Shaun Newman Podcast - #712 - Jon Hromek

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Jon formerly served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Adonai Resources II Corporation, is a member of both the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Headquartered Oil Producers and is the leader of the Saskatchewan United Party. We discuss the upcoming Saskatchewan provincial election and his thoughts on the issues of today. Clothing Link:⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

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announced first because it'll be the easiest boom done and and then of course it will record it and put it out here so if you're like I want to know when it's coming out substack it's free it comes out once a week right now, Sunday nights, 5 p.m. I don't try to blow up your inbox for the Cornerstone Forum being finalized. I probably will blow up your inbox, and I'll be too excited not to talk about it. But if you head down on the show notes, you can slide over to Substack. It's free to subscribe. It is the one place where if you want to pay for a subscription and support independent media, you can do that. And, you know, we've been putting out every Friday, every Sunday, 5 p.m., the week in review, it's become a real big hit, actually real fast.

People have been enjoying it. And last week, or last Sunday, there was a little bit of inside the studio, a little behind the scenes footage of when Premier Smith was in studio, so you can become a paid subscriber and see that. You can also on Sundays, if you're a paid subscriber, get a preview of the next episode, which has been pretty cool to put together. I've been having lots of fun with it. Friday, November 29th, the S&P Christmas Party, We're bringing in the dueling pianos, and I got tables available. That's at the Gold Horse Casino.

So if you're interested in that, text me down the show notes. And I was saying yesterday, and I'll reiterate it, that I've been getting lots of texts on the legacy interviews. There's a couple left. So if you're interested in that, shoot me a text down on the show notes. I would love to discuss possibly sitting down with one of your loved ones and grabbing their story before probably the Christmas season.

All right. Let's get on to that tale of, the tape. He's a former CEO and chairman of Adonia Resources and Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Company. Now he's the leader of the Saskatchewan United Party. I'm talking about John Rummock. So buckle up.

Here we go. Well, welcome to the Sean Numa podcast. Today I'm joined by John Romick. So, sir, thanks for hopping in the studio. Absolutely. Now, you know, last time we talked, you know, there was all this hubbub of the The Sask United running in its first by-election, 23%. Yeah, that's right, 23%.

My memory is there still, okay? Absolutely. And at the time, I think a lot of people that maybe were hoping the Saske United was going to all of a sudden roll in 90%. Here we go. It was 23, and it was, you know, how? But then the hardcore political folks were like, what the heck you guys talking about?

23% you just knocked out the NDP for second spot. You took a whole bunch of the things. Things are running. Now we're how many days away for the election now? Well, what would it be 45? Something like that. Okay. So we're getting close.

Yes. Well, tell me how it's been going. Because we haven't talked since then. I know. And lots of people have been texting me and I have to apologize to them all about SaaS collection. But friggin' Alberta, we got an AGM coming up. I just had the premier in.

And it's this weird thing trying to keep up all the provinces, even though I live right on the bloody border, you know? So bring me up to speed. You're running as a leader of the Sask United. Yeah. And if people want to go back and hear your story, by all means they can do that. But I think we got pressing issues today to let people know about the Sask United, what you're looking to do. And some of the big news, I guess, of today as well. So fire away. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's difficult starting a party from scratch. And, you know, it's taken a lot of time. And, you know, it's taking a lot of time. And, you know, just to put together all that infrastructure.

But, you know, in Saskatchewan, there is a lot of people on the right that are not happy with where the direction of the SaaS party has gone under Scott Moe. And, you know, this party was founded by, you know, we were all former SaaS party people. And, you know, we came together and said, you know what, this, the SaaS party is going to hit the ditch. and we'd better have an alternative in play because if it does hit the ditch and when it hits the ditch we know the keys will eventually get tossed to the NDP

and we're just not prepared to have that happen because we saw what happened in Alberta under Nottley and that's just not a good thing so that's why we needed to come out, put this together and it's a long-term project. And so yeah, like you said, I ran in the by-election. It was tough.

