Shaun Newman Podcast - #451 - Brett Oland

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

CEO of Bow Valley Credit Union. We talk gold, freezing bank accounts, 3 types of people in crisis and CBDC's. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast

This is Nicole Murphy. This is Rachel Emanuel. Hi, this is John Cohen. Hey, everyone, this is Glenn Jung from Bright Light News. This is Drew Weatherhead. This is Terracount. This is Ed Dad, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Monday. Man, I had an interesting weekend. Went to Canadiens for Truth, Sarah Palin. And let's just say Sarah Palin did not disappoint. I was, well, I was rather surprised. I got to even sit down with her. That's going to come out here in a couple days, hopefully. And, yeah, a super, super interesting lady.

And if you missed that one, that was one to catch. I would head over to Canadians for Truth and see if you can get caught up on when they release everything. I think they got an interview up with her already and everything else. But yeah, really, really interesting lady, not what I thought it was going to be. Also, I had mentioned that today I was going to release Longo and Criner, the live event. It's been delayed until Wednesday, so if you're waiting on that, wait a couple more days, and we're going to have it up for you, all right? Now, today's episode is brought to you by Canadians for Truth.

They are a non-profit organization consisting of the Canadians who believe in honesty, integrity, and principal leadership in government, as well as the Canadian Bill of Rights, charter of rights and freedoms, and the rule of just law. They just had Sarah Palin in Calgary, and if you're wanting to see who they're bringing on next, just go to Canadians for Truth.ca or head over to their Facebook page. They're constantly updating Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. You can also see the latest shows from Joe, Theo, and Joseph. So I'm kind of interested to see who they get next.

It's Sarah Palin. I was, yeah, really, really pleasantly surprised, I guess, is what I'm trying to spit out. Clay Smiley and team over at Prophet River. They deal with importing firearms from the United States of America. Of course, if you're in Lloyd Minster, stop in and see their amazing showroom, the new facility. I mean, it's a year old now, but still quite the spectacle. And if you're coming through town, make sure you stop in there.

If you're not, if you're anywhere across Canada, they can help you with, well, getting that firearm into your hands. They are the major retailer of firearms, optics, and accessories. They serve all of Canada. Of course, if you're not the hunter, but you've got a hunter in your life or, you know, sports, sportsmen, you know, they offer gift cards, that type of thing. So whether it's birthdays, we just had Father's Day, showed out to all the fathers out there, you know, and you're looking to get them something. You can always get that.

And then, of course, once again, they ship Canada wide. So all they've got to do is go to Profitriver.com. Tyson and Tracy Mitchell, Mitchco Environmental. They've been looking for equipment operators. They want to point out that farming experience is a bonus, and they're also looking for labors for seasonal or full time. All you got to do is reach out via, well, you can do it either, give them a call, 780214, 4,004, O2Gow to, or go to MichkoCorp.com.

C.A. Carly Closs and the team over at Windsor Plywood, they're the builders of the podcast studio table for everything wood. These are the guys, and certainly deck season is upon us. So whether we're talking, you know, mantles, decks, windows, Those doors, sheds, podcast studio tables. Give the team over at Windsor Plywood. They've got some really, really cool pieces of lumber sitting there.

Let me tell you. Let's get on that tail of the tape brought to by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methadone, and chemicals delivering to your farm, commercial or oil field locations. For more information, visit them in Hancockpetroleum.com. He's the CEO of Bow Valley Credit Union. I'm talking about Brett Olland. buckle up. Here we go. This is Brett Olin and we're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm sitting with Brett Olin. So, sir, thanks for,

I don't know, making the trip down. It's been an interesting weekend. I've forewarned the listeners every time I hammer off this many in a row. I don't know when this gets released. So I, but at the same time, it's going to be hard not to talk about being at Longo and Craneer in this whole weekend and not like, I feel like I haven't left the studio. There's been so many interesting people coming to town to see these two that, you know, trying to capture a bit of it on the, on the podcast and everything else. But I appreciate you making the driving coming all the way out. No, not at all. Had a blast last night, you know, two steaks, four cigars and about 14 scotches later. It should be an interesting day anyway, so.

You know, and Dust built that barn. So my brother Dustin, for the listeners, don't know, built a a Roman arch barn. Like, it's beautiful. And up in his loft, we just got together. There was only like, I don't know, 12 of us, 13 of us. It was a pretty small group. And just for supper. And, of course, I was like, if I'm having Tom Longo in Canada,

I'm smoking a cigar with the man, right? So then I bought everybody's cigar. And I'm like, I wonder if Dust when he first built that place thought, what was going to be housed there and who was going to come through and the amount of cigar smoke that was going to be in that sucker last night, You know, like it was just like wafting out the door, you know. You don't see that anymore. Yeah, no, I think there are a few people purposely staying outside to get away from the cigar smoke at one point.

But anyway, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Well, for the, for the audience, I assume everybody's watched a bit on your bank, you know, but at the same time, I'm, you know, I got people listening across country into the states, everything else. So it's like, let's start here. Let's start with a bit of Brett's back. background and we'll start there and we'll slowly just dig into some things. Sure. Well, first let me get into a little misnomer. So we're not, not a bank actually, which is, which is very different from a credit union. And I can get into, there's a couple of very key differences between a bank and a credit union. So particularly for our credit union, Bow Valley Credit Union, we're

provincially regulated versus federally regulated. So we fall under a different jurisdiction there. And we're member owned. So, you know, anybody can come in the door and pay a $25 membership fee and become a member of Bow Valley Credit Union and you're a voting shareholder of the organization. And you can drive key direction. You can get people voted on the board of directors. You can vote on bylaws. So that's another key difference and we're local. So we're local to Alberta. Our staff live in Alberta. We have a vested interest in Alberta, which is very different from the bigger banks, which typically, as we've seen time and time again in Alberta, when times get tough in the oil patch, then the banks leave and they pull out their capital and usually that's the way

it goes and that's where credit unions that are locally based are sort of fundamental to to the province that we live and work here and we have vested interest in seeing it go forward. So that's important. Another key difference is we have 100% deposit guarantee. So all our deposits are guaranteed versus at the bigger schedule in banks like your RBCs, your BMOs, your TDs there. If you just have a single account unless you stack it, you've only got $100,000 worth of insurance through C-DIC, apologies.

So, you know, another key difference that we have huge deposit insurance. So anyway, but back, sorry, to your original question. My background, I've been in banking for the better part of about 20 years. I'm a chartered accountant by trade. I also have an institute of corporate director's designation. and I got a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary. Grew up in Medicine Hat, Alberta. There seems to be about the same number of ornery people down in Medicine Hat as there is in Lloyd,

but this is good. And started off my banking career in about 2004. I banked in the Cayman Islands for a couple of years in the different. type of banking. It was investment banking down there. Huge banking hub just because it's a tax haven in the Cayman Islands. Came home, met my wife, well, met her while I was in the Cayman's, but moved back home and moved up to Edmonton and worked for Canadian Western Bank. It's a regional bank based out of the West, although they're across Canada. did pretty well down there and decided to have a bit of change in lifestyle.

