Shaun Newman Podcast - #686 - Kirk Lubimov

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

He’s a political commentator and entrepreneur in Alberta. We discuss three revolutions coming, the state of Canada and 30 year mortgages in Canada. Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone] – and be sure to let them know you’re an SNP listener.

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I'm talking about Kirk Lubemoff. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Numa podcast. Today I'm joined by Kirk Lubamoff. So, sir, thanks for hopping on. My pleasure. Looking fast speaking. Yeah, well, I was saying to you before we started, you know, me and, you know, I wondered how long it would take me to start saying X instead of Twitter.

And I guess what has it been? I don't know how long it's been. Has it been a year yet? Has it been over a year? It doesn't matter. Whatever the time frame is, I'm starting to retrain my brain to say X. And, you know, you're one of the guys on. on X that I follow that, you know,

it said some things that have grabbed my interest and mainly because it's about Canada. And I always search out different Canadians to talk about things Canada and to see some interesting thoughts. You're talking about Jasper and sorry for the listener, if I assume we'll probably snip out just what we were talking about. But you were talking about Jasper Wildfire

and the fact you've been in Jasper a few days before and how big of area now the wildfires cover. What have you thought of, I shouldn't laugh. I don't mean that in the, I laugh in the sense of like, I'm thinking about the Canadian government and every time we have a giant crisis, they always seem to let me down.

They never seem to like hit that out of the park. What have you thought of Canada's response to the wildfires? Well, you know, it's, on one hand, they're to keep talking about climate crisis. and this and that and saying how it will increase wildfires and, you know, all the usual stuff. And on the other hand, they're stating what will be causing what will be, you know, the issues increasing and they're doing nothing about it. And to Jasper Wildfire is, you know, a perfect example of it. I mean, there's tons of fires going on here in BC where I am right now as well.

But to Jasper one, there's a massive fire. It's going up. It started just above Norda area, Highway 11 close to Baff National Park there, of a white goat area, and came all the way up to Jasper Likti. The area that was burned down is massive. So there was so much time to do stuff. You know, the liberal government, he said we should be happy that 70% of the town was saved. Well, 100% of the town should be saved.

Like, you know, there is this acceptance. of failure in this, you know, it seems to be like in this Canadian culture right now. It's like, well, only 30% of the town is burned down, which is like, no, like, you know, how about zero percent of the town should have been burned down? So there was so much, you know, time to do stuff. And it's, you know, one of the things I don't get with our, you know, emergency response in general in Canada, besides, you know, buying to water bombers and training to, uh, firefighters like the liberal government has promised for years and campaigned in it is why we're not

activating the local resources like Hilden Hinton, like all the towns around Jasper are just so resourceful. There's so much heavy industry. You know, you could have got a whole bunch of companies together, say, listen, we need to cut a line through here, a fire line through there. And, you know, there would have been so much resources available to mobilize, you know, so many hardworking alberdons here with heavy equipment that, you know, could have helped so much. But instead, you know, we're flying people from across the world. And by the time to get here, it's already a little too late. You know, I had a conversation with Liam Parfit and Marty up north. I don't know, a few nights ago now. And when they started talking, you know, one of the

things they were talking, and I'll probably butcher this a smidge, they were talking about thinning the forest, forest management essentially, right? And that when it comes to Jasper, the problem has been evident. And the news cycle is showing that, that the government's known about this for quite some time and did nothing about this. You know, while shocking, it's not that shocking because, you know, I go back to the flood in New Orleans, I believe. And I'd read back then, there was people talking about, you know, like, we really need

to improve things or, you know, we could have severe flooding. that could like destroy our city. Oh, you know, this and that. And then, of course, it happens.

To me, I know this isn't identical, but at the same time, when I was listening to Liam Parfit talk, you know, these, when you talk about being proactive instead of reactive

to major, major problems, Jasper seems to be, well, a prime example of it, of where, you know, although they could go around to all their other towns,

get the heavy machinery and different things like that, I was learning, Liam was talking about, crown fires versus ground fires and some of that is just preventable by forest management which is years before this ever happened and instead you know you have what you have and the worst case scenario almost plays out i mean it does play out in the fact that 30% of jasper's gone um i guess worst case scenario probably would have been 100% right so um yeah it's uh it feels like it's an

aptitude perspective so you know jasper was one of the hardest hit national parks by mountain pine beetles. Over 230,000 hectares have been impacted by the infestation. So essentially it's 230,000 acres plus of dead wood. And if we put in a perspective, Jasper's wildfire was about what, 32,000 hectares, which is huge, but we still have majority of the National Park with dead wood. So the fire hazard that we still, still have out there is astronomical. So if we haven't learned anything in the past couple weeks, the past couple days, is we, I mean, we're better smart and up quick because the risk, the majority of risk is still out there. I agree with you. And I think, you know,

getting some people with some know-how on the job and faster, sooner than later, would be a real smart decision. I'm not going to hold my breath when it comes to the liberal government. but you just never know. You know, Kirk, normally what I start off with is a little bit, we just got kind of rolling, folks, and so I clicked recording. I'm like, well, I should, you know, I was letting you finish your thought. I normally, it's the first time you've been on, excuse me,

first time you've been on the show. And I wouldn't mind if you'd tell just a little bit of your background. So people, you know, maybe people know exactly who you are, but I do have listeners from all over the place, some on X, some not. And I would love to just hear a little bit about your background and, you know, what makes Kirk tick. Yeah, absolutely. So my background is essentially in the investment world, is in venture capital and retail investment management.

