Shaun Newman Podcast - #520 - Marty Up North

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Marty Belanger has spent 30+ years as a petroleum engineer who goes by the handle "Marty Up North" which stems from his videos he put out for the last decade on YouTube which covered his adventures in the Canadian outback. We get into his 30 years of setting up camp with a group of men and the government's debt. Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast

This is Late and Gray. My name's David John Parker. This is Andrew Lotton. This is James Lindsay. This is Jonathan Peugeot. This is Tannenaday. This is Sean Buckley. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. Let's get to today's episode sponsor, shall we? Guardian, plumbing, and heating. I tell you what, snow was flying today. And I always, thank goodness for the heat we got in our houses. in this area, man, it has gotten, it went from just like beautiful

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Hancock Petroleum.combe 30 plus years is a petroleum engineer and an avid outdoorsman you might know him as Marty up north I'm talking about Martin Blanche. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

How's it going? Thanks for making the drive. Yeah, it's a long drive. You know, I want to, I was thinking, I've been thinking about, you know, a lot about this. Because I had Yakstack come a couple weeks ago, I think it was now. And you might be the first guy that gave, in the back of my brain, cemented an idea. And the idea is what I'm trying to run with more of now. Okay.

And I'm trying to build out for 2020. and that was once upon a time I went everywhere for everyone so like I packed up the podcast and I'd go racing in Amiton and do an interview or I'd race to Saskatoon or I'd race anywhere somebody was going to be and I'd be like okay I'm gonna get you and with young kids

well not just young kids look at the gear you got well that too yeah yeah it it became really tough because like I want to be around my kids and you already aren't your kids, you know, like they're in school and then they get home and now they're in the sports and, and then if you take where you're gone for two days or three days or whatever it is, all of a sudden you're just, you're not around your kids and they're at, you know, 7, 6,4 now.

Oh, I got a story about that, but go on. Yeah, yeah. So my, my, you place this in the back of my brain because I remember, uh, this is in the middle of COVID and I was following you on Twitter and I said, hey, Marty, you want to, you want to do a podcast? You're like, yeah. And I'm like, sweet. And my first question was, do we do it remotely? And you said, if you can come in person, it'll be better. And I said, absolutely, because you and I know the face-to-face beats the screen any day of the way.

Any day, absolutely. And so you were, I'd had people come before that. But certainly you're one of the first after, because when I first started the podcast, my, what I said was, I'm never doing a virtual podcast. If you can believe that. So my first, like, the first one I ever did. virtually was Paul Bissonette and for obvious reasons I was in Arizona spitting chicklets and I went I went sure and he and we got it and I was like sweet and that's like episode I don't know 64 or something folks but up until that point everything I did was in person because I'm like

there's just so much magic and then COVID happens and I went well I got a choice yeah and so I made the best of that choice and and I got to have people from all over and some big names etc etc but nothing ever replaces this and then in the middle of COVID I go you go what's better and I go obviously in person, and you got in your vehicle and you drove five hours. And I was like, holy shit. Holy shit. Okay. Well, that's badge guys.

Five hours, nothing for me. Nothing. And so I went, well, if you're from this part of the world, five hours, you know, it's just a hockey game. We'll do that to go. I used to do that routinely. And so I went, okay, Sean's going to try. And I ask folks as TIPLTs, I am going to mention myself in the third person. Oh, God.

It's funny now I catch myself doing that. But I went, I'm going to try and push on people to come in person. I'm going to try and delay some podcasts if it means they can come in person. If they're coming through Lloyd, let's do it in person. Because I've already heard so many people go, man, it is so much better when you do it in person. Like, yes, yes, it is. But I live in Lloyd Minster. And I'm not moving to Calgary or Eminton.

I'm sorry. I'm not going to Saskatoon. I'm not going to Regina because then I will lose part of who I am. I want to be here in my hometown. So I'm trying to build out the field of dreams here in Lloyd. And the next time you come, if possible. Yeah. We'll see how this plays out.

I'm hoping to have a new studio. We're going to have two, I think, is the idea, but the idea is to have two. And the new one to be out on the Newman farm. So when you come next time, you spend a day and you come for the full experience. Full experience. So I bring shotguns.

We go shoot geese. Man, the geese flying right now, impressive. But, yeah, okay, cool. So actually, part of your solution, too, though, instead of traveling all the time, you said two studios. You ever consider a second studio somewhere closer, like Calgary or not closer central

certainly so or maybe Edmonton I mean if you got somebody who's going to fly in you know you're going to get to that point right when when Joe Rogan comes he's going to fly into Emmington so if you had a studio in Emmington well mind you Joe Rogan's got enough money he'll fly all the way out here

won't he I think so I go you know it's funny for like the main part of the podcast I went like for the first four years like if I could have a studio and all these big centers when the big guy comes and he's like I want to come to do your show. Yep. Then you got to race down there and you do it.

It's like, would you do that? Absolutely. Like tomorrow, folks, if Joe Rogan said, would you come to Austin to do the, I'm like, yeah, I'm gone. You pack it up and you go. Absolutely. But the truth of the matter is, if you build it, they will come. Yep. And you're one of the first to do that after the, once COVID hit, I didn't do.

And you put it back and I went, at some point you get to the, and I like hearing that, because, you know, the reason, again, the reason I come was not, there's no alter. motive, man. Like, you invited me and we talked about this the first time I came. I'm not going to say no to an invitation, any kind of invitation. And so, and, and I never know what's going to come out of a meeting with somebody. So you help me. And if I helped you, then even better. So we helped each other. That's, that's all. That's the reason I came here. No, no, no other reason. You invited me and let's have a chat. And if we help each other out or inspire each other, perfect. Well, that's, that's my, my, uh, the reason I started inviting you all back on, It was one of my other, I got three older brothers.

Yeah. And Harley, he listens to, you know, shout out to Harley. He listens to pretty much everything I do, which these days is a lot. I, anyone who can keep up to a show a day Monday through Friday, my hat's off to you. And there's a lot. I shouldn't just, I single out Harley because he's the next one and goes, you know what Joe did really good? And he's like, what he did if you look over the course of his podcast is he became really good friends with certain people and they always came back on. Right.

And if they rose, Rogan Roe. And if Rogan rose, they rose. And kind of this trust of where you're just hopping into a conversation, and it feels like a conversation where it goes. And that's not unique to podcasting. I mean, you know, that happens in hockey, happens in entertainment, happens in business, right? You, you alone is tough. And in group, we can do a lot better.

And then groups that support each other can really do incredible things. Well, so he pushed me to write out a list. Okay. Who did? My brother. Okay. Okay. And I don't know if he actually put, or if my mind went, I should write out.

a list. So I wrote down the list of all the people I've had from Alberta, Saskatchewan. That area makes sense. Okay, if these people, if they would come, that'd be a lot of fun. And that's why I started reaching out to people. So the cool thing is, is there's going to be more people coming. Now, winter is upon us. And I go, when it gets to winter months, do I feel comfortable having somebody drive five hours in a day or 10 hours in a day? Not really. So probably in the winter months, you know, unless they're coming through town for hockey or for, you know, speak engagement or a concert or something like that. I'm not going to be pushing near as hard, but once the

summer breaks and spring and fall and everything, I'm like, man, let's go. Hunting season, you know, like everybody's, everybody's, you know, like Brett Kistle was on. I don't know what that was. A couple months ago now? Maybe a month ago. And I know we might be coming back, well, might be coming back through. And so

we're trying to line that up all over again, right? Because like this, this is fun. Like, yeah, the podcast in general, folks, is fun. But when you get to sit across from somebody, that's the best. Yeah, so for the viewers, I drove five hours. I left this morning at the, I got up at 4 o'clock. I was on the road at 4.30.

It takes me five hours to get here. Take the back roads. It's gorgeous. I love this country. Love this country. Well, and I'm hoping, you know, as the listeners, not viewers. Well, both. Both.

Well, the thing is, is they can watch too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's, I mean, everything, everything when you come in studio goes up because you get better mic, right? Both sides. You get the video, everything. It just goes up. And I'm like, when I watch Rogan, I'm like, that's,

what he does. He has everybody come in studio. I can count on my hand how many interviews he's done virtually. Ira Glasser's one who I'm trying to get on because he's unbelievable when it comes free speech. Edward Snowden's another, right? Sure, sure. Or maybe Assange or somebody like that, you know, people that just can't come on the show. But I'm glad you mentioned those because I couldn't think of anyone that Joe did not. In the middle of COVID, he had a handful. Just a handful. It wasn't. And then they got the protocols in place. And if you listen to Joe in the middle of COVID. They were doing stuff that, you know, instead of being like, nope, we're going to, we're not

doing anything. It's going to be all. He just started, okay, well, we do all these things. Like he became so well versed on it. You couldn't argue with them. Doctors couldn't argue with them because he was doing it all. Yep. Which is why I do Twitter.

It's not podcast, but that's why I do Twitter. It's instant feedback. You get, and people don't appreciate that, you know, the amount of information that I get by engaging on Twitter daily is incredible. And you guys do the same thing on podcasts. I mean, the people you've invited, the people you've talked to, like, wow, you know, that's impressive. Well, and fun. And fun. And Twitter, Twitter is an interesting thing. X. You've got to say, is it X? How long do you think it takes before people adopt X? Or do you always think you'll just be the Twitter guy? I'm going to have a hard time saying X. I'm, I'm, I'm, it's a tweet. What else is it,

right? The whole choosing to call it X, I don't know, is it because of his space X and other things? Does X have a special meaning to Elon? It does. But through the rest of us, I'm Xing right now. I don't like that, you know. But that's right. So you assume X sticks around for 20 years. How long does it take before the young kids just start calling them X and man? Or whatever, I don't know. They'll figure out something. I mean, you know, and then we'll have pre pre-X, pre-X, post-ex, pre-Twitter, post-to, whatever. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I'm not going to even try and predict that. Once again, Harley seems to come up with some great ideas, but once upon a time,

is Sean Newman podcast, and it wasn't SMP. And he goes, oh, yeah, I was listening to SMP. And I'm like, what did you say? And he goes, what? And I'm like, I was listening to SMP. I'm like, oh, I like that.

I really like that. And so that's where, you know, that's how it all starts out. Is you listen for something and you hear it, you're like, huh, troll clothing. If it's done with good intention like that. I don't like when it's done with shitty intentions.

What's shitty intention? What do you mean? Kentucky fried chicken. Trying to hide from your past and rebrand yourself. Forget it, man. You're fried chicken. Like, you're not KFC. You're fried chicken.

Well, I think of my brain went to, have you heard of troll clothing? Dirty hands, clean money. Yep. Blue collar. What's his name? He goes by another name. Yeah, yeah. They're a company that the way,

they found dirty hands clean money was in, I hope I'm getting this right. I've been trying to get them on. They don't want to come on. But regardless, they were in chat rooms of like welder chat rooms. And they kept seeing the same thing played out in the welder chat room. And so they,

they trademarked it, sold it. And now they've got like a million dollar company off of like something everybody was saying. And, you know, you just pay attention. You're like, oh, it's right there.

Yeah. Why didn't somebody? And, you know, you just enlightened me because I saw that, I saw somebody wearing the clothing the other day. And I thought it was their own personal. So I'm behind the times on this one. I mean, I only saw that clothing for the first time about two weeks ago. And they're everywhere. Wow.

And it's been a big brand now for, I don't know. Has it been five years, folks? Is it been less than that? I don't know. It doesn't matter. Part of their proceeds go to American veterans. And so, like, it's, it's a really clever, really small. really well done brand.

And, you know, if you come from any part of blue collar, you see blue collar, you're like, I already respect that. Yeah. It's like crazy. You know, blue collar, quick story. I mean, I remember one time as a very young kid looking at a man sitting at a restaurant, and he had dirty fingernails. And dad immediately pointed out, like, there's nothing to be ashamed of a man with dirty

fingernails. And that stuck with me forever. I mean, my fingernails are clean today, but I'm proud of the fact that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm an engineer and I'm educated, but I'm also pretty blue collar by, by, by Canadian standards, you know, I live on an acreage. I work in the old batch. Yeah, well, there's blue collar, um, you get around blue collar people, uh, they just look at the world different. And they, and they can problem solve extremely well, right? Like, grew up around them all my life.

That's, that's, that's, you know, that's, that's, that's Lloyd Minster. That's all they are, like, you think about it where somebody sent me a meme. and man what was it here I'll pull it up so you can see it yeah if I think yeah if I think Lloyd Minster actually my wife had a hard time today I kept saying you're going to Lethbridge it's it's Noah on the ark and it's it's an elephant and a penguin have made a baby right and it's it shows it shows the the elephant it's an elephant head with a penguin body and it has Lloyd Minster over it and then Saskatchewan's over the

elephant and Alberta's over the penguin and Noah noah's going what the hell is this. What the hell is this? Yeah. That's where we live, you know, cool. Tell me about you've been, you know, I was actually just telling him the neighbor here. He's like, oh, who you got coming in today? I'm like, Marty up north. He's like, well, what does he do? And I'm like, well, once upon a time. And, you know, I'm always fascinated because I wanted to get out this year with you. And then it just never happened. And that's the way life goes. But you go to the back country, I don't know. It feels like a lot, but probably as much as you can get out. And I assume it's not as much as I think it is.

It's actually, it was my introduction to social media. That, like, you know, apart from, let's say, Facebook, I became known on social media because of my outdoor adventures. So Marty Up North was my YouTube channel, is my YouTube channel. That's my, that's my name. For me, you know, I lived years in places like Fox Creek and Edson and that part of the world. And you got the mountains in your backyard and hiking, hunting,

things like that. I love all outdoor sports, but the one in particular that keeps drawing me back is hiking. It's long-distance hiking. And so on YouTube, I would document my adventures

and I've been doing it for 10 years on YouTube and I was documenting adventures on YouTube before hiking adventures before anybody else. Actually, I remember an old article. There was an article written about me in like outdoor magazine one time

discussing this weird genre, the fact that people were, watching me hike on YouTube. So, and, you know, today there's... Pioneer of YouTube. No, not a pioneer of YouTube, a pioneer of hiking videos on YouTube. Fair, fair.

Yeah. No, it's, you know, for the listeners, hiking is, you know, Alberta is blessed. I mean, we're blessed. Like, we got the national parks. We have Crownland extraordinary. Like, you know, I'd say, what, 75% of the province is Crownland. And so and what modern Canadians fail to understand is that this country was shaped by this country, Alberta in particular, you know, Saskatchewan was shaped by people walking across this land on horseback or on foot long before cars ever appeared.

And so there's a network of trails all over the province, especially in the Rockies and the mountains. That are these trails. They're historic trails, right? They were used by fur traders. they were used by settlers. They were used by people to, you know, to if you wanted to get from Alberta to British Columbia, you had to go across the mountains, let's say, in 1825.