And my wife and my son at the time, we have two sons now, but wife and son at the time moved down to Canmore outside of Banff there, about 11 years ago and worked completely changed gears. I was working in not-for-profit. I did pretty well in the few years before that, so decided to change pace a little and try and give back a little bit and work in the not-for-profit world. And I was the CEO of the Peter and Catherine White Foundation down in Banff for a number of years. And got on a board of a local credit union named Bow Valley Credit Union, where I work now. And there was a bit of shake-up at the CEO level, and everybody was sort of looking at each other.

around the board table and I was sort of looking at the ceiling and they kept on looking at me and I kept on looking at the ceiling and then um decided to yeah take them up on the offer and get into the position of CEO about four years ago. Um, this is kind of what I did. I worked at Pricewaterhouse Cupers in Calgary and he used to parachute into organizations that, that, uh, were, we're in turmoil and then try and straighten them out and that's, I, I, I, I, I, work very well in organizations that are either in growth mode or transition mode. And, you know, that's that's sort of my banking background, if you will. So, yeah. Can we, I'm curious, lots there.

Before we get to Bow Valley, you mentioned working in the Cayman Islands. Anytime I think you go outside the country or even across the country and work at different spots and have a different, you know, change of perspective, essentially, right? I assume the Cayman Islands, you know, besides being a beautiful place, working in that part of the industry would have been eye-opening. Yeah, absolutely. You see the actual scale of the money, first of all, that's sort of around the world, especially that's coming out of the U.S. and the U.K. especially,

which are looking for tax havens like the Cayman Islands. The sheer number of banks is incredible down there. I think last count was 550. banks down in the Cayman's in in the Cayman's and it's a very small place so it's it's you know it's maybe a 13 mile long island or something like that and and it's it's the Cayman Islands have a land area of 264 kilometers there you go there you go that's tiny yeah tiny um when I when I first moved down there uh there was about 30,000 people and and and just and just to give people in Canada perspective sorry

because I'm like, okay, I'm trying to think, what's the comparison to PEI? PEI has 5,600 kilometers of square kilometers. So 264, 5,000, like, you know, just because I can picture PEI, I've been to PEI, right? Cayman Islands is a rock in the middle of the water essentially, right? Yep. Sorry, carry on. Oh, yeah, no, so it's all good. And, you know, there's about 30,000 people when I first moved down there.

And not many people heard about this one in 2004, but a hurricane came through, Ivan, and basically took everything most of the people on the island had. So a lot of people exited the island after that event because, you know, 95% of the buildings were either damaged or wiped out. And that was a heck of an experience too. You mean you were there while it was going on? Yeah. You're in the middle. So Hurricane Ivan is rolling through, destroying 95% of the building. buildings and you're sitting there doing what well hiding into the stairs so yeah it's it's pretty

incredible story category five hurricane didn't hear much about it because it didn't make landfall in the u.s but yeah just sort of we had a bit of a false start a few weeks prior and it was more like just a big party type thing that oh a big hurricane so nobody was really too fussed about ivan coming through, but, you know, it's really got real when the wind really picked up and things like that. And, you know, it's, you can't describe it other than, it's like standing next to a freight train for 36 hours. And it's that loud. And then the water starts coming up because of the surge. And so the Cayman Islands is a pretty low-lying island. There's, you know, Not many, the highest point is probably 10 meters above sea level.

So just about every building, if not every building, was impacted by the surge and the water coming up. And, you know, lucky me was at a place where the water was up to your neck for three days, you know, so, yeah. So you're saying where you were at, the water was up to your neck for three days. Pretty much, yeah, yeah. Maybe not quite that long, but pretty close, yeah. So it's like, folks, I didn't realize I was walking into this one. It's like, what, so what did you, like, were you kissing your ass goodbye? Were you praying?

Were you going like, man, this is the end? Or were you like, no, we just got to survive? It's going to go down and you're calm. Like, or were you freaking out? No, you definitely sort of lose yourself in the moment for sure, but there's nothing you can do. You can't go outside. Like literally, the place that we were at, a friend of mine's had had all those windows boarded up just for the event type thing, but had a little peake hole sort of in one of these

pieces applied what he's put up. And you'd look out every once in a while and you see just nasty things happening like eavesdraff coming off building, wrapping around trees. And it looks like a piece of ribbon flapping in the wind. But it's a piece of eavesdrop, it's steel that's flapping around in the wind like. Yeah, like a kite. Yeah. And it's like you can't go out in that. Otherwise, you're going to get impaled because there's crap flying around everywhere type thing. And you see water come up and cars just, you know, short-circuening and blowing up. And it's nasty business. And, yeah.

So was that the, that was the sign to get out of Cayman Islands for you? No, I came back. You know, it left for a few months. Just the way it worked out is, well, and that's, that wasn't even the scary part. is really after the hurricane, that's when sort of the people troubles started too, because, and the way I look at it, there's three different types of people.

There was, the people that were sort of calm and collected and just trying to gather food and water because there was none. There was none. There was no police service, no fire service, everybody's just fending for themselves.

There was a British, naval ship off the coast, but they didn't have enough troops to put anybody on landfall, so they couldn't help. So basically you're fending for yourself. 30,000 people. Yeah, and all looking for food and water at the same time. And so there's the calm people that are sort of looking for food and water. There's the drunks that are trying to avoid reality and just sort of drinking and

trying to cover things up. There's the looters. And when those sort of three groups clash, it's pretty interesting. And believe it or not, the most dangerous people were the ones that were drunk and sleeping and just all of a sudden ran out of money to pay the looters for booze or quit drinking and reality sets in and they have no food. They have no water and they're dangerous. And they're trying to steal your reserves of food and water.

they're desperate. And so, you know, I see a lot of parallels to that and society today of, you know, deluders of society, people that are trying to make a difference like yourself, and then people that are still sleeping. And one day they're going to wake up and my fear is they're going to be in a panic in what to do. So it's, you know, it was a real pivotal changing point in my life. life for sure and had a big impact on me and that's sort of why I talk about it now but yeah well you've seen something that you know don't give me wrong 30,000 people saw it but at the same time you've seen something that I equate it to you know like military service I think a truck prodnick or Jamie Sinclair I was just actually texting with them this morning there you know it's

like are you the only one who's ever done military service well no but in the general population you're such a small fraction of the Canadian population that's ever seen anything like that. So that makes you like a rare commodity. And you've lived through a hurricane. And then, you know, I wasn't even thinking about the three days later, you know, and what happens then. Just surviving the hurricane and living through it,

that's an experience that such a tiny proportion of, well, Canadian populations ever seen. But then now you've seen, you know, people are like, oh, yeah, like, I wonder what it'll be like if we ever get to the point of like, and you just explained it quite well, then. essentially. Like that's, that's what happens when you get to the point of, like, the police can't control the population because there's just too much crap going on and they don't have the numbers. No, they've, they've got families to look after themselves, right? So I'm sorry, push comes to shove.

Their family is going to take priority like it should for everybody. And they're protecting their own. So this is why, um, Luong, you know, so I've been riding around with Luongo and Craneer now for like, three days, which has been fascinating, right? And everything, you know, as we talk about everything, and this comes up on so many different podcasts. And it's why having you on, you know, to talk about the credit union was important to me, is it's about creating community, right? Because, you know, you can't go out at it by yourself.

