Shaun Newman Podcast - #386 - Kris Sims

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

She worked in radio on Vancouver Island before moving to Ottawa to work as a legislative assistant on Parliament Hill. She then joined News Talk Radio 580 CFRA as a producer, reporter and anchor, eventually becoming a journalist for the CTV Parliamentary Bureau. She was also a founding reporter for Sun News Network and now is the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federations. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Brian Gitt. This is Ed Latimore. This is Danielle Smith. This is Kristen Nagel. This is Aaron Gunn. This is Vance Crow. This is Quick Dick McDick, and you are listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Friday. I've got Chuck Prodnick and Jamie Sinclair sitting in watching me today, so that'll be interesting. That's Monday's episode. Either way, happy Friday. I hope everybody's week is cruising along. I've been trying really hard to get this out. I'm going to blame Chuck and Jamie for this as not being further along. Monday, it will be official.

Monday, tickets for March 18th in Eminton. We get Kid Carson, Wayne Peters, Byron Christopher, and Chris Sims, who you're going to hear today. Coming to Emmington, we're going to be talking Legacy Media. And the tickets for it have been delayed. I don't know. I'd love to give you this, like, lovely story about it all. all, but let's just say we're very, very close. And certainly I've just gotten an email while I sit here, and by the end of today, it should be all finalized. So it might even be before Monday.

The tickets finally go on sale. Either way, by Monday, they will be for sale. And that's the next show. The next SMP presents March 18th in Eminton. If you're looking for opportunities to advertise, the Tuesday mashup has been very, very, very, very. popular. I put that lightly. Honestly, I don't know how to explain it, but we've been advertising for less than two weeks, and we're almost sold out for the entire year.

So if you're looking to hop on a Tuesday mashup, I suggest you fire me a note off on the text line. Just looking to show notes. If you're looking for the rest of the days of the week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and heck, even some Thursdays, you're looking to get to, you know,

hop on board with the SMP. Shoot me a note in the text line as well. We have open spots there for 2023 and would love to have you on. So just, yeah, hit me up. Before we get to today's show, let's talk a sponsor here. Rectec Power Products for 20 years. They've been an industry, a leader. This is what happens when Sinclair over there brings in a case of Bud Light.

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Give Wade Gartner a call 780808, 5025. Now let's get on the tail of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals, delivering to your farm commercial or oil field locations for more information visit them at Hancock Petroleum.com. She worked in radio on Vancouver Island before moving to Ottawa to work as a legislative assistant on Parliament Hill. She then joined News Talk Radio as a producer, reporter, and anchor, and eventually becoming a journalist for the CTV Parliament. Elementary Bureau. She was a founding reporter for the Sun News Network. Now, she's the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm talking about Chris Sims. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Chris Sims, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Chris Sims. So, ma'am, thanks for hopping on and doing this. It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having us. Well, let's start here. We're going to start with a little bit of your background. So not only myself, but everyone else can get a feel for you. We were just kind of talking briefly before this. And you already mentioned you had 25 years of experience. I'm like, holy crap. First off, you do not look that old to have that much experience.

But hey, that's just me. Fire at me. Let's hear a little bit about your background. And then let's jump into some things because I feel like I'm going to learn a whole lot of what's coming here in the next couple of years. and you're going to lay some facts on me that are going to probably hurt my head. Yeah, there's a lot of numbers to go through and the numbers affect people. So, yeah, I've got about 25 years experience in. I just had my birthday yesterday on Ronald Reagan's birthday, so thank you very much to the former president.

I'm from rural Western Canada. I was born and raised in Hope, British Columbia. I was raised on hunted meat. I am a firearms owner. I own a pickup truck. after my husband and I got married, we moved to Ottawa back in the early 2000s under the idea that the West wants in. Remember that? And worked on Parliament Hill for 15, 20 years, mostly in news, news media.

So national bureaus of CTV. I was a founding reporter for Sun News Network. I was there from Startup Day to Shutdown Day when the CRTC pulled our plug. I've done a little bit of time on the other side of the fence. in government working as a director of communications, but mostly it's been on the media side of that fence. I even worked at the CBC for a few weeks, so I know what the inside of that beast looks like a little bit.

And now, thankfully, I have found my home at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I've been here for just over five years. I was the British Columbia director, and now this past summer, I like to call myself an economic refugee from BC. the warm embrace of Alberta has accepted me here. So I am the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

For folks who don't know who we are, we've been around since 1990, since before the internet was a thing. And we are dedicated to low taxes, less waste, and accountable government. Geez, I like the sound of the end of that. There's a lot there that you're like, oh, geez, that sounds reasonable and common sense. But hey, today's world, we don't like to seem to want to do it. any of that. So the Sun News media thing. There's something I know a little bit about, but not a whole heck of a lot. This was a conservative style attempt at media. Yes. Am I getting that

right or am I thinking something different? No, you're thinking it right. Basically, we were started, we were founded on the principle of the Sun media newspaper chain. So Calgary Sun, Edmonton son, Winnipeg son, Toronto son, all those guys. That's been one of the longest standing media organizations in Canada. And then a guy by the name of Corey Tanike, you might have heard of him, a big mover within conservative circles. He used to work for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and he saw a gap in the media landscape. This is back, you know, in the late 2008, 2008, 2010 around there and said, you know what?

We've got a big voice and talk radio. we've got a big voice for you know small C you know conservative government libertarian standpoints big voice and talk radio bigish voice within the Sun Media newspaper chain and really no

representation on TV like where do we hear from rural Western working class common sense type folks on TV and so he started a television news network and then dozens of us signed on to it

and so you probably know Ezra Levant, Candice Malcolm, lots of folks from that school on, went through Sun News Network. And we were on the air for almost four years before the CRTC shut us down. We couldn't get carriage. And I don't know what that last part means. Could you explain that to me? Because, you know, being someone who was boots on the ground, I find this fascinating. I didn't realize this was going to come at me today.

I've heard the kind of like the old wives tales of what happened but you knowing exactly I love to just hear exactly what happened so you'd be like oh okay and you know this probably bleeds a little bit into Bill C-11 and possibly for this guy what what the future could hold if the worst case

scenario happens anyways back it up a second at the end they wouldn't give you and explain that to me Yes. So in order to back it up, I need to back it up a little bit more. So for a long time, networks like CTV Newsnet, CBC News World, BNN, those Canadian kind of cable news channels that you would see, they had what's called mandatory carriage. Now, this doesn't incur a cost to taxpayers. I need to let folks know. But what it was is that you automatically had a spot in a cable offer package. So when you're back to remember, harken back to the days of regular TV and you're flipping through the channel guide, we would otherwise have landed between CTV and CBC if we had had mandatory carriage, but we never did get it.

And so we launched without that carriage. You had to basically hear about us. And then you'd have to phone your cable provider, ask if they even offered it to pay, and then get us. In some cases, the cable provider didn't even offer, like we were non-existent and big chunks of Western Canada. And so then fast forward, we presented a full, you know, presentation to the CRTC on how Canadian we were. We provided hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of original Canadian television broadcasting. Even our desks were made in Calgary. And I was a true believer. I used to, you know, we had a collection of our viewers who were really hardcore and loyal. and I went through them on phone numbers asking them to please write a letter to the CRTC asking for mandatory carriage.

And it just never happened. And then towards the very end of our existence, the CRTC went a step further and tightened the screws more. Basically made it so that no matter what, we wouldn't have been able to get viewership. And our plug was pulled because we just couldn't get through that wall of bureaucracy at the CRTC. And this is the sad part is that since we were, I think we were born a little too soon, in that we couldn't do what you and I are doing right now. The technology wasn't there yet. The streaming services weren't a thing.