And there were people living here, right? First Nations and others. And there's only so many ways to easily get across. And so they became established trails. I mean, trails. I just assume, Marty, and I guess I'm wrong in this. I always assumed that they built the highways on the established trails. In some instances, they did.

In some instances, they didn't. So the highway 93 through, that goes north-south, through Banff and Lake Louise, and that was chosen by the civil engineers because it was an easier path, because the trail is not there. The trail is a little bit to the east. There's a trail that traverses north, south, in the Rockies, east of the existing highway. But that was, so the one used by humans and horses was a little bit more rugged but more direct. But when they built the highway, they chose a different path.

But, yeah, so no, I hike and I still hike. For me, it's a fascinating hobby. You know, it's a, it gets me out of the, out of civilization. And I comment about that all the time. Like I'll even say it on Twitter. I'm out. I'm gone. And people go, oh, you're turning off your phone.

I'm like, it's more than turning off my phone. My phone doesn't even work there. There's no, there's no communication. So I'm gone. I'm gone for 10 days. I remember doing a flying fishing trip. So north drive to Meta Lake folks. And then I think from there you fly, man, is it a couple hours?

It doesn't matter. Nothing works up there, you know? And I remember just sitting there going, you know, if the world like really went to war tomorrow you wouldn't know about it you'd have no idea yep you just wouldn't know it'd say a mushroom cloud over the horizon and then you go well and I guess I'm staying here a little bit longer a little bit longer and and you know and it's a very unique feeling because uh you're you're helpless but you're not all at the same time I don't know I'm sure that makes sense to you because you do it more you know I'm sure you feel more

comfortable in the backwoods than most oh I guarantee you I feel more comfortable than most I mean, you know, and again, humans have forgotten all sorts of things that we used to do, right? I'll go in the backcountry and I don't bring a satellite device. I don't want to. And people say, Marty, bring one. You know, it's small and sits in the bottom of your package. Like that takes away from the reason I'm there, which is I'm there because I want to escape. I'm there because I want to step back in time.

And I'm also there because I want to challenge myself. And so I don't, you know, I rely on my skills. And if something happens, I'll get myself out. I'm not calling a helicopter. And then humans forget about other things, too. Like, people ask me, how do you deal with bears? How do you drink water? Like, what do you mean you drink water from creeks?

I'm like, I drink water from creeks, man. Our ancestors have been doing it for hundreds of years. But modern humans are paranoid. They're cuddled. They're, you know. And that's one of the things I've been doing through the channel for 10 years as I'm introducing people to the sport. And then once in a while you come across people who get it

and want to challenge themselves. and in the instance of this sport, there wasn't a lot of information. So I've done that. I'll call myself a pioneer in that sense. I have introduced a lot of people to the sport, and I've helped a lot of people get comfortable in the outdoors. You know, if you could go back to our ancestors and hear you say it's a sport, they'd be like, it was just living.

Oh, that's what we called it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Surviving. Oh, yeah. Our ancestors were tough. Our ancestors were tough. I don't know where your ancestors were from, but mine were from northern Alberta.

And when you have ancestors that grew up in places like Fulair and high r or high prairie in 1905, 1910, they were tough. Yeah, if I told them that I'm, yeah, they wouldn't think, I wouldn't brag to them that I'm drinking water from a creek. Well, it's just funny about how time goes. You know, but on the flip side of that, where I sit today, I hear that. And I'm like, it's just because we're conditioned to think you can't drink water from anywhere but the tap. Totally. I mean, that's... Oh, and I have tons of stories like that.

I mean, I just come back from hunting. I was out hunting, you know, first week of October, and then I got home, and I posted a picture of my moose hanging. And then you get people who don't know anything. He's like, you shouldn't leave that moose hanging like that. It's, you know, bacteria is going to set it. And I'm like, and then that was my comment. It's like, what do you think our ancestors did? Well, I'm going to...

So it's funny to say... We didn't have walk-in freezers in... 1950. Actually, most people don't have one now. I went out with the cowboy preacher and Joshua Allen. Yeah. This is, oh, man, I can't remember. This is in the middle of, oh, God, this is, I forget how many months ago this is. It doesn't matter.

We're out back on horseback, and, you know, I hadn't ridden a horse in, you know, a couple of years. And it takes me up for eight hours. You can imagine how I was filmed by the end. But we get back in the woods, and he's like, we're by this little tiny creek, and he goes, let's light a fire. And I'm like, ah, you know, I don't know if we should be lighting a fire. And he goes, why? And I'm like, well, I mean, like, you know, forest fires and everything.

And he goes, what do you think your ancestors did? Like he said it exactly. And I'm like, well, he's like, you think they didn't cook their food? Or you don't think they, you know, they just, they didn't put out of fire to keep warm at night. And you're like, you know, yeah. Yeah, and I'm right. And even I feel guilty when I do that. And I did it.

You know, like, if the cops want to stop me, go ahead. But, you know, even when there's firebans, I'm out there. And sometimes I'm still cooking. and I'm making a fire. I'd be in deep, deep trouble if I got caught, but it's unfortunate, but the fire ban exists because there's too many morons.

Well, no, that's exactly what we got to talk about. It's probably more for me than anyway. It's like, because there's morons out there that are flicking cigarettes into dry grass. Moron. Morons. Right?

Yep. There's people who light a giant fire and then walk away from it and don't put it out and, you know, and on and on it goes. Yeah, and even if you're in survival conditions, you still have to use common sense. I mean, if it was blowing wind,

then yeah. and I needed a fire. I'm going to do something, you know, I'm going to modify my behavior. I'm going to make a smaller fire or I'm going to put it somewhere where I'm really in control. But, oh, yeah, no, we, rules in general. I mean, what's the old joke, right? If there's a warning label on something, it's because somebody did something stupid to warrant the label. And, you know, I mean, we all have stories.

What's it? McDonald's coffee? McDonald's coffee. I mean, my favorite one is the, you know, the old towel dispensers where you used to roll out the towel. and it says, you know, don't hang your head in there. Well, if there's a warning that says, don't put your head in there, it's because somebody put their head in.

Somebody put their head in there. And so, and that's one of the things that just back to hiking, I don't hike into national parks anymore. People have commented on that, and they've noticed that Marty doesn't go into national parks because the national parks have gone too far in, a couple of things happened in the national park, but the national parks have to accommodate idiots.

So what did they've done? Well, for instance, let's go back a little bit. You know, when I was a youngster, you didn't have to pay to go into the National Park. So then you started having to pay, okay, it's going to pay for roads and stuff like that. Then we had to start paying to get backcountry permits to go into the back country, which is insane. I'm going to walk somewhere. And I warned that if you start charging, two things happen. A, the entity that's charging becomes liable and also once people pay, they expect something.

So the Parks Canada, other governments, you know, many departments have done the same thing. So in Parks Canada now people, so now you start paying to go in the backcountry. Well, then whoever paid wants a bridge over the creek because they don't want to get their feet wet. So now they build a bridge. Well, if they build a bridge, the bridge has to be engineered a certain way because there's a liability. And then they'll put a sign. And then at the old, you know, at the campsite in the middle of nowhere, now Parks Canada puts a bear pole because you know, they're liable for the bear attack.

And it just gets ridiculous and ridiculous. So now when I go into the back country of Jasper or Banff, you know, I've been going there for 30 years, it looks like civilization as far as I'm concerned. It's gotten so ridiculous. There's a park down in, it's a provincial park. It's in British Columbia, but it's down in the Calgary area. It's called the Elk Lakes Provincial Park. So in the middle of Elk Lake's Provincial Park, there's a beautiful waterfall called Patan Falls.

And it's two, now I've got two stories. stories about that one. So Patan Falls is worth seeing. It's gorgeous. And the little campsite that we used to hike to got washed away during the floods in 2013. So then they would not allow us to go there and they built a new campsite. Well, the campsite is ridiculous. Like it's, you know, pressure-treated lumber and stuff like that in the backcountry. And then they went one step further. They made it wheelchair accessible. So now I got this backcountry campsite that's wheelchair accessible because it, you know, I'm going to be non-politically correct, but people, people, people argue that they're paying for national parks

and parks and therefore they have the right to see it. No, you don't have the right to see it. The park is there to protect for future generations. And all you need to know is that it's there. But now we've turned that into, no, I have the right to go see it because I'm paying taxes to protect it and now they're going over the top. So I don't go into those national parks because it's it's the experience of being in the back country and stepping back in time is gone for me in the national park. So now I'm going off the beaten path and I'm not advertising that anymore. My days of posting videos of where I'm going. I'm not going to I'm not going to popularize every square inch of this province. Yeah. Let me tell you the second story about Patan Falls.

though. And Patan Falls is not called Patan Falls anymore because it was named after a World War II or World War I soldier. I can't remember the exact story. And then, you know, 50 years later, somebody said, ah, whatever. He said these bad things, kind of like the cancel culture. So they succeeded in getting that name struck from there. And so as officially as we speak, there's no name for Patan Falls or it's a contest in BC to rename it. like it's you know like it's to me that's annoying on so many levels so I'm not going to elk lakes anymore forget it yeah that man a couple thoughts the world we live in the cancel culture thing is oh it's it's something I I'm gonna go back to I'm not gonna talk about I don't want to be in a bad mood today yeah yeah um when you when you talk about um the hiking you know and going to to all these different things I imagine being in like New York state or something where you just have such a high density of population. There's probably very few spots.

I'm sure they're there, but probably even less than what you have in Alberta. Because the lovely thing about Alberta, as you go, like, it's like, you can go lots of different places. I just off the top of my head, I'm like, you want to get away from civilization. You don't, I mean, do you got to go away for it? Sure. But like, not that far. Not that far. And all of a sudden, you're just away from everything.

Yep. And you think like every generation that comes that's built like Marty that wants to get away from civilization if the world continues to go the way it's going, we'll have to go a little farther to find it. Whereas, like, you know, our forefathers, you just had to come to this, you know, like I read the story. Dad, I still have it sitting on my bedside table

because it's fascinating. The stories of where I grew up and the settlers that came in. And the first thing one of the stories talks about is they get to like a creek or a, not a creek, like a slew and are getting water. But then it's full of something, and they can't figure out what the heck it is, and it's tadpoles.

And they're like, oh, how lucky we are. And they boil it and eat it. I'm like, that's the early settlers, right? And so they had a main trail, and if they wanted to get away from everything, they literally just stepped off the trail and they were in the lines. Oh, yeah, no, I, I, I, I love.

Whereas the longer it goes, the more civilized, because you're right, there's probably a tax incentive for them to put it wheelchair accessible. Oh, we'll give you some grant money. And they didn't go, you realize where this is at, right? And they just went, oh, yeah, sure, yeah. and we'll just put some things in. And to most of us, we go, like, that's ridiculous.

To the guy who does that and has been doing that for 30 years, you're like, this is ruined it for me. And now I have to go to somewhere else because you are taking what I love and turning it into something that's modern and civilized. And that's not what the outdoors is supposed to be. Which is, and I'll argue it's not the mandate of the national parks either or the in this case, it's a provincial park. But some of the national parks, I think, have gone too far.

They've gone too far. You know, well, I'll give you, I'll give you an example. Another one that's, you know, shame on my fellow engineers. But one of the more popular national parks or provincial parks is Berg Lake. It's Mount Robson provincial parks. So Mount Robson is the highest mountain in the Rockies, right? And at the base of Mount Robson, higher up, there's a lake, and the glacier comes into the lake. So it's called Berg Lake.

Most popular trail ever. And but they had a bridge wash out during one of the first. floods. And so they re-engineered this bridge. It was crazy how engineered, because in the good old days, John and Larry and Bob would show up. And the guy go like, okay, start cutting logs and start piling rocks. And then we'll... And then get a bridge built. Get a bridge built, right? But now because they're charging people to go there, people expect, anyways, they built this bridge. There was a flood about three years ago. The water was torrential. Rocks were coming down. The bridge then moved. The rocks just

piled up against that bridge. And the bridge started the foundation of a major rock dam. And then it completely redirected the river. It totally washed out all of the trail. And it totally transformed the landscape. The bridge is buried under rock. The old wooden bridge that was condemned is up the road and you can see it. And now the trail's been close for three years because they damaged it beyond repair.

And they won't let people go hike there. It's illegal to go hiking there. Isn't that just like a, that's the government. That's the government in a nutshell. Yeah, like what we do today, we think we're doing such great, but they can't see the damage they're causing. And if they could just talk to common sense guys and people and like I don't, I don't even understand why the common sense is how it can disappear so dramatically.

Like what would make you think that the bridge that we've had for 50 years that Larry rebuilt it? Every 15 years, Larry had to rebuild it. Every spring when it would wash down, a couple of volunteers would go find the bridge. Because now it's under some part of the bureaucracy. It's totally gone. Right? Like, I mean, you look at bureaucracy and the big machine it is. We just need this form.

Just fill out this form and we'll get this over there. And then actually we can get it built for free. And Larry doesn't have to pay for it anymore, but it's just got to be engineered to spec and it goes over here and it goes over there. And pretty soon you've built this beautiful thing. And you were talking earlier about blue collar. Now, yes, that's the thing. Like when I go there or whether I'm with my buddies, we see solutions that are so simple.

and then there's the bureaucrats that make things so freaking complicated. Well, so. And this, yeah, we're going to have fun. We're going to keep talking about this. But, you know, what I'm describing is like a teeny, ween little microcosm. Like, this is Berg Lake where there's this major screw up. But we have politicians and bureaucrats that have the ability to amplify that a million times.

One of the things I love about Lloyd Minster is we have, and somebody maybe can correct me on this. I feel like we have. No unions. And as small bureaucracy is you going to get, right? Like we don't have any big government. Municipally, you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course we have city council and we got that.

We certainly have bureaucracy. I don't mean to say we don't. But compared to like, let's say, Emmington, Calgary, Regina, Saston, we're not even remotely close. I'd even argue, I bet your red deer has way more than us. Like, you go to, and so we just, we don't have it. And so you get to, you still have this blue-collar aspect of Lloyd where you, you know, like, I don't know. You create a problem.

I feel like some solutions are coming from this area because we have to fend for ourselves. Nobody's taking care of us. Man, now you're getting me to think about a whole bunch of things. Yeah, we should have blue-collar guys on councils and running parts of the government, but they don't want to do that. Unfortunately, that's the reality.

I wonder how you can incentivize them to do it. Short-term, each take a four-year-term. I don't know. But what comes to mind is Jordan Peterson has done this series on Exodus, right? They read the entire book of Exodus, and he's got all these scholars. And the only thing I wish he would have had in there is somebody blue collar. And I don't know if it would have been good or not. But like somebody who doesn't sit behind a desk for a job and like stare at a book and think about it.