You need to have trust in some people around you. Because if things were to ever fall apart like that, I don't know, I assume you leaned on a few people while you're while you're in the middle of the shit storm. No, absolutely. You live on the good graces of others that, you know, live on more than the second story, which their places weren't destroyed and things like that. And so, yeah, you sleep on the floor in their place and you're thankful for it. And you take a shower in the rain and it's definitely, it wouldn't have worked without sort of that support system that you just have, even if it's just an acquaintance or something like that. And you'd be surprised how those acquaintances that you build ahead of time

really come into play when shit hits the fan, right? That's, I think of the podcast, and that's pretty much what I do is I just build acquaintances, right? Like last night, I was just saying before we got started, it's, I keep talking about it, and then the great idea last night was maybe an AI could build it. And I'm like, oh, she was pretty smart. I keep bringing it up. And you know what? I should, I've been wanting to get somebody to build it.

But then I'm like, I don't know. Same time you get an artist or something to like draw it out. But essentially what I'm talking about is like the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, right, with Marilyn Monroe and all those sitting in that, you know, the restaurant, the diner. And I'm like, I just have this idea for all the acquaintances of the podcast to kind of be like, having all these little conversations in something similar to the diner, right? Because like, I've seen it happen now. Last night was case in point, right? Now, I hadn't sat down with you, but I'd sat down with pretty much, like, almost everybody

in that room roughly has been on the podcast before, minus like two guys. And now they're all interacting and none of them have interacted before. And you're like, this is interesting. Like to me, sitting there, I just feel like the great facilitator or something. You know, like it sounds so odd, but it's a surreal moment. Anyways, it's when you talk about acquaintances, you wonder how important that is down the road. No, absolutely, because it's, it's just another piece of the puzzle, right? So yeah, sure, I'm in banking, but, you know, do I know somebody in the greenhouse growing business very well?

No, not really, but I met a guy last night. And he was just on yesterday morning, right? Yeah, right. Well, let's talk about Bow Valley Credit Union. You know, when I first heard, and I think this is kind of the headline, if there was a newspaper, it's like Bow Valley Credit Union backs with gold, roughly. Explain this to me. And let's get to the nuts and bolts of it so that people can understand. Sure.

Yeah, it's just so you know, I'm treading on a little thin ice with this because it's a bit of a sensitive topic with the regulator just because it's sort of stepping on their toes. to some degree that they're an organization that backs the deposits of the organization. So anytime someone puts out a claim like this, there's definitely going to be some pushback to it. But inherently, we have full faith in the regulators and what they do and the support of the deposits and everything like that. And it's just we want to be able to sort of give people, especially in this community, a bit of more peace of mind that they have with, tangible physical precious metals, land, commodities, that type of thing. And it makes very good sense for a financial institution just getting into precious metals like gold and silver because it's

been gold or money for, you know, thousands of years. And so it's just the translation is really not that much of a leap. And we're basically just trying to revive it to some degree. And I can sort get into the details of what we're trying to do around that, even though we're not quite there completely. And it's a lot of back and forth with the regulators. And we want to get it right. And we want to be transparent. Can you talk about the regulars? I guess I'm pretty green to this conversation, you know, and I assume some of the audience is. I'm assuming some of the audience isn't. But when you talk about the regulators, I see a bank. And then in my mind, I see the regulators over top of that? Am I and and who is that and why they basically

ensure that all your deposits, you know, are top or covered or whatever. I don't know if I'm explaining that right. Could you could you build me a picture that makes sense? Yeah. No, they're they're basically the traffic cops, if you will. And and so they're tell you to slow up and speed down and stop and that. So is that provincial though? Is that because you mentioned your provincial or is this a federal thing that regulates banks? There's two. So any Anybody that's outside of Alberta, um,

that backing up just across Canada, say like an RBC or a TD or CIVC, BMO, they're federally regulated by OSFI. So office of the superintendent of financial institutions, which reports to the minister of finance, which is Christina Freeland in Ottawa, um, which is a different regulatory body.

And then I'm sure we can get into OSFI and what they did with Finns. track and the trucker convoy a little later on. But we're regulated by the credit union deposit guarantee corporation who, you know, live here right in the province based out of Edmonton and regulate only the credit unions of Alberta. And they're they're quite easy to work with and very accommodating. And but yeah, they're definitely the traffic cops, if you will, to sort of, you know, regulate the industry and so forgive me why would they care if you're making the claim that you're going to you know back with physical assets and things like that why would that bother them well i think to some degree they're they're concerned about rhetoric around the sustainability of of the alberta

credit union system or the canadian banking system as a whole that you might be putting doubt in it by saying we're going to back with physical assets right right so fair enough that's their job type thing, but it's, I think it's nagging on people's minds when they see things like Credit Swiss, one of the oldest banks in Europe go upside down or all the problems they've seen in the US banks, getting over their skis and getting into trouble and that type of thing. So they definitely have some merit to what they're saying and you don't want to cause a panic or bank run because I think In general, the Canadian banks and credit unions in Alberta are some of the most well-run in the world. So if they're going to fall, they're going to be the last.

But I feel like, you know, once again, I don't know this subject near enough, right? So from an outsider, like just listening to what you just said, and I'm like, I don't see how it causes any doubt or any fear into the banking system for what you're doing. Actually, if anything, I feel like it's alleviating. It's like, wow, somebody's doing something that makes sense to myself. others and if they want to come bank with you because those reasons then way they go. I don't see how it's causing certainly I mean if you talk about certain things I could see you how it stirs up some people to be like oh man I didn't didn't notice that before but just by backing with physical assets I don't know how that all of a sudden would

you know ferment fear into the system I mean the system itself right now if you watch it all the things you just said about all the different banks it's like that's fermenting fear just sitting there and going, well, we're going to back with physical assets. I don't know how that does that. Well, I agree. And there's definitely some perspective around it. And effectively, what we're trying to do is change the system from the inside out as well. Because the thing is we see some and how we actually came to the conclusion of backing up our organization with physical assets is we see a big inflation problem coming.

You know, I think what we've seen in the last couple of years, that's just the typical. of the iceberg. What have you seen in the last couple of years when when sorry no what have you seen in the last couple yeah no absolutely just just during through COVID just massive amounts of money printing currency printing sorry but there are different terms money and currency are different terms. Currency is what the the government's printed so that currency typically devalues over time so I think rather than even calling it inflation, the store of value within Canadian dollars has declined over the last couple of years. And the more they print, which they continue to do, the more it declines.

Correct. And so we're, in my opinion, we're coming into a bit of a perfect storm around that currency printing. We've got a demographics problem. We've got a pension problem. We have an energy problem. Um, like all these things are going to result in the federal government being forced to print currency to basically keep the economy afloat. Um, and hence, in my opinion, it's going to cause a devaluation of, of the currency and inflation. Yeah.

I, um, it's funny. Like, to me, uh, I got three older brothers. You got to meet two of them last night. I talk about this all the time. Like, to me, this is, like, we argue about this all the time. We've been arguing about this now for, like, because I remember watching Martin Armstrong, who's going to be on the show here in July, which blows my mind.