It was a little bit too early for, hey man, just subscribe to it if you want to watch it. You can watch it on your phone. You can watch it on your laptop. We weren't there yet. It seems like it's 50 years ago, but it was only a few years ago. And so we weren't able to overcome that wall. We were born in the traditional media age, and our plug was pulled just at the launch of alternative media.

But all is not lost. It eventually spun off into things like Rebel, True North, in many cases, Western Standard, all podcasts like this. And it still lives on in things like talk radio and the Sun media newspaper chain. So, yeah, that's in a nutshell. Why wouldn't they give Sun Media carriage? There's two answers to that. One, the traditional answer from the CRTC's perspective, if I recall correctly, this is a while ago now, was that we just didn't meet the standard.

You know, thanks, but no thanks. You're not providing enough content. And sorry, what's the standard? Like, what do they have is like you need to check off these things? original content of Canadian television per day, a number of employees. We did, to be blunt. We checked off all those boxes. If you want the political answer, it just wasn't going to work. I don't know if you've had that situation before where you just can't convince someone because they just disagree with you. And they just don't want to see you around. And that's ultimately what it felt like. Now, to be as fair as I can and take as much responsibility for Sun News as possible, again, we were born. a bit too early. We had all these regulations. We were born within traditional media and we couldn't make it work. And we didn't do things small. We had satellite trucks. You know, we paid our hosts well. We had full studios like with proper lighting, really good cameras. Like, you know, we went big.

But Chris, that's what we're up against them. Right? Like, that's what we're up against. This, you know, like, I'm at times, I can be a little bit naive maybe to the, to how precarious of situation we might be sitting in, you know, like the best, we will find a way, we will find a way. And then I hear that story and I'm like, oh, like, oh. This is why, so Jay Goldberg is our Ontario director and he's been working with Michael Geist, who's a brilliant gentleman who works in academia, who's been fighting tooth and nail against C-11. And personally speaking, this is why C-11 scares me so much. much because I feel through Sun News Network that I've seen this movie before. And when you put

the existence of your voice, like we're doing right now, your free expression, your broadcasting, in a sense, over the internet into the hands of bureaucrats in Ottawa who get to decide whether or not you are seen or heard, that should disturb everyone. And to friends on the left, If you're cool with the Trudeau government deciding what you can hear, say and think online now, do a thought process. Imagine if it weren't your guy who's in power. Yeah, Macon Pierre gets elected in, you know, the next year. And he goes, we're going to cancel everything on the opposite side. Right.

You know, rabble, Canada land. You know, there's all sorts of folks who are, you know, individually doing their thing on the left. It's good. We want as many voices as possible. What we don't want is the government deciding what you can hear, say, and think and view online. And we don't want taxpayers paying for it. And this is where we're in this real pickle. Because we've seen this movie before. We've seen what happens when bureaucrats get to decide what is and is not Canadian content, what should and should not be seen by Canadians. And then you add in the fact that now journalists are on. the government payroll outside of the CBC. This is just not okay. And as a longtime journalist and as a taxpayer representative, we're in dangerous territory here. And so this is why it was really heartening to see, for example, award-winning novelists who are working in the Senate as senators, including folks like Margaret Atwood saying,

guys, we can't do this. We can't have C-11. The problem is, are they listening? No. You know, it's great that people are speaking up, but our politicians don't seem to be listening to anything. They aren't, but fortunately, we do have elections, and ultimately we do have a democracy. And they're going to have to listen eventually, because they are not ruling oligarchs that get to stay in there forever. and if we all are consistent and keep paying attention and keep writing those letters and keep making

those phone calls, eventually you're going to get inside the heads of members of parliament who are sitting in the caucus with Prime Minister Trudeau and they're going to be saying, you know what, man, I'm hearing from my constituents and they're not happy with this. And what that does is that gets that member of parliament thinking, hmm, maybe I might lose my job next time. Maybe I'll be locked down next time. Maybe I'll be canceled. next time. And that gets their attention pretty quick. So this is why I'm trying to give folks hope. I'm trying to warn people about things like C-11 and paying journalists with government money, which I can't believe I'm saying that out loud. That's not okay. But I'm trying to also give them

hope that if we all speak up, and it's like critical mass, right, we all speak up at the same time and put our foot down and we don't get distracted, we can win this fight. I normally don't like to spur on much fear or negativity, that type of thing. But I, I am curious from a guy sitting in this chair. If Bill C-11 were to go through, paint me a picture of what we're doing right here or just in general to shows like this or what have you, whatever they deem, you know. I'm just curious from your background, your eyes on it. What do you see if C-11 goes through and what comes of it?

So there's C-11 in and of itself. and as of right now, the way it's written, it basically goes like this. The CRTC slash whatever term they want to use for their new version of bureaucrats that will police the internet, will then decide what is and is not Canadian content. Okay, so that's first and foremost.

So is this Canadian content? I don't know. You'd have to ask the dozen bureaucrats who get to decide that because they'll have all sorts of different parameters or reasons they give you for whether or not we're Canadian content. And then they decide where that ranking is on when people will see it.

So, for example, if you go on to a streaming service or a video platform like YouTube or whatever it is, where will this wind up when people search? When they're scrolling through, will they have to scroll through several dozen other things, like government-funded TV shows in order to get to your podcast? and then it's buried and then it doesn't get promoted and then the algorithm messes with it, that's the start. So they could take that then and modify it based on what there's a new, there's a different bill.

I don't think it has a new number yet, but in the last parliament it was called the Online Harms Act. And basically what that is is an extension of the human rights tribunals back from the late 90s. And then they get to decide what is harmful, right? So is us saying that journalists should not be paid by the state? Is that harmful? Is us saying that the overspending by the Trudeau government into deficit has helped cause this inflationary crisis?

Are they going to label that misinformation? Why? Because the finance minister disagrees with us? See where this is going? Well, it's funny. I mean, we all live through COVID. I've already been removed off one good old YouTube gone. I'm pretty sure nobody's promoting me.

I've been pushed this way, that way. But I always think of the stricent effect. And it's like, and yet people want to listen. They share it. They find a way. They continue to move. But, I mean, there is a growing push to, I mean, I don't even know anymore. I think Margaret Atwood, for people who don't want.

realized, right? The Handmaid's Tale. Orks and Craig, yep. Right. And we were talking about this just the other day, that the handsmaid tail, I had no idea. Like, I guess it just never dawned on me that a Canadian wrote that, right? I mean, like, it's a huge, but it's not considered Canadian content. Why? Because you have to meet all these parameters on how many people are, and you're just like, how does that make any sense? Like, I mean, I was in radio for a long time, okay? And for a lot, I forget what the reason was. Sorry to interrupt, but I forget what the reason was.

But for a long time, I forget, it was, Brian Adams wasn't considered a Cancon. I forget why. Because you have a certain number, there you go. You have to play a certain amount of CanCon on regular radio. That's why we all heard Anne-Marie Snowbird, like forever when we were growing up. Because that's all, that's the only song that was out there. But for, I forget what technicality it was.

