Shaun Newman Podcast - #503 - Nicole Frey

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Nicole works as an operations manager, and runs the non-for-profit Animal Food Bank Foundation, where they fundraise to support homeless and low-income households with food for their animals. We discuss the City of Medicine Hat and the corruption within their city council.  Interview with Mayor Linnsie Clark: https://chatnewstoday.ca/2023/09/11/noon-interview-linnsie-clark-sept-11/ Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Patreon: www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

This is Late and Gray. This is Tanner Today. This is Donald Best. This is Granny McCoy. This is Steve Holmstrom. This is Viva Fry. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

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t f s a they also uh work with those i thought that was a really cool of a listener to reach out so i added it in um clay smiling team over at profit river they're having to meet the cfo here on October 21st. That's the chief firearms officer, Terry Bryan, who once came on the show. She'll be in town. They'll have industry reps representing the following lines in store. Hawa, oh man, you know, somewhere somebody's laughing at me as I rattle this off. Okay, Hawa, Spy Point, Nossler, Benelli, Boretta, Steiner, Ticka, Sacco, and we'll have some sales and specials on. How did I do there, Ed? Did I butcher that? I'm sure he's going to be howling. and sending me a follow-up email saying,

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that came from Windsor Plywood and the team over there Windsor Plywood look no further head over there and get one of their custom pieces of wood they got some unique character things sitting in their showroom. Now let's get on the tail of the tape brought to 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 oilfield locations. For more information, visit them at Hancock Petroleum. DatC.A. She's an operations manner who helped found the non-for-profit Animal Food Bank Foundation. I'm talking about Nicole Fry. So buckle up. Here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Nicole. fry. So first off, ma'am, thanks for hopping on. Thank you for having me. Now, you know, I was just joking with you. I've heard bits and pieces of this story and I'm like, well, if I don't know it, I got to assume most of my audience doesn't know it. So let's start with a bit of boat Nicole and then we'll get into a medicine hat and you can lay it all down for us. Awesome. Okay. Well, I actually got involved in all of this because we moved here about two years ago and my husband and I run a nonprofit in Canada called the Animal Feed Bank.

So we're very burst in people that are struggling or living on the poverty line or below the poverty line and the social services and the system's being broken and all of that kind of stuff. How I got involved in this was we were actually petitioning for a TNR program in Medicine Hat. And when I went to a city council meeting, me who's never at a loss for words, was that a loss for words for about a week after? I just could not believe the level of dysfunction. PNR. TNR, TNR, sorry.

TNR and release. It's a program for feral cats. And so what they do is they trap them, spay, neuter them and release them back into the community. And it's helped to control the colony. And because the animal feed bank steps in to help where we can to feed those pets or people who have taken in those cats, that's how I got involved.

And then like everything else I do, once I see it, I can't unsee it. And then I need to try and fix it. You start pulling on a thread. Before we get in, where did you move to Medicine Hat from? So I'm originally from Winnipeg. I've lived in Colonna, in Brooks, in Calgary, and then in Medicine Hat. And I'm just, so it was Medicine Hat like, you know, like I threw a dart at the dartboard and that's what stuck.

You know, like you were in Colonna. We've all, lots of us have been there and we're like, well, that's a pretty nice place. Right. It's very expensive. We all know why you left Winnipeg. We all know what you're like, yeah. It's a little cold here. You know what?

We went to Brooks for a contract for work, and I ended up coming into Medicine Hat to go to do a fingerprint check and drove down 1st Street, and it was beautiful. I had never been off the highway before. I had no clue that Medicine Hat was even a city. It didn't rank. But once I drove into downtown, and it's got these beautiful historic buildings and these big trees,

and we've got lots of irid deer, and it's relatively strong. safe and it's relatively, you know, affordable, a great place to raise the family. And we thought, you know what, why not? So we missed two years. And you've been across the country then, seen different provinces. You've mentioned at least Manitoba, Alberta, and B.C., correct? I don't know if I missed any in there. Yes, yeah, that's right. And I don't know, with you being involved in non-for-profits, that type of thing, these different programs across provinces. Is there anything you've, you know, you're like, man, being in Alberta is just way easier

than, let's say, British Columbia or Manitoba for that matter? Or is it like, nah, it's like the same thing, just a different, different health kind of thing? Oh, in the nonprofit sector, I was naive three years ago thinking I would walk in and be welcomed with open arms because we're all working for the same goal. and it turns out it's really competitive and siloed dysfunctional. And so it's pretty dysfunctional regardless of what province you're in. From a personal perspective, though, Alberta was much more affordable, offered much more opportunity and things like that.

And so from that perspective and the fact that we could work remotely from wherever, Alberta had some benefits, especially medicine had some benefits until recently. Were you doing non-for-profit in BC and Manitoba or different things? So our animal feed bank is volunteer-based. We are all volunteers. We operate across Western Canada, but I started it in Colonna. I flew home to Winnipeg to start a branch there. But my husband does website and marketing work, and I'm an operations consultant by trade.

So we can work from anywhere. Oh, so I'm just getting clear. I hope I'm getting this. You have a full-time job where you can work remotely. And then on the side, as a hobby or a professional. passion or whatever we're calling it, you have a non-for-profit where you're trying to do a food bank. Yeah, we do a pet food bank. And yeah, and three years ago, it's my husband's favorite. I told you so. He's like, you know what we're getting into? And I was like, I just want to be this homeless guy's

dog. And that's how it all started. And we started with just my husband and I in Colonna and a little branch there with no idea what we were doing. And three and a half years later, we've done 2.1 million meals and 11,000 deliveries in our own branches, plus we provide pet food and supplies to organizations all over Western Canada. And we've gone from two volunteers to 100. So it's like this thing. It's become this thing. And as you step into the sector, you start to see the, it's very hard, you know, people,

you can't budget out of poverty. Once you're in poverty, it's very hard to dig your way out. The system is unstructured to give you a hand up. It's more of a hand out and keep you where you. are. And so there's a lot of advocacy that has come from just the simple action of feeding pets in need because there's so much more to it than just pet food. I feel maybe I've said this not that long ago, folks, but I feel really dumb right now. I'm going, is there that many pets that are living that rough of a life? Or am I looking at this the wrong way? So it's super

