Suva.

That one just blew me away. And I know, Garth, you could talk to it, and I'll certainly let you. But, like, for the people that don't remember Brandy Suva coming on the podcast, right? Her son riding the rural school system, masked on a bus. And, you know, little kid, winner. And when he gets home, he's unresponsive, right? Yeah. As I understand, he's perfectly fine and healthy.

But that's a, like that story right there, it's still, you know, as a parent, you know, gives me like, yeah. Yeah, like, anyways. Well, yeah, and I talked to. She came to my office in Wainwright and we had a really good conversation about it. And that's what prompted me to do the statement in the legislature. And, uh, and that continued. Like Shane Getson, you've had, you've talked to him a few times. Like him and I were on the same page a lot of times relative to, uh, you know, trying to be, you know, does this make sense, right?

Like it's the same cohort going on a bunch. and these little kids like they it gets all damp and they fall asleep on the bus or whatever like it was just you know in the end for me when when when I was trying to answer questions because I'm not like I don't know everything I gotta be honest I appreciate you coming in and doing this with me right I think it's something that Shane had suggested a while back is you need to talk to more of us because a lot of us don't get her voices heard just like you yeah fair yeah because so you know and I but so I I I saw I I I I had to, you know, when I made a statement to someone on a phone or in my constituency, I agree or disagree, I said, look, I have to have faith that I'm saying that I believe, right? So kind of my stance on the thing was, is if someone came and asked me, should I get vaccinated? And I'd say, my recommendation would be yes, one to protect yourself from the harmful, as we got more data, from the worst effects and it doesn't not everyone has it and it's a minority that do but and then the other was just the overwhelming the health care system like if we didn't have

if the vaccines didn't cause a person that might have got really sick to get less sick to where they didn't need the hospital that that I felt comfortable saying that what I what I wasn't comfortable with was how the unvaccinated were treated and and I said that at least like when the nurses, right, I'd say, Jesus, like, why don't we just have a, you know, a vaccinated or a negative test? You know, it's like the convoy that got started. I think if Trudeau would have come out and said, you're either vaccinated or a negative test, right? I think that's what sparked it. But it was him.

It was vaccinated or nothing. And so that's the part that I didn't like and that I, you know, brought that up in caucus and whatever I could. And just because Garth walks in the room and says this doesn't mean it's going to happen that way. But you advocate as an MLA your position and it either carries the day or doesn't. Well, help me understand because I think this is beautiful for you to come in because one of the things I don't understand, okay, is how much, I'm going to use the word power. Maybe the word should be influence. I don't know the, I don't know the word. Um, an MLA has not just Garth, but all of them, you know, like I hear the story of Brandy Suva's

Hudson, right? See you're here? First person got young kids. And in my mind, tomorrow, they're all off. I, I have no time for, you know, uh, you know, you go through all the statistics. When it comes to kids, they were, I'm not sitting here. I had different listeners reach out and talk about some different things with young kids, but statistically, they were the least likely to have any ramifications from COVID-19.

Doesn't mean they wouldn't get sick. I'm just the least likely. And then you think when the protections that we're trying to put on to save them are harming them because what happened after Hudson Suva, the text line blew up with people from across the country that were in rural settings that had a similar thing. And I go, why can't government and MLA, I don't know if it's got to come from the Premier? I just don't get it. I assume there's 17 rings.

But why can't Garth or Shane or whoever just cut through it all and say, guys, listen, we almost killed a kid with a protection. We need to get, we need to, you know, and I don't understand that. Yeah, well, no, those cases were made, right? But what you're not accounting for is people that disagree with us, right? And so, so like there's, like I say, there's both sides of opinion. So we make our case, right? Like, that's what MLA's do. But what's the opinion on the other side of that?

Well, well, that it, that it, you know, kids, if kids get the disease, they can pass it on to their, when they get home. So, and so we have to try to stop them from getting the disease. That's, and you can disagree with that, right? But, I mean, but, you know, and then it's backed up by whoever they're, they're talking to. So, so there's information coming in from everywhere. From everywhere. And it's all being looked at. And, you know, people, so why don't you look at this?

And Mike, come back, yeah, they've looked at that. Like, I've brought those things up when we were in caucus. And I said, yeah, they've looked at that. And they've either discounted it based on other evidence from somewhere else because you get conflicting points of view. And then people that are trained in the thing have to make a recommendation. based on that. Like, you know, I'd want to waste the whole thing on this.

No, no, no. But I mean, like Ivermectin, for example. I'd love to remind myself, you know, I don't think we're wasting anything. I think this has been a conversation that probably needed to happen for a long time. Yeah, no, fair enough. But like, Ivermectin was one. And you kind of talked about it a little bit, right? Well, I brought on, honestly, to the listener, I brought on Peter McCullough,

because when Ivermectum wasn't, nobody is a lot of prescribe it, right? You prescribe it, you lose your job as a doctor. That's what it got to. Yeah. Right? So then there was a run on horse Ivermachton. And I brought on Peter McCullough thinking he was going to say, don't take horse ivermectin or animal or anyways and he said no he can take it.

I was like, ah shit, right? Like to me I was I was hoping to dampen a little bit of what was going on except you know, I'm no vet, I'm no doctor and so I left it to what I consider a medical expert. I mean I think the world and he's one on that side. That's right. So so when but anyways I ever but but no when we brought that up, you know, when that became part of the discussion, it's up to Health Canada to approve a drug for use, for medical use. It's the College of Physicians and Surgeons that disciplines doctors in what they do, right? So there was nothing that the provincial

government, we could have said, we couldn't have said use Ivermectin, even if we agreed with that, right? Yes. And the other part of it is the guys that make Ivermectin never applied for never applied to Health Canada to get it approved. So, so, so, so, Why not? Like if I had a drug that would help and everyone in the world would use it. Why wouldn't I, why wouldn't I? Somewhere I can hear somebody, somewhere I can hear somebody saying that there's no money in it. I can hear that. Money in what? In Ivermectin.

Well, then why do they make it and sell it? Like, I mean, they obviously make money. I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do. Yeah. I'm sure they do. But you don't, but yeah, I, you know, I have a, like I, I don't start from the starting point that everyone's devious. You know, like I, I think, you know, if, if, if they made application, they would have to go through the process or whatever. But, but they didn't, you know, that, that one was kind of what, because I didn't know, but I, well, I knew, I heard what I heard about it. Yeah, yeah. And I knew that it was Health Canada that had to prove it. And I said, well, are they testing it?

What are they doing? Well, then I heard that the guys that make it never applied. Yeah. So they never brought it forward. You know, the Ivermectin thing got funny because not funny. I mean, it was a very serious situation. I just mean now looking back, like it got to the point where if I said Ivermectin on a podcast and we've talked about this.

YouTube. YouTube. It's because of a couple of words I said and nothing nefarious. I think just talking about certain things. And then the convoy. Convoy got me completely gone. Yeah. And that's happening in lots of issues.

Yes, it is. You know, I agree. Yeah. And not specifically that. Yeah, right. It's frustrating. And I come back to an MLA. You know, I wonder, you know, how I would, you know, like people stare at Todd Lowen's

one, right, became independent. And I don't know the full story on that. You probably know more of it than others. And certain people have their own thoughts on, others have their own. How much influence did Garth have on, you know, helping his area? Because, because Eminton's going to, you know, like, let's just talk about Emmington versus where we're at. And I'll just, they're going to have their own thoughts.