I do quite a bit of economic advisory. And so I focus on the intersection of technology, where technology is going and economic policies and how they meet. So essentially where you want to invest in a couple of years. 10 years, 20 years. I think it was a pretty good hockey player that said you want to go to where the puck is going. And that's essentially kind of my role is to help investors and industry and some politicians get there. And I primarily do political economic and commentary on X or Twitter. And yeah, so a lot of those things tick me, what ticks me.

you know economy and economics and financial stuff is not really sexy you know it's not as you know it's not buzzwordy or whatever but I think it's one of the most fundamental issues that's really holding back this country right now and the decisions are being made are you know just so you know just disrespectful to what the country could be and that kind of really bugs me I'm a big bull on Canada but it's we really need to get our stuff together. Yeah, well, I think, you know, as I sit here and what do we add, 600 and some folks, I forget kind of the number.

We're at 687, 688, I don't know. It doesn't matter. People get the point. Over the course of, you know, of all these interviews, I think it's oftentimes the least sexy thing that really makes things happen. And so, you know, you go back to COVID or any time in between here and there. And I think trying to understand the economy and what's happening in Canada, there's a lot going on there. I think it's why I was drawn into some of your posts of like, okay, that kind of makes sense.

You know, when you look at, well, I was just, I was literally talking about this with my father-in-law yesterday morning here in the States because, you know, we went from a 20-year mortgage to a 30-year mortgage. I'm probably butchering that a touch. And I was hoping, you know, like the first thing we could talk about was just your thoughts on it. and well, and we'll see where that goes because I, you know, here in the States, they already had 30-year mortgages. They already have, now those aren't locked in, you know, so this would be a little different than that. But I just curious your perspective on it, Kirk. Yeah, absolutely. So the huge advantage into US is you can lock in rates for 20, 25, 30 years at decent market rates.

You can also write off your interest rates and, and, you can. quite a bit parts of the U.S. is elderly people, once they retire, their property taxes values are actually not the value, but the sum that pay for property tax. You actually locked in or get discounted, which is quite a different treatment than what we do with our real estate. In Canada, especially right now where there is this whole trend of, you know, how inconvenient old people are big houses with extra number of empty bedrooms

are to, you know, shoving an infill in every single part of, you know, sitting in Canada. So it's quite a different thing, but the, just a couple days ago, I guess Christia Freeland, our finance minister has announced a 30-year mortgage for first-time homebuyers with CMHC insured, as it's, you know, is it some kind of win, you know, I posted about on Twitter today on X, And it's a difference between the two conventional mortgages is essentially a couple hundred bucks a month. But if you look at over the length of time of the mortgage, you're going to be paying tens of thousands of dollars more to the bank, more in interest. So this is essentially another desperation move. You know, if you look at all her recent announcements, she doesn't, she didn't have any, she hasn't had any value building announcements in years.

Right. There is nothing in her announcements that says, okay. this is how we're going to generate wealth and financial, financial instability and independence for Canadians. It's just, okay, we did this policy bad. So we're going to announce this policy to try to counter it. And that's essentially been to liberal government's actions in the last, I would say, two, three years, is trying to correct what they're doing by piling up more bad policies on top. So this new 30-year mortgage, it's, you know, the problem, as if,

a couple hundred bucks is going to afford people more housing. I mean, it will qualify some people to, you know, extra $10,000 mortgage in value. But it's, you know, the grand scheme of things, that's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue, we just mass immigrating more people than there is housing built for. So the input equation is there's just too much demand for the supply.

And, you know, putting the Canadians in a place of desperation to take on more debt rather than spend that extra money on investing and generating wealth is just such a backwards way of thinking. And that's coming from the highest financial position in Canada technically, which is our finance minister, which is quite alarming in one way. Do you know, when you talk about it being alarming and you're staring at her, like she didn't, for my understanding, Christian Freeland doesn't have this giant, you know, 40-year career in, you know, economics and studying things and trying to, because you know, I'm just a poor man. I look at it. I go, you want to get the economy going. Well, promote what you got. Connect what you got. Start selling to the world what you got, which we got lots of. And all of a sudden, things would just start booming. Instead, we're importing, well, we're mass immigrating. We're shutting down what we have.

We won't connect what we have. And on top of that, as things continue to rise, we deny it. And then we put in a policy of, well, it kind of feels like a band-aid on a bullet wound. You know, we'll go to 30-year mortgages and that's going to solve everything. Good win for us. Meanwhile, everyone's staring at them like they're insane. I don't know. Maybe I'm just the guy sitting over here.