complicated because and throw COVID into the mix and it gets even more complicated. So we've had the movement of everybody was at home and got pets and adopted from a shelter and then everybody's lives kind of returned semi-normal and we've had an influx of animals back into rescue and shelters. So rescues and shelters are at or over capacity and it's been that way for quite a while. And then we also have the economy tanking. And so you've got and cost of living and utilities going up and things like that. And so you've got people who are faced and people food don't provide food as a mandate for pets. So if they do it, it's ancillary service, it's not consistent. There's all kinds of things. Sometimes they don't want to store people food

and pet food together. You know, there's all kind of stuff. And so I love dogs basically, but all animals. And we stepped in to help make sure that nobody was having to choose between feeding themselves or their pets. What that's evolved into, though, is this realization that without services like ours, many people are forced with surrendering their pets. And so we step in to help prevent the surrender of pets, happy loved pets, I say, happy loved pets that are better off with their humans than they would be going into the shelter. And it's very much like everything else in the social service sector, the community and the general public will end up paying for that some way or another.

So why not just give the person a bag of pet food and keep that pet with them? it's a whole thing because people at this stage in the game whether it was COVID and certainly now where we sit are looking at the budget and going you know because I mean we have a dog and and if you don't have a dog you probably don't realize you know you got you have pet food and then you got the shots and then you got and you can see when things get really really tight it's like are you going to feed your kids or the dog and that's what you're kind of stepping in trying to alleviate especially as times are not getting better they're slowly getting worse, especially with winter

on setting here, right? Well, I don't want to say right away. Geez, let's not with that. But certainly it's closer than it has been. It's right around the corner. And with that coming, we know that you know, your heating bills going up and on and on and on. And okay, okay, I think I get

where you're going. Yeah, to give people a little bit of perspective of the impact of the work, we pulled our clients because I'm data-driven. I love data. And so we pulled our clients. last year and asked how many of you had to choose between feeding yourselves or your pets before a service like ours is available. Sixty-six percent of respondents said that they used to have to choose between feeding themselves or their pets. How many would have to have surrendered their pets

if we weren't around? 56 percent said they would have faced surrendering their pet. And so when you look at it from that perspective, you're like, holy, you know, a $40 or $50 bag of food that's being donated to us. Maybe it's a write-off. We have a program where we're re-wrecked. routing pet food that would other boys be discarded because it's expired or close to expiry date into the pets of tummies or the tummies of pets in need. It's a huge, huge impact. And we have, so one of the most impactful stories I have about one of our clients was a school teacher in Winnipeg who reached out to our organization because one of her students hadn't eaten the night before because they couldn't afford dog food. And it gives me goosebumps and probably made me cry. He fed his meal to his. his dog. And so we stepped in and provided pet food and supplies. And our team went a bit above and beyond. It was close to Christmas. We did a fundraiser. We got them Christmas gifts. But it was just him and his dad and this dog. And this little kid was sharing his dinner with his dog because they couldn't afford dog food. Isn't aren't kids amazing? They really are. Yeah. That's a that's a cool story.

Yeah. A kid gets it. The kid gets it. Yeah. Okay. Well, fast forward me then to Medicine Hat. What have you, you know, you talk about, you've seen something and now you're like, well, what, what, walk us through the events. Yeah. So we've got feral cat colonies here pretty behind the times as far as TNR bylaws and things like that go. And so the advocacy came from the perspective of let's get a TNR bylaw approved so that we can start attempting to help control the feral cat population. Lots of impact. around feral cats and nature and birds and fighting and, you know, all kinds of things. So lots of benefits to it. In navigating that with the mayor and council, I was blown away and just thought, oh, God, they just don't know anything about the sector. And why would they?

Because if you're not in it and doing it, you just don't know. I didn't know what I didn't know three years ago. And then I went to a council meeting and I listened to the questions of the council and mayor asked about TNR. and TNR had been on the radar in medicine hat for 10 years for this council long enough for them to know better questions to ask. And I left that meeting and I thought, how unprepared, unprofessional and embarrassing was that meeting? That was terrible. And so we kept the pressure on them and we did manage to.

Just from, sorry, just to hold it there for a second, just from the standpoint and they didn't know what TNR, right? I'm saying that right? Yeah, yeah. They didn't know what TNR was? So they didn't do any research and didn't understand, in my opinion, they didn't do the research and they didn't understand what it was or what it was trying to achieve. And their questions were not on point. They didn't engage any local experts.

I requested information over and over again about what information they were looking for with regards to TNR pros and cons. You know, they give you five minutes to present. We weren't invited to present. What are the pros and cons of TNR? Oh, that's a whole other podcast. But essentially, the pros for it are that you get to help control the quality of life, improve the quality of life for the feral cats.

And you also help to start to control the population of feral cats. And so cats can have kittens over and over again during the year. And those kittens will have kittens as early as, you know, four months old. And so it's just this never-ending cycle. They affect birds. they affect other animals. They affect cats. And when they're not spayed or neutered, especially neutered, the male cats will seek out

females way outside of a territory that would be considered like normal. And so when you stay and neuter them, then you start controlling where the cats go and lessening their boundary. It's a whole thing. There's not really a lot of negatives. We had a lot of questions about, isn't it inhumane to trap a cat, neuter it, and release it back into the wild? And unfortunately, some cats do better in that environment that they would ever do in being adopted into a home because that's all they know.

They become essentially wild cats. So there's a lot of, there was a lot of misinformation. I'm just curious. I'm like, okay, well, you're getting me blank. I'm like, how many cats are we talking about? Like, I'm thinking about Lloyd here. And I'm like, do we got feral cats? I'm supposed to do.