I'm fine with them having their own thoughts. I really don't, like I care, but you know what I mean. I want to protect my area, my community. I want to have both sides. And if we find something out that's relevant, it works for us here, I want to be able to enact that fast. But maybe, maybe it's got to go through some channels because, I mean, there's, there's, you know.

Yeah, it's because it's not my decision. Right. Yeah. So all I can try to do is influence the decision. And even like here's an example of how can well say contentious. Like in December of 20, um, was it 20 21? Maybe it's 2020. Yeah.

Well, it's been a long stretch. It's been a long stretch. Yes, it has. But regardless, there was in December, we went from one of the least restrictive, uh, jurisdictions in Canada to one of the most. And because our numbers through the fall, it was 2021, I think. Well, it was, it was, it was 2021 where Kenny came out, uh, around the time the stampede roughly.

Yeah. And said open for business. Exactly. Yeah. So it was that it was and then, and then the, uh, Delta variant came around and whatever. So we got to that point. We had, we had two caucus, we had a caucus meeting that lasted five hours where that's all we talked about.

So you can tell that there was probably lots of disagreement. within caucus from both sides. Yeah. Right. It was so contentious and we were running out of time we had things to do. We set up another one a few days later and had another five hour meeting exclusively dedicated to this, right? Then the parlor, the pick committee had before the decision was made and they had people come in presenting two of them and everything and then they made a decision. That lasted eight hours. So if this was a slam dunk, everyone agrees and we're going to do this.

That, that, you know, so all views got put on there. There was a consensus point of view as to here's the decision we're going to go with. It wasn't probably everything anybody wanted, but it was, it was the battle. So the influence is, is you represent what you're hearing. Now, when I get an email in and I get this or a phone call and people are saying, Here's my opinion to do the right thing. The very next phone call, someone 180 degrees different than that, saying here's my opinion, represent me go do the right thing.

Right? 100%. The only issue I have with that is one side of the opinion has all of the media play, has everything on their side. And the other side, especially through COVID, had very little. That way. But, I mean, that didn't stop us. from representing that point of view.

But it would have been tougher. Look at Daniel Smith, even coming out and just saying a few things and how much she's been attacked. Yeah. Like that side of the coin, everybody thought DeSantis was nuts. And now he's, you know, like, we'll wait and see what. Yeah, in the end. In the end.

Yeah, but, yeah, it's, yeah. So all I'm telling you is kind of the life of an MLA. Here's my, here's a curious question for you now. Yeah. How many, how many MLAs sit? 87. 87. Are you ever going to get 87 people to go, yes, on the same boat?

No. Wouldn't it be wise? This is completely, I have no idea. This is just Sean throwing ideas at the wall. You're living it. So wouldn't it be better to have a little more control over what goes on in each 87 spots? And certainly you want to work together. I mean, you just, we should talk about it.

You just toured, you were doing all these health care meetings across all of Alberta. Both Jared Elber has asked about it and both Shane Getson thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it. So here you've gone across the province. You've seen everything across the board probably a thousand different opinions and thoughts and everything else. You have a very interesting perspective in Alberta. My old thought is like to have one decision for an entire province, let alone a country, let alone a world, is a crazy. crazy thought because Lloyd to Helmand, well sorry that's Saskatchewan, but my hometown, to Vermillion, to Elk Point, to Cold Lake, to Wainwright, you know, and then everywhere in between PV, you get,

you know, you get the point, Kid Scotty, there's a lot of, there's a lot of difference. Yep. Anyways, you've toured the province. What did you find out, what did you hear, what did you see? What were your thoughts? Well, it was interesting. The process was as we went to these different communities and we met with what we called internal people, so it's people that worked within the healthcare system. So doctors, nurses,

dietitians, people that ran the hospitals, all that type of stuff. And we asked three questions. You know, what's working well and then what isn't working well? And what are some of the solutions to it? So we did that in the morning and then over lunch or after our afternoon meeting, if time allowed us, we'd go tour the local hospital. And then in the afternoon we met with municipal leaders. So, you know, Reeves, mayors, counselors, chambers of commerce, health councils, health foundations, all that kind of stuff and asked the same questions. So what was consistent that we found was there was people were really, like the morale was very low.

People were, like some people were leaving the industry because it was. was just too overwhelming and, you know, various problems. But then it comes down to specific stuff, like rural EMS relative to urban. Yes. So there's specific issues there. And like rural, like, and we got a central dispatch system that wherever the closest ambulance is, but then there was issues when an ambulance took someone from Wainwright into Amiton, they might get dispatched locally in Emmington

and down to Leduc and over to Bonacord or wherever and it would be a long time before they got back. So that was a rural versus urban issue, right? And as we went through this tour, we made changes. And it was interesting because when we were in RIMBY, there was an EMS person there and she said, I really like that stacking thing you did in Ementon. right and I hadn't heard about this right and I says well what what is that you know what

what do you mean and she says well what what we did what we tried to do was get like an ambus goes from Wayne Wright to Amundon and then starts getting all these different calls so what they did is they started to triage those calls so if it wasn't considered highly emergent they'd get stacked and be dealt with by EMS in that town in Eminton so that the rural one could get back. And she said as far as she was concerned in RIMBY, it made a big difference for them. So that was a solution that came out of that for our, when we were when we were cruising around the province.

The other one, what that resulted out of that was, I get these mixed up, but it was nine and one and ten and the other. So Calgary and Empton, nine new sets of ambulances and staffed up and just. to get more in there so we don't rely as much on on the rural ones and and they and those are they're working now and and I tell you the when I was doing this when the leadership election thing was was was being contended and and based on what I saw of this minister and how he got along or communicated with everyone I I told him look I'm going to advocate like crazy to make sure you stay

Minister of Health because that morale problem I was telling you about I had people come up after a number of them and said You know is he still going to be the minister because this is one of the best ones we ever had as far as The the way he was able to absorb all this information and use it and come out with a plan on how we just going to try to improve stuff and then communicate with people So we did all these tours We sent out newsletters as we did it and there's a fact feedback loop so people can continually get information back. So, so, you know, we, we, we did that. Another one that with relative to the MS and this was, these are local solutions.