Maybe you have different thoughts, Kirk, when you hear Christia Freeland come out with good news. Yeah, it's a hurt. Her version of good news and reality is quite a bit different, right? It's, yeah, like I said, just more bad decisions. You know, it's just the same thing with the capital gains tax. Like, what is it needed for? Right? Like, you're spending a record amount of dollars.

Like, I think the last data from the central government was that our debt is at $1.34 trillion dollars, the central government net debt, which is, I mean, it's growing by every month by more than they would collect in a year from a capital gain tax. So it's just more decisions, bad decisions on one end while they're making worse decisions on the other end. And it's, you know, and two don't cancel each other. They're just adding to more problems, right? Then putting Canadians into more boring position just because you mass immigrated people

while Canadian have record debt as it is already. And the issue is when we're looking at first-time home buyers, those are renters. mostly and you know people living with parents for free or whatever else is the other aspect of it but renters in canada have the least amount of savings least amount of affordability out of any out of any group because they've also been hit by expensive rental markets expensive housing costs because you know again we mass immigrating people and there is just no supply for it and you know If we look at even the government-funded, built rental units, like the one in Victoria, that she boasted as an affordable unit for $1,800 a month for 300 square feet.

I mean, that's absolutely insane. As the second largest country in the world, we should not be shoving people into shitboxes while we have so much landmass, right? It's just poor planning. So if, you know, if I go back to what you said right close to the start, You mentioned, you know, you take a look at two years out, ten years out, 20 years out, where you're putting your money. When you stare at Canada, you know, Canadians, where would you tell them like, well,

in the next couple years or the next 10 years? You know, 10 years puts us at 2034. I've had on a man named Martin Armstrong multiple times, and he always talks about 2032 is going to be something else and, you know, and different years in between here and there. But that, you know, that's eight years away. What is the same but 2030 too? 2032 is when he thinks we get to redesign democracy.

I think, you know, I wish I could, you know, go and grab Martin's clip of him just talking about it. But, you know, my understanding of listening to him talk is that, you know, after the U.S. election here in November, both sides are going to think it's fraud and it doesn't dampen the civil unrest that's there. That's just going to increase and increase and increase. And we're getting to the point with the U.S. debt and other countries debt where it's going to be unmanageable. And things are going to start to fall apart quicker than they are.

And Socrates's computer always is spitting out the date of 2032 and he believes in the cycle of things. That's going to be a giant year. Yeah, to the U.S. elections are an interesting thing because it will definitely impact Canada. And I think that it's something, you know, Canadians, you know, Rara Trump or Rara, you know, Kamala now, which is, you know. I know, I was just thinking Biden, but yes. How do we got to that point? But it's, you know, neither one is good for Canada, right? Like Trump is talking about becoming more self-independent on energy.

on everything manufacturing. And Camel is just going to continue with whatever policies Biden is doing, but it's crazier, right? Like she's a lot more, you know, a lot more loose, right? A lot more in control of things. You know, she's essentially going to be just a cheerleader up front, you know, versus Biden, which gave just a little different image. So either one presents quite a. quite a big risk for Canada because we're becoming so dependent on everything else.

Right. So if you think about Canada, you know, we can grow everything. You know, we can produce our own energy. We have natural resources, precious metals. There is nothing that we can't, you know, if we close the borders in Canada, if whatever, if, you know, someone dropped a few bombs and we have to close everything, like we can self-sustained as a country forever, right? Like if we're just our own country, you know, and we,

should start moving towards that becoming a lot more independent becoming a lot more what can we do in canada for Canadians you know I mean still obviously trade incorporated with the world but we can we should be Canada first what can we what can we find as a solution to do in Canada first so what's been happening in Canada essentially is really is kicking the can down to down to road. You know, we have typically an economic downturn every about five years, right? The market cycle is about five years. So what we're seeing in Canada is, you know, the massive amounts of printing by the government, but also import millions of consumers essentially is a quantitative easing, right? It's trying to kick the candle down the road saying, hey, listen, our economy is

growing, look, we grew it, whatever, we're supposed to be around 2%. 1.7 this year, 2.5 next year in GDP growth. But you're adding 3%, 4% to the population every single year. So you're growing below, you know, what you're bringing in, essentially. If you think about spending rates here. So the spending rates per person per capita are going down. So what we're seeing is kind of a perfect storm of, you know, our unemployment is growing.

the amount of jobs we have out there available is decreasing. To consumer spending is decreasing because people are essentially tapped out for affordability. And we have a huge wave of mortgage renewals coming up. So there'll be billions of dollars coming out of the economy really, really quick. Because every single mortgage, you know, there's what, $2 trillion of mortgages coming up for renewal? to the next couple of years, every single mortgage is going to be more expensive. So we're talking about probably about $40 to $50 billion in consumer spending would go come out out of the economy and go just into servicing their debt.