It was something like his producer was from Australia for a brief moment of time, or they made eye contact with an American once. Something had happened. and he wasn't CanCon. And so this is where we're saying, guys, really? We want folks sitting in their offices in Gatineau and Ottawa deciding whether or not what conversation we're having is Canadian enough. And then if it should be viewed, and then if it should be amplified,

and then if you start adding in things like the online harms bill. Arms bill, yeah, if I drop the F bomb six times, which can't happen, all of a sudden you're removed or whatever else. It's interesting because I've said for a long time, you know, like one of the frustrating things I have about Canada is all of our talent goes south. But maybe it's even, it's not even so much that, Chris, is what you're saying is maybe they start to work with people from the South and that takes them off being Canadian content. And then you start to think about that, you're like, man, that's really fucked up. Yeah. I mean, like, honestly, like, if you're a

Canadian artist and there are a ton of them that love being here, but they, you know, Nashville for country music singers is kind of a big deal. I don't know if people realize that. And yet, you know, like it seems like it makes sense. Oh, we want to promote Canadian. Yeah, you got to be Canadian. Well, I have a Canadian passport. But if I start doing things outside the lines that may benefit me probably will, all of a sudden your country is like, yeah, but you're not Canadian.

Like, that's kind of ass backwards. It is. And this is why government should be small, like small, small, like fit inside a teacup small. But if you let it get big, they start deciding things like, what is harmful? What is misinformation? Which journalists are actually journalists and which ones should be paid for by the state? What is and is not Canadian? Like, dude, this should have nothing to do with government.

We should be deciding this stuff for ourselves. Why did I wait so long to have Chris Sims on the podcast, right? Like, I, geez, Louise, this is. Well, I'm happy to come back anytime. Well, I mean, you're painting a pretty, like, I guess I understood Canadian content. I just, I don't know if I truly understood it, you know, like, it's like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the CFL, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry football fans, but like, I'm sensing a rant. Well, one of the things that, that a sports lover wants to do is he wants to watch the best.

Sure. And the CFL has its Canadian content way of making sure Canadian players have. a way to play in the CFL, right? And it's like, well, that sounds all nice, except what happens if they're not the best players? Then they still get a spot. And the CFL lovers are going to be like, well, that's what's the best for the sport.

You know, okay, fair. But nobody wants to go watch the CFL. Why is that? And I don't mean that Canadian athletes aren't good. They certainly are. But you want the best, which the best all go to the NFL. And I mean, I'm kind of splitting hairs here.

And it's just like any time you put in, we have this, I'm sure there is a lot of benefits in certain realms, but there also is like repercussions to that. And it happens all the time. Like, I mean, come back to the music industry. I'll have a bunch of CFL fans mad at me, but come back to the music industry, you know, as soon as you start like that, man, that's really difficult. Because like if you want to better your career, all the musicians I've talked about have talked about, two spots in particular, obviously Nashville being giant, but a lot of recording artists talk about LA.

And I'm sure there's a couple other spots, right, where you go work with the best, you have the, whatever it is. And as soon as you do that, if all of a sudden you have to choose between being played on all the Canadian radio stations or working with somebody down south, and you have to balance, it's like, why are we doing that to them? I mean, don't we want the best? Don't we want, you know, I've always wondered,

and I don't know, maybe Chris, maybe you can weigh in on this. But I've always wondered with the CFL why they don't have, the biggest names in Canadian industry come to do their halftime show. At times we do and at times we don't. And then when you put it that way, I'm like, maybe they're just pissed off. You know, like maybe they don't want to come back and do Canadian things

because we've like literally told them, oh yeah, you're not Canadian. Like, I mean, that's pretty tough. There's probably some regulation. I bet you there's some weird regulation where they can't do it or they're not can con enough or who knows what. To come do the CFL show. Yeah, I know.

Well, just, hey, man, never underestimate the size and tentacles of government. You'd be surprised. I think there's actually a rule on how big our canned potatoes can be in Canada. Not quality, not origin, size. I know, right? I know. Franco Tarasano told me that. I thought he was pulling my leg.

But no, no, there's like some rule. I know this is where we're getting at. Okay. Government should be low taxes, less waste, and accountable and small. you know, folks should be deciding which CFL players they want to watch. You know, people should be deciding what music they want to listen to. And that's cultural. That's for personal enjoyment, which is very, very important.

I'm not, you know, discrediting personal enjoyment. But when we get into stuff like C-11, when we get into stuff like our online harms and we start having ministers say things like we're going to clamp down on misinformation. Yeah, I know. My entire podcast, Chris, is misinformation. You know how many labels I've had slapped on me from like day three? It's like misinformation, misinformation, misinformation, COVID this, COVID that, misinformation, this. I'm just, it's almost a bad, you know, for a bunch of us, it's almost like a bad your honor.

If you don't get one of those slapped on you at this point, it's like, well, I guess it was kind of a boring thing because, I mean, you literally talk about anything. Yeah. And it's misinformation. They love, they love saying that word. It's like, okay, how about you guys? You know, like how many ridiculous things has government done in the last week, let alone the last year, let alone the last eight years since Trudeau started? And you're like, and yet there's nothing to see here, nothing to see here. It's like, come on, give me a break.

Give you an example. Give you an example. So global, okay, we all know global. They are now asking for help from the federal government. We don't know what that means exactly. could be regulation, could just be a bucket of taxpayer cash, the way that other media outlets are taking. They actually, I forget, I'm going to paraphrase, they were talking about the carbon tax. The carbon tax, the one we have here in Canada, the mandatory minimum carbon tax, which is going up to $65 a ton on April 1st.

They actually said something along the lines of, in their copy, this is not a quote, in their copy on their website, the price on carbon, in order to fight climate change, which some opponents label a carbon tax. Do, like, what? It is a carbon tax. And this is a mainstream media outlet. I know many people who work there. I used to work with them. And they're carrying water now for government narrative,

calling it a levy or a price or whatever, you know, euphemism they want to use for the word tax. But what they're insinuating is that calling it a carbon tax, is misinformation. So are we going to be told that we can no longer use the term carbon tax because Justin Trudeau doesn't call it a carbon tax with his mouth? This is not okay. This is dangerous territory. I'll give you another example again to our folks on the left, okay? If you don't want the government deciding what you can hear, say, and think online, okay? We already have a criminal code against horrific things, okay? Like, God forbid, terrorist attacks, something like that. That is criminal. We're talking about the Ministry of Heritage putting this

stuff through. So this is Newthink and New Speak, okay? It's 1984, yeah. Completely is. And so here's an example. So back in, right after September 11th, okay, early 2000s. Okay. This is when former U.S. President George W. Bush was gearing up for the war in Iraq. Folks might remember what that felt like, what people were talking about, okay? A lot of Canadians were against participating in said thing. Now, folks on the left, mostly, there were some more libertarian and a few on the right, but mostly, credit words do, were on the left. We're organizing protests against participating in that war, in Canada.

How were they doing that? online. They were doing it through largely left-wing media and chat room organizations that were public. There were bulletin boards. They were all arranging their meetings. Like, hey, let's meet up here, let's do this. Here's the date. Here's what we're going to do. It was all online. Imagine, and then, so they had their massive protest. It was across Canada. The one in Ottawa was huge. I remember because it was bone-chillingly cold outside because I worked there up on Parliament Hill. Massive. A few days later, then Prime Minister Kretchen stood up and said, you know what, we're going to sit this

one out. Thanks, but no thanks. We're not going to go. Imagine if the state had had the power to suppress all that information. Well, that's what they're trying to do. Yes. Chris, there was this giant protest last year. I don't know

if you heard about it. And that's exactly what they tried to do. They tried to suppress it as a bunch of white right wing extremists. Can't spit it. it out this morning. It was wild. And yet... And if you can speak for yourself,

depending on how you feel about any of that stuff, that's what matters. If you as an individual can speak for yourself and have freedom of expression and hold government to account, that's why the Taxpayers' Federation got involved against C-11, because how are groups like us supposed to hold the government to account

if we're going to start being shut down and accused of misinformation when we call a carbon tax a carbon tax? So this is where folks need to wake up. It's been a full on attack, though, because I've had Tom Korski on here multiple times. Yeah, black locks. He's fantastic. It's fantastic.