And I'm like, like, how many cats do we maybe have? here and somebody's going to text me and I just but it's not like I drive you know what we got we got a feral rabbit problem everybody a few a few of those rabid cats or rabid rabid I'm not rabid cats but we could probably use a few of those feral cats to take down some of the the the rabbits here we got rabbits everywhere driving this morning and there was a rabbit in the middle of road I'm like there's another one like where do you anyway they breed like cats yeah there's actually um there's actually movements for TNR for for bunnies too and it's a whole other thing and there's bunny rescues sure sure and I don't mean that but in how many how many cats like I'm sitting here and I'm going okay

I'm mayor of all medicine hat you walk in you're like TNR and I'm going like are we seeing cats everywhere is it is it that big of a problem they tend to be in colonies and normally in industrial areas and so it's really hard to say but there are statistics out there which I cannot remember off the top of my head but let's say it's like you know three cats for every person person or, you know, free cats for every 10 people or whatever it is. They're statistics. And so they were estimating, I think, over a thousand feral cats, which. In MedHat?

MedHat, the city of the feral cat. Right. Well, it's everywhere. But let's back up and go, like, statistics are only statistics. So, I mean, they're only as good. I'm a hockey guy. And I wonder if, you know, if the medicine hat tigers got us named from the feral cat, you know? Like maybe that's where it came from.

I don't know. Anyways, I'm throwing that there with you. Sorry, I keep interjecting, but I'm like, That's okay. This is interesting. Carry on. Okay. T.R,

they're asking these questions. They're going, is it inhumane? Please. What's going to happen to our birds? It's all on YouTube. You can watch the videos of the council meetings. You know,

what happens when they come into adoption? It was just, it was very, very shocking. I was shocked and then I couldn't look away. What shocked you? When you go back to it, what were you like,

wow, this is really strange. Like, was it the thought? The questions that they asked were so off point. I don't even know what the word would be. It was so not relative to what we were discussing. It seemed like they were super unprepared. We had one council member who didn't apparently bother to read the agenda and didn't know what the word feral meant,

which I don't expect people as a general public to know what feral means. I didn't know what it meant until three years ago. It's just a wild pet, basically a wild cat or a dog when they don't have a home. We used to joke about feral kids. So anyway, that's a little different. Yes. And so just not taking the time to know what that is or even like Google it on his phone while he was having the meeting, but instead to be like, what does feral mean?

Just really showed me the lack of importance that they placed on the subject matter, which was really unfortunate because it's not only the cats, but it's also the community and the bylaw officers and the pound and everything that has to deal with these cats. So I just found it really, they seemed very disconnected from the very subject that they were charged with voting on. And so I didn't have a lot of confidence that they were going to be able to vote effectively, whether it was pro or con vote, like yes or no. At that point didn't matter because I don't think they understood the subject matter enough. So then I was like, huh, okay, well, what's going on? Then the utilities up were started.

And we started dating. So timeframe from the Feral Cat issue to the utilities. Parallel, June, July, 2020. Same time? Yes. Okay. And so we are watching the request increase. And I could tell when the utility bills were coming out because we would see an influx of

requests. That was my hypothesis. I've been doing this long enough to know that there's usually a trigger when we see a spike. Watching the Facebook groups in the community, I love medicine had. It's like 1983 with Facebook. We're all stuck on Facebook here. And so watching the Facebook groups and watching people talk about and complain about their high utility bills. And we're not talking like it's gone up 50 or 100 bucks. We're talking it's tripled. It's gone up from 400 to 1200 or it's gone up from 5,000 to 10,000 for some businesses. So it's a substantial

problem. And somebody on one of the groups was talking about doing a petition. And I was like, oh, please somebody start the petition so I don't have to. And nobody started it. And I was like, okay, we'll start the petition. And so we put up a change.org position, mostly from the perspective of we are watching counsel and the mayor be ineffective and not listen to us and not give us an opportunity for input. I saw it with TNR. I'm watching it with utilities. We, had 2,500 people sign and no response from counsel. The deputy mayor at the time, and I've heard they rotate the deputy mayor here, so I'm not sure if she's like a permanent deputy mayor, but she was in the capacity of deputy mayor at the time when I started the petition, went on to

the medicine hat news, the newspaper here, and stated that the utilities pricing is not a medicine hat decision. This is our deputy mayor. But it is a medicine hat. decision. I knew that. And it took us a bit to peel the onion and get that fact out there, but she was wrong. She then proceeded to do laughing emojis on things that I was posting online about the impact of utilities costs. It was just super unprofessional. And I just thought, holy smokes, this is the person that's speaking on behalf of the mayor at this point. Like, what is going on? I asked the mayor. I said, her a message and said, like, are you, are you okay with this? I would not be okay with this.

Are you okay with this? She didn't reply. They don't reply to me anymore. I think I'm a troublemaker. And so I'm on some list. I'm pretty sure. It's the feral cat lady, you know? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I'm a feral cat lady. One of them replies, Councillor McGrogan always replies me and he's always lovely. He even met me for coffee and I and I respect that because he listened to me. But the rest of them have nothing to say. The harder the questions become, or the more you challenge their answers I'm finding, or ask them to provide evidence of their answers. So when they're telling me that they have obligations, which we know are not true, to charge based on the provincial rate for utilities, and I go back and say, great, point me to that legislation or that documentation or that,

whatever it is that you have to adhere to with the province, they just stop replying. And I'm like, well, that just makes me more suspicious, because if you have, If you've nothing to hide, then just give me the information. If you don't know after being in council and the mayor for two years, that's another problem. But at least say that. I don't know when I need to go research. Just don't completely ignore us. And so anyway, we did the petition.

They chose not to respond. We had another community member named Sue, her and her husband own a restaurant here. They've had utility bills spike. I think they doubled. They managed to rent a location here called Higden Hall and there was a community meeting. And so there was about 500 of us community members that showed up at this meeting. They had the mayor came and a few council members. And it was basically our very first opportunity to ask them some questions and give them some feedback on what was happening and the impact of the rising costs of utilities.