But, you know, I remember watching him and Michael Campbell probably five years ago, you know, shows where I was at, you know, so many things once you have kids and buy a house, really, you stop chasing the weekend so much. And all of a sudden, you start to stare at some problems. And certainly on this show, we've, you know, we've had, you know, Premier Daniel Smith on and different things like that where it's like, it's like, okay, politics actually matters. Okay. What else actually matters?

And let's start talking about those things. And one of the things that weighs heavy on me right now is, you know, that's why Luong and Kraner in town is, I look at the future and I go like, I see storm clouds. I, heck, maybe we're already, you know, like, or maybe we're, you know, to pull out a little bit of your story. Maybe we're already in the surge or in the water's coming up to the ankles right now or wherever. you think and I'm just like okay so we should be talking about this because if you know if we aren't talking about it certainly there's lots of money shows that do talk about it um but it's kind of being swept under the rug like it isn't a big deal well we'll just print some more money and it won't be a big problem and just carry on and we'll just keep moving on and and this problem isn't going to

ferment into worse things and you know like that's the way you know u.s just uh up to debt level ceiling again and they, you know, another trillion or however many trillions they're doing. And you're like, well, I got a banking guy on. This is, you know, this is why I bring you on different people like yourself on to kind of hopefully clear some of the murky water for me so we can paint a picture so people can actually include it myself, be like, oh, this is what I should be doing. That's what I see what your bank's doing. That's my guess. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that, you know, whether you pay attention to it as intently as you do or just go to the, the grocery store and go, hey, wait a minute, this tomato costs $3, you know, and it's like,

there's something there and people recognize a problem. Sometimes they just can't put their finger on it, but, you know, and I, you know, am of the opinion that because of a lot of this money printing and zero rates over the last number of years, you see a number of these issues start to show up in society. So when you don't have a return on investment, basically the investment fest, you're and just gets to be infected and things like that. So a lot of these social programs that are coming out today are just not effective because there's just no return on investment. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a financial return on investment.

It could be a social return on investment, but they're not there. And so in my mind, it's no wonder there's so much social distortion right now and so much, you know, just people living on edge and that type of thing because this money printing and these zero rated interest have gone into the economy and just festered there and created these animals that have no business being there. And it just, this is the outlet of it is, you know, societal discontent in my mind. So people are having trouble putting food on the table. They're having trouble putting roof on their heads, getting good paying jobs.

this is all the result of currency devaluation in my mind. You know, maybe this is just a banker or an account's perspective on this, but the thing is this doesn't happen when, you know, 50 years ago, when there was actually a tether to the money printing, and these municipal, provincial, and federal governments were forced to balance the budgets and just basically couldn't steal people's savings through inflation to fund these projects that have no return on investment.

Well, I'll bring it all the way back then to Bow Valley. You know, you talk about, was this always Bow Valley's idea of physical assets, gold, silver, land, or is this like something that's just come about in the last year or two? No, this was really a result of, you know, three years of work. just sort of taking a look at the problem, seeing what we could do as an organization. And, you know, just one day sort of hit you on the head with a hammer that, you know, in our minds, precious metals, gold and silver are one of the only solutions that are going to help us weather this storm. So, you know, I recommend don't get over your skis with this and put every red cent into precious metals. but a small allocation of your free cash flow into precious metals, I think is a good idea for anybody.

And we chose to do that as an organization because naturally, you know, precious metals like silver and gold or throughout human history have been assigned value, a store of value, money that we wanted to put into our organization. And so we saw the problem. And in November, we basically actioned on it, November of 2022 and basically started buying physical precious metals to store not necessarily in our vaults, but in third party volts and that type of thing to basically try and weather against what we see is a big problem on the horizons. And, you know, at the end of the day, are those hurricane clouds going to come over top of you? No, maybe not, but the thing is, are you any worse off by having a store of water and a store of food to sort of protect yourself against it? I don't think so. No, you're preparing for the, you know, an old farmer once told me you prepare for the bad days and the good days. So in the good days, you know, and what he was talking about is he had cattle.

And so what they did when it was when they had the money and the capabilities, they built a lot of dugouts and different things like that. So then when they got into essentially a 10-year drought, they were one of the few people that still had water. And he said, there's just a conscious effort in the good days to realize bad days are always going to come around. And what you're talking about is, you know, you're just got to talk to some of the old-timers about the 80s. And you can realize that, oh, right?

Like, we're not going to have this, like life isn't this straight line up. You know, it's maybe, I don't know, is it a heart meter? Is it just a roller coaster? But you're going to have ups and downs essentially. Yeah, no, exactly. And so the typical government response is, yeah, spend every nickel you have that you bring in taxes and then some. And if there's a problem, say like that drought you're talking about, oh, well, we'll just go into debt.

And that'll solve the problem. But eventually, and I think the U.S. is especially running into this problem right now, is who's going to buy this debt? Right? So Japan stopped buying the debt. China stopped buying the debt. Russia sure isn't buying their debt. So who's going to be the marginal buyer of the debt? And then you really only have, you know, a few places to go.

You can go within the U.S. to their banking sector and their insurance sector, but they're saturated with U.S. debt. They're up to their eyeballs in it. They don't really want much more. And so effectively, the only choice is that the U.S. is going to have to buy it. And so we're talking about quantitative easing again and they're going to be buying their debt and that's that's a bad road to be on because it especially if the governments keep on spending like they do and in inflating.

It's it's just a perpetual cycle that people are eventually going to lose faith in the system. So where do you think that leads you know I'd hate to speculate too much with you but you know if you if you know when you talk about It's one of the things I've tried wrapping my brain around and having a guy who's, you know, stares at the numbers and everything else. You know, obviously you would have a better handle of it than me. But like, you know, I, what's the U.S. government debt right now?

Do you know off the top of your head? Oh, 31 trillion. Trillion? Yeah, like trillion. And I'm like, the number is so large. I can't even wrap my head around trillion, right? I can't wrap my head around a million, let alone a billion. and now a trillion, you know, and it's like, at some point, I'm like,

are they ever going to get to like what comes after a trillion, you know? And it's like, and I just take a step back. It's almost like the numbers don't matter anymore. No, exactly, right? You know, you see them flashing around on news pages and things like that. Oh, you know, throw another $100 billion here, $200 million there, trillion there. It's just sort of lost the relevance to it. But the thing is it's if people really think about it and, in a,

inflation continues to run hot, then I think there's going to be no choice but people to pay attention to these governments trying at least to balance their budgets. And, you know, that was sort of the big farce that came out of the U.S. in the last couple of weeks. As oh, what do you do? They did a lot of, you know, political jockeying back and forth between the Drememocrats and the Republicans. And what did they settle on a reduction of the proposed budget by 0.2% of GDP. And it's like, well, that doesn't do anything. Like, and I think it worked out to maybe $300 billion or something like that. So it's like when you're dealing with $31 trillion in debt, I'm sorry, $300 billion is just not enough, right?