And yet they've been removed from the press gallery, right? And you're going, okay. So what does the average, I feel like we've been pushing on our MLA's MPs a lot. And at times, they give us the same song and dance. Is that your suggestion, though, is you have to continue to put the pressure on your representatives to go there and represent you and say no to this? You must. That's our only pressure point. That and premiers, right?

So right now, the premiers are meeting slash talking with the prime minister. And they have a bit more clout, right? So they've got, depending on the size of your province, you know, millions of people behind them, their citizens. millions of taxpayers. They have a bit more of a red phone into the PMO. So put pressure, no matter even if you agree with what they're doing, that's fine. But tell your Premier to put pressure on the Prime Minister on these issues and your MP, because that's the only way you get through, right?

So here, for example, the gun grab. So they made adjustments at the last minute to seize way more firearms than they were even planning on doing. which of course then overnight criminalized thousands of people who own long guns and shotguns, rifles and shotguns. I'm a gun owner. There is more than 300,000 of us just in Alberta alone. And folks use them for hunting, for target practice to get rid of coyotes that are, you know, bugging the herd. All sorts. They're tools.

They're like chainsaws or pickup trucks or skis-dews. They're tools in the hands of responsible people. And here, the MPs within the liberal government, within the liberal caucus, were getting pressure and phone calls from folks like us saying, heck no, you can't do this. We know for a fact the NDP were getting the same phone calls. If you're a member of parliament and you're representing like a northern Ontario riding, good luck if you're trying to outlaw basic hunting rifles.

It's not going to fly. And so that is why I'm encouraging people. It may not show right away, but keep sending those emails, keep making those phone calls. Contact, not just them in Ottawa, phone the constituency office too. Well, and a lady from Three Hills had, shout out to Sarah Lynn. I have folks up there near three notes. She had said the other, you know, one thing is to certainly to put the pressure on. The other is you can get involved.

You could get on boards, like your MLA, your MPs board. That way you can have a little more of a direct access to it and be like, you know, and have, you know, to me there's a lot of different things. It's, you know, I think a lot of people, including myself, were just like, you know, at some point, can this just all go away? I know. But, you know, it just keeps ratcheting up, ratcheting up, ratcheting up, ratcheting up. And the only thing you can do is, you know, take your, take your breaths when you get

But then you got to go back to work and continue to put pressure on this because, you know, like to think we could ever get to where, you know, like honestly, where 1984 is. Like, there's a reason why that book has talked about a lot right now. Yes. Because we're slipping closer and closer to a lot about what it talks about, which. Yes. You pretty much need a hot shower after that book and a good episode of something funny because it takes you to dark places. It does. And to hear some magic words that.

work on most politicians. So yes, I agree, phone and tell them, you know, you're worried about this, you're worried about that, get involved. But don't just say I won't vote for you next time if you don't act on this right now. Here are some words that often work. Say something like, I'm not going to vote for you next time and I'm going to get involved with your riding association and I'm going to get together a dozen of my best friends and we're going to doork against you in the next nomination hearing and the next election. Because now you're inside their machine, right? That's how electoral politics works in Canada.

We have a representative democracy that is ruled over officially by a monarchy, all that good stuff. But we go up from riding associations. We are all represented supposed to be by our MP and our MLA based on the constituency. So then you start saying things like, I'm going to doorknock in your neck of the woods and your neighborhood next time, and they might pay better attention. And again, this is, I don't care if you are, you know, a bicycle riding urban granola green party voting person. You need to have your individual sovereignty respected and you need to have your voice heard and you should be able

to get any consumer news that you want to on the internet. The state should have nothing to say about that. And if we have the government deciding what you can see and say and share online, folks, like, we're in some serious trouble. And this is the kicker. We have to pay for it. So we're on the hook for the CBC for $1.2 billion per year. That could pay for 13,000 new nurses. Imagine, Imagine folks if you could direct some of those hard-earned tax dollars to come to Sean Newman like you want to do. Can you imagine? Me and two is talking about this. Just make bigger donation.

No, no, you'll be saving money on your taxes and then you can make a bigger donation as you choose to the Sean Newman. There you go. There you go. You know, well, I just had on the weekend people asking how they can support it. And I'm very, well, I'm humbled by that. But I'm also like, you know, like you got to take care of your family first. like Sean will, Sean's working hard and he's got some great,

uh, businesses and, and put on different shows and things like that. And, uh, but when I hear about the seat, that I'm, I'm essentially funding all of my competition that sucks.

You're like, fuck me. Not just that. The $600 million media bailout too. So folks, yeah, in mainstream media are on the, are on payroll.

And I can't stress how weird this is. Okay. Like I was in private media for most of my life. And, The running joke was that for every one of us, like producer or reporter, whatever, in private media, there were four of them over there in the CBC. And it's true. And most of them were managers.

And that became real when Peter Mansbridge finally retired and they replaced him with four anchors. Right. Like, it became the joke. Now it's other mainstream media that are on government payroll. And to put it bluntly, a friend of mine put it this way, he's like, folks, this is like you're a ref, okay? you're a referee. You're calling a game. And you swear you can call that game straight even though you're taking side bets on the outcome. That's what's happening with journalists now. It's crazy. How are you supposed to hold Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to account if perhaps $13,000 worth of your paycheck comes from him? How? It could be your very position of existence in that newsroom, whether or not your job exists is dependent on, federal government funding? And then the other guy wants to scrap it? How are you supposed to call that game straight?

If you're working in the press gallery as a reporter, you can't. You can't. You may think you'll be able to. And God love you for thinking you can. But you can't. It's like ethics. It's the perception of bias even that'll get you. Yeah.

I can come back. It's okay. Is this too sad? No, not at all. It's, I think it's, it's providing a lot of clarity, honestly, to something that I think, you know, when I read, going back to C-11, I'm like,

well, right now I'm not getting promoted. So it's like, what more can they do, you know? But you add in the harms and all that jazz, and you're like, that's where it gets very scary. But I think for Canadian content creators, you know, defining what is Canadian, like all that, I think it's just really good to hear.

I think it's like very clarifying to hear that and be like, oh, as far as politics goes, I've been saying this for a little while, you know, like a bunch of it is just getting educated on the pressure points of it. You know, like, it's one thing,

it's one thing to get emotional and angry about another thing. It's a completely opposite thing, another thing, I guess, to like get educated on how the system works and apply pressure to where it hurts them so that they listen. I mean, to me, that that's, that's tactic. That that's like just identifying how you can actually move the scale. And for a lot of, a lot of COVID, it felt like trying to find it. I always, I don't know, I don't know if you're Lord of the Rings fan, but anyways. I sure am. It's okay. Well, well, perfect. Well, well, you. It feels like attacking Helms deep, you know? You're like bashing against the wall for two years. That's all we did. And then finally you found the drain. You blew the wall.

And all of a sudden you're like, holy, what do we just do there? Can we do that again? And I feel like that's kind of politics, right? If you don't know the world or the rules or the game, it's just constant bashing your head. But it's learning. It's starting to educate ourselves on how things work so that you can start to adjust. And I actually do things.

that actually work because at times it feels like nothing works, but that's just because you don't understand the pressure points of, you know, when they just continue to label and all of mainstream media continues to label and are funded and aren't going to tell you exactly what's going on. You come to me, but they label me the fringe or whatever extreme or there's about 18 other terms. It's like you have to find a way to combat that.