And $40 to $50 billion is a lot of money, right, out of our economy. So which will essentially in a way almost cancel what the mass immigration is bringing in and spending. So we have a perfect storm lined up, but the key is really what the new government will do. You know, we have an election coming up, hopefully, next year. And, you know, in politics, politicians both like to, you know, like to dilly dally and afraid to do bold moves. We're not in that position to do that, or else we're going to fall down a really painful hole that that it's going to cost even more to climb out. Right.

So right now, the Bank of Canada is reducing rates because they kind of have to, they kind of have to prepare themselves. You know, the overnight repo rates are kind of getting a little assistance. So they're preparing themselves for a proper situation of, sorry, of, you know, be able to do something. And this is where the new government has to come in and really, really, You know, kick-ass right from the beginning, we were spending way too much money in public sector. We're sending way too much money overseas.

I think NGOs just from Canada overseas got like around $12 or $13 billion last year. All the money should be started going in and focusing on how can we reduce more taxes, how can we increase productivity, how can we invest and do things more in Canada? Like, given a lot of our natural resources, a lot of oil and gas is being manufactured, built in China and just assembled in Canada right now, which is just ludicrous, right? It's, you know, we just need to be doing more things in Canada for Canada and for Canadians. And we need, you know, one of the things that I've been kind of playing with modeling a little bit is building up the Canadian economy that we can substitute is actually the Canadian standard of living.

right if we can sell enough stuff overseas if we can build up enough you know rather than carbon tax Canadians to increase our cost is do something something at the opposite side we can reduce and sell our own energy our own products for under the cost or not under the cost but at cost because we're making so much money overseas or elsewhere and we have such a strong opportunity to do stuff and do stuff more locally. It's, you know, I get quite excited about that stuff. I know, I know it's not sexy, but there's just so much opportunity here to, you know, there is, you know, you look at Dubai, you look at other places. There is zero reasons why we shouldn't have that here in Canada, but just safer. Do you think that's going to happen? No. No. No. It's, you know,

Right, because we all talk, sorry, Kirk, we all talk about it. We all look around and we go, listen, let's stop sending all these billions of dollars away. Let's just invest in what we have. And, you know, in my lifetime, certainly in my kids, this country will be unstoppable. And, you know, you want to have some immigration going on fine. Mass immigration, a little dangerous, it seems like. But hey, I'm just, once again, I'm no immigration policy analyst. I'm just a guy with a microphone looking at it.

And, you know, there's all these things going on that don't seem like they're healthy for Canada. And yet they continue to, I don't know, kick the can down the road or just start to manifest themselves right in front of us all. And we're all waiting for, you know, we look at the election in 2025. And we go, okay, so it looks like Pierre's not a shoe in the wind by any stretch of the imagination. But, you know, by polling standards, he's kind of going to win. in. He's the front runner. There's a lot of time between here and there. And then you go, okay, so Pierre gets in, how quickly can this change and will it change? And so we all talk about this. And then you go, well, are you hopeful? No. So if you're not hopeful, where are you going to put, like where do you go,

well, this is what I'm going to do with my, I don't know, money or, you know, my, you know, one of the things that I do started this year is that I had a forum, a cornerstone forum. And the idea was, you know, if you can see the problems coming, you can see the storm ahead, maybe we can find safe harbors or paths around it or just ways to go through it so it isn't nearly as bad. And when I hear you talk about, you know, a couple years, 10 years, 20 years, I'm very curious.

You know, you're obviously staring in the future and you go, well, is that gonna happen? No, okay, so what are you doing or what are you thinking about when you look into, I don't know, even the next five years? Yeah, so there's, There's a few things that are really getting intersected here that is quite interesting to talk about. So, first of all, we need to 100% hold our politicians' feet to the fire.

The problem is not just who we elect. The problem is we have a whole legacy of public sector workers. And the matter who's at the top of the government, right, we have a whole infrastructure of public sector workers. They've been there for, you know, 15, 10, 20 years, whatever. I've met with some people in government that's in charge of different places of key portfolios that they couldn't point me to what they've achieved in the last 10, 20 years, which is absolutely insane, right? So the thing is there is a divergence in the government operational speed and what we see in the

private market or into technological evolution, right? And we need to get them closer together. Like the government needs to work just as fast as the private sector or get out of the way where they can't. And this is, I think, one of the most important points that needs to be changed. Right. So if Pierre comes in, you know, there needs to be mass layoffs right away in the public sector. You just you just can't sustain the level of payroll. You know, there's whole departments that should be just, they're completely.

completely zero value added to our taxpayer dollars. So they need to be completely gone. And we need to start moving, think about, you know, just looking at this mass immigration stuff. We're getting to a point where it's cheaper to build automation and robotics rather than deal with the increase in minimum wages, different, you know, costs, like, you know, CPP costs and all the stuff. and the risk of employment. So we're building risk in there if that makes sense. So we're building, we mass immigrating people that will essentially do basic jobs.

You know, this is unfortunately where a huge part of them go, where the industry is starting to invest and we should encourage highly in Canada invest in automation because that's, the, you know, like we say, the tide lifts all boats that increases the overall productivity of the whole country, right? You don't want as a citizen or whatever or, you know, someone moving a box from point A to point B or someone, you know, walking across, you know, the building to, you know, serve you a cup of coffee. You know, it's just such low skill. It's just so unproductive. It just doesn't really make any sense.