And that's all they do. It's like, man, wouldn't it have been cool to have had some tradesmen sitting there and being just selling a wrench and everything they're saying? Like, you know, here's another example. I mean, we just lived through a forest fire season. Did you watch some of the town halls were happening in some of the towns? Yes. Like Grand Prairie. So I have family in Edson, right?

So Edson, you know, the fire breaks out and the bureaucrats said, hey, we're going to evacuate. And they didn't think about it. They didn't plan it. They sent everybody anyways. And they ended up evacuating a town that has 90% blue collar guys who work in the old patch. Guys who have trucks. Trucks. welders, water pumps and stuff like that.

And they didn't call on. Have all the skills in the world to solve this. And they didn't call on any of them to do that, to help out. And then those guys within minutes, like within minutes of seeing a problem, they go, we should have done that. And you go, wow, yeah, that's cool. Like, you know, certain people have that ability to solve problems practically very fast. I interviewed a lady.

I'm forgetting her name, folks. It was like a special 15 minute interview from BC. up towards, I want to say salmon arm, but I'm forgetting the town. It doesn't matter, regardless. The fire department showed up to, like, evacuate all the people. And they were like, no, if we leave, we lose everything. And then she was talking about the cops. They were, like, barricading the roads. And when I asked about it was to stop looters, and she said, I'd rather lose a TV than my house. Like, let's work together, you know. And so when I got talking to her, it's funny. Like, I don't, I don't grow up in forest fire country for the most part, right?

Like certainly around here we have fires, but, you know, the last couple of years around that Klona area, it's been like fire. It's just, it's just been for, and so, you know, you get talking to her, and then I talked to her for 20 minutes after we were done, and you realize they have things they do to prepare for forest fires. And then on top of that, I'm sitting in Kulana,

and we're watching this big, uh, giant plane drop, this red, uh, powder fire retardant. And I'm sitting there with a few people, and this girl, I don't know how long she was, I apologize, I don't know, maybe 20, 25, it doesn't matter. She goes, why wouldn't they just give every citizen a bag of it or five bags of it at the start of the year and go, if a forest fire happens. Sprinkle this on your roof. Sprinkle it on your roof or sprinkle along the edge or do this. And now you have 30,000 firefighters instead of like you're watching these helicopters. That's brilliant.

That's actually a brilliant, simple idea. Simple idea. But it's not in the bureaucracy world. It's not in a bureaucracy world or somebody will say, oh, you're not trained to handle it. Or there's insurance problems. Who's got the liability, like the liability of this, liability of that? You got the Helmand Rink, a beautiful, beautiful facility. And as kids, I feel like it wasn't open all the time.

I know it wasn't, but I feel like it was open more than it was now. Or take Lloyd. It doesn't mean to pick on Helmand. And you could go skate. whatever you want it for the most part right the lights wrong go skate that's what it's there for yeah now it's got you got to make sure all the ice times are paid for or the next one is well whose insurance is everybody on it's like just have them sign a bloody waiver if you get hurt like you go play in a park they won't even let us sign

waivers anymore I've asked that in certain circumstances like I'll take the risk I'll take the risk and you can't even sign the waiver I'll go hike to Berg Lake man I'll go don't worry about it I don't need a permit I'll sign the waiver you don't need to come rescue me, you can't go. Isn't that wild? It's totally wild. I love that. I'm coming back to that idea, though.

That is so common sense that a person would say that. Give everybody five bags of the stuff. It's going to cost you less money because you think of how much money was spent. And all the arguments that against it, I would say are flawed. It doesn't matter. Oh, it's not going to be effective for everyone. I don't give a shit. If you give it to everybody and 50% of the people manage to save their house,

I think all the insurance claims. Oh, yeah. Like, I just, you know, and then you go, like, I go, the way I can put my mind into it is if tomorrow, Hillman had a big giant fire. Who knows that area better than the people from Helmont? Nobody. Not a single person. And you go, if you enlist them with all their equipment, all the tractors, everything, like, I don't know. Does a forest fire come raging through?

Sure, it might. But I feel like when called upon, that community rallies and that fires out in a couple days. Now, the mountains is a little different because I, the mountain is a terrain, but eventually. evacuating Edson made no sense. Made no sense. Right. Made no sense. And then you watch the town halls and you're like, it's everybody stuck in the rules.

You know, well, yeah, we understand. We understand. But, yeah, yep, yep. Oh, yeah, no, that's, uh, let's move on to another topic. Because you and I are going to get mad if we keep talking about the government and competence. Yeah. Actually, I'll, I'll, no, no, no, we're done.

Well, it's funny. You know, like, there's still people who think, like, obviously, blue collar that can, like, see the problem, see all the restrictions and find a way around it. It's super cool. I mean, entrepreneurs do this all the time. One of the reasons I want to build a second studio and I want to put it out on the farm in the country is because I'm like, right now there's all these problems with how I do things. And, you know, Lloyd's, I love Lloyd, but, like, Lloyd isn't Colonna. You're not coming to Lloyd to, like, get away for a vacation. But in saying that, Lloyd 20 minutes north of it, maybe even less, all of a sudden,

you're in God's country, in my opinion, and you're like, wow, this is something. And I'm like, why haven't I leaned on that? And I'll give Too's a compliment here. Here you are, you're probably listening to this. Tews helps spur on this idea. He chuckles at me because he's like, I gave you that idea. Maybe you did. Maybe it did.

maybe you didn't i don't know well i already built it on a mashup it doesn't matter you build it and uh and then i mean you're in you're you're you're like uh we just out in the bush once again with josh a josh allen we're shooting partridge we didn't shoot a dang thing and um i felt like a little kid again you know no phone no contact i'm sure i'm speaking to the choir here just tromping through the bush looking for birds and had a little uh you know uh little campfire a little a little a little Meal, hike back out. Like, what a great day. Like, I could, Marty could come up for a day or two.

We could do the exact same thing. Odin and Erie he's probably never been to. And when it comes to guns, when it comes to all that, sure. Oh, yeah, no, no, I'm in. I mean, I, you know, I do the same thing in my neck of the woods. And, you know, like, you know, I just come back from hunting. And we were, you know, we're a group of six guys. We're in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, I'm not even going to tell, you know, we're east of Grand Cash, but it takes us four hours of driving on trucks and then about three hours on quads to get. Same guys that you've been going with for a while? 30 years. Same guys. 30 years. 30 years. 30 years ago.

Rewind the clock for me. Yep. What is it about those six guys or I assume you and five others that you and now it's been 30 years? What was it about that group? I'll tell you a story about that group. So they're all operators. They're all people I work with. So 30 years ago I was working in Edson at the Edson gas plant.

for Talisman Energy. Sure. So I was, you know, I was the engineer on site, and these guys were all forming electricians mechanics. So, so we, you know, and you talk about Lloyd, you could say the same thing about Edson or Fox Creek or whatever. You don't go there for the tourism. You go there because of work, of work,

but you also have, you're attracted to that kind of work, but you're also attracted to something that's offered locally. So when you go to work in Edson, you're attracting, you're attracting somebody who wants to work in the Alpatch, but also wants to enjoy the outdoors. It's true. It's hand in hand.

And so I'm working there and we're solving problems, which is fantastic. We're a group of guys brought together with a common purpose, make this plant work, solve problems, collaborate. And then after hours, we go snowmobiling, hunting, quodding, doing all that stuff. So they're lifelong friends because actually I'm really going to weave something. I mean, you know, when you're in high school, you have friends. But they're your friends, they're at the same high school because your parents live in. this town and you're thrown together, but you might not have a lot in common. Then I go to university and now I've chosen this university and I've chosen a degree. So the people I meet as

friends are thinking similar to you. Similar. And then I choose to go work in Edson at the oil place, you know, whatever. Now I've narrowed your focus and now you're landing beside human beings. So these are 30 year buddies and there's a joke in there. I don't live in Edson anymore, but I stay completely connected with these guys, go to their weddings, go to their kids' graduations and stuff like that. And then when I get together for this trip once a year, once in a while there's a new guy or whatever, but I'll introduce one of the leaders of the group. His name is Norman. So Norman, if you're listening, love you, Norman. And I always say to the people, I'm like, Norman ruined my career. And it's an inside joke. But I was working in Edson. And my boss was a

city guy who came, a very white collar, had his own ideas of how management should interact with the staff. And he took me aside one day. I got to put a little more context to the story. My boss was gone and he left me in charge of the plant for a week. And while he was gone, I had a barbecue at the plant called, whatever, one of the service companies and say, hey, John, mind bringing your barbecue over? We're going to just cook hot dogs and burgers in the parking lot. And no reason. That's just Marty, man. Like, we're just, we're just working and we're taking a break because the previous boss, he didn't do that. That wasn't in his way of thinking. He comes back. He finds out about this and he's giving me shit in my, in, in, in his office for

for having thrown the barbecue. And I'm like, you're mad because the guys like me, blah, blah, he goes one step further. He says, you know what? Hanging out with norms not doing anything for your career. That's what my boss said to me. He's like hanging out with norms, not doing anything for your career. I'm like, you think I hang out with Norman because I'm trying to advance my career. And what a strange thought. Holy shit, dude. I hang out with him because he rides a Polaris.

He shoots a 7mm. I shoot a 2-7. He would make fun of each other. He likes to go quadding and he drinks Pilsner. Like, dude, like where? Sounds like my type of guy. It'd be your type of guy. Norman, you bring some Pilsner on down here.

Yeah. So then whenever I reconnect with Norman and the guys, I always tell that joke. And I always say, you know, I'll name my boss. My boss was Dave. I'm not friends with Dave. I quit probably six months after that. And Dave, hanging out with Norman, did help my career. I ended up going a lot farther than you ever did, Dave.

And 30 years later, I'm still hanging out with Norman. And you still got a friend. And I still got a friend who will drop everything to come see me. So, you know, it is, it is one of those weird things. It's a, that's, um, yeah. But back to the story about hunting. So just, just quickly, because, oh, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say that, I think that's important if there is a young

kid listening or even a young adult. I remember always being told that high school is the best years of your life and although stress-free because you don't have, you know, bills and all these different things, I think it's so far from the truth. They're good years, but so are university and so are the years you come out. And one of the things you're pointing to is like with work, it's hard to fathom as a young kid, but you will spend more time around the people you work with than your wife than your children. Absolutely. And if you don't find the right group, it can be like you can like it can be a rough

freaking go. Yeah, well you spend a third of your life at work, a third sleeping and a third at home. And when you're at home, it could be a mix mash of a bunch of things. Absolutely. You spend a lot of time with people you work with. And so that brings me back to why I reached out about getting you to come back, Yack stack, all these people is and this comes back, freaking Harley, you're sitting in my head right now.

He's really, he's really put something in the back. It's like, so build it and have those people a part of it. Because my work is sitting here doing this. And I want to do it with people I really enjoy. Now, there's lots of people I really enjoy. They live in different countries too. So that makes it difficult to get them in studio. Have you interviewed people you don't enjoy?

No, no. What I would say is there's certain people when you sit across from, it's like almost instant. You're like, oh, man, this is interesting. And I look forward to getting to know this person more. And there's some that I don't know. It's very, there's not as much as you'd think. Yeah, yeah. And some surprise you, and some, you're like, I'm looking forward to this,

and it's exactly what you think. Some, you know, you just go, yeah, I just probably never talk to that person again. It's not up, you know. Like, I do five shows a week. And so, like, in the course of five in a row, I'm sure listeners can be like, man, you had something going on that day. That was fun. And others are like, yeah, that was good.

And vice versa. I mean, you and I could have fantastic conversations nine out of ten times, and then you got a day where we're both off or one of us off and then the conversation is just not there. Yeah, yeah. And so do I have ones that I don't enjoy the person? I don't know if there's ever been that. But certainly there's some where I walk out of there.

I can guarantee everyone listening. Sometimes I walk out of the studio and I go, yeah, that was good. Like, I could ask me, yeah, it was good. Oh, you had this person on it? Yeah, it was okay. Yeah, it was okay. But I probably could you interview Justin Trudeau? Yeah, I could.

Yeah, I think it would be really fascinating. I think I would have to like really harness my tongue not to say some like really you know like I'm not worried about physical violence but like he says triggering things all the time that I'm just like I just I'd want him that I'd want him I'd be telling him cut your bullshit just tell me what you truly feel you know but that's what I mean so I in my mind I'm like okay like attacking the man isn't going to get what I want how do I get him to talk and save things yeah and then to push on it a little bit I think to be fascinating. Yeah, we were back to my hunting group, you know, we sit around the fire and we talk about a lot of things, and that's one of the things we talk about. You know, if Justin was sitting here, how long would he last? And to a man, we're all like, he'd last about four minutes and somebody'd want to punch him. The thing is, the thing is, I don't know if, I've never been near hunting group, so I'm, you know, I just go, I've been around groups of men before where it's just, you just don't give him the space to talk anymore. Once you realize he has really nothing,

nothing to say. I feel like the conversation just grows, you know, like you have all those, you've been around the campfire. Everybody's like, who, what is this guy got to say? And you're all turned in and you're listening. And I just feel with Trudeau, everybody just slowly go back to their and they want to hear more about Norm or whoever, right? They'd be like, this is, you need, you sir, need to learn some things. How about you listen instead of talk? Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, yeah. Our, uh, our hunting group is officially called the he-man group. It's the he-man women haters group. So that's how it started out. 30 years ago. And so some of your listeners will know who that is. A lot of people hear me

referring to my He-Man trip. I'm going to He-Man. It's just called He-Man. And some people have no idea where that comes from. So for 30 years, you've been doing a trip, same time of year, same everything, or does it rotate? No, almost exactly the same week, year after year, in the same general area. We've moved our tent three times. We started in one spot for, about five, six years. And then we showed up one time in year five. And there was an outfitter who had used our old spot. And, you know, we moved. Because when we move, you know, when you set up a hunting camp, you are setting up a lot of things, right? You're digging a latrine somewhere. You're setting up a fire pit. You're leaving poles for your wall tent and stuff like that. So, so some guy

came and used our spot. Well, that pissed us off. We moved, you know, a couple of kilometers away that year and we found a spot. We didn't like it too much. We, we, we, we didn't anticipate where the sun was going to get up and so the mornings were blah, blah, blah. Anyways, we moved a second, you know, a couple years later and the spot we're currently at, we've been there for about 15 years now. So it's, it's quite literally the same spot. And I got a moose this year. It was my tag, you know, getting a getting drawn for moose in Alberta is a once every six or seven year thing. And so because it's my tag, I put in an extra effort, but I know the area so well. I literally, before I even got there this year, I'm like, I know where I'm going. And I walked into my favorite meadow,

I called it, and I walked into that meadow. I saw that moose. I saw a moose two days in a row, didn't get a shot on him. He was kind of small. And he was very, very skittish. As soon as he, as soon as I'd try and get a little bit closer and he'd get a sense of me or a whiff of me, boom he was gone and I came back to camp I was talking about that I'm like how am I going to get that bugger and then somebody said there's probably a bigger bull nearby and I'm like ooh that's why he's skittish he's he's he's in a meadow but he's looking over his shoulder all the time because there's a bigger bull I let a day go by didn't visit the meadow on the on on on on on day four I went to the meadow I walked in and and I timed it perfect I mean I literally like what time sunset today or

Rise, 806, I'm like, I can start shooting at 736. I'm going to be in that meadow at 736. I had a shit at 715. Like, walking to the meadow, I want it to be like nothing, nothing happening. You know, anyways, walk into the meadow and sure enough, a big bull. Biggest bowl I've ever shot in all my years, biggest bowl I've ever shot. So for people, you know, we measure the size of a bull, roughly speaking, as the distance between the two outside edges of the rack and he's 57 inches. So he's he was he was beautiful bull and for me it was a classic hunt

classic hunt hanging out with my buddies wake up in the morning while they're still sleeping jump on my quad quad somewhere and then get off my quad and walk like half an hour to a meadow sneak into the metal quietly all the circumstances are perfect and that's how well I knew that area I'm going to rewind you I have minus like small a game I've never been hunting before. That may shock some people because I grew up on a farm, but the way it, the way it worked is by the time I got cattle, you had beef. We had beef, but by the time I got to the age of where I should be going to hunting, circumstances, financial circumstances led to where my father started working a ton and doing long haul trucking and stuff. So for, for the years, I think

where a lot of young kids start hunting, I just didn't have the same experience. So I've just never got into it. And I find it fascinating, like really fascinating. And to the point where I'm like, I probably should just, you know, get out and go to it. But I just never have because I watch other people get right into it. Oh, that's interesting. When you were picking, you mentioned, I think, three different times. Over 30 years, you got the same group of guys. You have a spot you go to.