And I'll talk about the focus group in Vermillion when I went there to talk to them guys one day. They said, come out back. I want to show you something. Well, they got this thing called a nat van, a non-ambulance transfer vehicle. I've heard about these. Yeah. And I, and I, and I, but in saying that, we should.

should explain it for the listener because maybe they haven't. Yeah, and what it is. So they're, they spent a little over a hundred grand getting this thing together. So it's, it's the ability to take people from say the lodge to the hospital or to go visit a doctor or do something that you don't need an ambulance for. Now there's a counselor in Vermillion named Robert Snow and he's a host works on focus. He's had 22 years with EMS. And he said 30% of ambulance usage is for things that don't need an ambulance, right? Yeah. If we can take that heat off and what they do is they charge people to do this,

but it costs about half of what an ambulance costs. So, so it made sense if we can find something to do that. And then they then they try to fundraise to help adopt a ride for the people that can't pay for it. So what he asked me to do was can you go and see if we can get some kind of a monthly retainer just to kind of keep lights on as we develop this thing. So I brought it up with the because on this tour the interim CEO of Alberta Health Services and the chairman of the board of Alberta Health Services were with us. So I developed a relationship with Moro Keiz who's the interim CEO and I asked him about it and he says well

send me something so I he Robert had done up a great business plan I shared it with him he says we'll we'll get someone in touch with him. So that's the local part and and then when I bop around because Lloyd Minster has handy vans. Yeah. So it is Wayne right. A lot of places do and maybe this retainer thing. But of course that won't get decided in a in a week or a month, right? Because the minister has to say well on the big picture how does all this fit in. So, so you know, that was one of the examples of stuff that was learned on the trip. The other one that I've been promoting for a while now is I'd really like to see the use of nurse

practitioners expanded and have more of them. And three years ago, we had about 550 nurse practitioners. We got about 850 now. I think they're part of it. Say those numbers again. Sorry. What was the first number? 550.

And now we're at 850. Okay. So we've got more. And I think, uh, and we have to be able to utilize them to the full scope with their practice. And that was part of like the long, short and medium turn. issues that are like that was another thing that we learned is the on on on on like there's a shortage of doctors there's a shortage of nurses there's a shortage of all

these things and lots of industries not just health care but there's shortage a lot of them so the the long-term plan is train our own so we've we've created a or we've added spots to both you of A and the University of Calgary for doctors And we want that to be a rural stream. So if we can train rural and get them, they're more likely to come back to their community. There's no guarantee, but they're more likely to come back to their own community

and practice their medicine there. That's a long-term plan. That takes eight to ten years. The medium term is immigration and bring in qualified people. So we had to work with the College of Physicians and Surgeons and getting them to tighten up their approval process to allow doctors to practice, say from Britain or Ireland or whatever. And so we, we, um, so that's, that's kind of the short term issues.

Bringing nurses, we signed a deal with the Philippines to bring more RNs from there and recognize their credentials in that. Yeah. So, so those are, and then the short term thing is to increase the scope of practice of as many people as possible. And an example of that working is the first place we went down was, or second place was Lethbridge. And while we were there, we went to the local shoppers drug mark to open up a family clinic. So these are pharmacists that can, they have a scope of practice that lets them diagnose

and make prescriptions for certain ailments. It's not as big as a doctor or a nurse practitioner or any of that, but they can do some of that and take the load off of a doctor. The reason, this was the first one in Canada that shoppers did, the reason was, is because our scope of practice was the biggest for pharmacists across the country. And that's why they came here and did it. And now they got another one on Lethbridge and it sounds like they want to expand that. So we can take some of the load off doctors so they're not sitting there taking wax out of someone's ear, right, or doing routine type stuff and they can concentrate on more of the complex things. So that's the short term thing is to increase the scope of practice

as of all as many professions as you can. I'm curious, did you, in all your travels, did you ever get a chance to sit with Mike Kuzmiskis? He was the CEO of I-Corps blood services. He's the engineer switched over that was promoting the idea of doing blood tests on a demographic of people. Usually over, I can't remember, and I apologize, Mike, I'm going to say like 50 plus to catch early things like different diseases and things like that so that it would take the burden off the health care system. Has anything like that been explored? Because when he told me about that idea, you know, it's honestly, we, it's honestly the idea has spurred from that conversation into some of the

SMP presents I've done where it's, it's solutions for the future. It's trying to bring different backgrounds to look at a certain problem, no different what you're, you've talked about traveling the entire province, to try and discuss and then to see if there's something that bubbles up. And what he was talking about, I found very, very interesting. Now, of course, it isn't free. all that jazz and I don't know how that'll works. Yeah.

But at the same time, I was like, that seems like a really smart idea because if you can all of a sudden eliminate, you know, you talk about the 30% of the ambulances just by changing the vehicle scope. Geez, uh, if you can do that with people having to go to the hospital and everything else and catch it earlier, that seems like maybe a possible solution to, to a chunk of the problem as well. Well, it makes sense. And I did meet with them.

It wasn't part of the tour, but I was also, uh, uh, uh, uh, chair of the North Royal Caucus. So, uh, and with that he wanted to meet with our caucus and that we were down at Calgary. Um, and he was during Stampede and I had spare hours. So I told them, let's get together and have a chat. Yeah. And then I brought him to one of our, our stakeholder meetings where more people, more

MLAs were there. And at the end of that meeting, I, I thought, because all he's doing is facilitating like some of that testing comes in from mail clinic and different parts. Yeah, he's just, he's just created a business model, and, and facilitate, facilitated it through Alberta so that you can get. Yeah. And what he wanted to do was a pilot project that would cost a couple of million bucks and see if it worked, right? That's what he wanted to do.

So when we hung up, my question was, well, why does, why can't Alberta health services do that? If all he's doing is facilitating it, like bringing in the Mayo clinic or wherever these tests get done, why do we need him? Right? Why can't AHS do it? And so that was my, you know, like nothing's happened on that. Okay. I know Danielle did talk about it in the leadership campaign. She did. Yeah. That might, uh, why don't we try stuff like that, right? But why, why can't we, why, you know, my question is why can't that happen through

aHS? Because we can phone mail clinic too and we can take the blood samples and send it off, right? And maybe it's not big enough to like I don't know what the problem or not the problem, but why that doesn't happen, right? It's, uh, I, uh, I, Well, I don't have the answer to this. I always go when you have somebody who's creating a possible solution, although maybe your original agency can do it. For the short term, it would be an interesting idea to explore with somebody who's energetic to do it, already has the business and model there,

and has created a possible solution that could benefit Albertans and maybe Canada, to be honest, for a lot of years to come. To me, but I don't get to decide those. I just get to commentate on it, so to speak. No, and that was kind of my thought. I just said, well, like, really interesting hair on him, you know, for what he was doing. Like I was, you know, you know, for like $2 million in a $22 billion budget. Yeah, I know.

Two million sounds like a lot. Yeah. It sounds like a lot to me. Yes. But then you realize how much money we're spending. We're spending on stuff, right? And let's, yeah. And it'd be a solution that could possibly benefit.

Well, it's worth a pilot project, right? It's, it's worth a pilot project to see, because it could benefit. Not only you or me or somebody else, but like the entire population. Yeah, no, fair enough. I, you know, but that's, so I did, I did, I did hear that. Like my role at the North rural, and now that's changed, there's just a rural caucus and Roger Reed has taken that over. Like when I got appointed to the Alberta First Cabinet Policy Committee, I, like when

Daniel, or Premier asked me to, to, if I take that on, I said, sure. And then I just said, you know, boy, we, um, I'm on a lot of committees and I don't know how busy is this one going to be. And she said, well, pretty busy. So I said, well, I need to get off some things. So I did get taken off some of the committees. And actually I should comment on on that as a difference. Like MLAs now, the way it's being run in my view, have more input and earlier in the process.