We campaigned hard. We literally only campaigned maybe 18 days and went from 2% to 23% and again, went right after the SaaS party. And spoke to the issues, to the real issues. Because, you know, ever since COVID, it seems that the electorate is starting to wake up and, you know, and re-engage in politics. because they're starting to see that, you know, politics affects like everything in my life. It affects, you know, my ability to go to work, how much money I can make, you know, wearing masks, all kinds of different things. And, you know, my kids' education, health care, it affects everything, and I better start paying attention. So that's what we're seeing happening.

So elector is getting more engaged. And more importantly, they're looking for real solutions to real problems. The days of I think easy politicking are done where you can just go and just throw out slogans and platitudes and think that that's going to inspire anybody. I think that that's not going to happen anymore. I think that those days are done and people are looking for real problem solvers, people with a track record of management in order to manage, you know, the biggest public purses we've seen and go and go from there. there. So it's been busy. The by-election finished. I still had an oil company. So I was running that as well as being on the roads and trying to raise money and trying to garner awareness for the party. The oil company I had, we sold it in May of this year. So ever since then, I've been going full-time.

Two feet in. Yeah, all in. All in. All in. Yeah, there's no, with me, with me, you're either all in or you're not so I'm all in on this one and you know Saskatchewan's worth it but it's going to take a lot of work and it's going to take people uh you know choosing choosing to go uh to go a different way you know we can't continue to do the same things over and over again and expect a different result it's time to start looking that let's say you're you're um you know my audience uh is is dialed in but let's just say you got sent this because you know your Saskatchewan resident somebody goes you got to you you probably listen to this guy when you look at the sass party and you say the issues of today and there's you know nobody's talking to it nobody's what do you think the regular everyday

Saskatchewan night scatron scatron yeah saskantonian person from Saskatchewan um is sitting there and you're like what what is the things they need to understand because, you know, there's going to be lots of people who are just, I'm just going to go vote SASS Party. They're going to have, you know, if they're still stuck on maybe the vote split or new party and I don't know. And what do you see is the big things they need to know about? Yeah.

Well, definitely number one is the SASS party has been in power for 17 years and look at our services after 17 years. It doesn't matter whether it's health care, it's education, it's roads. It's things that are 100% within the provincial purview, and they're all in crisis. We also know in Saskatchewan that we don't have a money problem. We have a management problem. So that's what this is all pointing to. It's just a lack of management.

Like I talk about it, you know, how oil and gas is to Alberta, potash is to Saskatchewan. And so we've got all these resources, potash, oil and gas, helium now, all kinds of different things. and the governments of the day, the SaaS Party government, is spending more money today than it's ever spent in its entire history. And yet our services are just in total disarray. So what does that tell you? It tells you a couple things. Number one, it tells you that there's a management problem

because it's definitely not a money problem. And it also tells you that anything they've tried in the past, like their way of thinking, it just hasn't worked. So that's why continuing to do the same thing over and over again. and, you know, it's just going to lead to the same, to the same, to the same conclusions. So that is one of the biggest issues I see. It's their spending and their mismanagement and, frankly, how they have just grown the government to a place now where, you know, here's something, Sean, that you'd find interesting. So I pulled the numbers.

I'm a numbers guy, engineer by trade, right? So numbers guy. And since the SAS party took over in 2007 until 20, until the end of 2023 here, they have grown the size of government in Saskatchewan by 41%. Scott Moe himself, so just over the last six years, he's grown at 22%, over half, just himself. So this is supposedly a conservative government. Like SASC United, me, I'm a conservative guy. We believe in small government.

We believe in, you know, fiscal restraint. We believe in less is more when it comes to the government. We believe in more autonomy for the individual, more autonomy for municipalities, more autonomy for towns. And what are we seeing? We're seeing the exact opposite. So this whole idea that the current SAS party of today is somehow a conservative party, and they've been following along with conservative principles, is just flat out, just not sure. Did you listen to the Daniel Smith, Premier Smith interview?