And in five years time, it may not even exist, right? So we're pricing out people, but we're pricing in technology, essentially. And so we're building up this risk of societal risk. Because the question you have to say, ask yourself, okay, what is the tipping point? How many places have to be automated before you have 10,000, 20,000, maybe 100,000, low-skilled unemployed people that became newly unemployed, because of technological evolution. So the question of our society is, what do you do with them? And this is where a lot of people are like, oh, we need UBI.

No, we don't need UBI. We need smarter policies. We need better education system and we need better mass immigration policies, right? This is where competing for talent becoming a real key because we need the people to build the industries of tomorrow but not work into industries of yesterday. You mentioned, I think, you know, this is where lots of things start to intersect. And the one thing I took, not out of, because I, I think I understand everything you were just saying.

The one thing that, you know, like, I'm like, okay, actionable. Hold politicians' feet to the fire. Are you seeing more of that, less of that in today's world? Or maybe even, I'll even go one step further. I feel like there's more of it. who see politicians feet to the fire actually working, or are they finding ways around that? Yeah, that's a good question, right?

So I think we're seeing more of it because, because there's just social media, right? So we just see more of it like ourselves, right? We spend time online and we're seeing everyone yelling about this or that. So, and I think that has quite a bit of influence on politicians to, you know, My ask for politicians would be really just open up your circle. You know, there's so much protectionism around politicians and there is so much, you know, this, you know, yes people. They're little inner circles of, you know, just leads them to nothing new, to nothing good, to nothing bold.

And they need to, you know, we just need ambitious politicians that will just say, listen, I might risk my reelection, but I'm doing what's right. And so, you know, when people are like, we need to attract, you know, we need to pay politicians more or whatever to attract better politicians. It's not exactly to pay. It's just we need politicians that are there for the right reasons rather than, you know, just trying to get reelected, which is, you know, this is, you know, when people are talking about bringing up the U.S. style politics, that's essentially

the U.S. style politics, right? You work for two years and campaign for two years. And we need to make sure we don't fall into that hole in Canada. So we need to make sure that we elect people that are not afraid to get kicked out if they do something too bold. But if they do stuff bold enough, I think a lot of the politicians will be in for a long time if they do the right thing. So we need to see a lot more of that. And it's, yeah, it's just, it's, I just wish more people were involved in actually, you know, getting out and voting. I think that is one of the most important ways to hold politicians to the fire.

You know, one of the issues with mass immigration, and I think polling in general is, you know, there'll be so many new voters in between the elections that essentially every single riding can be flipped in any direction. Like you look at in like Alberta's provincial elections, like there was whole writings that were flipped or won just under a thousand votes. Well, we're getting, you know, over, you know, 70,000 new people around just Calgary every single year. So every single, every single, every single place in Canada, I think, is up for grabs. So which is, I think it's something very important for politicians to remember. Yeah, I, you know, you. How do you get people more involved in politics? Once again, COVID, I think, injected a ton of people into politics, right?

Like the fact that a whole segment of the population was not listened to. And when you put their stories side by side, you know, you start to see a trend of what politicians were hiding behind. And so then what happens? There's this mass push. I mean, Alberta in particular, you look at David Parker, take back Alberta. And, you know, other groups alongside them, what they did here in Alberta, getting Jason Kenny removed and then Premier Daniel Smith in place, you know, and you go, has that been enough?

I mean, obviously you can't just, oh, job done, walk away, it's all over. But you look at Alberta compared to the rest of Canada, I might add. It's been really active in the political scene. I think that's bared fruit for what. for people coming here and other things, you probably have a better idea than I would on that. You know, when you compare Alberta compared to the rest of the province, but there's people here in Alberta that are still pissed because they want more boldness, not mediocre, not lukewarm. They want somebody to really, you know, I don't know, go to the mat for them.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you definitely see the kind of patience starting to run out with Smith, you know, in Alberta a little bit. It seems to be it's a little bit online in certain circles. You know, Alberta will continue to lead Canada in attracting population and growing into GDP next year, it's projected by, I think, RBC as well. So, you know, she started off good by rah-rah protecting Alberta against, you know, the federal reach, right?

But what we need to do is fix Alberta issues internally first, right? you know, we have so much bloats, so much inefficiency in the government here. Let's fix our stuff here first, you know, while we're doing the other stuff. We can multitask, right? And this is some of the stuff I would like to see action on and really start investing in industries of tomorrow. Like, we need to start rolling up our sleeves. And, you know, if you look at Quebec, you look at other provinces, whatever, as much is mismanaged

and in debt and red tape as a lot of those places are. they're attracting, you know, quantum computing. They're attracting tons of AI. You know, just the province itself in Quebec is invested over $200 million in quantum computing while we send them equalization checks. It's, you know, we need to see that as well happening here in Alberta. We're not really seeing that here outside of it. So we need to, you know, we did really good on venture capital investment,

attract them, but we need to really start focusing, okay, what strategic role can we play in generating a lot of those future industries here? There's, you know, there's a lot of, you know, crown corporations doing this and that, but they're so inefficient and it's just, I'm just surprised nobody is looking at them right now. And so I really wish that the Smith government internally here just start cleaning out, you know, the bloat we have in Edmonton and, you know, the NDP legacy bloat. Okay, you mentioned a few things there, and I'm hoping you can just go a little deeper. You mentioned, I just want to start with Alberta issues, and why don't we clean up our own issues first?