So for example, the Sovereignty Act came through my cabinet policy committee. And that's made up of about half a dozen, six or seven backbencher MLAs, six or seven ministers. And the stuff that comes through there is anything that impacts our relationship with Ottawa. So the Sovereignty Act came through there. And when it first came through, so the ministers, they get and they say, okay, here's something we want to pass. Here's the framework of it. Sure. They come and they present that to our cabinet policy committee.

We get to chew it up, have our concerns heard. There's the parliamentary, what are they called, policy coordination offices there, taking notes and everything, and we have votes on things that are close, right? And then all that information goes to Cabinet. Cabinet does the same process overall and have their input. Then the minister builds that into, well, here's a policy. then that all comes back to caucus for another crack at it. And the Sovereignty Act is a really good example

because during her leadership campaign, it was the Alberta Sovereignty Act, right? That was the name of it. People and people in the local constituency were saying, I'm not a separatist, so I don't want that. It was never about separation. It was about jurisdictional, you know, keeping things within your jurisdiction.

And so, Through the process that the name changed from Alberta Sovereignty Act to Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act Just to make sure everyone knew it's not about separation Then there was then the policy went to the floor and there was a couple of amendments that were made that happened through through Caucus and through The opposition like the NDP saying well this gives Ministers too much power and they can change laws so there was a amendment

it's made to fix that. So that's the way the system is supposed to work. So I'm I'm comfortable that the system we have now compared to what we did before, I feel like me as a backbencher has more input early on in the process. So that's something that the leadership group brought forward and on how we're going to go about things. Well, I want to talk about leadership. You know, it's you've had an interesting, I mean, COVID aside, you've had an interesting. and go here because you've had when you first get elected you got Jason Kenny right we're going to unite the parties you know everybody in this area knows about the wild row I mean half the

names you've mentioned I'm like yeah right and this was a wild rose area right like it was and so when the parties are united that's an interesting perspective then you go along you hit COVID you get Kenny steps down after he had buy a hair but he still had majority yes that's right he steps down and now you have Daniel Smith who won you know I was there that night that was a strange night too because I mean lots of people thought it would be a little further stretch some people thought that or further apart sorry and other people thought taves was going to win you know hands down blah blah anyways you get Daniel Smith how is the change been you know from inside a party going from Jason Kenney to Daniel Smith the Alberta Sovereignty Act in the united Canada everything

you know like she's come with um a little bit of uh I think the word is pizzazz. I think, you know, like I would say personally, when it comes to politicians, Gareth, maybe you disagree, maybe you agree. She has a way of speaking and talking about any subject you want to put under the sun. Like nobody I've ever seen on a political stage. It's rather impressive.

I think we got to see it in the debates and everything else. But you're, once again, someone on the inside. What is the change like Ben? I know you probably aren't going to sit here and, you know, I don't know how you're going to talk about Danielle. I highly doubt it's going to be one or the other, but I don't think it's going to be bashing. Well, no, what I will see is like I didn't publicly support anybody.

And the reason I didn't do that is because of my position on carbon dioxide and my desire to be able to speak about it, regardless of that. Well, we'll make sure we put a note in here. But the, the, um, uh, but people would phone me and ask me like, who do you think, right? And I said, well, you know, if you want to. more assertive in your face kind of an approach to Ottawa, that's Daniel Smith. If you want a more diplomatic, strategic, uh, type. That's Travis Taves.

That's Travis Taise. Yeah. So pick your poison or whatever. That's a bad word maybe, but, but I get what you mean. Pick your person, right? And, uh, and so I'm, I was like, um, Travis Taiz is just a, uh, a very competent professional and a gentleman. So I, I, I, you know,

know he'd hear you out like I really enjoyed working with him he was this so he wasn't open he didn't he didn't go goofy and with hair on fire he just was very competent and knew what he was talking about so I was really really comfortable with that part of him but daniel worked very hard and and she's like I think she worked the hardest you know and I've said that to people even before the vote happened like the number of get out the vote meeting she did and even through this constituency was pretty impressive. Was impressive, yeah. So I think she worked extremely hard and she won.

The other thing I'll say is there's, we have got a problem. We've got a problem as conservatives. It's not a problem. It's a good thing. We're a big tent, right? And, and. Well, as we've sat here and went back and forth, you kind of get, every listener under the sun can get a feel for conservatives

because we're a little bullheaded too. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, and that's fine. But that creates a problem for us. And if you look at us on a national basis, for every conservative, there's two progressives in the country. We can't afford to split our vote. In the province, I'd say we're still majority conservative, right? Like if, but if you split that conservative vote, it's not, it can lead to trouble.

And so, and I think the part of that reason is because when we first, like, even, even, when Premier Kenny got got as the leader I had people nitpicking at them well I don't like him because of this or that or whatever right and then that built over time as decisions get made and that people don't like and then and then a way you go when Danielle got elected I heard the same things again you know from the other side right I think progressives are very narrow tent you either agree in there or you're not in the tent right I would agree with that.

So they're very, so, so they're less subject to internal strife than conservatives are for that reason. And that's something that I've kind of come to, I might be wrong, but that's my perception of the difference between, one of the differences between the two parties. I would add to that and say that you think, you think like they, they, they, they, they, they. do or you're out. Yes. And so one of the things was that really I had no idea about was pro-choice or pro-life. I didn't realize in order to be, I think there's a liberal party. Liberal Canada.

You have to be. You have to be pro-choice. You have to be pro-choice. And once again, I'm sitting here and I'm going, I've had this talk with lots of people. You know, like I'm interested in having the conversation. Anytime you can't have a conversation, I think by now people understand me. Anytime you can't have a conversation, I think that's dangerous. And it doesn't matter the subject because I want to hear people out.

I want to hear what their thoughts are because every time I do, I learn something. I think that's maybe hopefully one of the things about the podcast is why people tune in from time to time or weekly or whatever you're doing. I love you all. Is that we get to have a conversation about difficult things. And when you hear that with the liberal party, I'm like, oh, that's it. To me, that's not that I'm not pro-choice or pro-life. I just like hearing the discussion. I don't got to carry the kid, you know.

I mean, I want to hear the different things. And I can hear people already yelling at the radio, right? Because that's a very hot button issue. Yes, it is. Yeah. But you're, you're right. The, the conservatives, one of the beautiful things about us is we get to argue about everything, which is great. Well, it's like in like the carbon dioxide issue with Kenny.

Sure. When I brought that up the first time, like three reasons I ran the first time was getting rid of red tape. balancing the budget and pushing back on the war on fossil fuel. That was my, you know, plus all the other things you do as an MLA, like solve local issues, you know, or try to do at least. So those were the three. Two kind of got looked after. Red tape, I think we're doing a great job. Our mindset is there.

There's more to do, but at least we're in the headspace to go do it. Balancing the budget, it showed how important oil is oil and natural gas are to us, right? Like, like, and here's the NDP wants to, uh, shut it down. Like how brain dead can you be? Like that to me is this like, they're just pulling numbers out of the air. It's just, it's nuts. Yeah. It's mummo, jumble.