I'll preface this with the city budgeted for. something like 35 million in profit for utilities for 2023, they're on track to make 150 million. 150 million. We have no other opportunity to have competition here. And I don't believe competition is necessarily the solution. But from what I found out, and again, we've not been able to get any information from Rachel or Rochelle Pankow. She's like the director of utilities, from the mayor, from council, from the chair of the

is commissioned. Nobody will give us information on anything. I've actually submitted FOIPs to try and get it. you look like you're gonna you're like what right yeah i'm i'm i'm i'm want to make sure that i slow you down a little bit because i'm like okay let's see if i got this right so they triple the bill okay we're gonna use the the original number he said that was 400 instead of it going to 500 which i think you know anywhere in alberta everyone saw an increase of their power bills everybody was talking about it it was like man this is this is interesting you're saying it goes from 400 to 1200 Now, that's not every case, but that's a lot of the cases, and people are just paying an exorbitant amount more. Yes.

The next thing I think I caught was in there that they were planning to make $34 million surplus office. This is the city of Medicine Hack, correct? Yes. And now it's going to be closer to over $100 million or $150 million. Yes. Where does the surplus go? Does it go back in infrastructure? Does it go back in the town?

That's a very good question. Yes. It goes into some fund, some rainy day fund, in case they need it someday. one of the counselors asked, I think it was for Shell Pancoast, it might have been the CFO, the acting CFO, where he was trying to get them to admit, I think, that the 120 million was unexpected cash flow. And from the perspective of, okay, you've got this 120 million, you didn't expect, your city is now facing, so many people are facing struggles where they can't feed their kids

or their pets or are facing, you know, worried. that they're going to lose their homes because they can't go from, it's like a mortgage payment almost our utilities now. And they just really skirted around the issue with what they're going to do with the money, where it's going to go, why they have it. They've been very, very standoffish. And that's part of the problem as well. So I would love to be like, well, this is what they've got planned for it, but we don't know. They've just got this extra surplus. I assume this surplus has been coming in every year, right? Now, I'm not saying that high, but I'm assuming if the ones charging the bill, they've never went, well, we're only going to make 10 cents this

year. I assume it's been a million here or a million there. I'm going to go low. Maybe it's been 100,000 here. Like this didn't get implemented yesterday, right? No, it was, it turns out, so back to the deputy mayor's lie to the public that this is in a medicine hat decision. It is a medicine hat decision and it's based on a bylaw that was put into place by the city council in 2009. The bylaw at that point was not meant to deal with rising costs of utilities. So it's outdated. It doesn't work for what we have going on right now. But instead of actioning that, they keep hiding behind it.

Like they can't change it or they don't have power to change it or do something, which they clearly do because once we've got the uproar going, they took immediate action. But this has been on their radar for 18 months. 18 months, they've been asking for a rate review. 18 months. where in private sector would you allow a team to be this dysfunctional and incompetent and continue to allow them to go on with their job?

Oh, don't get me started on that. Yeah. So now you have people who, you know, we have a single mom and there's a video of it. I'll try and find the links and send them to you. There's a video of this Higden Hall meeting, this community meeting where the single mom is up there with her two kids crying because she cannot buy groceries for her kids because her utilities are so outrageous. It is, from the perspective of incompetence, that's one thing.

It is appalling that our council and our mayor in particular are so disconnected from the needs of their community that they didn't see this coming, even though we have been all saying that it's coming. The mayor has gone on TV last week, I think, and said that she didn't notice. utilities were such a big deal because she's just one person how many how big's how big's medicine hat we got about 60,000 people we don't grow a lot we grew a lot by 11 people my husband and my son and I were three of them so yeah I think it's like sixty three thousand and well and medicine hat on January 12 2028 to the population for the census metropolitan area of medicine hat had over 80,000 in the past year so that would be medicine hat and more medicine hat city

it populates at 63,000 is what it's saying. Yeah. Just, I'm just for my comparison, because Lloyd's like, I don't know, is it 30,000 folks or is it like 25,000? But it's roughly double the size of Lloyd. With a lot of bunnies. With, you know, when they talk statistics,

this is only my eyes watching. It's about five bunnies for every person here. It just seems like they're everywhere. Right, yeah. Walking a dog is interesting because I'm like, I know, buddy. You want to go and then you get around corn. There's another one.

You're like, oh man, there's another one. going to have to hold on you like they're going to have to get in blinders like the more goodness it's wild so did they just think you know like 500 in the population of 60,000 you know is is small is tiny and yet when you're doing things like this 500 is actually a pretty good turnout you know like I remember when I first had my first show and I had a couple of politicians in attendance and they came over and talked to me after because I had 270 people I think show up to that one if memory serves me correct and they're like how did you do this and I thought it was a small in my mind it's a small crowd I'm like I you know I want to get to I don't know 10,000 or

whatever I just watched Jordan Peterson with 8000 and and you know like to me I'm like oh that's you know an inconsequential number but now the further I get into this I'm like oh I get it they go to things and get 27 people and can't get people engaged you can't got 500 people going, where are the answers to this? That's civic engagement and that needs to be paid attention to. And now your lady who's speaking on behalf of the mayor is saying, oh, I didn't notice anything. The mayor. The mayor is saying that. The mayor is saying that. The mayor is saying that. Yes, she's a single person and doesn't use a lot of energy and so didn't really notice the bill. And I'm thinking, okay, this is a problem because you have to be more aware of

that because not everybody is single in our community and has a well-paying job. And there's kids, there's kids and families. And just the level of disconnection from the community that she was elected to represent is appalling. We're seeing that. We're seeing that out of a lot of politicians. And the one that comes immediately into mind is our fearless leader, Justin Trudeau, right? Oh, God, yeah. He sits up on his pulpit and acts like nothing's wrong and he's one of the people and everything else. And then you, you know, you're staring and you're going like, is he understand what the heck is going on right now? Are we in the same universe? Because I feel like are we in the same country, you know? So it's just on a smaller, smaller scale, obviously, from Canada

down to Medicine Hat, which is, which is interesting. So you have an interesting perspective. So where is it at today then? So the mayor on her, so where we left it after Higden Hall, there was some promises or some commitments made from council and the mayor that did not transpire. One of them was that I went up and said, what's our cost of utilities? How much is the cost to produce a kilowatt hour? They didn't know. 18 months in and you don't know. I've heard, we've got some unofficial whistleblowers who claim to work or have worked in the

utilities. And so no. And by what they're telling me and the verbiage they're using, I would tend to think that they have some intimate knowledge. They're telling me that eight cents a kilowatt hour would be about where we are, maybe 10, but probably eight, possibly six. They're charging 25, 26 cents. And then the other thing was we have so many fees on our bills. It's ridiculous. And so we wanted a listing of what the feeds were, why they're being collected, and where they go. And I were supposed to release that information into the paper, which they didn't do.