Anyways, I think it's fascinating little chat here this morning, honestly. It's very eye-opening. Here's some CanCon. Keep kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. There you go. Keep going.

Just keep going. You'll eventually break through. And this is here, another insider tip. If you want to send a really good email, send it on either Tuesday night or early, early Wednesday morning federally. Why? Because that's when they're having their caucus meeting.

Every Wednesday morning on Parliament Hill, when the house is in session, that's when all the parties get together and they have their group, their group huddle. And that's supposed to be doors locked, phones down, everybody hash it out. So if you get that email into that MP, Tuesday night or Wednesday morning,

they've got a hot phone and realize what you're upset about. And then they're more likely to raise it in caucus that way. And just keep going. Government is like a duck sometimes. It'll be all calm and cool on the surface, like nothing's going on. But underneath the surface, they're just paddling like this because they're feeling the pressure.

And so you can get to them. And so just to encourage people, keep going. A friend of mine, Brian Lilly, I used to work with the Sun News Network. I used to work with him at Sun News Network. He once said something to the effect of in big government countries where there's like bigger government, you know, more control, there are no free weeknights. No free weeknights. Because the other folks who want to raise your taxes, expand the role of government, seize

your firearms that you legally own, all this. stuff make fuel unaffordable, make food unaffordable, all these things. It raise inflation. Those groups don't take Wednesday nights off, man. They're meeting on Thursday. They're getting up in the morning on Saturday. They're doing all those things. And I think for some of us on more of the smaller government, individual, grassroots freedom side of things, we want to leave people alone because we want to be left alone. Because the government should leave you alone. So why should we have to do all this man, but we do. We have, we have no free weeknights, man. Have you seen, uh, from your perspective, have you seen more people than, um, getting involved? Like,

have you had encouragement from seeing how many people are starting to pay attention? And I just use myself case in point. Yep. If you'd ask me anything, uh, let alone five years ago, maybe even a year ago, I would have been, I certainly wouldn't have known a whole lot. Uh, and I'm not saying I do even today, but I'm certainly paying attention. And I don't know. Do you see from your side, Chris, like encouragement from that? Yes. So anecdotally, so not even anecdotally.

You can look at the data. You can see how many people, for example, signed up to the United Conservative Party, the UCP here in Alberta to have a say in the leadership vote. And those votes went all different places, right? But there was a lot of new people signing up. And just anecdotally speaking, I've been a political nerd my entire life. I remember vividly when Ronald Reagan was reelected. I was a little child.

And anecdotally, in the last three to five years, yes, I've seen a lot more people who say things like, you know what, I barely knew the difference between provincial and federal politics. You know, I didn't have to pay much attention to it because that government machine was just running over there in the corner, humming along. and I didn't have to pay attention to it. And I worked and I raised my kids and I did my stuff. But now, as Pierre Poliver says, it's gotten big and bossy. And if he ever becomes prime minister, we'll make sure that he doesn't become big and bossy either. This is a function of government.

And now it's up in your face. The government is in your pocket. It's on your lawn. And so more and more people I find are saying, you know what, I've woken up. I'm paying attention. I'm going to meetings. I'm organizing. I'm door knocking with my friends. And what's painful is that a lot of the reason for that is financial. So I'm from British Columbia. It's one of the least affordable places to live on earth. On earth. And when I first started with CTF about five years ago, I'd get a phone call maybe about once a month where somebody would say something like this. Hey man, you're the tax lady or government lady. Can you help? me. I'm working my butt off. I'm working all the time and I can't make it. I can't afford my rent,

my heating bill, my food, and my transportation because of my basics anymore. I'd get that call about once a month or so. By the time I left BC, I was getting that call once a week. So yeah, that desperation is really cranking up. And I was in talk radio for years. And it was something that I made a point of checking in on a few times a year was food bank use. It's important to know how many of our fellow human beings are going to food banks to eat and feed their families. It's at record levels now. That's really bad. And so, yeah, out of necessity, people have woken up, unfortunately, and they're getting involved. And I'm sorry that it's had to been this strong of medicine, we're going to be in debt for a long time. It's more than a trillion dollars.

This federal government has almost doubled the debt. And so our inflation issues are going to be here. It's going to be a fight for a long time. But we can do it. We can turn things around. Let's talk some, a couple different things on the old pocketbook. You know, like I was saying to you before we started, the carbon tax, you know, like you carbon tax this, carbon tax that. You kind of look at your, you know, you kind of look at your bills and you know, oh, yeah, whatever. Or maybe some paid way more attention to it way early on for a lot of us. I feel like you just kind of, oh, yeah, sure, whatever, moved along and whatever else. And then I was saying to you, you know, you mentioned April, it goes up to $65.

But by 2030, it's going to be 170. And that's in Alberta. That isn't, that isn't BC. That's Alberta. That's the mandatory minimum. Yep. And you're like, okay. Sean's been looking at 2030 for a long time.

Like I've read a lot on 2030. I don't know why I overlook this. That's what I chalk up to is I just overlook. Or maybe there's so many things coming at us by 2030. I just not focusing on it. Explain to me and maybe the listener what this means. So if that's a mandatory minimum, that means Saskatchewan is going to have to be 170.

That means no matter where you're at in the country, in 2030, the carbon tax would be $170 per ton. What does that equate to the average consumer? I don't know. Great question. So yes, very blunt. The current federal carbon tax is going up to $65 a ton. What that means, the normal people talk is that it's going to be 14 cents a liter for gasoline and 17 cents a liter for diesel.

And it applies to your home heating. So if you heat your home with stuff, like natural gas, propane, or furnace oil, as they call it back east in the Maritimes, that means that your costs are going up. So on average, okay, it will cost you about $10 or $11 extra every time you fill up your minivan. It will cost you about $15 or $16 extra every time you fill up your pickup truck. Now let's move over to diesel, shall we? That means that that trucker who is bringing you your groceries and all your supplies is now spending that money on the carbon tax and they're paying about $140 extra to fill up those cylinder diesel tanks. That then

causes a layering effect of cost because of course the grocery store has to pay for their natural gas. The trucker has to pay for the diesel. The farmer has to pay for propane or natural gas to dry the grain. and you have to pay the carbon tax on your home heating bill and your transportation to go to the grocery store. This is why we call it a compounding or layering it. So that's just in April. Take that cost and triple it. Within the next seven years, those costs will be tripled. Okay.

Now, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, the Trudeau government, supported by the NDP, is creating a second carbon tax, and it is going to be imposed across Canada, coast to coast, this summer. Coming from British Columbia, I can tell you what the second carbon tax is like, and it's awful. So British Columbia has been a carbon tax leader

in North America since 2008. They have had the highest carbon tax there since 2008. It's also one of the reasons why it's one of the least affordable places to live on planet Earth. So they have the highest carbon tax. They exceed the mandatory minimum. They either meet or exceed it because they think the carbon tax is awesome. They also have a second carbon tax.