And then you rattle off a bunch of, which I assume you're going to repeat yourself. But regardless, I am curious about that. When you look at Alberta, what issues specifically do you think we should be cleaning up? Yeah, I mean, if you look from everything from, I mean, our health care policy, to just overall government operations, right? Like, it's, you know, our AHS is just so inefficient. It's just so ridiculous. Actually, let's just talk about something probably everyone hates.

Registry, car registry. Why is this, why is this still a thing? Like, this is one part that I really don't get, right? Like cars have vins. They have their own identification things, you know, numbers. everything should be on blockchain everything should be tokenized we should be able to log into a website or an app click and it's done like you know yeah to alberta you know has like an online auto registration if it works mine didn't want to try to register so to drive back all the way back to try to register

it find a register your office here when i realized my car was uh expired to registration but it's it's just such a mess. Like there's so many little things that can be, um, that can be, you know, just brought out technology into it. Like the car register is just such a low hanging for, like I really don't get that part at all. Why, why it's still a thing? Um, you know, to AHS, just to communication aspect of it, you know, there's so much stuff still done with faxas. There's still such horrible policies. I've quite a quite a bit of family working in AHS and it's you know you'll have a new manager come in and they'll refurnish the whole place because they have a new budget and they want to establish their own little feel into the

ward and it's just it's just ludicrous amount of spending but just overall processes like again the communication within the HHS so much of it is done by fact some of it some of it it is just human error loss right if someone doesn't follow up with it you know it's just gone into the system which is just absolutely ridiculous. Like, I'll give you an example. I booked an appointment for one of my daughters. And it's, it was sent, you know, you've got to your family doctor.

The send in the facts or, you know, to request from a specialist meeting. You know, nothing, nothing. Phone in three weeks later, what happened. So to write, the, our family doctor's office has to call their office to figure out what happened. and they forgot to put a case file number in so they had to refax it and so forth. And it's like, why is this such a thing? Like, why do we still have it? And it's like, NHS is riddled with it.

Like, just, you know, just 1970s protocols. But also, we just have a lot of stuff in the government, a lot of, you know, Notley, Smith, whatever, the same infrastructure, the same vertical people in the public sector that have been there under both governments and they're going to be there probably for another five, ten years. And no one knows what a lot of them are doing, right?

Like it's just, you know, we have meetings on top of meetings and it's like I said, the government needs to operate at the pace of the public sector or just of the private sector or just get out of the way. So if, you know, Smith and other politicians really need to go to,

Palmer but department say what results have you you know this department for example is costing us whatever 10 million dollars what results have you yielded that generate more than 10 million dollars in value for taxpayers you know and add inflation to it start looking things just as simple as that because we have just so much paper pushing around it and it's just it's it's it's so frustrating right because no one in the private sector will be able to operate like they do in the public sector all just they'll just close down, which is why we're printing more money. Our budgets keeps increasing because we need more money to operate, but we're not yielding the same results. Well, hypothetical. Let's say tomorrow Premier Smith calls.

Kirk, I need your advice. What's an industry of tomorrow we should be investing in? Quantum computing. Quantum computing. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And it's something I'll probably try to reach out to Smith office for but it's it's something that you know so there's essentially two revolutions coming to the to the market one is robotics automation right we're just pricing out humans and we're pricing technology Canada is kind of far behind in them because we don't encourage investment but I mean it's just such low-hanging fruit like even if you look at at some of the new factors being built, like warehouses around Calgary and Balzac for Amazon and McDonald's, all the big stuff. There's tons of robotics in them. Like, if you look at the

factors, Amazon factors into U.S., there's more robots coming in into them right now than there are people. There's more robots coming into Amazon than people? Yeah. In the workforce, I assume is what you mean? The percentage of net growth is more robotics than people. So we need less and less of the people that I don't want to say don't produce value, but we just don't need as much people to do very, very basic stuff, right? And this is the reality. So that's one revolution coming in. The second one is quantum computing. And that's a total paradigm shift into marketplace. and, you know, it kind of pisses me off. Alberta is now leading in it because for material science discovery, Alberta should be such a right ground for it.