And then after that, they had magically, they all of a sudden can call emergency council meetings, which they couldn't do 18 months prior. But now we've got three happening in three days. Let's not bring that up. I was like, people, you know, there is no coincidence here that there's some emergency meetings happening. So they can do it when the pressure's on. And then we had the council meeting and they, they approved. So there was two agenda items.

There was one for relief, so giving money back to community members. And then there was one for a rate review. We had 300 people show up. I organized a very peaceful protest. I wanted people to go to the council meeting and witness the dysfunction. I wanted people to be there so that the council had to look at the community members that they were impacting by their incompetence. And we had 300.

We filled it. There was standing room only. half the people walked out. I was one of them, midway through when the mayor chastised a council member for her belief that he was addressing us. He was only looking at us while he talked, but she told him he was not allowed to address us or acknowledge that we were there. And a bunch of us left.

The city came back and very, with their very political, can I swear? You most certainly can. Okay. Bullshit answer. that had no substance and are like, oh, look over here and stop paying attention to the fact that we're raking you over the coals. They were very adamant that the relief coming was not tied to consumption or rebates for utilities. It was not tied to utility rates. It was coming through the utility bills because that was an easy way to administer it. And it was going to be a flat fee or flat rebate.

So it didn't matter whether you were a business that was going from $5,000 to $10,000 or $15,000 a month in utilities or a homeowner going from $400 to $1,200. They were giving us all the same amount. People, residential accounts were getting $200 a month credit on their bill. It was called pressure relief, not rebates, utilities. And then businesses were getting $500. And even though some of the council members came back and said, like, you know, that's going to be a pittance for a business who is going to have to face shutting their doors because they've gone from 5,000 to 10,000 for utilities and 500 isn't going to make a difference. And at Hagen Hall, one of the business owners said, you know, do you know how many more meals I have to sell to make enough profit to pay an additional $5,000 a month in utilities? Like, are you guys grasping that?

It's not just $5,000 more in meals. It's probably more like $15,000 more meals with people who can't afford to go out and eat, right? It's just like this whole thing. So they approve this. They're very proud of themselves. Okay, they're on the news. Record setting, 33 million relief given to community members.

And I'm like, I think you've got the headline wrong. I think the headline is, you've stolen $120 million from your community, put them in a position of poverty, left them to the point where now they're going to be thankful for anything you're willing to give them. And now you've given us $33 million back and you want to be a hero. Fuck that. That's not how it goes. But okay, we've got the relief.

So we've got a little bit of pressure relief for our community members while they do the rate review. I know. I'm just, okay, we, I don't know if I, do you want to finish your story and I can just jot questions down on the side of you want to interrupt?

No, no, no, interject. Yeah, interrupt. Okay, I got to interject with two things. One is first. My bills come from like direct energy, that type of thing.

So are you saying medicine, city of medicine hat bills all businesses and residential. As the city of medicine hat, like I pay my water in the city of Lloyd. Like, my water bill comes from the city. city of Lloyd. In Medicine Hat, you get a bill, and it's for your electric, your water, your heat, your natural gas, sorry. And you pay the city for that. And so the city has made a deal

with whoever their provider is. We are our own provider. We have our own utility. This is the medicine had advantage. The medicine had advantage is that we produce our own power. And so we should not be paying provincial rates. Oh, yeah. They should have an giant influx of people right now. Well, no, because it's one of the least affordable places to live now. I don't understand, but think about that. It's like, actually, we don't need to do this. Yeah, 100%. Oh, I should have asked this question right at the start.

Okay, fair enough. Nope, no, I'm. That's okay. And again, I want to preface this for everybody who's listening or watching that we have not been able to get clear answers from the people who hold the information. And so we're doing our best to navigate based on snippets of information we're getting or documents we can read and things like that. But my understanding is when medicine had decided to have its own utility,

in exchange for not having to adhere to the provincial regulations for rates, we are not allowed to have competition. That is the medicine had advantage. And that makes sense, right? So we can offer our own, in theory, our own residents, a cost plus. We could offer eight or 10 cents, and it could be that super affordable medicine advantage place to live. And then they sell power back to the grid. So they make money off of that power as well.

And then they can charge back to the grid whatever they want to, whatever's market rates. So that's part of the problem. They have a monopoly. They're supposed to be a benefit to the citizen because of that monopoly. But there is none. But I know. It makes my eye twitch. Well, I'm just like, this is the problem I have with politics, right?

It's like, but where's the money going? The money should be going. Like, if it was like, well, building new schools and new rinks and the reason we're charging this much is and you just blurt it out it's like oh you guys want actually to have let but then we got to wait five years to get the brand new whatever oh that's oh okay that's that's that's pretty cool because you know raise a hundred million dollars in a year where you don't have to raise 150 right where you don't have to like go around to business to say hey could we get a thousand dollar donation for this and

can we it's like and now you can build out whatever the heck you want to build out it's like well, I mean, maybe you don't need 100 million in a year. You could less than that blow a little bit. But, I mean, okay, so that's one. Two, you said they went on news and said record 33 million? Did I hear that number right? 33 million in relief. So this is what doesn't make sense to me because I'm doing the math in my head.

And so I pull out the calculator because I'm like, maybe my math is wrong. If 80, I said 80,000 was the city of medicine hat and the metropolitan area. So that area, let's just say 80,000. 80,000, and you said 200 for residential and 500 for businesses, right? But don't use 80,000 as your number because that's the number of citizens. You need the number of households because it's... But I'm going to use the number of citizens just to prove my point. Okay.