It's just a drop in the bucket. So it's, they haven't learned a lesson. and I think eventually the bond market will make them learn that lesson very quickly. Well, what's the average, you know, when we talk about these different things, bring it back down, I'm trying to, I'll try and bring it back down to the everyday person listen to this and going, okay, bond markets, trillion dollars, this and that, point two, GDP, okay, yeah, it's like, well, what am I going to see? And you're already seeing some of it when you go back to the tomato story.

it's like, well, higher prices on food. You know, and you just think of the carbon tax going up. You know, I had Chris Sims, geez, from Alberta Taxpayers Federation, just the tax alone here in Canada, you know, tripling by 2030 for the carbon tax. And if you do the math on how we get everything in this country, it's like, well, if we're getting triple taxed and that's going to transportation and everything, everything's going up.

But then you talk about the debt and everything else. To the everyday person, what do you see? see in the coming years? Okay, so just backing up to some earlier comments. So I think we're running out of oil, and it's going to cost, you know, a lot more for barrel oil going forward, whether or not, wherever you sit on sort of the environmental spectrum, we're going to need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

And we're being attacked in the oil and gas industry, by effectively eco-terrorists to try and shut down the oil and gas industry, which is not going to help. Which, you know, it's, yeah, sure, everybody wants clean air. I get it. It's nice to have, but the thing is you have to be able to transition to something like this, that's something sustainable. And there just is no alternative at this point. And so when you basically have the reduction in the supply, then the demand keeps on going up. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw 200, dollar barrel oil in the next five years. Yeah, which doesn't,

it shouldn't shock anyone to hear that. Lots of people have been talking. I've even heard 300 barrel oil now. Yeah. But people, I can throw out, you know, different crazy numbers, but 200 barrel oil,

there's been enough people talking about that when you get talking about demand versus supply and everything else. Well, and so think about it this way too. So oil is the major input cost to everything. Everything. Like, it doesn't matter if it's,

a solar panel or a tomato, there's fossil fuels that are involved in that process. So if you think of the price of the oil going up that much, one of the major inputs of all these things is basically has to force the cost of the product to go up and therefore the price of the product to go up. And so that's just math. It's just going to work that way. So the higher the price of the oil is, the higher inflation is going to be. And that's why the U.S. has been continuing to drain the strategic petroleum reserve,

even the last couple of months, because the oil price has been down. It's not at $120 a barrel like it was 18 months ago or whatever it was. But they continue to drain the strategic petroleum reserve. And why are they doing that is to basically keep the price of oil down, because they know if it gets too high, inflation is going to run away. And, you know, and this ties into places like OPEC and OPEC Plus where they're not playing the U.S. game anymore. And it ties back into they're not buying the U.S. treasuries anymore and basically giving them the middle finger and saying,

no, we're going to cut production by another million barrels in oil because we know that you're running out a strategic petroleum reserve. And once that's down at a critical level, the price of oil spikes unless, you know, there's a revolutionary, new refraking process that develops or something like that, then the price of oil is going to spike and hence inflation is going to spike. You know, another piece of that demographic problem. So we have an aging population, especially in the Western world, U.S. and Canada especially. And a lot of these people have savings and promises from the government for from a number a year. So they've been promised old age security in CPP. And I have no doubt in my mind that

they're going to get paid that, you know, what the government guarantees. But if they're just printing the currency to do it, then they're paying you in devalued dollars. So yeah, is $800 worth a lot more, you know, 10 years ago than it is today? Absolutely. So, you know, if you can expect that look 10 years out and see, see what's that going to do? And, you know, if a loaf of bread costs $100, what good is it going to do you if you got $800 through CPP? You know, so it's a real problem. And it's called unfunded liability. So they've made all these promises that they have to pay out on. And they've committed to it. They will pay them out. But if they just print currency to do it, you've got an inflation problem on your hands.

not that you paint a bleak picture it's just that you know um what i enjoy about these conversations it's like oh man you know it should increase the level of urgency of all the listeners on you uh you know like preparing for and protecting what is yours uh over the next you know whatever it is you know i ever doubt on here what was that folks a couple weeks ago he's just talking about you know the end of this year is not going to be fun it's like well That isn't very long away, you know? And, you know, my mind always, you know, you think of like riots in the street and things like that. And that's not what he's talking about.

He's talking about like, he's talking about what's going on with the financial world. And, you know, if lots of people don't even pay attention to it and we're going to go to the store and one day, you know, a tomato is going to be $7 or whatever. And they're going to grumble about it and carry on with life and keep their head down and go to work and everything else. But if you're watching it right now, you're like, oh, like I should be doing more. Well, and that's what's striking about. it and I don't think it's necessarily our generation. I'm assuming you're about the same age as I am. It's the people that are on the verge of retirement or that that are already retired that that basically

savings gets evaporated through through inflation. So if you're still a working age, no problem. It's like you can continue to keep working and and basically get. Don't quit your job. Yeah, well, exactly. Right. And so you just demand raises more often type thing. And I think that's a lot of what's happening in society today is people are demanding more out of pay and benefits and things like that because they can't keep up with society. And so rightly so they should be demanding more of their employer. And so they can pay for a good living. But people that have socked away that $100,000, that's who I'm really concerned about, that it's just going to evaporate. And that's where the people that are sleeping, the people that were drunk during the hurricane, all of a sudden wake up when a loaf of bread is $100. And basically then they're crying to the government, please, please save me, help me, do something.

And the politician's going to stick up their hand and go, I can help you out. I've got this great little money printing press in the background and your problems are going to be solved. did you i'm curious um have you looked at other countries that have went through like crazy inflation you know everybody always points back to germany you know i i'm history i enjoy history and so everybody looks back at like germany when you know uh you know a barrel full of money would buy you know essentially a loaf of bread you know and everybody talks about that and then the next person goes it'll never get there don't stress about that right but i mean in recent history you've got different countries that have um

well, pretty much collapsed due to different pressures on their financial system and everything else. Have you looked at those or do you pay attention to those? Yeah, no, for sure. And, you know, you don't have to look too far back in history. And some of them are happening right now, you know, like turkeys. It's going through it right now where their lira is basically tanking. And what does the government do? They jacked interest rates to 96%. But in the background, the kids, they continue to print currency. So it's the political jockeying again where they're, oh, look at us, where we're increasing that rate to almost 100% to try and get down inflation. But meanwhile, in the background, they're basically just churning up the presses again to print out money.

But, you know, there's a lot tied up in that, and a lot of has to do with the U.S. dollar as the World Reserve currency. And it puts a lot of pressure on any nation that, that, that fundamentally relies on the U.S. reserve currency. So, you know, another Zimbabwe's a recent example. Venezuela is a recent example. You know, I encourage the listeners to go take a look at a bit of history on that. And everything's fine until it isn't. And all of a sudden the money printing curve goes parabolic,

and you can't stop. It's just, it's math. And that's sort of where, the frustrating place is when when I get pushback from people and it's like I'm just running the math. I'm not doing anything wildly out of tune here. So I'll bring it all I we I I love a good conversation. I can't bow valley in big bold letters because I want you know if you're sitting here in Alberta you got a you got a you know the CEO bill bow valley credit union here talking about uh I don't know I don't talk to a whole lot of bankers, right?