I listened to one that was from a couple months ago. Was there a more recent one? Yeah, I just had one like three days ago. Okay, no, I haven't listened to that one. Okay, so the reason you bring up the size of government and I brought up, now I am not an engineer by trade, so I didn't go, you know, it's come up by 41%. But what I did bring up is like, everybody knows the government's too big. What have you found?

And I didn't get an answer. I was almost like, huh, you know, I would have expected, well, we're through the first phase. You know, I was really expecting like a government out. We're through the first phase. and we think we found some ways to pull from, you know, Peter, feed ball or whatever, and I didn't get that. And when you look at walking in, you're not in government yet, but let's say you do get in government.

You see the 41% how easy do you think it is to just walk in and in the first, I don't know, six months, year, two years, I have no idea. Because everybody who walks in there seems to think, you know, they're going to do something and then it's this big giant machine and nothing changes. So I don't know. When you throw out those numbers, It's like, well, what can you do about it?

Right, exactly. Well, like our first, our first thing that we're going to do, and we're going to go by department and by department, by department, by department. And we're going to stop and audit it, significantly audit it. And I'm not talking like some internal audit in order to check the checkboxes. I'm like, why are we spending so much and why are we getting such terrible results? Here's another stat I'm going to throw out. And this is just, it's a high level stat, but it just goes to show how much money,

is just being burned. So from 2019 to 2024, so in the last five years, government salaries excluding pensions, because I pulled out the pensions, because everyone's always talking, oh, that's because of pension expense. I pulled it out. So in the last five years, government salaries alone have gone up 23 percent, 23 percent in Saskatchewan. So there is lots of places to find efficiencies. So if Danielle Smith or others are saying, well, you know, we're looking at this or da-da-da-da-da or not even wanting to address it, it just goes to show because in reality, another stat I'll throw out. So Alberta, their program spending is, I believe it was 15,300 per person in Saskatchewan, we're running about 16,400 per person, program spending by the government.

If we were just to cut to the same place as Alberta, we'd be able to save $1.5 billion a year alone. That's half of our PST alone right there. So the only way to do it is you've got to have a leader who has the stomach and the management abilities to sit down and be like, here's what we're going to do. It kind of reminds me of, remember when Ralph Klein became the premier of Alberta. See, I was in junior high. I went to my grade school I did in Three Hills, Alberta, actually. And Ralph Klein came to my class. I was in grade seven right after he got elected.

He was such a interesting fella, and I quite liked him. And they had a mandate, and the mandate was, guys, we have to work within our limits here. And they were having money problems. They couldn't sell bonds, so they were having debt issues. And they just had to work within their limits. But he was blessed because he had ministers, other MLAs that were elected, and he had staff with them, that had management ability to know and sit down and be like, okay, we have to make it work within this.

Let's look for efficiencies. Let's start streamlining. Let's start cutting bureaucracy, cutting red tape. Let's start, you know, aligning our processes because at the end of the day, throwing more money at this is not an option. And we need to be able to work within our bounds. What happened was all of a sudden, they turned that province around in basically one term. But the key to it was Ralph Klein had this mentality.

And the mentality was, I'm not here to try to get reelected four years from now. I'm here to solve the problems that we have today. And I'm getting elected four years from now. Yeah. I mean, I could be wrong. Yeah, but, you know, he's like, you know what? If I don't get reelected, that's okay. I'll just go back to Calgary and I'm still Ralph and I'm comfortable in my own skin.