In British Columbia, you pay two carbon taxes. So folks, if you're driving in from Saskatchewan through Alberta and over the Rockies, that's why bang, you're suddenly hit with a much higher fuel price, both diesel and gasoline. That's because the second carbon tax adds 17. $0.10 a liter to gasoline and $0.0.0.0 to diesel. Okay. The second carbon tax is a, it's a government fuel regulation that varies in cost, but it's on average, $0.17 a liter gasoline, $0.19 a liter diesel. Okay? And they have a bidding war online. They have to buy credits, blah, blah, blah. What it is is a government fuel regulation ostensibly to reduce the amount of carbon in the fuel. And if the, the, provider doesn't meet those standards, they're then charged a fee. And of course, that fee falls down to you and me. We're the ones that paid at the pump. Okay. So yeah, that's the carbon tax in a nutshell. And again, federally speaking, the federal carbon tax is a mandatory minimum

across the country. It's going up to $65 a ton, April 1st, and they are tripling it within the next seven years. And I really want to put a fine point on this. emissions aren't going down in BC. So when we were all first sold this carbon tax thing by the BC liberal government in 2008, it was all, you know, you might remember, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about it. It was like the thing. It was a trend, right, to talk about carbon taxes and impose them in some jurisdictions. They told us many things.

They told us it was going to be revenue neutral. They said it was going to stop at $30 a ton. They said it was going to create a, an abundance of affordable alternative energies for us all to use. And they said it was going to make emissions go down. Today, none of those things is true. Not one. Emissions keep on going up, other than a blip in 2020

when a lot of people were locked down and couldn't go to work. Emissions are steadily rising in British Columbia, even with the highest carbon taxes in Canada. Why? Because people still need to drive to work. They need to heat their homes and they need to eat. we don't have an affordable, abundant alternative energy source that people can switch to.

Okay, I got to, all right. Sorry. No, no, I, I, I, I think it's,

you, you, you, you, you, you, you, uh, I'm glad I reached out to have you on,

because, uh, I watched something that you were on. I can't remember now what it was. And we're thinking, oh, that was like, put like really well.

And here it is. It just smacked me again. I, I, I want to make sure that I got this right, though. Okay. So April, it goes up to 65 a ton. And that, in a minivan, using the minivan analogy, is about, or sorry, I guess across the board.

And gasoline is 14 cents a liter. Correct. Which currently the Alberta government is artificially lowering by 13 cents a liter, correct? Yes. So that's why we have. And it's the fuel tax, yes. And that's how we're dodging this right now. Then you mentioned a second federal tax that's going to go across the board.

And when is that? Or is that already happening? No, it's this summer. So right now it's in the Gazette, which for nerds on the hill is what they first publish their regulations and ideas in. And it's coming this summer. We don't know how much it's going to cost yet. It's going to be, we think it's going to be between 9 and 11 cents a liter of gasoline. So let's just go on the low side.

Let's just go right in the middle. 10 cents. Okay, sure. That's going to be 24 cents a liter in Alberta is what the cost of fueling up will go up. That will be the total carbon tax. If you ain't smacking the radio right now. I know.

I mean, like, if you live in Ottawa, what do you fucking do? I mean, you take public transit, you do whatever. And that isn't even thinking about like food and everything else and how it gets transported and everything else. Geez, there was just this protest, a bunch of guys who work and drive across the bloody country because we live in this giant country that has to move everything.

Jeez, you're going to get me wound up. And it's cold. But here in Alberta, here in Alberta, like, I live in Lloyd Minster. I don't know if everybody knows where that place is, but, I mean, everywhere we go is, is like, you want to go to Eminton, you want to go to Saskatoon. We live in the, you want to go to work every day. I used to work in the oil field where I drove five. hours a day just to do my job.

Like... So like I said, I'm from rural British Columbia, right? And like, yeah, I'm born and raised in hope where Rambo was filmed, first blood. It was normal for us to drive into the, you know, lower mainland every weekend. We'd bomb into Langley. we'd go to a, you know, swap meet. We'd go pick up a car part up in North Band. Like, people drive.

So, Chris, where... Where do you see this hitting a tipping point? At some point, this has to fall off a clip where people, like, you already mentioned the, the, not the shelter, sorry, the food banks. Yeah. And we already know, I agree with you, we already know. I think any community, if you go talk to them are record levels. Like, people are using it.

And from what I hear, families that you would not expect are using it. Yep. Like I said, working families. Working families. So where is the, do you? you see a cliff? Are we already over the cliff and we're just like, we're not acknowledging, I keep bringing up Wiley Coyote when he runs off the cliff and he all of a sudden looks down and he's like, crap. Yeah. It's like, what went like do we hit or it doesn't work that way? Eventually, I don't know.

I think it does work that way. Having been an observer, I'm looking around because I made little signs with shapes of pickup trucks and minivans and stuff for us that show the actual cost, but that's okay. I can keep remembering them. It will. And I'll give you an example here. Folks might remember the previous leader of the conservative party, Aaron O'Toole, had promised and signed a pledge that looked a lot like that. So this one is, I will never impose a provincial sales tax.

Yeah, I remember all these. Yeah. There are pledges, right? They're a really important tool of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And Grover Norquist uses them in the United States, lots of taxpayers. associations and federations use them to hold governments to account and politicians to their promises. So then Mr. O'Toole had signed a pledge with the Taxpayers Federation saying, I will not impose a carbon tax. I'm against a carbon tax, period. Then their policy changed. They decided,

willy-nilly, not consulting their membership within the Conservative Party, that no, actually, we're going to impose a price on carbon, or they called it a levy or some other wiggle word. He's no longer the leader. And that is because folks voted with their feet and the caucus got mad. And they said, you know what? We have to be against the carbon tax. Number one, because it's the right thing to do. And because it costs people way too much money.

And two, we signed a pledge saying so. And we have to be accountable and keep our promises. Otherwise, these folks at the Taxpayers Federation are going to like chew our legs off if we don't keep these promises. And so that's a microcosm of that happening within a party. But the vast majority of normal people in Canada aren't members of a party. You know, they want to get up, they want to go to work, they want to raise their families. But when those folks start feeling the pinch of how much the carbon tax is costing them, and they think that realization is dawning on them, they'll call up whoever they vote for.

It doesn't matter. Liberal, conservative, whatever, and say, scrap this thing, like be done with it. it. They will. They will. Yeah, but not fast enough. I know. Right?

Like we're heading, well, I mean, you just think of, just, I just take a step back. I don't know why, you know,

it takes certain conversations for things to like kind of crystallize in your, in your head and you're like, oh, I get it. It's like, Like the cost to heat your house right now, folks, if you go look at those bills, we were just talking about this this week. Like, it's up while it's only going to go up again.

Up a lot. And here, here, another point of hope for you. Sure. Up until now, up until now, the vast majority of the Maritimes, Atlanta, Canada, I've got a lot of folks out there. I lived out there actually for a while. they weren't on the mandatory minimum. They had a special carve out because they had a cap and trade and blah, blah, blah.

So they were paying a much lower carbon tax than the rest of us. But that's all changing. That's all changing this year, folks. And as John McLean said, welcome to the party, pal. They're now going to be on the mandatory minimum carbon tax. Well, guess what? They're going to be pissed.

Sure are. Because about one-third or a little more. of them use furnace oil to heat their homes. And a lot of folks live rural in Atlantic Canada, and they use propane because that's really one of the only ways you can truck your heat to your house. That's how you fill up a big bottle. I used to have my propane handlers ticket at the gas station and you bring it to your rural home and you hook it up to your propane furnace. This all has carbon tax. On average, on average, it's going to cost them around 300 bucks more per year just to to heat their homes, just in the carbon tax.

I'm not even touching trucking or grocery store runs or whatever. And sorry, but even locomotives, trains, everything we use, you know, Canadian. Yeah, nothing's going to be exempt from it, right? It's already not exempt. You're already paying the carbon tax on locomotive diesel. And then it goes onto a truck and you're paying the carbon tax there. And it originally came from a farmer and he had to pay the carbon tax to dry the grain. And now it's at the grocery store.