So, Sean can stick his hand up and go, maybe all of them are talking like you are. And yet, your name has been funneled to me. I don't know. I don't even want to put a number on how many times I've had your name texted to me through the phone since you started talking to different podcasts and different groups of people across Alberta. So if you're sitting here in Alberta and you're going,

wow, this guy, hmm, interesting. Is it a simple, like, can anyone bank with you? Yeah, anybody in Alberta, can. So like I mentioned earlier, you can just basically even go online and you can sign up online. A lot of people in this demographic don't like to do that. They want to look at their banker and the whites of their eyes before you're giving money. And I don't blame them because, you know, people these days spend more time worrying about what TV they're going to buy than where they're putting their life savings, which is pretty interesting to me. But so yeah, our charter basically dictates

that we can work within the constraints of Alberta, so anybody that's in Alberta can bank with us. And we have six branches right now, one in Banff, Canmore, our head office is in Cochrane, two branches in Erdrey, and one in Calgary. But we're looking to expand because we've seen an incredible uptake on our messaging and what we're trying to get out there and put across.

And people really like that value, set because it's it's not like that we're trying to put emotion around it but it's it's already there in people's minds they've seen it at the grocery store with that three dollar tomato they know something's wrong and so if if there's confidence in in somebody's actually paying attention to that I think within a financial institution I think people feel a little bit better versus most of financial institutions just glaze it over and go oh yeah yeah no problem because that's another thing about credit unions. We're membership owns, so our vested interest is in our memberships to do financially well. Whereas with a TD, I always pound on TD because their

shareholder driven and basically profit, they don't care about at the end of the day their clients. They just care about return to shareholders, which is a lot different from the credit union value proposition. You mentioned a couple different things that I don't know, I'm not going to stick words, I don't know if it was separate you from other banks or, and one of them was 100% deposit guaranteed. How is that different than other banks? I'm just curious because right now I bank with the ATB is one of the banks I bank with and then I bank with a credit union in town here. How is that different than say, and I don't mean to pick on any of those banks, just banking banks in general?

Well, I'd pick on ATB, but let's just pick on TD because that's the theme. No, no, no, let's pick on ATB because I actually bank there and it's in Alberta Bank, right? Well, the thing is, you know, it's been really interesting to watch ATB over the last couple of years. You seem to really drive home a number of narratives that haven't been in the best interest of Albertans, in my opinion. You know, I think anecdotally that they were one of the ones that really froze people's accounts during the truck of convoy. ATB was. ATB was. TD was another big one.

BMO was another big one. Royal Bank was another big one where anecdotally we saw a lot of membership come towards us as a result of that. And we still get letters from people and say, hey, look what ATB just gave me. And it's a letter that basically says you're outside of a risk profile. You have 30 days to clean up your affairs. We want you gone is basically what they say. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. And so that's, I, maybe this is new. I don't know. That's news to me. I thought I was being relatively smart by being an ATB and you just crack that on top of the head. Well, the thing, I don't think you're wrong because there is that 100% guarantee through the Alberta government through ATB. So I don't think you're far off. the mark, but the thing is their value set. I do a podcast where I talk to people that are on the

fringe all the time. I can't wait for them to give me your value set no longer lines with us. It's like, oh, well, that's, you know, it's legitimate. The thing is, and, you know, it's typically the people that, that have been vocal and have been sort of on that fringe minority, air quotes there, that they seem to be targeting. So maybe someday you'll say something or one of your guests will say something like me and basically crack you over the head. Sorry about that.

Well, to me, I think it's better to know now than to find out later, right? Like this gives you time to adjust and carry on. And to me, it's not a, I'm not worried about it. Jeez, like if this is, I always say, like to me, If this is controversial what we're talking about right now, like I just think of some of the other conversations I've had on here and I'm like to me this doesn't even feel like it's I'm in hot water and maybe it's because I don't even know what realm I'm entering into, you know, to me this seems pretty, I don't know, safe haven. And yet I know that's not exactly true. Well, and part of the problem is is when people get debanked, it's their complete livelihood, right? So what we found is people are just trying to put food on the the table, pay the rent, you know, put away a bit of money for a car, whatever it is.

And then all of a sudden they get their legs taken out from them because their financial institution doesn't agree with their, you know, value set or risk profile. And it's a big problem. And so if you're in a mortgage or something like that, good luck trying to find one within 30 days, right? If they say you're debanked within 30 days, we want you gone. basically you have to find a home for that mortgage and the first question that a new financial institution is going to ask

is like, well, why are you moving? Why are you breaking the term in this other mortgage right now to come over here? And it just, the red flags go shooting up and then all of a sudden you're debanked, not just one place, you're debanked everywhere because the thing is you don't have, you have all your eggs in one basket with one financial institution. I recognize that I'm even shooting myself in the foot when I say this,

but you almost need more than a few financial institutions just so you can basically swing from one branch to the other if you need to and have that relationship established those, again, those contacts established so you can call up, you know, somebody at the other financial institution and be able to make it a fairly easy transition. Okay, so you're an average, Albertan. You hear this, you go, oh, maybe.

you're in the Calgary area, maybe you're in an area, and over the, let's just assume here, over the course of the next year, another branch pops up, maybe out this way, maybe wherever, it doesn't matter. And they go, oh, I'm going to start moving some things over there. Is it, you know, is there anything unique about it or is it just a standard bank or 100% deposit guaranteed or is there some cool things or things you think people should know if they're looking into you? Oh, for sure. So we've gotten a lot of attention lately around the problem, well, even around the world. I was talking to a guy from Australia a couple of weeks back who writes a newsletter for central banks. That's what he does. And he was really interested in sort of the prospects of

Alberta. So there's really the three things that are distinguished us. And we touched on that that gold theme a little bit. And that's pretty unique to financial institutions. How much gold are you guys holding? Well, we won't release that quite yet because the thing is usually the next question is can we audit it? And we're not prepared to do that until we get it straightened out with the regulator, what direction we're actually going with this thing. Okay. That is a bit of hiccups. And we've been sort of working back and forth with the regulators on that of how that might work. And so once we are able to sort of release that, we absolutely will because I think it's important for people to recognize that. And we've had a couple of hiccups and and,

and but we continue to storm forward with that theme. And we'll attempt to do it, uh, in perpetuity too, because we, the, the intention at the end of the day is to get enough precious metals in reserve to match our retained earnings of the organization. So basically the entire capital of the organization is covered by by precious metals. Brecht's metals. And that's the intention at the end of the day. And obviously it's a significant amount. You don't want to slap 35 million on the table once and go, hey, buy gold because you could be wrong. The gold could drop by $200 tomorrow. And so when you look like a fool, if you did that type of thing, so you almost need some dollar cost averaging to go into it. And it'll take a number of years to get positioned. But I think people recognize that it takes time. And, and, just like the idea of it. So, yeah. Sorry, and then I'll go back

to kind of my original thought process going back if you're an average Albertan and you're looking at this. Is there anything else unique that you want to make sure that, you know, gets mentioned here before, you know, not that we can't talk for another hour, we certainly can, but just, you know, as we slowly wind up, is there anything else you want

to make sure Albertans, and I think specifically Albertans, you're sitting in Alberta and, you know, certainly maybe other provinces will hear this and, you know, I think of being right on the border city, a ton of Saskatchewat, vocar list of this as well. So, or, and I'll, you know, and on and on and on. But is there any other things that you want to make sure that get distinguished from other places so people know? Yeah, and that's what we found people have transitioned to our organization, have really latched onto our value set. And so this stems back even a couple of years.

now. And we made the conscious decision as an organization not to force people to get vaccinated for COVID-19. Your organization did that. Our organization did that. Where at the OSFI level, so that's the Canadian bank levels, the government forced everybody that was working for an OSFI organization to get vaccinated. You know, that's an easy statement. Now, but two years ago it wasn't so easy. Things looked a lot different two years ago. There was, you know, it basically was pounded through advertising in every angle to get vaccinated. And if you don't, you're going to keel over and that type of thing.