Yeah. So anyway, I, so, but that's one of the reasons I went. Well, I, I wanted to say it. And of course, there's stuff I wanted to say. And of course, the zeitgeist of the day is you can't talk like that because it'll hurt the party. On here, you can. talk like that. No, I know that. But I, you know, but I, so, so anyway, at the start,

they were editing kind of what I said, right? At the end, they weren't. And the NDP came to, in question period, and they wanted me kicked out of caucus because of what I said. And Kenny defended me. He said he has a right to have his own opinion. It's not the party's position, but it's his. And what is your position then? You call it, what do we, what do we, what do we calling here? Well, somebody's going to call it climate change. Another is going to call it global warming. Another is going to call it this. Another is going to call it that. I just call it carbon dioxide. Like the whole premise of all that is that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and it's going to end the world in eight years now. It was 12 years, four years ago. So in eight years, the end of the world, because of

carbon dioxide. I think carbon dioxide is essential for life on Earth. I think a lot of scientists would agree with that. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, and so, and now with the carbon taxes and all this stuff that's coming on, the rubber starting hit the road on the cost of all this. Right. Like you look at our natural gas bill 20% of it now is carbon tax and by April 1st,

that's going to go up. Like it's going to be, you know, probably when they get to the end of the carbon tax, whatever that is, but 170 is what's stated. right now, that might be 50, 60% of your bill. You look at how electricity is priced in this province and carbon credits have value because of the carbon tax. And that is factored into how electricity is priced in this province.

So I want to push back against that. And, you know, and that's the thing that I want to bring forward. And so the three going forward is, war and fossil fuels. That's what I want to do. Utilities and electricity. I want to, like I've been working like crazy trying to understand how electricity operates

in the province. And I've got an opinion. You know, I'm always learning stuff, right? And then the other one is health care. So those are the three that I want to work on. And I just, I just think that we're, I don't think a carbon tax is going to save the planet. And I, and that's, all it's going to do is cost us more.

And so I'm just not. I'm just and I want to push back against that. I'm willing I'm willing to have people scream and holler at me and tell me I'm wrong and here's why, but I have to have the right to say it. Right. Well, I mean you're talking to a guy who that's what I fight for is the right to say what's on your mind. Yeah. No matter how controversial it is as long as you're not what inciting violence.

I would say that probably takes it a little far. Yep. As long as you're just getting a thought out of your head, you should be able to say it. Well, you should. The doubt from a party perspective is like you go to AGMs and you have meetings and and you have all these things and you agree as a group as to what you're going to say. And then and then where we fall down sometimes is we say, well, the hell with that, I'm going to go out and say my side of the story, right?

And it, it create in the political world, it creates problems for you and and you can lose seats in those areas. So you have to be willing to be distanced. Well, tell me this. I'm going to pull you off a subject and put you on a new one here, I think. I can't speak for the, there's 87, so I can't speak for 86. Vermillion, Lloyd, Wainwright. What do you think has worked in this area for an MLA?

Is it been talking to all your constituencies? Is it just because we're so UCP, you know, like, you know, to sound like, Once again, I say this a little in jest and a little less, and I'm just green, right? I've been paying attention, you know, like, do MLAs have to, like, if you didn't talk to a single constituency person voting public, would it matter in our area? Because we're going to vote UCP, we're going to vote UCP. I mean, we've been, you know, I mean, and saying that until the Wild Rose came around, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

And it, you know, like the, yeah, I think it does and where it shows itself is in our nominations, right? Like I got a claim this time. Like, but the first one, there was six of us, right? And a wide variance of views. Explain that to me. I probably don't understand that. So when you get nominated the first time, six of you. Yep.

The next time, if you say you're going back in, nobody can run. Oh, no, I didn't let me run. It just no one challenged me. Is that, I don't know. history. Is that unique? Or no, that happens. Or is it because COVID just happened? Everyone was like, I ain't touching that position with a 10 foot pole.

Because like Tanyahu up in Fort McMurray lost by eight votes. He was an incumbent MLA up there. Dave Hansen just before we got out of the legislature in December lost by one vote. So he got challenged. There was two people that challenged him. So no, like we, it's wide open. Like anyone can challenge you. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. And, uh, and if you get a challenge. in acclaimed then either no one wants the job like you say or are they're content enough that they don't want to kick you out of there right like the local the local members type of thing sure yeah yeah yeah because if you get in you're going to upset people that's the nature of the job right in positions you take or whatever well i mean you think of a uh a president i'm going to use the States. Sure. Um, when the vote at the end is like what, 52 to 48? You know, how close it is.

It's like you just pissed off half the country. No matter what you do. And maybe, maybe at some, and you know, a majority is, you know, a 60, 40 split. You're still like, yeah, how many millions of people that pisses up? Politics is really strange that way. Well, and it's the process, right? So if, if, and that's where like we, for the first time since I've been involved, uh, and even before I got elected, we actually got a policy recommendation put on the AGM agenda and had to do with electricity. So we put that, and the way that works is we as a local CA came up with a policy suggestion that we wanted to do. We submitted it. That gets sent out to all the members and they vote on it as to what they want to see at the AGM. Ours got the third most votes.

And what was it, Garth? It was on electricity, and all I said is I, I, I just think that any new source of, of electrical generation should, before we approve it, it should be, we should take into account how far that is, like the transmission costs. Because if you take a generation spot and it's out in the middle and over, you have to get it to the line, to the, to the system, right, to the grid. And that is transmission. And that gets socialized over all users in that area. So if you're building all this new transmission stuff, because you have to go where the wind blows or the sun shines, not only are you adding costs relative to, from a carbon credit perspective, that's adding to the base cost of the people that set our energy price, or electricity price,

but you are also increasing potentially transmission costs. And all I said, that should get into the equation of whether that gets approved or not. So that's what we said in a real tight policy thing. And then that went out and we were number three. And we were number three in there and it passed. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to become part of our policy, but it's a recommendation from the AGM. So that's how people get involved. Like, do individual points of view matter?

Yes. like I went and spoke about health care at the Camrose AGM and there was over 300 people there like those people are engaged right and I was really impressed with that and after people came up and talked to me and and but they they feel that and it can happen like if you have input

into your local CA that's how policy gets into the AGM and if it passes there it becomes a discussion point for a platform that you're going to have for an election. Then if you win the election, you can implement your policy. So I think sometimes people phone up and say, look, this is what I want, go get it done, right?

Well, there's a process, and there's work that needs to be done other than just saying it. If you're serious about it, get involved, get a policy development process going through the CA, get it to the AGM, and then to try to get votes for it, you've got to go out and get other CAs, and get them to vote for it, right? And members and stuff like that, like get that message out.

That's what you have to try to do. And that's how people can get involved. So locally, like, you know, that's that part. The other part is when I work with local municipal leaders. And like Mayor Gerald Albers is a great example. He's, uh, when I first, you know, first guy to latch on me, he says, come to Lloyd. I want to drive around and show you my priority. Right.

So we drove around and we had a list of them. five and we start trying to check them off right and I use him as an example to other municipalities that I talked to in my constituency and say that's really good instead of just like don't just yell at us what do you need help with and I'll see what I can do for you and I've been able to get that working with everybody because everyone wants to solve local problems right especially municipalities because that's their job so I've so we've done that like here one of them and it's been the biggest frustration

Like in the fall of 2020, we passed a where we can send Netflix across a border to the Saskatchewan hospital, right? Saskatchewan side of Lloyd Minster. And you can't do that. So you have to do tests over again sometimes going back and forth. Send, explain that. Net care is medical information. So x-ray and lab tests, right? Okay.