There's just so much opportunity here for a cooperation with heavy industry, for just different IPs, different innovation. Alberta is really missing the boat on this portfolio. This will be the second time this week or in as many ways. weeks, I guess, that I feel like a complete nutter moron. Quantum computing. I feel like you're speaking Greek to me right now. So break it down just ever so slightly for this layman so that I can, like, I don't

know what I'm, I don't know what to think of quantum computing, I guess, is what I'm trying to spit out. Yeah, so quantum computing is essentially, so right now our current computers like the stuff that mean your own and everyone essentially on is binary, right? it's when we're calculating stuff it's essentially you know in ones and zeros and quantum computing can do you know can be in a state of one and zero or both or either so it's it's kind of like hard to it's not hard to explain but it the calculation values that it can generate because it can be in different states in different quantum it's uh

you can literally save thousands of years in calculations. But you will take, so for example, if we do a very complex equation with the most advanced computer on Earth, a quantum computer can do that equation in one millionth of time savings. So one millionth of the time it will take a normal computer to do a calculation.

So for example, if, if I ask you to go and check what's written on the house with the house number is, it's essentially running a person back and forth. But a quantum computer can run a bazillion people there at the same time and figure out different things at the same time. So the calculations that it can output is absolutely astronomical. I'm not explaining this good, but it's like extremely. efficiency over even what a computer can do the calculation power is like is literally millions of times more than our most advanced so when you when you let's

say you you're sitting once again you're sitting in a room with with the premier and a bunch of you know I don't know minions or whoever sitting around the ministers and you're sitting there trying to explain this how do you get them to understand so they're like oh okay yeah like that makes sense like What is it about quantum computing in Alberta that you're like, we should be doing this yesterday because we would be so far advanced on what? Yeah. So first of all, so Canada has a quantum strategy.

A lot of people probably don't know it, but I think we have like a two or three billion dollars at the federal level for it. We're not really investing much with it in the last, I think the last 12 months or so the government has invested in about 12 or 15 companies. very little, though. And we lost a really good company. They moved, well, we didn't lose them, but they moved the headcores down to the U.S. a couple of years ago, which is a huge blow.

But it's essentially, so the material discovery, you know, you can, instead of testing drugs for years, you can test drugs in 30 minutes and come up with different, you know, variety, different calculation to drugs. Instead of trying to discover different, you know, polymers discovering different whatever applications for X, Y, and Z, different chemical equations that will take years in a lab. You can do that in literally minutes, just hours, could be seconds with a quantum computer. So the shift that's coming is huge. You know, China is massive investor in it. US is a massive investor in it.

Europe is getting pretty up there. But we're just really at the beginning of the quantum computing calculation ability. So even right now, even the today's quantum computers are a million times faster in calculation than our best established computers. tomorrow they'll be even more powerful. So whoever has that access in their economy to build on those calculations speed is going to be really leading the economy of tomorrow. So, you know, when we're talking about AI, data and all this stuff, there's a whole second revolution coming to it because you need new apps for the quantum computing world. They need full new apps for the security aspect of it as well, right? Because the overall, you know, 64-bid, whatever, all the encryptions of today are essentially obsolete to quantum computing.

So there is a lot of really exciting stuff coming down the pipe from the outside. And again, like in Alberta, we just have so much heavy industry innovation that we can utilize so much agricultural. innovation that we can utilize it for. It's just such low-hanging fruit that we can, we need to put ourselves in a position to be a leader in. I can hear part of the audience screaming at me because they are right where you are. They get everything you just said.

And yet I'm probably the one sitting at the table going, okay, so are we using this? What are we going to use this for when it comes to running a province? How are we going to make things? Like I get that it computes at an insane level. Like I'm trying to even get my brain to even think of what you just said, you know, even when it comes to drug manufacturing. And I'm like, that would be insane. You know, in 10 years, down to two minutes.

It's like, well, oh, okay. Here we go. You know, like it's like, didn't see that coming, you know. So let's just focus on the example of what you said there. So just think about the cost differences, right? So being an R&D and trying different stuff in the lab, this is putting it through an equation and then take into a lab as a ready equation and then, you know, and then seeing if that works, right? So the cost differences there is billions of dollars, right? You know, rather than spending 10 years of salaries, you know.

But I hear that idea from a private sector standpoint. I'm like for private sector, holy crap, they're like going, we aren't going to lose business. billions of dollars chasing, you know, the hen that lays golden eggs, from a government standpoint, they can't, they have everything at their disposal rate now and they can't get it right. They literally, you know, like we talk about the ineptitude of AHS or other industries, you know, they got a red tape minister who goes around supposedly cutting red tape. Like, just cut the red tape and let's be done with it.

I feel like if I put Kirk in that spot in the first 20 minutes, he's like, okay and you're cut and you're cut and you're cut and you're cut and like yet that isn't what government does so i look at quantum computing and i go i hear what you're saying but for a government i don't think they like i just i don't know what they would do i'm trying to get it in my brain like how they would be like oh we need to adopt this yesterday you know so so the job of the government in this example will not be exactly to adopt it right now but create the uh the i guess playground and to attraction to bring companies here and develop the talent. I got you. So the conditions that that attract these people to come in and make Alberta the hub for it.