At 80,000 people at the highest of 500, which they all are not, right, you can go like a number of households, you can go, well, how many businesses? That's 40 million. and it's like 33 million how did they get 33 million i understand i'm 7 million over it but i went with the highest number possible which isn't plausible because there isn't 80 000 residents or sorry there isn't 80 000 homes and businesses and i'm just a little confused by that that's okay so let's go the the rebate will be 400 so it's four months of 200 so 800 i said it's yes multiple months thank you clearing it up now i don't

care. I'm like, okay. I'm like, your math is wrong. My one-time rebate. And I'm like, I know like some residents have businesses, folks, so I understand it can double up and things. And I'm like, that number seems really inflated, right? It feels really big for the amount of people are there.

Anyways, that cleared it up, multiple months. Okay, fair enough. Sorry. Carry on with your story. You've cleared up a few things. The fact that the city of medicine hat has a deal with the province so that they have to be sole provider, but now they can give their citizens the medicine had advantage, which should be cheap. Correct.

It seems pretty simple, right? It does. Actually, it seems like, well. Apparently, it's not simple. We need 18 months, and we need external consultants, and we need meetings, and we need petitions, and we need all kinds of things, because after 18 months of having this on their radar and being in office for two years, now one of them can tell you how the utility runs. And it is ridiculous.

We have the mayor who went on, and let me tell you, there's no personal vendetta against the mayor. I've been accused of that. My personal vendetta is against incompetence, especially when it affects people who are in marginalized situations and don't have, don't have the voice or don't have the confidence to have a voice and all of those kinds of things. She has, and all of them have, an obligation to their community and especially to the people in the marginalized communities.

And so what they now need to do is come up with a rate review. Again, this rate review has been on their radar for 18 months. Our council was asked to provide clarity for the rate review from the city. Our council went back and said, can you give me clarity on what clarity you need? This is the level of competence for dealing with. They are way outside of their wheelhouse here and no wonder why decisions can't get made. What they've proposed is that they're going to look at giving us best market rate. What the mayor said when she went on chat news here last week was she was looking for best rate.

I went and checked the motion that was passed in the council meeting. And it says best market rate, which is very concerning because best market rate in August was 24 cents. It's not going to help people if it's cost, whereas the medicine had advantage, right? We have no opportunity to shop. We have to use them. And so they had this whole system. And pardon the French, but who gives the shit what everyone else is doing? You got your own.

You should be able to. Exactly. Yes. Like with you talking about it, but I'm like, geez, that's a smart idea, folks. Like, like, that's a smart idea. So you can be different than everybody else. And you can. You know, you don't.

Anyway, I guess I'm going down here. We get on this whole thing of like medicine hat isn't growing. And it's, you know, a city. not growing in the city dying and we don't want to see medicine hat dying. I don't want my son to have to move away for opportunity. If he wants to move away, that's one thing. If he has to move away, which we hear all the time from people here. So what there's no opportunities for this? Sorry, I'm just like, so what do you think is going on then? Because like, if nobody can tell you what, what, what, what it costs for the city per gigadjule, right?

Kilo-watt hour. Kilo-watt hour. I'm learning to. Yeah, whatever. I'm thinking, anyways, doesn't matter. I'm thinking two different, anyways. They can't tell you what that is. No. They can't tell you where the... They won't tell me what that is. They definitely can tell you

because anybody who runs a business can tell you the cost of running it. They won't tell us what it is. But can't you... So freedom of information, you should be able to... We have one in. So that should tell you everything you need to know. 100%.

We're ready for that to come back. Because they can't run from that. One. I went to them and said, what is the cost? the mayor already committed to giving us the cost, why are we not getting it? And I got the standard bullshit political answer. Council would have to change the business model of the utilities.

Great. What's the business model of the utilities? Tell me that. Is it to hose people? Because I feel like that's the model. And that we, that information is confidential because of competition or something. Well, then I Googled. Transelta releases their output statistics, which I also.

asked for because I was like if you just give me your output statistic, I'll just calculate your cost on your financials that you have to release by how much power you produced and figure out an average. But they released it. They released that information to their shareholders. They release cost statistics, all kinds of stuff because profit isn't necessarily a dirty word, right? And so when you're in a for-profit business and your shareholders, you're reporting to your shareholders. Which is your citizen? Correct. Transelta would have shareholders or what have you. they're reporting the effectiveness of how they're running their business.

We do not have that in medicine hat. They are closed-lipped and they are battening down the hatches. They don't want to release anything. So we have zero visibility on what is going on and no options to shop around. And a council who has had this on their radar for 18 months, who doesn't seem to get why that's an issue. And a mayor who's so removed from what her community is facing, and what they need that she didn't notice that the utilities were an issue because she's just a

single person. And how can we ever affect change? We've already had two years of this council. Can we afford another two years? So now we start looking, well, how do we get a by-election? Can we, can they resign? Like, what do we do? What do we ask them to do? The mayor has made it clear. You can watch the chat news interview with her from last week. She will not look at the change.org petition, even though I sent it to all of them and I asked them to please read the comments of people having to choose between feeding their kids or utilities or worried about facing homelessness. She stated she won't look at the petition because it's not official and basically challenged us if we want a petition she'll look at.

It's a recall position. So now we have a recall petition in the works. I believe we're going to be the first possibly the first city of our size. to try and take one on. It's not an easy task. It requires a large, and it requires more people to sign the petition than voted. It's 40% of the voting population.

There's a $500 fee, which we fundraised for and we have the fee. I will put my name on the petition and then we have to, it's like old school pen and paper signatures. They have to be witnessed. It's a daunting task, but we have no other option. And all we want is,

an opportunity for transparency and accountability and clarity, which everyone's always talking about in politics. But this council, and particularly this mayor, gets on, you know, their podium and says, we're going to affect change. We are the council of change. And we're not seeing that. And when she went on the news last week, you got to watch it. Chat News, Mayor Clark, if you look it up it, I think it was September 11th lunch chat. She talks about how change is hard. Well, no shit. Change is hard. Yeah, it is hard. It is hard. But that doesn't mean it doesn't get done. And so we, that's where we're at. We're waiting now. She told us on the news that the rate review would happen at last week's meeting, even though it wasn't on the agenda. And we did have one of our community members ask her why she said it was going to be on that meeting when it wasn't. And she didn't reply. And so it's not on the agenda until October, the first meeting in October. But they're just coming back with best of market approach. So that's where we're at.