And for the listener, I know a lot of people understand Lloyd, but let's just assume there's a few that don't. Lloyd falls right smack in the middle of the borderline, right? The border, yeah. You got half on Alberta. Two thirds on Alberta, one third on Saskatchew. You'd know the percentage is better than me. So you can understand that her hospital is on the Saskatchewan side. Meanwhile, majority of the population lives on Alberta.

Yeah. And there's issues, right? There's like that creates issues for all sorts of things. But, but the, the, the, the, the, and it's been trying for years to pass legislation to allow the transfer of us, that information across a border. So we pass that, that can, that can go across. provincial borders and it can go through international borders. What's happened is then, okay, you pass the regulation or the legislation, then you need to get regulations and amendments in place

to be able to do it, right? Because the privacy commissioner had a real problem with it. How am I going to enforce breaches of the Privacy Act if they're in another province or another country, right? So that was their concern. So they're out there building up, regulations and amendments and stuff like that to give them the ability to do that, whatever that is. We still don't have that. So here we are two years later, right? And we're into our third year now, and it's still not in place. The guys that couldn't get that information in 2020 still can't get it today.

So I'm really proud. It was going to be one of my marks on the wall of what I accomplished locally here. And here we are. They tell me they're close. real close but you know the frustration of that part is one of my it's one of my accomplishments I think but one of my biggest frustrations is that it's take it so long to try to get implemented no I was gonna ask you about frustration you know one of the things I don't think the lay person understands and I don't use me as

specifically is how slow things move it doesn't make it doesn't make well certainly when it comes to security and privacy and things like that and you know sweeping change to the province yeah I understand how slow things can move. The only problem I got, and I hate to bring COVID rate back up, and how quickly things could change overnight when we were having press conferences every single day. Right?

Like the sweeping changes that happened to everybody, it seemed like in an emergency was fine. Yeah. But now when you got, you know, like, you know how ridiculous that is? Sorry, for a local person that that can't just, it's ridiculous. Well, I'll give you a better example. Sure.

Federally, we made marijuana legal in one year. Right. We can't build pipelines. You know, we, it's sometimes. What's, what's the thing then, Garth, you know, I'd ask you about how you fell on the politics and that kind of thing. You know, looking at politics from outside and being a campaign manager and certainly seen a little bit of that race, then actually getting in. Yeah. What have you learned from being in politics to just being a citizen, voting, paying, etc?

that you think would be wise for people to understand. Well, you know, people have asked me, you know, how come you're not a minister of something, right? Well, I really don't want to be because as a ministry, you get so narrowly focused on the one ministry that you're dealing with. And it makes it less, you're less able to do your constituency work because you're just so hyper-focused. You're just immersed in the day-to-day challenges of running that minister.

So my preference, and I guess if a leader came and asked me to administer of something, you know, I'd probably take it, but I, but it, I don't view my success as an MLA as to whether I get a ministry or not. Like I'm not there for title or treasure, but like there's like I can define the three issues that I want to work on and then solving local constituency issues. And I just think that if I can have influence, And I can. Like I can, I can, like the, the renal dialysis machine. Like we, the foundation came to me and said they were raised money and they needed another two million, I think it was.

And so I worked on that one. I worked on that one. And they've been trying to get it for years. And we got $4.25 million. And I phoned up Malcolm Racky, who was running at that. At that time. At that time. And he said, oh, geez, they're paying for the whole thing.

You know, so, so I had some influence, right? The exhibition association over there, there was land that the town owned, that they were leasing. The fear was is that it was going to get a developer or some private thing might come to the town. He said, I'll give you this much money for that. Yeah, it said he can't turn it down or what have. Yeah, whatever. And then what happens to the exhibition association? So I advocated for that and they've been advocating for that for years and maybe it's because we're in power, you know, that happened.

But so we got the money to buy that for the association and then that was money that the city could use for whatever it wanted to use it for. So, you know, those are local things that people bring to my attention and and not everyone sees the advocacy that happens, right? because they're just going about their life. Like people aren't involved. They're just living their life. Have you enjoyed it? Yeah. I mean that certainly, I hear, I've asked this a lot about politics.

You know, I've told you, you know, Trudeau gets in, you start paying attention. I don't know. Maybe it was kids. Maybe it was all the same time. Maybe it's a certain age. I don't know. But one of the things, you know, when I first started out, I'm like, why aren't more people? racing to be into politics, right?

Lots of business owners want nothing to do with them, right? They talk about there's not enough money in it. I think I've debunked that. I think there is enough money in it. I mean, I just don't think you get paid $20,000. You don't. Like, the numbers are way higher than that.

They talk about how much you're in the public eye. And I'm like, okay, maybe fair. It's to talk about how much animosity you have to deal with and how busy you are. You're away from your kids or, you know, everything else. Have you enjoyed it? Yeah, I have. And why I have, you know, it's funny because I was listing, I went to a local Rotary club meeting,

I was listing all the different committees I was on and what I was doing. And, and they said, well, Jesus, like, what are you doing your days off, right? Well, you're kind of working all the time, but it, it doesn't feel, like what I said, it doesn't feel like work. Like I'm, I'm learning so much. What I describe to people, I say, you know, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can, talk I can talk partly intelligently to a way broader group of people about their issue than I could before I got into politics.

So you learn a lot, right? And if you, in the end, like whenever an MLA passes away, they get announced in the legislature, right? Most time I don't know that name, never heard of it before, right? And it could have been just two terms ago. So you don't... Well, you think of guys from the area who've been MLAs. I can't list them all off.

Yeah. I mean, I just can't. And that's our own MLA, let alone 87 or 86 others. Yeah. And so that's why, and this is what Steve West, the great recommendation he gave me when I, when I won that night, he says, look, you are going to be inundated with all sorts of stuff. He says, don't try to be an expert at everything. You'll get nothing done.

He says, pick one. what you want to work on, focus on that, be aware of everything else and be able to look up the issues or advocate for it based on the information you get from a constituent or a mayor or whatever that you're dealing with, but pick what you want to work on. And so that's kind of what I've done. And that's why like fossil fuels, I'm like I'm known as the climate change guy or wherever you want to call it. But I don't mind pushing back on that. And I don't care about the the vilification that I like I get beat up all the time we get emails from Ontario asking me saying you know quit embarrassing yourself like they so they're

trying to intimidate me into silence right well you know I I don't care so so for me the the draw of it and like I just recently decided to run again and part of it was the like before the nomination process happened and and I was sitting there And I'm thinking, you know, can I be more influential? Because you get tour in so many different areas. If you want to work on something specific, would I be better working on the outside through some sort of a lobby group or on a board somewhere, you know, relative to health care or something like that?

And I asked the minister that specifically when we're on the tour. And he says, you know what? He says, as long as I'm a minister, you're going to have influence in the best way you can have influences as an MLA. And so he is he's embraced input from all sorts of MLAs. And, and so that was the reason that I said, okay, I'm going to add health care to it. And, but I'm still going to work on the electricity and utilities and, and, and, and fossil fuel thing. So that's why I decided to run again because, you know, I don't need, I need issues to try to solve.