The Outfitter uses it the first time. So that piss you off. You're like, there's an unwritten code in the bush. He shouldn't have been there. But it is. So you decide, okay, we're going to move. So then you go. And now you've had two different times.

The second time is where you land. and you're like, this is the spot and you've been there 15 years. Yeah. What are you looking for the next time you go out? Like, do you just like hop on the quads and you're just, you got an area you're going to and out you go and you're looking for certain conditions?

Or what was the mentality of the group when you're looking for the spot? Yeah, good question. We know the area is very extensive. Like I can get on my ATV on my quad. And over the years, I've probably logged about 500 kilometers of different cut lines and trails. So that's how much selection we have. And yes, so there is a thought process when I show up.

It's like, what's the weather feeling like? You know, have we seen other people hunting in an area? Have we seen tracks, evidence, things like that? I mean, there's a lot of skills. So in this instance, we were there. I knew the rut was on. It was just cold enough. The animals are moving.

You start seeing evidence of animals all the time. You know, you walk down a trail one morning and then you walk back like 30 minutes later and there's tracks on top of yours. So for me, I had a sense that this, you know, well, the other thing is we know from hunting the area certain, this is deep, this is heavy covered forest, right? So meadows are rare. And meadows are these natural little habitats where trees for whatever, you know, the bigger spruces and things like that don't grow in there. It's just always willows and certain kinds of willows that are.

So I know that in certain meadows, moose hang out there. And now that this big guy is gone, for instance, I can go back there and I'll know that the little guy I saw, he'll be there next year. He'll be there the year after. And then he'll be there in four or five years when he's a big mature bull. So yeah, there's a lot of thought process to... But when you're setting up a camp, you're not looking for, like, water nearby. Oh, no, that. No, no, the camp has, the camp has all those things.

I mean, the camp had to be... Actually, the camp is close to a river, but not right on a cut line. So we were on a cut line, and we zigzagged a path that takes us to where we wanted to put the camp away from potential main traffic of other hunters or whatever. We need water. Man, this just sounds like it's just the curiosity, the adventure in me, I'm like, this sounds like a ton of fun. It's like, okay, boys, we're on the cut line. Now we're going to traverse into this bush.

Because we looked on Google Maps or something else or. Yeah, and laid it out and went, by the looks of it, if we go in here, there's a bunch of things. We want to land somewhere over here. And then you just start going. And the landscape changes year to year, too. Like, you know, the old cut lines get overgrown. They get windfall sometimes, so certain paths become no longer accessible. So you try something different.

And we're always exploring. We're always exploring. I mean, to be honest, the machines we own today, the all-terrain vehicles, I've said, you know, they've been called all-trained vehicles as long as I've known, right? 30 years ago, we called it an ATV. Well, you had a 250-c-c tric. It didn't go everywhere. What we have today, they're all-terrain, man.

They are unstoppable. Like it's, it takes a lot for me to look at something and go, hmm, not going down there. Like, you know, I'll give you an example. We, we have, we named the cutlines. We have names for the cutlines. You know, it's reference points. And so there's one cut line we call it Jetboat Alley.

And there's a story behind that because, um, we went down this cut line. We knew about it. We had gone down, you know, a few years earlier. And then we had a new guy in the group and we took him down this cut line. cut line. And he got mad because it's muskeg. It is deep, deep muskig. And he was getting stuck all the time. And he yells out something along, you know, forgive the explosives, but he's like, if you'd have told me I needed a fucking jetboat, I'd have brought a fucking jetboat, right? Because he was so mad because he was getting bogged down, right? But that was 20 years ago. We went down

Jetboat Alley this past couple of weeks ago. And, you know, we're just sitting there. And, at the one day. It's like, where should we go today? And somebody's like, let's do a loop this way and let's go check out Jetboat Alley. And I'm, and we're looking at Jetboat Alley and there's guys going like, we're not going down now. I'm like, dude, don't worry about it. Like with these modern machines, you're just, just go. So, hey, while I think about it, Norm's brother is George. And George is probably watching this right now. Hey, George, guess what? I'm on Sean Newman. And I know George watches your listens to your podcast all the time. Well, hi, George. George is his brother. And if you come to our fire. Maybe you should have George, actually. You know what? You should have somebody like Norman

and George. That'd be hilarious. If you're just open to it, invite George, man. George lives in Edson. He'll come here. George is an electrician, but he's also very politically involved. Like, he's part of the constituency association for the conservative party in the town of Edson and stuff like that. And you could have a fantastic conversation with George. One of the ways that I've built this show has been off of the audience suggesting people and people I respect suggesting people. So I respect the hell out of you. That'd be a crazy round table, actually.

You could have Norman, George, myself, and you and do just, you know, blue-collar workers talking about common sense or whatever. Well, one of the things I'm building out right now, so you know, you raise a very good idea. one of the things I'm building out is we've been talking on and off about this bloody thing now for like a year

and it just hasn't come to be and so now we're trying to set it in stone it's a military roundtable because who in this country has a brain like Chuck Prodnick or Jamie Sinclair or Willie or all these different guys who served overseas for year after year after year and have seen

you know like I've never seen combat no and then to you know see what's going on with Palestine and Israel or Russia or Ukraine or whoever. And to have some people who have actually, this is what I think of, you know, the Russians or the Ukrainians or this or that, you know, they say there's Nazis

over there. What do you think of that? And then they're like, oh, yeah, and they just rattle things off. You're like, oh. So one of the things I'm trying to do for probably the next year I'll go through 2024 is once a month because we don't want to get too crazy on people's schedules. A military roundtable here in studio where we have anywhere between two to three guys come in with military experience and talk

about this. Oh, I could, I could volunteer a bunch of guys for you. I know a lot of guys with that. And I go in the interim when you're not doing that to have those military guys come on and have their one-on-one. I just did it with Jamie, right? And Jamie's been on now three times and Chuck's been on multiple times so that the audience and myself can get to know these people. So that when you get in a roundtable situation, military guys can be military guys and talk about what the heck is going on. Because do you want to hear my thoughts on Israel, Palestine? No. It's like, I don't know anything. I'd never been there. How the heck can I? And possibly know what's bullshit.

And if you bring a guy who served with one of the UN groups of peacekeepers in the Golan Heights or something like that, he'll tell you stories. That's right. And then all of a sudden it paints you a picture a little bit. And you're going to be like, oh, so what you're talking about, I think is another brilliant idea is a blue collar roundtable. Blue collar roundtable. Wouldn't that be something? That'd be a lot of fun. Probably less, yeah, more of those than there are soldiers right now.

You'd have no problem finding. Well, actually, I've had no problem finding military guys. Oh, okay. The military, I mean, you got, well, you got Cold Lake nearby, you got Cold Lake nearby, you got Wade, yeah, yeah, you're surrounded. You surround it, and nobody talks to our military. Like, the vets, it's like, that's strange, right? Like, here's these guys, you know, when you talk about, like, blue-collar people with

the forest fires, not being, like, enlisted to help, we got big problems going on, and they're not talking to our military vets. And you'd think that'd be a natural, like, these guys probably have some thoughts that could actually probably work. actually a bit of a tangent, but I've suggested to Parks Canada, you know, bridges are an issue, right? And it's like, why are you trying to, why don't you bring the military to build a bridge for you?

Do a double whammy win-win exercise. A training exercise. Yeah, these guys are dying to train. Have the, have a, you know, Hercules plane fly overhead, drop a group of 15 soldiers. Into the back country? Into the back country and tell them we need a bridge over that creek. Done. win win. That'd be cool.

And then nope, can't do that because of whatever. Because it's not going to be up to spec and injury. Not up to spec. And it's like, well, no, there's engineers in the military. If it's good enough for the military, it's got to be good enough for the public, right? But, uh, no, the military's mandate is not this and we can't do things. Oh, whatever. Like, I hate when you propose solutions and people shoot them down because of bureaucracy.

Yeah, well, they just or they, or it's easy to say no. it's easy to say no and they say no yeah well i think i think you're on to something a blue collar round table wouldn't that that be you know you think about it get the tradesmen sitting in the studio and see what comes out of them talking about you know well i have to actually you know what are like a great topic that we that i love talking about when i'm with those guys out there you throw any topic like you could mention something like um well what do you guys like talking about you were just about you're just about it like i was going to say how do you guys feel about um the alberta pension plan versus the Canada pension plan.

And people will discount a blue-collar worker as if he doesn't have an opinion. And you'll be surprised. They'll start talking about it. And you go, holy shit, man. Well, what does Marty think about the Alberta pension plan? Oh, Marty's totally in favor of it for a lot of reasons. Well, why?

Well, I mean, Marty's a separatist. I mean, Marty's conclusion after, you know, Marty's conclusion is that Confederation was very fragile. And Confederation work when you had really mature statesmen managing it. Did we ever have that? I'll give credit to say the cred chance of the world. I mean, we had real

statesmen, you know, 50 years ago, the Defean Bakers of the world and whatnot but in the last decade, statesmanship is gone. What we're doing right now and the lack of statesmanship and leadership has identified some really deep flaws in Confederation.

So I've just given up on Confederation. It's, it's, uh, you think it's a ticking time bomb and eventually it's just going to happen. It's an experiment that was, that lasted a deck, you know, 150 years and it was good while it ran. But, but now, you know, it's time for certain regions of Canada to go about, so about their own business. So I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll preface my comments with that. Marty is a separatist at this point. So you think, do you think that, uh, uh, Alberta and Saskatchewan go, go together? or do you think that there's any?

Alberta and Saskatchewan is a very common sense partnership. I think that's absolutely a partnership that should go together. Maybe a little chunk of BC or a little chunk of Manitoba. But, but, you know, so that's my premise is that separation is inevitable. And in the meantime, I'm in favor of preparing for that. and also taking charge of our own affairs the way Confederation was meant to be. So I would like to have our own pension plan, our own police force, our own even tax collection agencies.

I mean, we have everything else in Alberta. We have our own courts. We have our own schools, our own curriculum, or own whatever, you know. So why not go that extra step and get some of these things? So there's that reason. But then also very pragmatically speaking, I look daily. I mean, one of the things I do is, you know, is I, I, I question everything. And lately I've been really diving into the finances of this country.

Okay. Country's a mess, man. The finances, Canada's finances are a mess. Tell me about it. So, you know, I think we need to separate ourselves from, from the rest of Canada because it's such a mess. Well, what, when you started digging into the mess, what were you, what was like the, oh, my God? Well, the big, oh my God moment is, there's three of them. So the first one is, well, let me weave you a story. Sure. So prior to, you know, the government, prior to COVID, you know, up until about 2018, the federal government's budget for a year is about $400 billion.

So $400 billion is to deliver everything that the federal government delivers. It's embassies overseas. It's paying the salaries of diplomats, border security. our military, maintenance on our naval ships, old age security, E.I benefits, child benefits, whatever the government delivers, $400 billion. But even, and, you know, right up to about 2018, you always hear about the deficit, right? So the government spends $400 billion a year providing services,

but collects about $380 billion in taxes from citizens and corporations and fees that they charge to go to the part. and whatnot. So there's a shortfall. That's the deficit, right? So the deficit, did I hear the numbers correct, is 20 billion roughly? 10, 20 billion, right? Okay. It was always that. And remember Trudeau's getting elected and he's like, I'm going to keep running deficits, but I will balance the budget eventually. And because all these deficits over time have added up. And so by, you know, by 2018 or by 2015, when Harper's leaving and Trudeau's coming in, we're looking at the balance sheet of Canada going like we owe 500 billion dollars. Okay. So we all these deficits over

decades, over 147 years have meant that we now owe 500 billion. Okay. And people are like, okay, yeah, we need to start paying it down, but it's not that big of a deal because, you know, they always use this measure of how much do we owe compared to what we have in the bank or how or our net worth, our assets, right? And so the net worth for a country is this gross domestic production, which is almost a bullshit number. But they'll say, yeah, the country's GDP is $2 trillion. So having $500 billion in debt, no big deal. Okay. But Trudeau says he's going to bring it down. Then we're at COVID. So in COVID, we spent in excess of almost $800 billion during COVID. So almost two years worth of spending in one year. So the budget, the spending instead of 400,

went up to $800 billion. And what did we do for that extra $400 billion, right? You know, we shut down the economy. So Trudeau had to, Trudeau, the liberals, the government had to pay served to a bunch of people, build quarantine hotels, buy machines, you know, deploy the military, whatever. I mean, we spend an extra $400 billion that we didn't have. So we added just during COVID another $400 billion on top of the $500 million we had in debt. So now we're at 500 billion. 500.

So now we're at. So what you're saying is in the course of, and I'm being a, I don't, we double, we almost double the debt. Right. But the debt up until that point took roughly 150 years, give or take, to create 500 billion. And in a year, we doubled it. Just like that. And we got nothing for money.

But then they're all like, oh, interest rates are low. We can borrow. It's all good. Blah, blah, blah. Then you look at what happened post-COVID. So 2,000. in 2021, 22, the next two years, the government brought it back down, but we're still spending $500 billion a year. So we're not back to pre-COVID days. We've really increased the spending.