We've got the relief that isn't a rebate tied to utilities. They won't, they did admit that they were given advice. The city admitted they were giving advice not to tie the relief to consumption. So meaning why wouldn't we just take a percentage of everybody's bills or we're going to rebate back five cents a kilowatt hour. And so we're going to go look at your usage, right? And I build systems for a living. If it can be put into a spreadsheet, we can do it really quickly and upload it.

There's a way, right? But they hid behind them, well, this is the easiest for us because, of course, it should be easiest for the city and not people living in poverty. The entitlement is crazy. But now we're waiting for them to, you know, even tell us who gave them the advice. Where did you get the advice to not? And why was that advice given? And they're like, we're just, we're excited to get going on the rate.

review, that's not answering my question. Like you guys are on our radar. And so now we need to follow because we can't trust you. And I know we can't trust politicians in general, but this is a whole new level of non-trusting. We can't trust you to be forthcoming and give us accurate information. And more concerning, I think we can't trust you to be connected to the community in such a way that makes you able to make good decisions. Right? Your face. That's my face. When I came back from the first council meeting, I was like, what is happening? I'm just, I'm trying to like, I guess now I'm curious, like with the mayor, is she from Medicine Head? Like, she born and raised or is she an outsider?

Like, now I'm just like, more than anything, you know, you got me kind of interested. I'm like, because I just, you know, as I sit here, you know, what, what, but this isn't the way bureaucracy works. But, you know, as you mentioned private business at the start, you know, how long would it take a private business? Well, I tell you what? We do this show called the Tuesday mashup and every day, every Tuesday we go through headlines of Canadian newspapers for the most part. And I'm like, none of this would fly for a month, let alone years in any business. Like if the podcast came out and did what was going on, I've been jail.

Like, you know, you can't embezzle money, you can't do all these things and get away with it and I'm not saying that's what's happening in medicine. I just mean when you're talking about private businesses. I mean, 14 years. 2009 is when it gets brought in. It seems like a really smart thing to do. Oh, that's smart. In the FOIP, I'll send you a copy of the FOIP if you want to post it for your reader.

Sure. Well, I could. Yes. Okay. We've asked for information on not who's been paid how much in bonuses, but we've heard that bonuses are paid quite often for profits. To who? To employees of, they call it Comco, which is our utility. company. And so what we're asking is for information on how the bonuses are calculated. So like,

what do you have to achieve to get a bonus and then how much do you get? Not by person, because they won't be able to give that information and I understand that, but as a rule and what is the budget line for the total amount of bonuses that were paid out above regular salaries? Because we've heard, and again, we can't get any clarity. We've heard that that is happening. So we want to that information. We want to understand. It's from my background too, like coming in, I come into failing startups. That's my thing. And I fix them. And so when they give me their financials, I take a look at those sheets and now I'm going to identify the ones I want to see detail on, right? And so it's the same thing with the city. Yes, you can make your financial say whatever you want. I want the detail. I want to

understand what you're including as expenses and the cost of operating because if they're bonuses, And let me preface this to you. I am not against paying good people, good wages. That is not what this is about. I don't think people should come in here and work for a pittance or live and, you know, do a whole bunch and not be paid fairly or even above average for their skill set and what they can provide to the business in this particular instance, the utilities. What I am saying is that when that is happening to the detriment of the community that has no choice

but to use your service, there's something we have to look at. There's something wrong. Right? I know. See? I know. This is exactly it. Thank you for also being speechless.

Well, I'm just coming back to it. I'm trying in my brain as hard as I can to try and rationalize out this situation. What's the utility called? Comco. They call it Comco. Okay. And is Comco owned by the city? Yes.

So Comco is essential. another person that the tax dollars of years go to fund, correct? Correct. So in theory, they should have to make that public knowledge on everybody getting what their wages are, correct? One would think. Other areas do it. Somewhere a lawyer is listening to me going, well, not exactly, because this is why they probably did it that way and everything else, right? I went and looked that up because now I've like Googled more than I ever wanted to know about how council works. and the Municipal Government Act.

And so Lethbridge, Calgary, they both release very comprehensive in comparison to Medicine Hat information on salaries. We don't have that here. Everything is very hidden. And, you know, the gravy train needs to stop because the gravy train is affecting not only people who live here, but our ability to grow the city. And this is me just from an outsider hearing this story for the first time I'm going, like, if there is a gravy train, like that, could be, I don't know, I just assume, jail time or if not that serious, it could be like literally people getting lots and lots of money. And if they open up the books and get, well, all of medicine hat pissed off, that could come to a crashing halt, whether it's legal or not illegal,

you know, I don't even mean to, to me, I'm just like staring at it from afar. It's, you know, I'm not the one living there. I just hear the idea. I think the idea is brilliant. But now it's like it's been morphed to where they're, you know, it's like, well, I kind of want to know over the course since 2009, how much money's gone into the kitty. It's like, you know, like 100 million a year, and I'm assuming it's, it's, you know, it's gone up and that's why it's there. But let's, you know, that's one point four billion dollars if it had been going for 14 years of 100 million. And you go, a town of 60,000 could have one point, you know, and once again, folks, I'm just exaggerating, because I assume it hasn't been that bad for that long,

but if you don't know, then what is it? Right. That's exactly it. If you don't know what is it, and they're leaving us into, they've led us into a position where we have to make assumptions based on the information we're able to get, if we can get any,

and that only leads me to believe they're hiding something. Because if there's nothing to hide or nothing to be worried about what the community is going to think, then just release the information. The fact that they called an emergency, meeting again after Higden Hall, the community meeting where 500 people showed up, tells me something has been found out. Like it's just we have to, we have no choice, but to sound like crazy conspiracy theorists

because we don't know. You know, there's no information coming. So hopefully we decided to wait on the recall petition until we see what comes out on the first council meeting in October. I suspect it to be hot verbiage, to be. honest because it is written as best of market rates. So unless they're calculating market rates on some kind of cost plus structure, which they apparently don't know their costs, so that might be hard. I don't think it's going to be enough. And so we're going to launch our recall petition after that.