But we looked at our value set and we're here to provide a financial service to Albertans and stop. We're not here to make any judgment on health status. We're not here to make any judgment on, you know, political status, sexual status, any type of status. That's not what we're here to do because we're simply not experts. You're a bank. Yes. And we're not here to virtue signal, which I think people are starting to wake up to

that all this virtue signaling is just that. That sentence in itself right there, I'm like, oh man you know like we just a younger Sean once watched the NHL do a couple things and I went what's the big deal you know I like I don't know what everybody's so upset about why can't they introduce some things like that and now where it's at I'm like oh I understand what like oops it's like oops you know a big oops and but now it's like nobody wants to tune on tune in, all these organizations have brought politics, social, everything. It's just everywhere. It's suffocating. So to hear you just, we're a bank and we're going to be a bank. We're going to

make sure that we protect your money and, you know, and protect Albertans. And, you know, we're looking at that and we're paying attention to these things. It's like, that sounds pretty unique to me because everywhere else you go, it just seems like they're going to try and ram down. All the different things are being rammed down that nobody wants to have rammed down on them. No, and we're not interested in that, nor is at our place to make that judgment. It's just not. And frankly, for organizations to do this, it's almost insulting your intelligence, frankly. So anyway, that's probably enough of that.

I think in the wrong run, we were actually not that there's right and wrongs in these things, but I'm glad we didn't force our staff to get vaccinated because as a result of it, a few people, left our organization and they were the troublemakers anyway that left the organization that were hell bent that we should be all getting vaccinated. You know, and as a result of that, that we've seen a few, you know, vaccination injuries and things like that. As a result of that, you know, that's just anecdotal. I can't verify that at all.

But anyway. Well, I'm not here to bring you into that conversation anyway. So people want to go listen to those conversations. Go back and listen to just Edward Dowd. literally like two weeks ago, and he'll do, he'll bring up all the, uh, the stats they had on like everything in the United States. It'll blow your freaking mind. It's like, you know, it's, it's bad. So anyways, um, no, um, anything else, you know, because I think that's, honestly, I'm glad you brought that point up to me. Well, so yeah, the next one is our final thing

that we've sort of done a little bit differently. And, and, you know, it could open a can of worms here. But during the Freedom Convoy, the trucker convoy, we got news that, you know, we were supposed to freeze people's accounts out of Ottawa. And they were using this tool called FinTrack. And so if you don't know what FinTrack is, it's basically when you go into a financial institution in Alberta and it's a significant amount of money or it's a significant check or you're pulling out a significant amount of money, you get, you get the questions. and you know if you're in the camp that we are we don't like those questions well that's fin track and we're legislated by law to follow fin track federally regulated to to ask all these questions so

it's it's not necessarily your financial institution is just being nosy and what they're doing they're actually legislated to do this and fin track is is quite a blunt instrument so it's been around since just after 9-11 and basically it was the intention was to prevent terrorism from happening, terrorism funding from happening and it's morphed into something much different.

And really all it is right now is just a database and they collect this information and as far as I know, they've never made one arrest or made one conviction as a result of any information that they've gathered out of FinTrack. So it just sort of goes into this government

database void. But part of the problem is in March of 2023, the federal government announced that they're going to throw a whole bunch more money at FinTrack. And so this is the tool that they use to legislate the freezing of the trucker convoy accounts. And they're throwing a whole bunch money at it to improve AI to increase ministerial powers and increase criminal charges. that type of thing. And so when you introduce something like AI, it turns fin track from a very blunt instrument into a very scalpel-like tool, which, which, you know, we don't like, particularly as an organization. So we were one of the first ones to put up our hands and basically say, hey, wait a minute, we don't like this. And, you know, if somebody had all the documentation

in place, they had an RCMP order, they had a legal. court order or something like that and they said, hey, you know what, we need to, you know, Sean bought a Jerry can and he filled it full of water and he went to Ottawa. We want you to freeze his accounts. Um, there's not much we can do because it's a federal legislation. It's, it's the law. But the thing is, we were one of the first ones to push back. And we're starting to get the province involved in trying to get more interest around that. So, um, in September of 2022, we had Daniel Smith at our board planning session with our board and senior management, and we discussed this exact thing. And so we're hoping to work with this government,

because I think at the end of the day, I get it. You know, you want to stop the drug dealers. You want to stop the terrorists and that type of thing. But everyday common person, getting their accounts frozen for virtue signaling purposes, it just doesn't fly with me. So I think Alberta could create its own basically FinTrack equivalent that isn't so overbearing and basically take over charge and take back that that piece from the federal government. And, you know, I can go further to this. You know, we could get into CBDCs and digital IDs. Well, we haven't even brought you. You know, it's funny, what did I tell you before we started?

One of the things even I'm concerned about, right, I think it's hard not to be. is CBDCs, you know, central bank, digital currency. It's, well, it's alarming, right? Because they've already put out the, you know, government in Canada has already put out, you know, what do you guys think about this idea? You know, like it's already, it's already a well-established thought process of where we could be heading or maybe where we are heading.

And what's your thoughts on? Well, I wrote a small document on it. You can find it on our website at bow valleycredit union. dot CU. And basically I'm very opposed to it. A true central bank digital currency effectively means, right now, if, Sean, if you had $100 and you deposited it with Bow Valley Credit Union, it would be an asset to you and it would be a liability to us.

So effectively what a true CBDC is, is that liability would no longer be with Bow Valley Credit Union. It would be with basically the central bank of Canada. And so effectively, that's where all your transactions would run through. In theory, it's, I think, a lovely tool for dictators, but frankly, I think we're years, even decades out from something like this. The functionality of it, I think, is very hard for governments, let alone the private sector to get around because it's just banking is very, very common. complicated. You know, it seems that it's, it's very seamless, but, but it isn't. And just to give you a small example of that. So a few years back, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba decided that they

wanted to streamline their payments process. So we're talking like checks, wires, EFTs, AFTs, e transfers. And we wanted to straighten out these, these technologies to, to make it more effective, because it's a bit of a spaghetti diagram because it's just sort of been built over the past, say, 60 years. So now really all we're doing is trying to straighten out eight streams between these three provinces in the credit union system. It's taken six years and almost $200 million to do just that. And that's just the payments.