So we're running a deficit of... Now the deficits are $80 billion a year. Yeah, right. So we're just, just so I'm summarizing what you've said, so I got it in my brain right. It took 150 years and we're running a $500 billion. We're $500 billion in the hole over a course of 150 years of it slowly adding up. Then in the course of the year, they double that essentially because they run $800 billion instead of it. And so now you've just added $400 billion on top of that. And then to top it off, since we've come from there, instead of going back to the $400 billion, we're adding $10 or $20 billion a year, we're now upwards of $80 million, $100 billion per year of overexpanding.

Enormous numbers. So then, so when you look at the, so the budgets are done, and then there's this independent body within Parliament called the Parliamentary Budget. office and there's a parliamentary budget officer. So the parliamentary budget officer, he's kind of an auditor, not quite an auditor. He's just looking to make sure everything looks good. He published his report on October 13th just a just a week ago. So when you look at that, you go, holy shit. So the government has no plan to to to balance the budget. All the way to 2028, there's a deficit in the annual spending as high as like $40 billion a year. So Trudeau has no plan to rein in

the spending. He has no plan to start paying down the debt. He's accumulating debt. The debt right now sits at $1.2 trillion. And then the debt payments, they're forecasting those to kind of go down because they're hoping that interest rates go down. But at the current interest rate, the debt payment of the interest alone on our debt is $50 billion. So 10% of our budget every year is just debt. So in the next five years, just the debt is just the interest on the debt. It's crippling. Just the interest on the debt in the next five years, $250 million,

which used to be a year's worth of spending kind of thing, you know, a decade ago. So and when you look at the balance sheet of the government, which is published in that report, they'll have, there's actually $1.8 trillion in debt, but they offset it by saying, yeah, but the Canada pension plan is $500 billion. So they're using that in the balance sheet, which is correct, but it's also worrisome because when does a government of the future go, hey, man, I got to take this money that's sitting there that we promise to people, but, you know, I don't trust the governments. I just don't trust governments with anything. So that money, there's a huge amount of

Canada pension plan money there. People will say, well, the money's being managed properly within the Canada pension plan. I'm like, yeah, it's managed properly within an organization that is absolutely a tire fire. Yeah. So do I trust that that money will be there for me in the future? I'd rather take a chance and bring it in, you know, people, that's the other, the counter argument. It's like if we take our share of it, make it whatever you want. Let's say Alberta's share of that is $200 billion.

I'll take $175. I don't give a shit. I'll take an amount and we'll put it in our pension plan and then we'll manage it ourselves. If you look at Alberta's balance sheet, it's in great shape. But if you look at the, you know, and you know that we're onto something when Trudeau writes a letter to Daniel Smith like he did yesterday. He writes a letter to her saying, please, Daniel, reconsider your, you know. Did you read that letter? I didn't.

You're not even aware of the letter probably. Okay. So yesterday Trudeau writes an open letter to Daniel Smith. and saying, please reconsider creating your own Alberta pension plan. And then he goes with the gas lighting. It's like, oh, you know, Canadians have, there's enough uncertainty in the world right now. Canadians don't need this additional uncertainty. I'm like, are you kidding me?

You're the guy who feeds off uncertainty and division. So he's playing that angle with Danielle. And then he literally says he starts nicely in the top of his letter. Yeah, there's the letter. but then he finishes with kind of a threat, which is I've informed all my ministers to do everything possible to block Alberta going alone. And you can't do that because it is in the constitution. It is in the writing of the Canada pension plan that any province can opt out of it. Quebec did in 1965 and Alberta can do it any time they want.

But, you know, this is Trudeau being petty on the heels of losing Bill C-69 last week and a few other things. Which is pretty cool, eh? Totally. He's disintegrating right now, man. The liberals can't do anything. Now we're talking my favorite topic, but I didn't come here to talk totally politics. But, you know. No, it's funny.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting. You know, I see how you weave it all the way back to Alberta. You know, when it comes to the debt and everything and why it's a good reason for, you go, what you said was, I don't trust government. I have this point, I don't think any of us trust any guy. I don't even trust our government, but I trust ours more than I trust the federal government for sure.

And I would say in Alberta, I feel like I have more of a voice than I do federally. Right? I think federally, I'm like, you know, do I want Canada to remain a country? Yes, my heart says yes. My heart says yes. Right? Like I don't want to lose Canada. I love Canada.

But I mean, Canada, the Canadian flag at this point is somehow viewed as a hate symbol. It's like, and. I mean, I'm a little bit tongue and cheek, because obviously, a lot of us don't think of it that way. But, I mean, there's a part of Canada now that when a Canadian flag is flown, it's been put in the side of right wing and a whole bunch of different things. It's a Canadian flag, you dummies. I mean, if you brought the soldiers here, the military personality, you know,

they have a strong attachment to that Canadian flag. I mean, they fought for that Canadian flag. But, yeah, in my mind, I'm like, I'm proud of the Canadian flag. but you know if Alberta became its own independent state and we went to the Olympics I'll cheer for Alberta just like I would when we you know when I watched a juniors championship I'm not cheering for Team Canada I'm cheering for for Alberta when we're competing so but anyways yeah it's a I want to read if you can do it out loud or put it up on the screen or whatever I mean it's not that long to read and and Danielle responded right away saying you know you're you're

you're out of line and you're, yeah. Oh, yesterday was an interesting day in politics, man. I mean, there was some grandstanding that went on in the House of Commons too. Like the Speaker of the House did something absolutely bizarre in the House of Commons yesterday. Welcome to, welcome to, I've said this many times on Twitter in the last few weeks. Canada is not a serious country right now. You know, as I'm sitting here, I'm trying to Google Justin Trudeau letter to Smith. And I'm like, you think I can find story after story of it.

You think I can find the actual letter? Like, what is going on here, folks? Go to Twitter and you should be able to find it quickly or I don't know where your open letter to Trudeau open letter to Smith, something like that. You might, it's not very long too. It's a page and just a bit, you know. And the timing was, the timing is suspect. I mean, it's not, well, Alberta is a Trudeau's favorite punching bag. I mean, it's the bet, you know, look at where he's deployed.

to all his ministers. There you go. Oh, here we go. You want to read it? I'll be quiet. Go ahead. Yeah, I'll read it out that way I can. It says, Dear Premier Smith, I write you at a time when Canadians are facing a lot of challenges.

The world is changing fast and the cost of living is putting a lot of pressure on hardworking people. Canadians need our support and they need to have continued faith that their financial future is secure. With all the uncertainty they face, Canadians should not have to worry whether or not the Canadian Canada pension plan will continue to be there for them in their retirement. I don't know why I have a hard time reading the way Justin Trudeau writes. Not that he wrote this. No, he didn't write that. The Canada pension plan has been a stable fixture of Canadians and Albertans' pension income

for almost six decades, providing support to millions of Canadians, very much including Albertans. It is built on the promise we make to Canadians that after a lifetime of hard work, they will get the retirement they deserve as recently as 2016, the federal government and provinces, including the promise of Alberta, a historic and responsible deal to strengthen CPP and enable Canadians to retire with more money in their pockets. Our unwavering commitment to seeing people's financial futures

has led Canada to build a pension plan that is globally recognized success. Canadians have trust in the CPP, are proud of the CPP and work hard with the expectation that CPP will be there to provide financial security when it comes time to retire. Protecting and building upon this model is something the federal government takes very seriously. For the reasons I am deeply concerned that your government has proposed to withdraw Albertans from the Canada Pension Plan.

Alberta's withdrawal would weaken the pensions of the millions of seniors and hardworking people in Alberta and right across the country. The harm it would cause is undeniable. Withdrawing Albertans from the Canada Pension Plan would expose millions of Canadians to generate to greater volatility and would deny them certainty and stability that has been benefited generations. We have a model that works in this country. It offers workers a reliable future.

and pensioners with peace of mind. And then it finally says, we are living in a time of unprecedented challenges, external forces and events from geopolitical unrest to climate change and more are having a direct impact on people here at home. As a leader, we have the duty to protect Canadians from these headwinds not to introduce even more uncertainty and instability. And this is why, as Prime Minister,

I want to assure Canadians and Albertans that I will always defend their pensions and retirement security against any actions that would threaten its certainty and stability. I have instructed my cabinet and officials to take all necessary steps to ensure Albertans and Canadians are fully aware of this risk of your plan and to do everything possible to ensure CPP remains intact. We will not stand by as anyone seeks to weaken pensions and reduce the retirement income of Canadians sincerely Justin Trudeau. There you go.

Yeah, the whole language of that, you know, the whole opening chapter of like, you know, we live on uncertain times and we don't need the additional stresses. I'm like, dude, I could write that letter about you. I could pick any topic. Well, he's created all the... Totally. You know, I could say, dear Prime Minister, you know, the way you're managing the budgets right now and borrowing recklessly is causing fear for Canadians. I could pick anything.

The way you... Like, it's hypocrisy, it's gaslighting, it's... And it's not a coincidence. I mean, he loves to pick on Alberta. I don't know why he wants to pick... I mean, I've said this before. I don't know why he wants to pick a fight with us. I don't know why, because he doesn't need our votes.

He doesn't need our votes. Does he pick a fight with us because then he can turn around to the Eastern Canadian and say, see, look at Alberta, look at Saskatchewan, these are conservatives. These are what real conservatives look like. They're evil. And so is he picking a fight with us to demonize conservatives? Like if he is, that's a ridiculous, you know, I don't think he needs to do that, but he's been doing that.

I mean, the man could, like, when Trudeau first got elected, I was worried, I was worried, you know, here comes good-looking guys, got the right name, knows how to work a crowd. And I thought, oh, shit, man, we're going to have this guy for 20 years. Because the way Confederation works, the votes are done, man. When they close a polling station in Ontario, you and I don't even need to look at the results, it's done, right?

Yeah. He can get his 170-seat majority year after year just by appeasing the Easterners. If he comes to Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia and gets an extra 10 seats, perfect. That just helps. So he doesn't need to, if he was just nice to us, which was the strategy that the Kretchenz and others used. Just be nice to the Westerners. Give him a few little things.

Let him do their own thing. Keep collecting the money from them and whatever. And some of the wording in there is him kind of acknowledging that we are contributing. I mean, you know, people said, oh, no, you know, there's no way 200, that, of the $500 billion in the Canada pension plan, $200 billion comes from Alberta, I'm pretty sure there is, or some big number,

and now he's genuinely afraid that if we withdraw our chunk of it and leave them with $300,000 in an aging population, yeah, I agree. Us leaving the CPP or us leaving Canada will be very hurtful for... Easterners.

So do I need to do that for you to finally acknowledge that? We've been telling you that for years. Just listen to us and give us a fair deal. That's all we're asking for. If we don't get the fair deal, we're going to leave is what's happening. So this, kudos to, you know, and Danielle's playing the game. She's playing the game. She's, she's, she's, is this a diversionary tactic?

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Like, is she serious about pulling us out of the, actually, she is serious. She said she'll go with the will of Albertons. So if Alberts have a referendum and we say, and after the evidence has been presented, and we say, yeah, we want to pull out of this. the CPP and do her own thing. She'll, she'll respect that. I'll just follow the polls. We don't want to do that, supposedly.

Yeah. Well, currently, I'd say that's probably right. That's probably right. I don't know. I don't trust any of those. I think polls are shit. But that's just me. No, no, I don't trust the polls. But, I mean, if I ask Joe blows, you know, fine. I ask my, fair. I ask my father-in-law, hey, how do you feel about this? He's, without too much thinking about it, you'll say, nah, we should stay. That's what he'll say because it's a difficult to understand concept, right? The Canada pension plan. I mean, yeah, I'm laughing because, you know, my wife comes into my office some days like, what are you reading? I'm like, uh, the parliamentary budget officers report on the fiscal state of the nation.

Why do you read that? It's like, uh, somebody has to. Actually, just, just, just for an interest say when when you dive into that website that department the parliamentary budget officers website there's hundreds of reports there that are amazing so any they're a service to MPs so any MP who has a weird idea so maybe an MP says hey we should forgive student debt so then he's allowed to go to the parliamentary budget officer and say here's a hundred thousand bucks and I you know and and and I want you know you guys to give us a little study on what would be the if the government of Canada decided to forgive student debt. So then you go in there and you go, wow, a study on forgiving student debt.

You can read that 20-page report. And it might have been commissioned by the MP for Medicine Hat. And then you'll go another one and go like, wow, it's full of crazy information. And that's one thing I love about our government. Love them or hate them, there are thousands and thousands of bureaucrats in this country who just go about doing their job every day. And one of the things I love that they do is that they provide a ton of information. Now, that information is made available to MPs and MPs will twist it and spin whatever story,

but it's also available for us. So when somebody says the CPP is a bad idea, I can go, hmm, check this out. The parliamentary budget officer thinks differently. You know, here it is in black and white. So I love digging into that information. You go back to Trudeau for a second. You asked a question. And I think it's a fascinating question.

And that is why doesn't Trudeau just play the game right? And he could be in power for 20 years. I mean, that was my thought. I honestly thought he could be. But I think he's caught. I don't think he can, well, he's petty. And he's easy. He likes to be the focus of attention.

He likes the, he thinks of himself as a, an intellectual and an academic and a deep thinker and people can suck up to him really, really quickly and get shit from him. So he's been compromised that way. How much is politics the individual versus the people behind the scenes? I don't know.

Because like I take it here in Alberta and I go like, how much of the Alberta pension plan is Daniel Smith's idea versus her team or the powers that be behind her? like she is one of the most gifted politicians I've ever seen talking to reporters and being able to because she's smart she's smart and she's and she's she's genuinely very very smart and she's looked into a lot of different things totally been a curious person to listen to people we'll we'll come back to your question but yeah like last week Danielle was being interviewed at a press conference and they were talking about you know a net zero electrical grid which is like a

a pretty complex topic, right? And she was fielding questions left, right and center and giving answers. And I felt like cheering and applauding in the background because either, A, she understands it, but even if she doesn't understand it, she understands it enough to have gotten the best pieces from her advisors and whatnot. So to your original question, historically there's been a lot of great, the government is a machine. I mean, the prime minister or the premier is the face. Then there's the MPs and then there's the professionals, the advisors and the deputy ministers and things like that. And I guarantee you when a

new leader comes in, everybody tries to make the machine keep working the way it did. And then you got somebody like Danielle who temporarily breaks the machine. I mean, I'll give you another example. I remember seeing an interview when Donald Trump first got elected and somebody, Somebody said, you know, hey, Mr. Trump, you need to come on this course here and we're going to explain to you how government works. And he basically said, no, no, no, no. You can take that course and shove it because I'm here to start over the way government works ain't the way it's going to work going forward. So if you want to teach me about protocol, forget about it because I'm going to teach you how it works, not the other way around. So I think, so you got variations.