Exactly. Yes. And they need to invest in it. Like we investing as a province like a ton of money different startups. We have a crown corporation, you know, I wish someone looked into the hood, but that invest in different things. And this is just one of them that we should really be in its own separate thing. Let's roll with this. But as, Just as a kind of is tying to what you just said. The Minister of Red Tape, I don't even remember who it is, but it's such a weird role because, you know, it's essentially getting rid of old policies, right? So it's essentially a portfolio that's looking after which policies are crap and trying to get rid of them or put better ones in. But I think that portfolio should be like, where can we put technology to replace a whole office of,

public sector people. That should be the job of that portfolio, right? Where can we put in, you know, AI, they'll get rid of, you know, floor number three downtown Edmonton, you know, that should be their job, not just saying, okay, our previous government wrote, you know, a stack of papers that are bad for this industry. Let's get rid of us. No, no, let's get rid of it. You know, if the floor. Dale Nally is the, the minister of red tape. And I would say, you know, the way that people have been fearful of artificial intelligence is that, you know, it's going to put so many working class people out of a job and then they're going to need universal basic income to, you know, supplement that. Right. That's kind of way the argument structure.

But I think, Kirk, if I heard you correct, you know, if it was sold in the way that it gets rid of the public sector and the public sector shrinks to this tiny little, you know, fragment of what it is right now, I think a lot of people get behind that. I could be wrong on that, but I mean, if all of a sudden, you know, like you say, an entire building that is inefficient and push people over there and over there and they can't get things right and they just mess it up over and over again, all of a sudden got wiped out and you had some quantum computing making life more efficient, I feel like most people could get behind that. I mean, obviously not public sector. Think about it into tax savings that it could be, right?

It's, you know, if you have 10, 20% less, you know, people, to pay for, like our taxes better be going down, right? And if our tax is going down, our standard of living is going to go up. And this is where we should really utilize technology to increase our standard of living, right? So again, going back, the problem with mass immigration, it's costing us billions of dollars, right? And those billions of dollars you're coming out of Canadian pockets, our standard of living at the expense of our standard living in general. Like, you know, if we're paying refugees, or some sickers,

whatever. Like, you know, absolutely we should be charitable to a certain degree. But if we're

paying them $224 a day for hotel and food and all this, it's just adding so much cost to our system that it's,

you know, if we have the high productive economy, if we utilize more robotics, if we have, if we lift all boats, everyone in Canada benefits.

And this is the kind of the direction we should stream not be afraid of technology, but think about how can we utilize technology to increase our standard of living, save us tons of money in taxes. You know, I think it was the Frazier Institute that came up with the stuff that they're showing the increase in tax costs on Canadians over the last, whatever, 20, 30 years and percentile. You know, our single biggest hit to our pocket is taxes, right? So if we can, a good government should think about how can, you know, talking about red tape, how can we cut taxes, how can we save money to people, right?

And that's including reducing taxes. And this is what they should be using and utilizing technology for innovation and increase our standard of living. You know, UBI is not exactly the solution, but we can have a version of it just by keeping more of our own money. essentially by literally cutting tax you get a UBI yeah right right I mean it's it's just it doesn't become a government funded operation where they get to hold the money and distribute it out to oh and you get a you get a little bit of money and you get a little bit of money and it's all good because we're funding it and we're so great you know when I when I when I go back and I say you know

what do you see coming over the next couple years 10 years you know whatever pick you want I think you give me a clear picture you whether Canada sees it Alberta sees it or not the two revolutions you see that are in full swing is automation and quantum computing would I be right in in saying those two things yeah let's add three of them let's add so absolutely automation and quantum computing but the third of it which I think is just as impactful from a government point of view is not acting bold enough and I think that will give us to a more trouble you know if if the government especially the next government if they don't act and turn around this you know the disaster path we're going on at the federal level you know we're going to

have huge problems we have a lot of legacy issues that are being built on right we just can't build a house on a on a bad foundation and this is exactly what we're doing as a country and for provinces they just need to do their own thing, you know, work, obviously work at the federal level, whatever, everything else, but they really need to be hyper-focused on what solutions, what actions they can do at the provincial level to, you know, to make sure they don't get caught with their own red tape, with their own legacy infrastructure, their own bad legacy decisions, and build towards the future. Man, I've enjoyed, it's been a quick hour on this side.

I don't know about your side. But certainly, Kirk, I appreciate you, you hopping on and doing this and giving me some thoughts today. I hope it won't be the last time. I have my brain. I'm trying to slow it down. I've been off for roughly a month, you know. So it's getting the wheels rolling again.

And you're one of the first in doing that. So my brain won't shut down on different ideas I have for future thoughts, you know, as things go along. And hopefully you'll agree to become back on. when that happens either way appreciate you coming on sharing some of your thoughts today and uh well we'll wait and see what the next couple months bring certainly with the u.s election uh you know closing down or closing in um and i'm sure the insanity is not going to slow down either way we'll we'll pay attention and look forward to hearing some of your thoughts if people wanted to

follow you on x where uh where can they find you and i and i should bring up sub stack as well Yeah, I'm under Kirk Lubimov on X or Twitter, and same thing on Substack. Yeah, it was a pleasure to talking with you today, though. Yeah, thanks, Kirk.