I don't need treasure and title. Do I have you for a few more minutes? Yep, I got to be it somewhere at noon, but we got some more time. Okay. So I'm just going to pay attention to the clock here for a few more minutes because I want to throw, assuming, you know, things go right in May. Yeah, right. Four years more of Garth, correct? Yep.

Okay. I've been pondering this idea and why not? No, I can't think of a better person to throw it at than the guy who's actually representing us. Four years out, assuming everything goes. spot on. Yep. Okay. Could we run?

Because I assume you won't stay in for a third term. No. I assume I actually should have thought that before I even said it. But I assume you're sticking for one more term and after second term, that'll be enough. That'll be enough for me. If I can't accomplish what I want in that length of time and I'll be 71 at that point. So, so, you know. Okay.

So then two questions. One is, the first is, do you think younger people should get a involved at the MLA level or at least campaign manager, I don't know, you get the point, where they're involved so that by the time they hit a certain age, they can get involved. Do you think it's a young man's game? Do you think it's the opposite? When you get young kids and kids in school and everything else, you've got to be, well, I think you've got to be involved there, but I'm curious because, you know, you're doing it in the later stage.

You get in politics or retire? That was the two options that said, well, well earlier. Do you think it's, you wish more young. folks would be involved? I got to tell you the we have young people in our caucus like there was two ladies Miranda Rosen and Michaela Glasgow at the time she's fry now okay and she's the one that gave up her seat for the Premier but when they won at the beginning of last term Miranda was 24 okay Michaela was 26 and fair boy you know and

how much value can they bring? My God, were they talented? Another one, Dan Williams, that's up from the peace country. I don't know how they get so smart, so early, right? But to answer your question, I think, like, when I look at it, when should you get involved in politics? Well, either in that 25 to 35 range, maybe, before you had kids, it depends how important if you can manage your way around it.

because I couldn't imagine being in this job when my kids were little. Like I just, I just can't see that. But if you're in there and that before you have kids, and then if you want to take off and go do something else, because you gain a lot of connections and you get exposed to a lot of different companies. And I was talking to one MLA that's not running

and he's getting approached by a lot of people to base, you know, because you have this, institutional knowledge, maybe you can be of value. Yeah, absolutely. So I think, and that's not my plan because when I'm done, I think I'm done. But the, the, um, so I think if you get in young enough, and it doesn't have to be 25, but I think 35 to 45, if you can go in and make your mark there and, and then use that, uh, all the relationships and everything that you developed and, and go get the next stage of

your life in place. that would be a good time frame. The other one is, you know, my age, which is, it's kind of your last fling and then where you go. Well, then here's a question for you. When you're officially done. Yeah. And you're going to have a new representative for the UCP. Yep.

And certainly a lot of things can change in that time. But assuming we stay UCP in this area, right? That becomes more of the election than the actual election. Yes. In my eyes, right? If I'm reading the T cards, you know, the T leaves, the right? way. And I go, I've had this idea of like a Canadian Idol of the, you know, the Wainwright, Vermilion, Lloyd Minster. I'm like, how do you foster where you get six, I don't know, 20? You just, and then we can have the best. And I'm not saying you're in the, no, no, no, fair enough. Yeah, I understand. Somebody who's going to follow in the footsteps of Garth that, I don't know, maybe is that 26 year old, or maybe it is the 80 year old, or not the 80 year old, the 60 year old.

apologies that that is but you get them on stage and we roll out the red carpet and we let people go up there and we try and I I think of like Canadian Idol where they go around town by town they they interview all these people and they pull out the best one and then they go to the next time and then they put them on and all of a sudden you have your area and they're like here is the six or here is the eight or whatever whatever the numbers yeah I'm like is that a because I sit here in this seat I'm fascinating by politics I never thought I would say that I tell you what when I first started Garth you can see the walls in here it's all hockey I mean it started to slowly change yeah but you know on sports shows what do

they tell they always say we'll never talk about politics and we'll never talk about religion and now in here we've talked about it all yeah you know it's it's slowly changed and so I find myself looking at politics and I'm like man I can't fix and I don't need to fix everybody's area but in my constituency I'm like okay how do we get people interested to run to talk about things again so that you foster the best possible candidate? So you get, in my opinion, and now I'm bullish on Daniel Smith, at least for the time being. How do you get more Danielle's? And certainly that's going to be certain instances where they, whatever.

But our area has produced some very, very talented MLAs on both sides of the province. And how do you encourage and keep? you know, pushing that up so that you get, you know, the best people. The best people. And then they're supported by the best people who are trying. Anyways, you kind of get the idea. I get it.

Yeah. And, you know, part of it. And I think this is where some really highly qualified individuals may not want to do it because of what they've heard of how, and I don't want this to sound like complaining, but how MLAs are treated sometime. Like they're like people can unload this. Yeah. Like I've, I've hung up on two people and it was mostly because of profanity. And I gave me a chance. I said, look, if you're going to swear, I can't continue this conversation.

And then they start swearing again, right? That's two. Uh, you know, the emails I've gotten and stuff, like it. And I, and I'm not too bad. Like, like, other ones have been death threats. Like, it's crazy what we do sometimes. So I think that scares away some really high end people that this have been. Like I don't need that because I've asked some local businesses. I said how much involvement do you have with government? Not much really, you know, unless something gets past that bugs me and then I'll complain to somebody. But to get back to your original question, I think we had six people that ran, all very good people. And we, the same format that we did for the leadership thing in Vermillion,

that was born here in this constituency when I ran for my, the first nomination. And what Garth is talking about for people that didn't come that night is it's like speed dating for politicians. Certainly my portion of it was brand new, I would think, too, more of a roundtable than a debate. And then it was followed by speed dating for politicians where they had different areas set up for each politician to talk to a group of, at that night, was probably 20 people at a spot. There was quite a few people there that night.

And they'd go around after a certain, I don't know what it is, 12. minutes or 15 minutes and then they rotate to the next spot it was very uh you're good yeah yeah yeah and so that's what that's what we did so i think like if anyone knows of someone that they think boy this is a good young person they should be in politics or that business person would be really good they need to start working on it early well well i i'll use a hockey analogy yeah you know growing up they used to have spring and fall camp and uh what do they call they call them those like where they could spring camp you brought in all these kids just to a try and identify right identify oh we should invite one two three four maybe it's 10 maybe it's two but you just you go and

I'm like I wonder how we foster that in our area yeah so that you can identify like man there's three sitting there and there's four over there and there's two because I've I've gone to a lot of political meetings over the course of the last like year and a half kind of hurts my brain because I never thought I'd be there and one of the things that always catches my eye and I could be wrong on this, because I don't go to all mall, is the average age has to be 50 plus. And I am a young guy. Yep.

And I'm like, I'm not that young. I'm not that old either. But I'm like, how do I get more people my age, you know, to come out and listen and get involved? And then maybe at some point, maybe somebody's got a different circumstance than me and wants to get involved. I got this opportunity to put you on a mic and grill you and hopefully, you know, have you come back and everything else, right? Because it's really important for my area, me too, to hear directly from Garth about what he's seeing. So before I let you out of here, I'm running out of time.