So in one breath you're saying the leader really does matter. If they're the right one, you've seen it with Daniel Smith in Alberta. I don't think we can go like, well, you can't like, yeah, things have changed. So that's a leader. Yep. And with Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, I mean, or even, you know, whatever group behind. And then you have the other extreme. So I think, I think a guy like Trudeau comes in and says, I'm the leader.

We're going to do it my way. But the way he's going to do it is nefarious. He's got other people behind him. I mean, Klaus Schwab and others were proud of saying it. Like Schwab said it at the world economic form.

We've infiltrated, you know, several governments around the world with bright new leaders. And as soon as he speaks like that, Trudeau gets all horny and all excited, you know? And,

and if you said that about Danielle, Daniel would be like, I don't need you to make me, don't butter me up like that. I'll make a name for myself and I'll do it myself, you know. So, well,

I just think, like, politics is such a weird world to me because there's like are there handlers and different people surround it? Certainly, you know, like in my own time with Daniel Smith, getting to know her before she ran to when she was running, to when I finally got to have her on as Premier Daniel Smith. Yeah, that was pretty cool. And after we were done, we sat there and chat and I'm like, oh, there's, like Daniel's still Daniel. Like, that's, I just imagine her world has gotten completely absolutely bombarded now with like, you know, being the premier. I mean, it's not that rocket science.

It's like everything she does. She came on the show, and I didn't think much of it. And the next day, it's on, like, global. It's on CBC. And you're like, what the heck just happened? Yeah, yeah. And by the way, nobody asked to take my content and put it on their show. So that's one.

But regardless, all of a sudden, you know, I'm getting texts from all over the place. Oh, they're really paying attention what Daniel Smith does. That shouldn't be rocket science to any of us. She's a world leader now. Yep. But you look at, I bring it all the way to hockey. And I go, why is it in the AGH show? Let's talk about Alberta Junior Hockey League.

Why is it that the Brooks Bandits are so good? Kail McCarr, one of the best defensemen in the game right now in the NHL, played Junior A for the Brooks Bandits. And I'll pick on my hometown, Lloyd, Mr. Bobcats, they were the Blazers and one point they're the Lancers. They've had three different name changes over their course. Have never won anything in 30-plus years. They aren't the only team.

I'm not just picking on them. What's the difference? Well, I would argue. you have had Ryan Papuano on the show. He's brilliant, and he had a vision and went out when he enacted it, and now they've created the Brooks Bannis, and they're one on the top junior A teams in all of Canada, and you can just see it.

So people do matter. I'm not to sit here and say they don't. Hockey's a proof in pudding. It's like sitting right there. Look at the Vegas Golden Knights. If they had different people go in and enact their scenario on Vegas, do they win a Stanley Cup? It's like, probably not.

I mean, now could have anyone walked into that situation? in one? No, I think that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a poor argument. And so you come back all the way to how much of this is Trudeau, how much of it is people behind him? So, so he is the, so he is the, yeah, yeah. So, so you can see it play out when he talks, but how much of it behind him is. Oh, I, I think, I, I think he's just the front man. I mean, I, the, the liberal party already is a very, uh, interesting machine. So the, the, the liberal party at the best of time always chooses a leader and then, and then the liberal policy, the liberal party makes more, uh, decisions than the leader. But in this case, it's the Liberal Party, and the Liberal Party is highly influenced by really big outside forces right now. So, like, it... Do you think Pierre winning, like, assuming he gets elected in, right?

Polls show, I always say I crap on polls and then I'll go with the polls show. So I'm a little bit of a hypocrite, but the polls show that he's favored to win. If people are still voting for the liberals at this point, I just, I don't know what to say. You know, I just can't, you know. But regardless, if Pierre gets in, do you think that'll, like, do you think he's a Daniel Smith type? He's a Daniel Smith type, but he's in a bigger machine, so he'll have more, it'll be harder. I mean, you know, Donald Trump is a Daniel Smith type who stepped into the biggest machine on the planet and look at what happened to him, right? So it's a tough deal.

back back to locally and people I think I think back to Kenny just not recently Kenny came in here is a Daniel Smith type person but Kenny surrounded himself with the wrong people Kenny had trusted advisors but they were all Ontarians and he brought in his Ontario people and they didn't read the room they so he had the right idea but he had the wrong advice he built the wrong team quickly and then he couldn't read the room so um you know and and and and and and that's what happened with kenny i mean he he he he he's he resigned but did you see the uh the video yeah i'm sure you have of pulier eating the apple oh i changed i i added an apple to my to my uh to my bio on uh on twitter i actually sat

there and watched and i'm like did like because he's one thing i'll give pierre like when it comes to social media he's about as savvy as they come do you think That video was staged? Or do you think somebody actually was tried, and he just picked my part. It's a real journalist, but, and part of me thinks, no, no, it's not staged. Look, that's where we're at in society. Yeah. Where you can't, he keeps saying things and he can't, he can't back up any of it.

That journalist was using classic techniques, right? Well, some people say, and Pierre use counter measures that were. What people? What people? Well, you're a populist. What does that mean? So he, you know, he used the, he used lines from the, uh, Jordan Peterson book of how to do interviews, right?

I mean, it's, it's, yeah, that, that was, that was just a, that was just a, um, uh, an imbalance of powers. I mean, it was a, it's not a rookie journalist, but he was outgunned. He was outgunned by, by Puellyiv. It's funny because it's funny. What's even funny is that some of the liberals are trying to use that to their advantage. They're trying to portray Pueleev as if he was somehow insensitive and condescending, you know, they're focusing on the fact that he was eating an apple while being interviewed. I mean, would it have been better if instead of eating an apple, you know, Peterson's done this. If he was if he was doodling on a piece of paper, I'd have, then I'd be really impressed.

I mean, you're dundling on a piece of paper and you're listening and going like, yeah, okay, you know, it shows. Yeah, I, to the liberal guys that are trying to spin this in a positive way, you're not going to work. Because where my brain goes is I go, that had to have been staged. There's no way. If you go, like, that's where we've got to in the world where he just got like, there's no substance to the question. It's just the question, you just like, what is he even trying to get out of that? Is it a, I don't even know.

It's like you don't understand who you're, because one thing I'll give Pierre. I mean, Pierre might have picked him out in a crowd, right? There might have been a little earlier press conference and he could see that guy. and somebody's like, you know, take him aside and do a one-on-one. And so that poor guy probably thought, hey, I'm getting a one-on-one, and it just blew up in his face. I think that's what happened, something like that. Yeah, because the team around Pierre is very, very savvy.

So is the team around Trudeau. I mean, they're all savvy. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, Pierre, well, see, you know, I hesitated when you said that because, yeah, his team is savvy, but they also make a few mistakes that I'm not, like, I don't like Pierre's transformation. I don't like that. I don't like the, I don't,

it's too obvious when you do a makeover on the guy. You know what I mean? Like I, I didn't like that. Like the no glasses, you know, the mill house. Yeah, yeah. So. It's funny though, because it's like, you know, the same thing happened, honestly,

to Daniel Smith when she became Premier. All of a sudden, she was dressing different and her hair looks different. And it's like, well, what do we all think it was going to happen? You're stepping into a role where you're going, think Pierre, he's stepping into a role where he could be the, leader of a country. Yep.

And so they probably did test after test on what plays out and what people like. Totally. And they went with, they like it better when you don't have the glasses. Totally. And you go, well, that isn't me. It doesn't matter anymore. They like you better when you have. We saw it with Bob Ray.

We saw it with other, you know, it's common. By the way, Danielle look absolutely radiant the night of the election. Like when I was in at the, she, she was happy. We dodged a bullet, man. We dodged a bullet. I've said it over and over. You don't have to tell me. I sit here and I don't know how to put how close we were to big business just vacating Alberta.

They all say, oh, it's great here. It's like you've got no fucking clue. Like we were so close to some of the best human beings on the planet that are in Alberta still. Suncor would be gone by now. And so would Sonovus. And so would a whole, I mean, Suncor this week, last week, you know, the president of Suncor gets brought in front of the parliamentary committee and they grilled him. And his answers were fantastic.

and you notice that, you know, if we had an NDP government, we would have lost a lot of businesses. Absolutely. We dodged a bullet. I'll, you know, we dodged a bullet. I mean, Rachel Notley yesterday, Rachel Notley in about four of her MLAs posted pictures of themselves, you know, getting the COVID shot.

And I just think about how they would have managed the pandemic and where we'd be like if they got reelected. It's insane. I mean, just statistically speaking, so far this year with the new COVID, COVID vaccine, like only 6,000 Albertans have received a new COVID vaccine. So it's 0.3% of the population.

And it's been out for seven weeks now. 6,000 have gotten it. So I look at the, I look at the, it's like four NDP MLA's got it. So four out of 6,000 is, you guys are like, you're cranking up the numbers just among yourselves, you know what I mean? Like people are, people are well past that.

Wow. You know, that's great to hear, isn't it? Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. You know, like that only six, when you think about that like you know like everybody's like everybody's work like I've been in different I remember when my neighbor came up to me it was like think master coming back I was almost so like I was triggered but I was just like and I'm like no they aren't and I think they're I think they're just trying to feel out if the population is even remotely interested in it yeah yeah

yeah and when you hear in Alberta 6,000 people got the newest boosters like this is so dead of an issue it's so dead and and I would dare to guess that Of those 6,000 people, 5,500 are in long-term care facilities. They're old people that they just went and, you know, jabbed them. Jab them, that's it. And then, and then, but the average Joe on the street is not getting, and the other thing that's noticeable is they, I guess they're calling it a bit of needle fatigue or whatever, but people aren't even getting the flu vaccine either.

Needle fatigue. Because, oh my God. Because, yeah, no, but, you know, people aren't, the numbers for the flu are also being published on the website. and we used to be in the 33 to 35% of Albertans would go get their flu shot, and now it's down to 20%. So they did something. People are cautious right now.

You know, you come back to your story about building the bridge on the hiking trail and then the rocks and it blown out. One of the repercussions of what they did and how hard they pushed is everybody, you know, I bet you if you look at the numbers with childhood vaccines and everything, I bet you they're all down. They're all down. Everyone's like, they call it needle fatigue? No, it isn't.

It's government fatigue. Everybody's like, screw you guys. I no longer trust anything you touch anymore. Like I don't want any, I don't want you, you know, like when they're talking about taking over things, I'm like, yeah, that's just what we need. More government in our lives. You know, I blew up the other day on Twitter, put out that video about, and I'm uncomfortable having like a little bit of a rant. But I hit my breaking point with hockey Canada saying, you know. locker room or whatever.

The locker room. Yeah, you know, you got to wear undergarments and it. It's like, you know, when you don't talk to like the blue collar people, why not have a bunch of coaches tell you what they need from the locker room? Why put a blanket policy on this? And I, man, like. Yeah, it's not a problem for most places. It's not a problem.

And if it is a problem for a community, the community will address it. They always do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You're a smaller town and you have, I don't know, a group that, that's not used to this, whatever, we'll deal with it. But, yeah, I mean, in my circle, everybody laughed at that. Everybody's like, what do you mean?

You can't do. You know, we grew up in hockey. We grew up where you get naked in the locker room and you go take a shower. That's it. And we also grew up in a time where if you didn't, it didn't want. And you grow up eventually and you get past it. And if you didn't want to, you just went in the stall and got changed and come back out. Or go home, stinky and don't shower.

But then we're going to call you stinky when you get home. It's life, man. It's just life. I mean, you know, talk about it. Now we're now we're segueing into really weird stuff. But did you see the NDP convention last week? Oh, yeah. Like, these are the people that want to rule.

These are the people that want to make policy. Yeah, but they're like seriously. You know, they were literally saying hold up a yellow card. By the way, bad choice of colors, you know. But were they thinking soccer? Sure. But when I hold up a yellow card or put a yellow star on myself, I'm not thinking, I'm not thinking penalty.

I'm thinking pure, brutal discrimination. And the NDP policy is like, yeah, if you don't have a, if you have a, they reverse it. If you have a yellow card, you're allowed to talk. If you don't have a yellow card, you can't talk. But the rules are bizarre, you know, in the interest of gender parity. I'll pick any gender I want. Did you see, I assume you saw the long intro from, you know, like talking about how we're inclusive and we got all these things, we got that. And I'm like, it was three minutes of mumbo-jumbo.

Yep. Yep. And I'm like, and next year it'll be four minutes because they'll have tacked on a few more things we've got to be inclusive about and we've got to make sure. And I'm like, I can't imagine sitting in the crowd. Except I can imagine sitting in the crowd. I remember now, this is amazing. We're, we're, we're letting people with, uh, in some instances, we're letting people with no common sense and no skills get into positions get into positions. Let me that, let me throw this idea.

I've never. Maybe I've talked a little bit about it on the podcast. What do you think in Alberta? If Marty and Sean in a group of like a thousand people all went and bought NDP memberships and ran for the NDP? We don't even need to run. We can get 50,000 guys to get memberships and influence policy. That's what I mean.

Destroy them from the inside. Yeah. But they won't sell your membership. They'll vet their vetting people. That's an idea. How can they vet it though? I don't know how, but they... Because I can go on.

NDP's website right now. I had an NDP membership. I did have one. And what happened? I can't have one anymore. Why? Somehow or other, I don't know, they, they know who I am and they, they, they figure out how to vet me. They can't vet. They don't have the staff to vet. Can you imagine they're broke? Yeah, yeah. No, and it goes both ways. In fact, the NDP were proud of that strategy during, um, whatever, three, four years ago. I remember it was an issue. It's, it, I guess, I guess the answer is that It can be countered by them. So if we go and influence them by getting memberships, then they can also do the same thing.

Sure. And let's be clear. I think they talk about it with the Republicans, right? The rhinos. Yeah. Right? That they're not true Republicans. It's like, okay, well, I look at the game in Alberta and I go,

you know, wouldn't it be amazing to have a UCP government that's held accountable by an NDP that actually wants, like, that actually goes, that's stupid or that's great. but actually works with them and actually gets something done instead of like what's going on right now. Like the NEP party in Alberta, you're like, oh, well, I'd even say most parties are at that point. Like there's no collaboration. I mean, you know, you can pick, you can pick a very common sense topic and because you're on the other party, you have to be against something that's common sense. It's getting that ridiculous, you know.

So you don't think we could have, you know, David Parker talks about the UCP. We're all about a bunch of memberships, take back Alberta, we're going to go in, we're going to influence, we're going to get Kenny out, we're going to get Daniel Smith in, we're going to push people on on the board, you know, we're going to do all these things. He's very public about it. He's like so open about it, it's ridiculous. Yep. I mean, it's interesting, but it's ridiculous, how opening it. I don't think we could just. No, no, I agree.

All go take over the NDP party, take over the board, vote people out, vote people on. on, no different than what David, no different than what all these communities are talking about with school boards, everything else. Exactly. And just go do it. Yeah, yeah. And you don't need 50,000 guys. You need the right people getting in at the right place, at the right level.