See? And so this is where we're begging and pleading with the federal government saying this is just a punishment. And in fact, they called it a punishment. I was on a debate with them a few years ago. And they said the purpose of the carbon tax is to punish the bad behavior of using fossil fuels. But if you've got nowhere to go, if you've got no obvious alternative that you can afford and depend upon for average working people in Canada, then it's just a punishment. They've got you in a corner and they won't stop hitting. And so this is where we're saying, folks, you have to send them your heating bill.

Take a picture of your heating bill. Circle the carbon tax. Say, enough. We're not doing this anymore. And for folks who are listening who are environmentalists and who are really worried about the emissions, I hear you. But, number one, Canada produces less than 2% of global emissions. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in French, on the talk. show years ago, Toulamant-A-Anpar, in Quebec, even if we stopped everything, I'm paraphrasing,

even if we stopped everything tomorrow, no trucking, no driving, no heating our homes, no raising crops, it wouldn't make a big impact. Why? Because on a global scale for global emissions, other countries are having a much bigger impact. And places like India, who are begging and asking us to sell them our natural gas? Hundreds of millions of people there, Sean, burn wood and animal dung every day for heating and cooking. Hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings do this every day. And the government doesn't want to. They want to buy our natural gas. That would tackle the big end of the arithmetic problem. If your issue is emissions and air pollution, boy, go there and reduce those emissions.

There's no point in carbon taxing Canadians for driving minivans and using natural gas. It's not even going to help that math equation. You think we get to 2030? You think we get to where we get to 2030 and we've gone up that much? Is that the pain point that eventually pushes this cattle cart over or before there something changes? Before there something changes. People, I don't like talking about this because nobody likes talking about it. people are in massive personal debt.

So if you listen to MNP or other financial auditors and people who, you know, chest these sort of things, it's been hovering around 50% now for a couple of years. And the question usually goes something like, how easy is it for you to pay your bills? And I mean your basic bills. Like not paying off your loans, making the minimum payments on everything you need. around 50% of people are now saying they're within 200 bucks of insolvency every single month. They push has come to shove. No, I don't think we're going to get to the point of 2030.

But if we don't do anything, we will. If we don't kick up a huge noisy fuss every single day like we're doing right now, sure. Because why would the government care? I feel like, you know, they don't understand monetary policy. They don't understand that they're bankrupting people. the problem well yeah i agree with you i feel like there's been a huge fuss being kicked up for a long time but when media is bought off um people don't realize how many people are actually kicking up a fuss because you can't tell like literally you can't tell you flick on the the mainstream side of this

thing and they're like oh carbon tax is great it's great things are great oh look you wouldn't even they didn't even mention it quite often now it's so it to me it's like artificially going up even more because the journalists that are supposed to tackle it aren't talking about it. And then you flip it over to this and you're like, yeah, sure, we're going to talk about it. But do I get the reach of what the CBC does? No. Well, maybe. There's six o'clock.

Their six o'clock supper hour is watched by a few thousand people. I'm not kidding. A few thousand? Yeah, their ratings have fallen off a cliff. Like a cliff. Whoa, let's talk about this for a second. I didn't, what are the, I think that's really interesting. I'm actually going to pull up the data because it was Blacklocks Reporter,

credit where it's due, they're the ones that pulled this up. Blacklocks, man, I have all the time in the world for Tom Korski and that team. Holly and Paul were great. Yes, Holly, yeah. Here we go. According to journalism website, Blacklocks Reporter, which is not funded by the government, I wrote this piece for the Toronto Sun, the total audience for the CBC's six piece. local TV newscasts at 27 stations was 319,000 people.

That means less than 1% of Canadians watch the supper hour newscast. Yes, I know. That's what I said too. Less than 1% of Canadians watch the supper hour newscast. 319,000 people coast to coast, 6 o'clock, supper. hour newscast, 27 stations. You're paying their executive director. Sorry.

I can see you doing the math right now in your head. You're paying anyways, you mentioned the manager. Finish your thought. The executive director of the CBC makes around $500,000 a year. And she's currently doing a coast-to-coast tour of Canadian as CBC Studios. They have 143 directors. 143 directors in CBC. They each make around $130,000.

Like, this is not a media organization. It's a wing of government. And we pay way too much for it. Well, you're just dropping things today that are just fantastic, Chris. I'm so sunshiny. You know, it's funny. I, when I, when I, like, I didn't, you know, certain things on a podcast you can plan for.

And then other things are just like, well, this is rather enjoyable. And I didn't see this coming. And I'm just going to add you into the list of the Tom Korski's in the world when you see things you do not understand. But you know you have tools that have expertise in it. It's, well, it's just fantastic to get clarification, you know, like a lot of clarity on things that are going to impact all of us in the very, very near future. and as you said, it's already impacting us, which is 100% true. I look at it and I go, but things are going to go up immediately and they're going to get worse. And there's people that I'll go, well, we're doing okay.

But then there's a ton of people like, I can't imagine being in the position they're in. And this isn't even starting to talk about the just, we haven't even got to just transition. The whole like, we're going to phase out the oil patch, energy sector. and switch over to things that are intermittent power that they say are, oh, yeah, they're more cost effective. And you're like, right, as we artificially do that. Subsidize all of this with what money were more than a trillion dollars in debt. We wrote a piece for the Western Standard on this.

And I said, you should just call it just break Alberta. Because you might as well. If you list all of the workers that are in that memo, there you go. to black locks that are in that memo, it's 2.7 million workers. If you add up all the salaries within those positions, it's $219 billion a year. Like in Alberta alone, there's 140,000 people working in energy. You can't make this shit up. Chris, when you sit and look at this, like, what do you come back to? Like, at some point, you think common sense has to reign true. except we should already been there by now.

And so you go, okay, what is actually going on? What do you think? I think that I'll borrow a phrase, I don't know how much Oprah used to watch, but I used to watch it a lot. Maya Angelou in the world of self-help says something along the lines of this. When someone tells you who they are,

them. So when the federal government, government tells you that they call judgment and they have an 80-something page memo between their bureaucrats and their minister going after trucking, farming, energy, you should believe them. You have to, you have it, you cut out for one quick second, just as you were saying. You watched Oprah. Could you say the, the line again?

That's a funny time to cut out. I know. So Maya Angelou, she's big guru and whatever. I remember her saying something along the lines of. When you who they are, believe them. When the federal government tells you that they have a plan called just transition, which will affect 2.7 million workers in energy, trucking, farming, manufacturing, believe them.

Pay attention to the 80-something page memo. Read it thoroughly. Look at what other countries are doing about it. So in the memo of just transition, where it was between the department bureaucrats, unelected permanent government and their Minister of Natural Resources, they cited what other countries are doing for their transition. In Scotland, they call their plan the Just New Deal. Okay.

They're spending around $35 billion on their Just New Deal. Canadian. Like, that's their numbers. These aren't even numbers that we found elsewhere. That's the numbers in the memo. So when they say that it could have a disproportionate factor, an uneven impact, whatever term they used, and they're listing things like energy, trucking, farming, manufacturing.

Everything that makes our basic necessities of life. Yeah. They build our homes. They heat our homes. They grow our phones. food and they bring us all our stuff. Those are not like laptop bureaucrat jobs that we can cut off. Like these are big deals. So yeah, the just transition is a major concern. Now again, Ottawa went into full Ottawa mode after that memo got out. They're like, oh no, no, no, no, no. That was the

totality of all of the positions. It isn't necessarily all of the positions we're going to nuke off the face of the earth or have to retrain at a massive uptick in taxpayers' money. for subsidization, not necessarily. But this gets us back to when the government tells you what they're going to do, believe them. Keep in mind the track record with this government. Prime Minister Trudeau himself has said he wants to phase out the oil sands. This is the same government that wants to outlaw the internal combustion engine. It's the same government that is tripling the carbon tax.