That's not even talking about the loans and the mortgages. So if a central bank thinks that they're going to figure out banking, anytime soon. Good luck. Good luck. Now, that being said, earlier before we pressed record, we were just talking about a new tool

that I discovered just even the last couple of weeks is through OSFI. So the Office of Superintendent of Financial Institutions came out with basically a paper stating, okay, these are going to be some of the new things that people need to be graded on. And so we're talking about ESG scores, DEI scores. And so if you're an organization and you say you're an oil company,

all of a sudden, your ESG score is bad. So they may not. Let's hold it there just for a second. For the audience, ESG. What is ESG? Okay. Environmental social governments, the acronym ESG, is a very big spectrum. So, but for the most part,

part, people have centered around basically reducing carbon, which is a very small portion of what actually ESG is. Like, there's actually some parts of ESG that I like. There's the whole section on privacy. I like that. That's a good section. You know, I like diversity piece. You know, there's nothing wrong with that.

Don't have a problem with that. But people focus around reducing carbon when you say ESG. And so an oil company is going to have a very, very poor ESG score. And so hence, through the OSFI regulations, you're either going to have a higher rate of interest or no loan at all. And you can translate that out to other things, too. It's like, well, your home isn't energy efficient enough. Your rate of interest isn't 5%. It's actually 7%.

Sorry about that. You know, wish we could do better for your ESG score. or perhaps your company doesn't have enough diversity. And all of a sudden, your DEI score is too low. All of a sudden you get penalized for a higher interest rate or something like that. So this document that I'm reviewing, and I have to summarize to some degree, basically says if you're not going wrong with the government agenda, you're either A, not going to get a loan at all,

or you're going to be paying a higher rate of interest. So it's basically, it's incenting people, absolutely, but it's a big stick. It's not a carrot incentive. It's a stick incentive to basically beat people in the direction that they want them to go.

So in that case, it doesn't matter what a CBDC does because they control the direction through OSFI. Hence why being with a credit union that's regulated by KUDG or the Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation versus OSFI has a significant

advantage going forward because you won't have to fall under these rules of Osfi. Hmm. I'm, okay, that's, you give me all this great information. Now John's going to have to go home and chew on it and, you know, and come back. I was trying to think of the guy out of the States at a St. Louis. I can see him in my head. He talked about ESG and all these different acronyms, right? And that went like that video went viral, right?

millions upon millions. It's exactly what you're talking about. And certainly from a person sitting here in Canada, in Alberta, you go, okay, so what can we do about it? Maybe this is where I'll slide into the crude master final question. And you met Dale Wilker yesterday. And so for the audience, we've been, for a month, we're going to try it out and see how this question goes. It used to be, what do you stand for, you know? But today we're going to ask the crude master final question. and that is going to be what's next and how can I help? Well, so, you know, and I think, I think this has been great that people have been focused on the problem for the past three years. And it's great that your show has been basically educating people to that point.

But I think it's even come to the point now where what are we going to do about it? Like we have to do something about it. We see this coming. We can sit there and bitch and. own till the cows come home. But we if you're not going to do anything about it, then shame on you, frankly. And so we're trying to stand up to a lot of these these things like we're working to get out from underneath the fin track. We're sticking with our value set as an organization. And frankly, I think the best thing people can do is vote with their feet. You know,

the same thing that they did with Target and Budweiser down in the States. They, they voted with their feet and said, no, I'm not putting up with this nonsense anymore. And I think the same goes with financial institutions. And we recognize that there's, there's a lot of demand for what we're doing. And frankly, I think I mentioned to you earlier, I asked you not actually to post this interview too soon because we're run off our feet with people that are trying to open up accounts with us. And we just can't keep up as an organization. But that in mind, we're trying to get into more communities within Alberta because we recognize that while the ATBs and the RBCs of the world are closing branches, we're looking to open them because I think banking is quite personal

and people want to be face-to-face when they're talking to people about their financial future and their livelihood. And so you don't want to talk to a computer. You don't want to be on the phone for eight hours. You want somebody in front of you and you answer your questions right away. So we're looking to expand and we sort of have a format to do that. And we're having considerable uptake. There's about eight or nine communities that are interested right now around some criteria that we're just putting out there. And it's good faith on both sides, both on the community's part and our part. And that criteria is just to basically get a satellite branch in your community and start doing

business with us and we'd be more than happy to take more people on in Alberta and help them out if you agree with our value set. So. Well, then, well, then the second portion of the question, which I was given Dale a hard time on them. Like, how can I help? And maybe I should change it. So how can we help? So voting with feet is, is in your mind, will show a signal to other people. Oh, they value this. And that's, that's how people can help. Well, yeah, and even, even all. And it doesn't have to be, and I should say, that doesn't even have to stick to just banking. That can go across the board to a lot of different things.

But anyways. Oh, absolutely. And altruistically, we'd love to see other credit unions not only in our province, but across Canada, sort of pick up this narrative about what we're doing. And it's an underserved marketplace, and I think it has legs. And people have strong value sets that are with our organization. and we appreciate that. And so if we're able to give a template

to some credit union in Saskatchewan, let's say, and say here, this is what we did, I think if we can get even sort of national recognition of this is a credit union or an organization that has this particular value set that's aligned with mine, and enough people go over to it, it basically forces the other financial institutions,

to sharpen up and get into place and start being more considerate, frankly. You know, it's, it's a bit altruistic. It may be a bit far-fetched, but the thing is you have to start somewhere, and we're willing to be that first mover. Well, I appreciate you coming in and doing this, you know. Obviously, you know, it's kind of a double whammy. You get to, you know, come to the show tonight and meet Tom and Alex and everything else, right? and hear their perspectives on things outside of Canada

and how they're going to ultimately impact all of us here, I think. And then, of course, actually getting to do this in person and in the studio and everything else, it's just kind of like, man, from where I'm sitting, I'm like, it's kind of worked out well, you know? Like, I don't know if I, when I first planned the show, I'm like, oh, yeah, this would be a ton of fun. But I didn't realize the little microcosms

that were all going to happen because of these guys coming to Lloyd and everything else, You know, and people are laughing. They're coming to Lloyd. It's like, yeah, we're kind of, you know, I don't mean to say, I'm not putting Lloyd on the map by any stretch. I think Lloyd's put Lloyd on the map and all the people here. But we kind of get left out to, you know,

because we're on the outskirts of the provinces, you know, where the border city and everybody goes like, oh, it's so far to drive, you know. It's funny. I go, I always shoot back. Well, I drive to Calgary all the time for all your BS, right? Or Eminton or Saskatoon or Regina, right? Like, that's all we do here is we drive. And so it's pretty cool to see.

different people flocking into Lloyd this weekend to come see these two. And certainly individuals like yourself and everything else has made it really interesting because I'm like, oh, this is interesting, right? Like now the point, I'm like, well, we've got to find a way to get you in here. Because I've been, you know, we've been talking now for a couple weeks of how we're going to sit down and everything else. So either way, I appreciate you making the drive out and then making some time to sit down and do this. No, no, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. And like you said, it's, we're just a small, deliver of the piece of the pie. You know, there's problems with justice and education and the health care system and the police system. And, you know, the financial piece is just a small

wedge of that. But the thing is if every one of these industries, if you will, sort of start to get collected together like has happened over the last couple of days, fantastic. We're sort of hashing ideas back and forth. And it's been a great experience so far. So, okay. Well, again.