You don't need, which is what the radicals and the extremists are doing to unions, to school boards and whatnot. Yeah, they're not, you know, there's not 50,000 people joining the Lloyd Minster school board. They just get together behind the scenes and to make sure that they elect one person on the Lloyd Minter's school board. So all we need to do to sabotage the NDP is elect Marty. Get Marty undercover in there. But I couldn't even pretend. I couldn't even pretend. I think it would be so much.

Sean, I've done those tests. I think it would so much fun to just strap like a GoPro camera to me. Sean buys an NDP membership. And at the next NEP convention in Alberta, Sean just shows up, walks around, shakes hands. Woo, this is amazing. Yeah, you know those personality profiles like the ENTJ, the Myers-Briggs and things like that where you answer questions. And I've done those where, you know, answer questions and it goes, yeah, Marty, you're a conservative. Then I go, okay, just for fun, how do I get to be, how do I get the software to identify me as a socialist or NDP?

And even doing the quiz, I'm like, oh, man, I can't even answer that question the way it is. You're like, do you believe in gender parity? I'm like, yes. You know, and even forcing myself, I can't get to there. So if you put me in the crowd and you started, I'd, what's the word? I'd cave under pressure, right? I'm sitting there with the lie detector. Are you really a socialist, Marty?

You're like, are you really ready to do. I don't know. The way, the way, I don't know, the way we look at the NEP is I feel like we treat them like they're all this collective body. And as soon as one of us step in there, we're like a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, A sliver or something in the body pushes it out. And I go, that's such a load of BS. Like, you look at the UCP, and I know they always talk about the big tent,

and they want to have all these different people in. But nobody knows what a person's actual beliefs are. Now, if I walk in, look in a certain way, talking a certain way, I get it. But in general, the NDP need people that buy memberships. And do they vet most people? No, they won't because they... If you walk in their first meeting and cause a scene, I'm sure they're like, that guy's got to go.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, like, I guess I should put the, I should test it out and see what it happens. Because maybe they're sitting here listening exactly what I'm saying. And they're like, when Sean Newman buys a membership, please do not allow him. Yeah. When Marty shows up at the convention. I have a hard time believing that they know anything about who I am. Maybe I'm wrong on that.

Yeah, could be. Are they sitting at hour two of me and Marty talking going, make sure when this, I don't know. I don't think they're that involved in it. I see them down their own paths. you know, pushing for all these different things. I just look at it. It'd be a fascinating journey because I'm sure there's reasons why somebody smarter than me must have thought of this. And been like, you know, one of the things that gets brought up is compared to the UCP, the NDP are tied to their federal party.

Yes. Right? So they get their marching orders from the federal party, correct? Yes. Which I'm like, okay, so what if the provincial party just said no? No, thank you. What if Rachel Notley said saying you? out of your mind. I don't want to do that.

She'd be the way the rules are written. She'd be grounds for her to be dismissal. Okay, so then they get rid of natural not only, and then we put in the next one. And then she's... And then they go, no, and we're not doing that single. So then they remove that. And they just keep...

Eventually, they go, okay, we need to rewrite this policy or do something because it's not working. Think if you had the power on the Alberta branch of it. Just be like, no. Okay, remove you. Okay. Next one's in. No. And eventually you've made such a mockery of the NDP Like, I don't know Maybe I'm wrong

No, no, no, you're not wrong I mean, but I mean, we're past that They're, they've made a mockery of themselves right now I mean, Jack Layton is turning in this grave Like, holy shit, you know I understand, but I mean they still are The official opposition in Alberta If you ran as an NDP in certain writings tomorrow

You would win just like if you ran the city In Emmington, you're guaranteed to get in Just like if you run And this is no I don't mean to, you know, like any of the UCP out in rural ridings. There's a whole, it's a sea of blue. You put a UCP on it and you show up. You're a warm body.

You're getting elected. Like, I mean, it's, that's the election, not the actual election night. So the same goes for NDP strongholds. Walking to Eminton, you want to beat it. It's like, why don't we just become them? And then we're orange and people just, they don't follow near as close as we. Like, it's the same thing on both sides of the coin. They're voting NDP.

Who's your representative? I don't even know. Yep, yep. No, who did that? Somebody did that during the last election. They went around and asking people who their MLA was, and it's surprising how many Albertans don't know who their MLA is. I have no idea.

Well, it's just, it's politics. Once upon a time, I wouldn't have known. I 100% wouldn't have known, like, I don't know. I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known prior to 2013. I wouldn't have known. And as it sits, I'm trying to think if I know all the people who ran for all the different parties in Lloyd against Garth.

And I'm like, that's it, that's a tall order. You probably have a hard time mentioning, naming all the premiers of Alberta, of going back 20 years or all the premiers of Saskatchewan, right? No, not like you, you know, I go, there was a guy named Ralph Klein. After that, I have no idea. You know, and then, and then all of a sudden, yeah,

I remember Jim Prentice, Rachel Notley, and then everything after that. Between Klein and Prentice, I have no idea who was there. Well, I've appreciated you making the trip. I know, you know, like, it's a long way to come, but I do appreciate it. And it certainly will not be the last time I force you or encourage you or whatever word we want to toss on making the trip because I do enjoy our chats. And you have an interesting perspective coming from an outdoorsman looking in on and then

going and experiencing that and bringing some of that to me. And I find it, I always find our chats fast. If you want to do a blue color or maybe a redneck roundtable, I mean, I know a couple of guys, man. We'll kick one off. We'll kick one off. That'd be awesome. Why not? Bring the gear to He-Man. Bring the gear to around the campfire. We'll do it proper. So, so this release is on Monday. And next week is the Tuesday MASHRub Live Tour. So me and twos are going to be in Lumsden on Tuesday night, the 24th. Yes, 24th. And we're going to be at the Lumsden Hotel and Steak Pit. And now actually, I'm just talking to Henry today, the money that

We're raising the donation box is now going to, let me get this straight. It's going to the fire department. Henry, where are you at, Henry? Donation bucket is going to go to the Lumsden Fire Department to fund raising effort for a new rapid response truck. So we're helping, you know, we're just trying,

me and twos are trying to get in front of an audience, play this out and see how it works. See if people enjoy it, see if they don't. So the reason I bring it up and the reason you're talking about going to HEMAN is I'm like, Well, as much as I'm talking about bringing and building the studio here and everybody here, me and twos are going to load up a couple of mics in the vehicle while we travel around Saskatchewan. We're talking about, I don't know how next week how it's going to go,

because you're Monday, I'm pretty sure I got something Wednesday. We got obviously the mash-up Tuesday. So the end of the week is there going to be two me and twos where we sit and we BS in the vehicle? It's quite possible. I don't know what the heck that looks like. But for sure, we're going to try it out for one episode next week where we do. So I come all the way around and you go, bringing around the campfire, I'm like, what the heck would that look like?

You'd need a lot of cameras to capture. Let's just say you didn't do the camera. Just voice. Just voice. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it'd be fantastic. You know, you could, it's a campfire. I mean, our campfires usually are spontaneous and the discussions are whatever, but you could, you could manage it. You could say, listen, we're recording this and think of it as a. as a campfire roundtable discussion.

Do you think it invades your space by bringing recording gear in there? Well, it would. But I'll also say this. We can do the same campfire at your place. I don't need to be, you know, if you want to bring the boys like, like, if you want to bring Norman George, they'll drive up to your farm and we'll go sit around your campfire. And we can say, for all intents purposes, boys, this is he man or whatever. and we could talk.

So why not do He-Man here and then just go do the campfire? Sure. We could do that. Absolutely. Then done. No, no. I brought up the campfire because it would look cool. No, no, because it would be.

But this is, you could do a He-Man group here. But you think about it. George is getting so excited right now. But when I talk about it like evading space, like, if you put, I don't know, for a group of podcasts, or people have been filming themselves for, you know, as long as you have. And now I'm going on five years of this. Yeah. I'm just so, to me, the mic doesn't bother.

me one. Yeah, I don't even know it's there. Right. It's just, it's just part of it. It's just, like, this is fun to me now. This is what I do. So if you had a group of us around a campfire, I'm like, I think it would actually really work. But if you have a group of you that have like this 30 years, man, like that is, that is as sacred as it gets in my mind of like a spot where you have this, this place where you go. And, you know, as soon as you bring in outside technology, your entire thing is not about technology. I, I, I, I think. the guys that I hang out with would get past that really, really quickly. Because I mean, I've been in their face with cameras for like you could go find videos of our.

Fair enough. They, you know, Marty gets away from having to gut the moose by saying, hey, I'm the cameraman. I'm documenting. So that was always my excuse, right? So you got the moose and I'm filming. But no, those, you know, the, and plus they don't forget too, some of them now, we've all had more experience with this because of COVID. People have done zooms and things like that. So it's not as foreign as invasive.

I'm pretty sure you could have those guys around here. All you'd have to do to really make it comfortable is make sure they had a can of Pilsner in front of them. Oh, that's, I mean, I was joking with you. I got a great Western sitting in the fridge is all sitting there. I'm just in sober October mode. I'm like, yeah, yeah. No, I'd make sure they got a can of Pilsner and then we're talking.

And I would help you mediate it like it was at Heman. It's like we could, every topic we just talked about, you could talk about there. Right. You could mention how do you feel about the CPP? How do you about it? Well, then I'm throwing it on Marty because your group, there could be three of us in here, myself and three others. I think it's an interesting thing to try out at least once.

Because the thing is, the thing is. And if it doesn't work, you throw the video in the garbage. Well, if it doesn't work, the audience will go, yeah, it was okay. Yeah. And you'll hear it. You know, it was okay. But every time I bring on, well, I don't know, I just think of the military guys and trying to build out a military roundtable.

Every time they come on, somebody texts immediately that day, like, I could listen to that every single day. You should bring that on every week. And I go, well, that's difficult because, like, you know, they got their lives and I got, you know, and you're trying to bring on. And so, but to not act like it shouldn't be more of an annual thing or a annual thing, monthly thing. Now, now I want to do this. I think we should because I'm thinking of the topic. I'm just going back last week sitting around the fire. We talked about well abandonments.

We talked about caribou protection. The guys have, and that's another example. Like, you know, we've been hunting in this area. The strategies to protect Caribou for 30 years, we've seen 15 different strategies. And nobody's ever asked the hunters, you know. So anyways, it's a topic. We've talked about, yeah, we've talked about the government stuff, like pensions and whatnot. We could talk about flood management, the forest fires, what they think about global warming,

what they think about the housing crisis. How do you get around building more houses? These are guys that are, they're all guys under 40s and 50s. That's a blue collar, common sense guys. And if you brought up topics like that, it would be, I guarantee you, you'd have an audience that be fascinated. And I would say to the Danielle Smiths of the world and to the Rachel Notley's, listen to these kinds of discussion because you're going to get some crazy insights. I mean, those guys have an opinion on everything. And quickly, you'll realize when you've talked to some of these guys, quickly they have some pretty.

pretty sound ideas of, hey, let's give everybody a bag of fire. Okay. So we're going to talk about something then specific to podcasting. Because what you just said is like, why don't we ask people who are in that world what they think of a problem? So specifically hunters about caribou. Sure. Like that makes, I'm like, that makes perfect sense.

And yet here I sit as a podcaster. And sometimes I don't ask my audience what they think of a problem I'm trying to solve. Or your normal go to would be, oh, okay, I'm going to invite Larry, who's a biologist with the government of Alberta to talk about caribou. Sure. And when some people do it well, they'll bring Larry and they'll bring a hunter. Right. And then to have kind of a thing.

One of the things I've been wrestling with is, you know, like, and I think a lot of podcasts are wrestling with, is how do you do, how do you make money on a podcast? Right. And so I'm full time, which I think in Canada, maybe in the world, is extremely rare. I've found a way to make it work. I don't know if people enjoy it, though. You know, I do my ads right at the start and then nothing else. And I was just, the reason why this comes to mind is with all this CRTC stuff with the government and, you know, $10 million and, you know, and our show is going to disappear and blah, blah, well, I've been really searching out different avenues of like, do I get registered my podcast in Australia? Do I create an app?

Do I do this? Do I do that to help safeguard me against government overreach into what I do. Right. And one of the things that came out that I was just talking to a guy yesterday, and he was talking about, you know, like what you need to do with your podcast is you need to start putting ads in the middle. I'm like, oh, I don't like that. And he's like, and then we take revenue share off that. And I'm like, I really don't like that. Because like, what do you, you know, like, I guess I'm like my backs up against the wall when I hear somebody saying how they're going to try and take money from me before I even do any of that when I'm already full time and I've done this. And where I'm going in, is I've had different listeners reach out and go, you should try these different things. So I've looked lightly into them. But I'm like, huh, I wonder what the audience thinks about multiple different things with the podcast.

One is I want to build a studio here where more interaction like this happens because I think I don't know, I guess I'm enlisting the audience here. Do you like it better when Marty's in person or do you like it? This is seriously texting. Our discussion wouldn't have been this good if I was remote. No way, no way. How do I get One of the things I wanted to do

Brett Kissel sat right in that chair And he's been living in my head I talked about living in head My head now I said I want to I want to raise a million dollars For 2024 And the reason I went with a million It's probably a little high

But I went It sounds right And then what I get to do Is I get to go out And I get to hire people Like full time to come work for the podcast I'm on one man show This is like extremely taxing

And I'm kind of like You know when they talk about levels Marty You can only get so high until you take the next step. I feel like I'm kind of there. And I don't mean that as like, do I have room to grow? A ton. But I'm like, I'm trying to do a video. Am I good a video?

I don't know. And I'm trying to do the auto. And are you? And so like there's this thing. But how do I enlist? I'm almost at. I'm closing in on a million downloads for the year of 2023. So folks, if you're listening to this, we're going to be within a hair at December 31st.

So share this podcast. Share it out to people. Let them listen. million downloads, not billion views on social media. I'm not taking any of that into account. I have stats from when I first started in 2019 to now. And my first month in 2019 was... So a million downloads is like somebody downloads it

so they can listen to it later while they're driving, whatever. As soon as you start listening on Spotify, Apple, any of those things, it counts. Yeah, okay. So you go, my first month I ever had was like 218 down. No, no, that's a lie. That was the first episode. 400 and something downloads in my first month. now it's like 100,000 in a month.

That's impressive. Or close to. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's like, but how do I get? A guy based out of Lloyd Minster. Holy smokes. Look it up on the map, folks. Do you even know where this is?

How do I get? Yeah. How do I get? A million dollars. Because Brett Kissel goes, you approach 100 businesses, 10,000 each, and they go, and I go, and I go, okay, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work, one. And two, I'm like, how do I make it worthwhile where any, you know, because I talked

to Drew McKay, showed up to AMC, and Rocky Mountain House. When me and two's lost our major sponsor in the mashup, me and him started talking, he said, you need to enlist all the small businesses that want to support you. They just can't give you 100 grand. They can give you $1,000. And to them, that's big money. And I'm like, okay, so we sold out the Tuesday mashup for the year of 2023 in like an instant.