It's the same government that has banned tankers off the West Coast. It's the same government that didn't lift a finger with Keystone, and they put through a no more pipelines spill. So when that same government has a memo leaked that is talking about a just transition for places like Alberta, you should probably pay attention to them and find out what's going on. Man, I tell you what, you've been spitting fire since we sat down. This is, uh, morning. Yeah, morning is right. This has been very, I'm going to use it again, clarifying again.

I was going to get my butt moving again. And so I appreciate that. I appreciate you coming on and doing this. You know, it's funny. I feel like we're just going to have to have you back on at another time. So I want to do this. I want to do the crude master final question, which is, if you're going to stand behind a cause, then stand behind it absolutely.

What's one thing Chris Sims stands behind? Right. now scrapping the carbon tax because that will reduce people's cost of living and that will mean that their bottom line at the end of this

month is easier to make. Baby steps. How quickly can you scrap the carbon tax? Is that like tomorrow? Government, man. Do it tomorrow. Order and counsel. Done. Maybe have your Wednesday meeting.

Can a province acts their carbon tax tomorrow? I'm glad you brought that up because it's something that we're trying to push for here in Alberta. So you probably have heard about the Taxpayer Protection Act. It's something that we have here in Alberta wherein a provincial government must hold a referendum before trying to impose a PST. Spoiler alert, that's why Albertans don't have a PST.

Because years ago, we put through a taxpayer protection act and no politician is going to take that risk of, hey, I want to impose a sales tax on all of you. Let's have a referendum. That's not going to fly. So what we need to do is that we need to put the carbon tax in there too, so that you can't have a provincially imposed carbon tax, just like you can't have a provincially imposed sales tax, without winning a referendum first, brother. So that way when the feds eventually scrap the carbon tax, we won't have, no matter who's

power in Edmonton, we won't have a provincial version of the carbon tax either. But yeah, BC could continue on with their carbon taxes. There are two of them. At this point, at this point, I'm like, you got to take care of, you know, you and your own. And for me, I'm sitting in Alberta. It's like, born and raised in Saskatchewan. So I got a lot of time for the two provinces. I got a lot of time for all the Canada, to be honest.

It's okay. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm like, you know, how quickly can you just do things to, you know, certainly them doing a lot of things with helping out when it comes to bills and the gasoline price and different things like that. I'm just like, just like how quickly can you scrap it? And what you're saying is very quick. Immediately.

You can. It just immediately. And then you work out the math and you adjust your budget as. it's presented. The budget is supposed to be presented at the end of this month in Edmonton, in Alberta. Same sort of thing happens in Ottawa. They try to move at the speed of peanut butter in January, except you'll notice when they've got something they want to ram through or like a pay raise or something. They do that real fast in Ottawa. So short answer to your question is they can do it really quick. So we need to see the carbon tax gone. The other one is, of course, like I've said,

C-11, because free expression is absolutely fundamental to everyone in Canada. It doesn't matter if you're left, right, or a space alien. We need to have free expression in Canada because we have to be able to hold our government to account. And so we need to scrap things like C-11, anything that stifles free expression. If I can very quickly, it's another thing that unless you've worked in newsrooms, you don't know. One of the reasons why, when you're watching mainstream media now, that you're seeing the same thing over and over and over again is because they lack bodies. The number of people working in newsrooms in private media organizations has been decimated. So I've been that six o'clock

producer. I've been watching, you know, stories come down the line, packs come down the line. No longer do you have a pick of the litter of what you want to run that night. You don't have that consumer affairs reporter who's been, you know, testing out TVs and cars or following up on furnace manufacturers. You don't have that dedicated city hall reporter. You don't have that dedicated court reporter covering crime in your community. You don't have those local

reporters producing content for your news anymore. They're gone. There's like a handful of people left in these newsrooms. And so that is why when you have 24 hour news stations or

a two hour long newscast, you have to put stuff in there. You have to feed that beast. That's why you're seeing press conferences being taken live by whatever unelected representative you want from a bureaucracy or a politician. Holding court, willy-nilly, talking for hours about what they're going to do to you and how they're going to raise your taxes and how they're going to stifle your free speech. Usually unchallenged. There's usually they're talking to an empty room where there used to be a theater full of journalists there, hammering them with questions. that's not there anymore.

And that's something, unless you've worked in those newsrooms, you don't notice. When I graduated journalism school at BCIT, there were two full-time reporters at the Vancouver Sun alone just on softwood lumber. Salaried positions, paying their mortgages. One topic, two people, one newspaper. I feel like I'm talking about like a fairy tale there now. It just doesn't exist. That's why you're seeing people rip and read. And they're just spewing government messaging all the time because there isn't the alternative.

There isn't the other stuff to put in that. How do you fix that? You fix that. I think you have to pull the plug on funding. That's first step. You have to have conversations like this. People want real content and they will pay for it. So they will subscribe.

They will buy their local newspaper. they will cover their city hall, they will pay for it. So I think that's first step is pull the plug on any taxpayers money going to it. Quit leaving it on artificial life support because that's what it is right now. And then let the chips fall where they may. Those newsrooms may have to shrink back down into local focused, beat level reporting. Things like City Hall, things like the courts, things like keeping the potholes filled, all that stuff. People will vote with their wallets.

they will demand that kind of coverage and the market will respond to it. But first things first, cut off the life support coming from the taxpayers because otherwise it turns into something like the CBC tax gobbling monster that we have right now. Here's then a further question on that is if you cut off the funding, life support is gone. What happens in those six months as they start to realize, oh shit? as a population, does one day you just wake up and the CBC is no longer there? Or do they have to just scale all the way down? And then what happens?

I just assume that there's like chaos for two, three months as the void slowly gets filled. It would be a bit of a void, but it would be quickly filled because we as social humans want to interact with each other. We want information. We want to talk. We want to have conversations like this. town criers have existed, you know, since the dawn of our villages. So we will still have people delivering the news. And what would be good about the CBC is that if you love small CBC radio, public broadcasting,

that sort of collective journalism, awesome. Pay for it. Folks will pay a subscription to listen to as it happens if they really, really want to. and it can be that small delivery system of humble information. When the CBC first started in the 1930s, their mandate was to tell farmers what the weather is going to be, right, do a little bit of radio drama to compete with the bigwigs, like coming at a CBS radio, right?

And that was basically it, and the hockey game. Nowadays, farmers, you know, spend a lot of money on satellite weather that'll tell them, you know, what part of the field it's going to run. rain on that afternoon. They don't need the CBC for it. You can get hockey anywhere. And nowadays, you have all of your entertainment at the tap of your thumb. You don't rely. Like, it's completely outgrown its mandate. And another thing for print, to speak up for print here, they've expanded so dramatically into online print that a lot of newspapers are saying, hey, like, you're eating our lunch here. Why have you expanded your mandate into so much online print? Because this was not

your original mandate. Your original mandate was a very humble broadcast signal coming out of a few stations. And so if folks want to pay for that sort of service, they can. They absolutely can. And then maybe they'll get programming that they actually want to watch and not 319,000 people watching across the country. Man, I've really enjoyed this, Chris. I appreciate you coming on this morning and throwing absolute darts at my head over and over and over again. This has been a fun little chat. And I assume it will not be the last time. But thanks for hopping on and talk about a few things. You've got my mind spinning this morning and that's a good thing. Stand up and be heard, folks. Thanks so much.