You know what's funny on this podcast, Nicole, is what I see is a whole bunch of like, obviously there's a, you know, like I'll be the first to admit, I didn't realize the level of maybe corruption or nefarious dealings going on. from small to large and everything else. But what's happening is, is all these things are colliding with people that are really good at asking questions and actually kind of know their way around that situation pertinent to what's going on.

And I'm like, ah, man, they just, they just irritated a lady that isn't going to give up just by having to wait an extra month or 18 months. It's like, actually, you're just growing the frustration. And the more you frustrate these people, and I'm talking about you and others, the more resolved they become in, something is very wrong and we need to figure it out.

And that's a, you're becoming a formidable opponent. And there's a whole bunch of those across Canada. I'm chuckling because I get to talk to, oh, man, this sounds like I'll be interested to see what comes in medicine hat then. What you're saying is into October and months coming. And I hope for the citizens, like, and for counseling, for the mayor and for, you know, everybody is just like, oh, actually, this is what it is. We looked and boom, and this can get salt tomorrow.

But, you know, if anything's the world has taught me in the last, what has it been now, folks, three years. That may not exactly be the case. Yes, we are foolish to believe they have our best interests at heart. And so we have to have our best interests at heart. And we definitely have to champion that. Well, I appreciate you coming on and doing this. With the crewmaster final question, I am going to say, what is next then for Nicole and Medicine Hat maybe? and is there any way

I don't know what I can do from over here other than bring you on to talk about it but is there anything people can do to help? Man, you know, I wish that we had a way that I would say like go on and sign our change.org petition but the mayor has made it clear she doesn't care about that and we know it's not official so it doesn't really have any impact I guess formally.

Just pay attention and there's really nothing we can do other than wait once we get the information on the rate review and we proceed with our recall petition then i think some media coverage around the recall petition and sharing that would be super helpful not only from letting other communities know that that is an option i'll be at a hard one but we have to start somewhere we have to start somewhere at holding them accountable to doing their jobs um i'll say that the one of the big things that the mayor complains about here is the lack of balance and power and we see some

of our community members buying into this belief where because of some changes to the municipal government act and some bylaws that they have themselves have put into place they believe they have no power because only the city manager the c a report to council and the mayor but that's no different than a CEO of a company reporting to a board the board has ultimate power at providing direction and accountability to what is happening in that company. That's the board's job. That is the mayor and council's job. So when I hear garbage comments from her like there needs to be a balance of power or change is hard or we can't do anything because, you know, only one person reports to us or we don't have day-to-day operational control or direction over staff at the city,

I call bullshit because as soon as you're sitting in a senior leadership position, you should never be directing staff on a day-to-day basis, you're providing guidance, accountability, and ensuring the people that are tasked to do their jobs have the tools to do it. So I think giving my hope, my hope with the change.org petition, because I came under fire for that to you, it's not going to do anything. People don't care, blah, blah, blah. My hope is that it ignites a fire in anyone to have a voice. It's important. And you never know, like AFB, our animal fee bank is the same thing. You never underestimate the power of one action, one conversation, one idea. So when we're coming up to situations like this, please have your voice. Say your voice. If you're for or against what we're doing,

speak. Use your voice because that is the only thing we have and we have to start using it in order to get control of our country back. Because look what happens when we have the wrong people in the wrong seats. It's awful. I agree. Well, I appreciate you coming on doing this and um thank you for having please please please please please stay in touch and keep me updated on the goings of medicine hat because uh it it seems like every time i turn the corner there's another town that's that's finding out its own set of things that are going on that they're they're very unhappy with and uh they're trying to navigate those situations so i'd appreciate uh being kept up to date on this and if there's anything we can do in the in the future that can be a benefit

Nicole will try and do her best. Awesome. I'm going to just throw one, I'm going to do two things. I'm going to do a little bit of research on TNR for bunnies. I'm curious now and I'm going to send you some information if I can find it.

Can you imagine? Sean Newman walks into the city council and Lloyd Minster is like, I would like to get a TNR on bunnies. And I'd like to look on their face and be like, you want to do what now? It's like, oh, we're being overrun by bunnies, man. Those jack rabbits are everywhere.

Those bunnies are everywhere. And the second thing, what was the second? I can't remember the second thing now. Oh, if anybody, if there's a need, for a pet food bank in your community. I don't know if you guys have one, but if there is a need for one and somebody would be willing to volunteer

to help start one, they can reach up to me. Well, I tell you what, if somebody's interested in getting a hold of, or in contact Nicole, just shoot me a note and we'll make it happen. That's easy enough. Great.

Thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks, Nicole. Thanks for hopping on. Thank you so much, Sean. Okay, folks, that was Nicole Frye. So out of Medicine Hat. I hope you enjoyed today's

episode. We've been asking everybody back and forth if, you know, we've been doing Patreon here for a little bit. And I said I would do it to the end of the year and that's our plan. And then, of course, Substack, I said I would do for a year and I've been kind of spotty on it because I'm not a great writer. But one of the things that Substack allows you to do is to post videos there, can put it behind the paywall, which we're already doing on Patreon, and bring that platform over to Substack, if that makes sense. And what I've been asking people is if you have a preference. Shoot me a note on the text line and let's get to the bottom of that. We got a few months here in 2023 and 2024 I want to hit the ground running. It feels weird to say 2024,

but I want to hit the ground running and get it right. So either way, let me know what you think of the interview. If you want to get in contact with the Cole, make sure you reach out and then substack Patreon. What do you think? All right. Catch up to you on the next one.