It was cool. It was like super like, oh, and every time we lose one, we gain it right back. The price is right, right? So I go, okay, how do we give the audience? everything I've been doing, but allow me to go out, and once again, maybe a million dollars, folks, is too high. I can, I can argue that that's, I just look at it and I go, then I can go hire people to do all this stuff because it all costs money. And then we can land somebody like something wild, like Tucker Carlson coming to Lloyd Minster. Wouldn't that be something?

Yeah. And like, you want it? Let's go build it. How do you make it so that everyone's like, here, here's some, and I don't, I don't know the answer. But I'm, but once again, I go, I've never asked. Yeah. And if you never ask, you never ask, know. Ask Joe Rogan. I don't know. Well, Joe Rogan just, that's interesting. Yeah. Well, I'd love to have that conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I don't know the answer. I mean, I don't even know how you make any money, but, you know, well, certainly, advertising. Advertising. Advertising, that's the obvious one. Advertising is the obvious one, right? Your events are good. Your events are, you know, you're using your podcast to build up an audience to give it a name for yourself.

to then host live events where you can make... But the tough thing with events is there a ton of work. Which is that... So it's time. Back to having the money to have the people because... And then the only way to put it on to make money is to charge enough for a ticket. And then people are like, well, I can't afford it. And you're like, no, I get...

Okay. So then you have to build something where they're like, I'm going to that regardless. So I've... You know, people may have noticed. I put out an event in January, March, June. And I haven't put one out since. because I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm like, I don't want to just put on events to put on events.

I want to put on something that you're like, I want to go to that. So what is that? And I point at it and I go, I don't know. Like, Canadians for Truth have Peter McCullough coming November 9th, I think, in Red Deer. In Red Deer, yeah. And I'm like, that's a name where I'm like, I want to go to that. But I can't go to it. I just, I can't even go to it, which sucks.

But I'm look at it. I'm like, that's a name. I want to get there. But I don't know what Peter McCullough is going to tell me at this point anymore. And I'm like, so even I'm like, there's been so many events put on with so many great names. Like, how do we get something that when it happens, when Donald Trump walks in the door and is it Donald Trump? I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you're talking about something that I've, that we all face in this world. You know, I faced it on YouTube. I'm facing it on Twitter. You have to constantly reinvent yourself. And, I mean, you're in a competitive market. You've got, you, the market's not saturated, but you got competition. you need to do something different all the time. So, I mean, you need to maintain your audience.

I'm going back. I think if you spin off and you start doing these roundtables with military guys and the redneck or blue color or whatever, it's probably leaning into what I already have. This is the reason. Which will increase your advertising and your audience for sponsors and things like that? I mean, I. So you lean back on sponsors.

I wonder what people say. Yeah, yeah. Because you think about it, if you had a million people, they all gave you a dollar. Well, it's an interesting question. And then all of a sudden, you're laughing. At a broader level, the questions come up a lot. So, you know, going back to Bill, which one's the one that pissed off Facebook? Is it C19 or C-18?

C-18, C-18, not C-11 and C-18 are the two ones. So C-18, now, you know, one of the big polling companies reached out to people. and people don't want to pay for content. Like the modern world, people don't want, your viewers don't want to pay for this. They're, they,

they, if they pay indirectly because they're paying a fee to, uh, to Spotify or to whatever, they're happy with that, but they,

you know, people don't want to pay for Facebook. They don't want to pay for. But would you want to, so let's use Marty. What would you pay for? Uh, I'm,

and I'm, it's an open, don't use Sean. Use, use your own, use your own, like, I'm like,

Marty pays for, Marty, Marty, in a comparable, Marty likes concerts. Marty pays Sure. You like events? I like events.

So I go to concerts. I go to comedy shows. You know, the only reason I haven't come to your comedy shows is because they're five hours away kind of thing. But, you know, if you were doing this in Calgary, you don't want to come to Lumsden? Yeah.

Been there. No, so I, I pay to be entertained. I have no problem paying to be entertained. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, I have no problem paying to be entertained. How that manifests itself can be a bunch of things. I mean, I pay for Netflix, so obviously I'm willing to pay for content. I pay for, you know, people say I won't pay for Facebook, but that simultaneously.

I pay for Netflix. I pay for Twitter. I pay for whatever TSN and things like that. If it holds enough value, you'll pay for it. Absolutely. That's the basic proposition. Offer something that people want and you'll figure out how to make money. of it and you shouldn't make money off of it and people most people have no problem with that

though you know they they they will appreciate that um what you're doing isn't free well it's just it's like it's like it i don't have the answer i just go like it be i found a way to go full time that's super like i don't i don't like i'm like okay yeah but now it's like how do you get to the next level and how do you enlist because one of the things i've done that i you know with the phone you know I was getting I was I was having a conversation with a lady from Iowa this morning

what a wild world you know and she listened because Graham Wardle came on and so we were having this conversation I'm like this is this is why I give my phone number out I mean I'm sure at some point it's going to have negative consequences but so far it's almost been

100% positive not entirely 99 out of 100 texts are more positive I'm like how do I enlist all of you listening that are the texters to grow up one step further where it can become this every time or maybe eight out of ten times because right now it's probably in five podcasts it's probably right now if I'm lucky once a week right like which is cool because of only like three months ago it was once every 25 what's once every what having you in studio having a person in studio okay okay

really that's it yeah well you think I mean like don't get me wrong um there's lots of people willing to come i'm finding out but that takes time because it's it's got to work in the schedules so now that you're building it out it's a lot easier yeah um because now you've got okay next week i got i got another one coming in in the studio and you're like okay but then we're gone for half the week and so me and twos will be in the vehicle and that'll probably be another one but then you're like you have to schedule it out you need to let people self-invite themselves and provide a calendar where we just go and put our our names on the time slot. You need to make your time slots available to guys. But, but then you might do that in the

background, but that's, again, that's where you're going to need somebody to help you. It's going to become unmanageable. Well, right now, it's funny. I hired a kid at a St. Louis, Jack. So Jack's probably listening. I shouted to him. He's really, like, I didn't realize how busy I was until he's like, well, let me just take like this one little piece. And I'm like, I'm really like protective of what I'm, okay. Yeah. Okay. You mean he. took a piece off my workload. Off your shoulders so that he's editing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So has there been bumps and crashes in there? 100%, but not like anything cataclysmic. And it's just slowly, you know, it's becoming a well-oil machine. It's starting to run now. And you're starting to go like, oh, I can actually focus on another thing. And so then we start focusing on and on it goes. You need to talk to Joe Rogan somehow or other. God, can you imagine if you had, and you want to talk to him one-on-one as a podcaster

and how do you get there, right? Well, I mean, one of the one of the one. We can see how he got there in a sense. You can watch his, you know, I could describe the steps. You're going through steps. I think you're doing the right thing and I can see a normal evolution. I can see how things are happening. I mean, you're going to, you're going to forget about the million bucks.

You're going to get somebody, you've got one guy helping. You're going to get another person helping. It takes people to work together to grow. You've, you're, you're simply getting to that point where growth is, is, is, um, is difficult because it's not because you're running out of topics or subjects or people. It's not like the government started doing things, right? We got nothing to talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, you, you, you got huge opportunity. You'll crack this one. You'll crack this one. I'm not worried about it. Well, I just think you said something really, really

thought-provoking. And that's, there's thousands of people that listen to this. Yep. That are loved podcasts. And you go, they probably have some ideas on how to make it better. Well, the phone line's open, folks. Phone lines open. Call Sean, and he'll bring you on board and you guys can have a chat about maybe there's a successful podcaster out there or somebody who's I mean there's going to be somebody beating the radio right now because they've been texting

and they're like I've been telling you yeah you got to do this you got to do this you got to do this and actually I'm just going to bring it back to my YouTube world in the YouTube world there was lots of guys who actually you could watch a lot of guys who became very successful and there was a recipe and a formula and you could try

and emulate the formula and get there so in your world I'm sure it exists. Is there a, is there an annual, uh, podcasters conference in Vegas? There used to be one in, uh, put on a, put on a podcaster's conference. You know, we put on a podcaster's conference? The Lloyd Minster pot, make everybody come to Lloyd Minster. You know what? I'm, I'm telling you, Lloyd Minster's going to be a spot on the map because I'm not, uh, I'm, I'm really tired of going to Calgary. Yeah. I, uh, you know, and I say that as you drove here from there, but I'm like,

everybody's like you got to do your next event in Calgary and I'm like listen someday when I don't have three kids running around and trying to be a part of their life I will plan everything everywhere yeah Calgary is not the center of the universe it isn't and actually I argue that Joe Rogan's Austin isn't the same center of the universe either he's just planted a flag this is where I'm at you want me here here I am and now he's he's done built something that is just I mean don't get me wrong it's still Austin I mean Boyd Minster is not Austin no

I mean, if you're a country music singer, you can try and make your way in Lloydminster. Nashville might be the better spot. Yeah, yeah. Like you said, if this was March and we had a big snowstorm, I would have called you this morning and saying, sorry, bud, I ain't coming up. But, yeah. I know, but, I mean, I'd still come up. I'd jump in my truck instead of my car.

I'm not one of them city idiots who can't drive in the snow. I'll drive in the snow. You know, Shane gets him when he flew here. Yeah. You know, he flew here and then got trapped here because it got so cold the one night. He couldn't fly back, so they parked. How the hell does he fly here? He's got a plane.

Oh, he's got his own plane? Yeah. Oh, cool. Didn't know that. Yeah. Lloyd's got an airport. You can fly West Jet flies in Amiton. In the Lloyd's room. Yeah. I mean, hey, we're a bustling metropolis. I shouldn't laugh. I live in the country. I lived eight years of my life in Fox Creek, Alberta. Look it up, folks. Look it up. Yeah. Do you miss those days? Totally. Life was so simple. You know, and I lived in Fox Creek, lived in Edson, lived in Grand Prix.

And I went to Fox Creek last year for a funeral. And when we went there for the funeral and then I drove around town afterwards, and my wife is like looking at me, like, don't even think about it. She knows exactly what I'm thinking about. I do want to come back up north. I mean, I'm Marty up north. I didn't get that moniker from living in Calgary. This is not home.

Marty from Calgary? Yeah, no. Marty's from up north. If Marty could settle back up north, he'd love to be an edge. in or some part of the world like that, but his wife will not. She'll divorce me. No, we're past that. She'll say, yeah, you go live up there in the summer and I'll stay in Calgary.

That's how we are. Yeah. Well, I'm hoping, you know, Lord Willem, by the time you're back here the next time. Because, you know, actually, I shouldn't say that because if we pull this blue collar thing off, because I want to try it. So, never mind. We'll still be here. Yeah.

But as the year progresses, I'm certainly, um, shooting for the moon because i would i would like because i mean i just you see the size of this it doesn't have to be this giant facility actually it has to be just something that that works and i think i can pull that together totally so that uh you know in the future here in the coming year um 2024 has a has a time where marty's out on the farm and and going yeah you load up with a bunch of things to bring out and uh your mind probably goes to a thousand different places with that and i'm like yes To all. Oh, man.

You can, yeah, you'll need a lot of editing because we're not just going to talk for an hour. We're going to talk. We're going to talk around the fire. And then later on we're going to talk while we're walking around hunting. And we're going to talk when we're whatever. We want to change oil in one of the tractors, we'll go change the oil. And we'll talk. It'll be fascinating.

Well, I appreciate you making the trip doing this. Yep. Yeah, well, I don't know. I always enjoy our chats. And, you know what? I chuckle about it because. I don't know if you realize this. You've been in this studio.

When I did my brief stint with the Western Standard for three months, you were in studio there. You're the only guy who came in there. And now that I've kind of shifted things around and hearing and kind of given a facelift, you're now. I've been here a couple of times. I've been on your Tuesday mashup once. Yeah.

We tried a weird experiment, and I want to do that one again, right, where I was on the floor during the... The Alberta election. Election night. And, oh, God, you know, definitely not perfect, but we could do something way better. Me and twos are going to do Saskatchewan next year. That's our next big one. We were supposed to do Manitoba.

And then Dr. James Lindsay was in Calgary. And I felt it like, I was like, we got to go support this. They canceled it three different times, right? So, yes. Yeah, keep pushing that envelope, man. I chuckle, because you've actually been, when I think about it, and actually you point out even the election night. coverage from the Tuesday match. You're a part of that? Like, you've just seen all the different

aspects as this thing's continued to grow and change and shift gears and everything else. Yeah. No, and and and somehow I'm sure you helped me. Not somehow, you help me too. I mean, I, I'm not the guy I was a year ago. My life on social media is completely transformed in the last year. How so? Well, I had that. Trudeau must go. Trudeau must go and things went crazy after that. I mean, I'm, I'm, yeah, the fact that I, I get called. I'll say it. I mean, I've had phone calls from Danielle Smith, too.

Really? Yeah, yeah. She called me at home. Because I'm breaking stories on social media because, like you, I mean, people go like, how do you know this? It's like there are not very many high profile conservative voices on social media like Twitter. So I'm one of them. And behind the scene, there's people who whistleblowers, call them whistleblowers.

Yeah. I'm getting emails. text and tweets and shit from whistleblowers. And so then I can literally, I'm not a journalist, but I can... But you are. But I am. No, no, no. I mean, like, literally you're doing what journalism

should be doing, which means you are a journalist. Yeah. In a weird... I'm not investigating, so I'm not picking a topic. Sure, so you're not an investigative journalist, but you're exploring topics and then giving your thoughts on them. Yep, yep. And so for me, it's exploded. I mean, I have to

I have to turn off the notifications on my phone. Oh, yeah, I did that a while back. Because my phone will overheat that. And I'm no Marty up north with Trudeau must go. I chuckled about that, right? Like, I mean, no, no, like, interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, we're part of a, we're part of a network, man.

We're people who are like-minded, right-leaning, who want to seek out some truth and do that through discussions and dialogue. and keep doing it. And we're, it's an ecosystem. I mean, we each have our own little parts in this ecosystem. Yeah. Well, thanks again for doing this and coming in, man. I look forward to our next chat.

Hopefully, folks, it's a blue collar roundtable or the he man roundtable. The he man round table. Yeah, I mean, that'd be fun. That'd be interesting. To me, nothing will, I don't, I don't think anything can ever make or break the podcast. Yeah. Because I've certainly thought someday when, you know, he had Don Cherry on, I was going in the moon and back.

And it's just another day at work, you know, even though it was really cool for me. And so one of these, it's like, who knows what it is? Could be this million-dollar idea. Could just be a lot of fun. Could just be a lot of fun. Absolutely. We'll come up with a new logo. Awesome, man.

Cool. Thanks again. Cheers.