Funny, I get a politician talking and me talking and it seems to go. A lady had asked, Tara asked, actually, I shouldn't say a lady, what you think of the new direction of Daniel Smith? What are your thoughts? Are you on board with what she's saying? And you've mentioned, I'm going to say climate change and you're going to call it something different. Well, no, yeah. No, I'm okay with that.

But certainly there's some things. Overall, what do you think of the direction under Daniel Smith? Well, I'm comfortable. Like, I'm, like, she's willing to accept input. And I saw this on the national media just this week. They are criticizing her for flip-flop, like changing the name and that kind of stuff, right? the Sovereignty Act. What she did is she listened to people that had

criticisms of it and acted on it. That's not a flip-flop. Like that's input. That's accepting input. So I see that. I see that in her. You can have, you can have a conversation like she's not, she doesn't portray herself as the smartest person in the room. You know, she's willing to hear people out and and so I'm, I'm, I'm comfortable with their leadership. I want, I think part of the reason I'm on the Alberta First Cabinet Policy Committee is because I want a more assertive response to the federal government. Like I'm on side with that. So I'm so I'm so I'm I'm comfortable with that I like I'm I think she'll I think she's going to be good

for this province and I hope she wins this spring. Here's another one. Okay. Tyson Metro. This what he asked. Alberta insurance companies are out of control to the point that is giving Saskatchew a competitive advantage and potentially driving business away from Alberta. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, we are. We're not the most expensive, but we're close to it. Um, the, uh, what had happened before is there was a cap on them and, uh, and they couldn't increase their, their prices and it made it. So what happened is coverage was disappearing. And I know this is one that's right on, uh, Minister Tave's, uh, plate. And he's working, he's made some changes. And in the last, like when, when we took the, when we took the cap off,

there was a bump. But the last, uh, I think it's 24 months, the rate of increase has been less than the national average. We're still expensive. We're all aware of that. There's a problem there. But travel, or minister TAVES is working on this one. So I don't disagree with what he's saying. Uh, BC, uh, is, uh, about as expensive or they're not that much cheaper than us, but they lose, that's a government plan, but they lose a whole bunch of money. So essentially the taxpayer subsidizing the government program there. And I think that under the NDP, by capping, what happens is the only way to is if you can't increase your revenue, you've got to reduce your cost.

So to reduce it by lessening coverage, that eventually lends itself to a government insurance program, which some people might like, right? But as a conservative, I'd rather not do that. And so I won't say there's no problem. There is. And I think Minister Taves is trying to find a solution to it. And he's the right guy to do it. But I don't have all the answers on that one for sure.

All right. Your final one, it's the final question brought to you by Crude Master. Shout out to Heath and Tracy McDonald. They sit on the Saskatchewan side, but they also have businesses on the Alberta either way. The question isn't about that. It's more of a personal. question. It's simple. If you're going to stand behind a cause and stand behind it absolutely.

What's one thing girth stands behind? Well, my, well, the fossil fuel, the pushback on what I call the war in fossil fuels, that and that relates right into electricity. And I, like, fossil fuels are being vilified around the world and it's going to hurt people. And it's, you know, like there's shortage in Europe right now right yeah and I think it's the the green whatever there the agenda the agenda yeah and that's a big deal like if we make we're in a position in this province to be so competitively priced if we don't damage ourselves with these carbon taxes if we have a healthy fossil fuel industry we can fund health care we can fund all these things if we destroy

that. Yeah, we're in, we're in big, big trouble. Like, you look at the county of Vermilion River and the MD of Wainwright, the linear tax that they get represents in Vermillion. It's 50% of their tax take. And Wainwright's 70. You kill that industry. Where is that money going to come from? If you're going to maintain services and roads, it's rural people, it's farms, it's acreages, it's the urban areas. Like, like people got to wake up and understand, understand that our competitive edge in the in this country and in the world is our false I think our area gets that right like I mean I've had enough people on here talking about Europe talking about this race to jump off a cliff with but I get

beat up locally for my position really oh absolutely like I get quite vilified interesting yes it's it's not and it's in my problem why is that because people want no why I just think you know what's what's happened is is what the green left, and I don't know if that's a proper word, but I'll call them that. They've done a great job of advocating for their case. And all they have to say in a meeting now is climate change, and that's supposed to intimidate you into silence. So they have gone unchallenged for a long time.

Well, I hate to bring it all the way back to COVID. But what the similarities are, when it comes to the green agenda, the same thing happens to experts, media, everything. If you talk at the opposite way, shadow ban, removed from things, silenced, vilify, everything. So as good a job as they've done on getting their message out and marketing and everything else. The other thing they have in their back pocket is anyone who speaks out against them, you've said the word already about six times. Intimination has been interesting. They find it interesting out here.

It's not that I think it's Brian Git. he's a guy who was in wind and solar in California and has switched over to a nuclear advocate and I would remember when they were wanting to put nuclear on the North Saskatchewan River I forget how many years ago that was and I remember thinking as a younger guy

I was like man I don't want that here right and then he got talking about it I was like oh that's interesting and I recommend people go back and listen to that but he wasn't against all solar and nuclear he said there's parts of the world that could really benefit it from. Absolutely. But to act like intermittent energy is going to solve our problems, especially in this country, especially in this province. Well, I'm okay with bringing,

by you with using it. I just, it has to compete on its own merit. Yes. It shouldn't be subsidized or supported through carbon credits or any of that kind of stuff. If it can actually lower our cost, then great. I don't mind having wind and solar. But if it doesn't, then it adds cost and it creates a redundancy where we got to have the fossil fuel backed up because of the intermittency of those, all we've done is raised our cost structure, which makes us less competitive in the world. If we took our advantage, our competitive edge in fossil fuels and didn't have it abused by us or a federal government, then who knows? Why can't we have car manufacturing here if we have the cheapest electricity in the in the in the continent right why not take our

competitive edge and use it and maybe that's part of the reason the feds don't like it because they don't like that competitive edge so so I'm like that's the pushback that I wanted it well I'm gonna make sure I get you out of here on time so I mean I've kept you longer and I thought were but I appreciate you coming into a conversation it it ventured into a whole lot of different areas I appreciate you coming in and being open about it certainly uh The reason I'm, you know, I don't want to have every MLA on G's 87 would be, you know, I mean, that Miles just called conservative talk. You're right. But I, when you're our representative and I sit in your constituency, I think it's really beneficial for me to hear from you, a little alone everybody else, you know.

And I'm sure there's going to be some people, you know, the text line will light up because one of the things, if I bring you back on, I hope to do better, is have more input from different people. And now that they've heard you, probably that won't be a hard thing to do. Sure. But to have more input from the constituency, because I think, you know, if there's one thing I've carved out for myself is that a lot of people from this area listen. Sure. And they're going to hear from you. And I think that's a good thing.

And I think even for me, it's a good thing. I appreciate you being open and everything else to coming in here and sitting here and getting a little bit grilled and everything else. It's going to be interesting if I get in trouble over. But whatever, you know, it's my, it's the way I feel, right? Well, I appreciate it. Thanks again, Garth, for hopping in this morning. Okay.

Thank you very much. Thank you.