And that's the kind of guy I am. And you know what? He was willing to make those hard choices and he was willing to allocate resources where they needed to be allocated. And you know what? The people of Alberta respected him for it. And they rewarded him with how many terms after. And he completely regrue that. heritage fund and and you know he turned Alberta around so like that's where I see

Saskatchewan heading in a hurry we're heading down that same that same place where Alberta was in in the 90s I mean and and we definitely we need some fiscal restraint we've seen inflation you know since Scott Moe became premier inflation's up about 23 to 24 percent and that's roughly the only salaries that have even kept pace with inflation has been in the public sector. The private sector, we know that, you know, we haven't kept pace. Interesting point up between private and public is I mean, I come from the oil industry, right? So we're in the private sector. The public sector used to always be paid a little bit less than the private

sector because they had the pensions and, you know, it was considered to be more stable, less cyclical. And that was okay. So there was a status quo with that. But then eventually they said, well, we couldn't attract good people to the public sector, so we need to pay more. Now what we have is we have the public sector being paid way higher than the private sector, as well as being bloated in size. I thought if you bring in really good people, sector outperformers from the private sector, then you wouldn't have to run with, you know, 20 times the health administrators as they do per capita in Germany, for example. But, you know, so what's happened is They're paying more than the private sector, and they're just as inefficient as they always have been.

So these are the things that need to be addressed. What's it going to take to address them? Somebody that actually wants to sit down and address it. Because you're right. The bureaucracy has its own, it's like a locomotive, right? It's got its own momentum. And because there's jokes about it within the bureaucracy. They say, well, don't worry.

The elected officials, they come and go, but we're. here forever, right? And, you know, it's time that we elect people that have a management ability, that have management track records and sit down and say, you know what, at the end of the day, we're elected by the people and we need to serve the people. And we need to make sure that our health care is solid, our education is delivering, and we're doing it for the best possible price. Me being a conservative, I'm always looking to be and ensure that we're running with the minimal amount of government is possible, not the maximum. I firmly believe that the government is not there to employ everybody. On the flip side, it's the government's responsibility to ensure that they're

creating an environment of entrepreneurialism such that, you know, people that want to take a risk, they can be successful and employ others and move forward that way. So long, long answer, but that one's pretty, pretty close to me. Well, I was thinking, if you're if you're going in to reform government, right? To, you better, like, to take on such a giant task, right? That when you look at Alberta, you bring up one person, Klein. Everybody remembers Klein. Yeah.

Right? I'm not running for the next 20 years. I'm running for four, and if you boot me out, fine. And what did they do? Keep the job. And, you know, and he got to go in and do what he wanted. And he's become everybody's kind of staple of that's great government. And yet, we only elected it once, which seems really,

odd, right? Doesn't that seem odd? It seems odd to me. But regardless, you know, I sit here and I chuckle on this side because I'm like, you're going to go into that, you're going to have to have a ton of energy, right? Like, you're going to have to have a great team around you if to even get close to that because, I mean, it seems like a daunting task. It seems, you know, where are you guys sitting in the polls as it sits right now? Yeah, well, I mean, we've got our own internal polling and we know that they're aligned with the other parties. We're the,

the public polling that has come out. I believe it was Angus Reed that came out, what, three weeks ago or a month ago. When NEP was on top? Yeah, or it was right. Well, that one wasn't, that was an intrinsic,

I think they were called. And it's actually a Saskatchewan company out of Saskatoon, which is interesting. So I didn't take those polling numbers to heart or anything like that. But the Angus Reed numbers, yeah,

they were showing that pretty close, between the SAS party and the NDP overall. But again, that was just a small pull. I think it was 600 and so. Well, you guys have been hammering the doors. Yeah? Yeah. And what do you?

I mean, like, Oh, we're, we're, we're well in play. We're well in play in, in, in many ridings. You mentioned, you mentioned when you walk to the door, two SAS party MLAs have crossed the floor, correct? Yeah, well, they haven't crossed the floor. They were retired. But, yeah, so they,

And we just announced that today, so they're running for us. One in Saskatoon Southeast and one in Metal Lake. So Greg Alchurch is, or sorry, Greg Berkidge is for Saskatoon Southeast, and Dennis Allchurch is for Metal Lake. How many, apologies. How many candidates you guys got running in total? We have announced now we're at 21. But what we have in the pipe and coming down, we're sitting right around 35, 32 to 35.

So, I mean, ideally our goal was to run a full slate, but at the same time, we've been really picky with candidates because we're running on competency. We're running on management. We just don't want to throw anybody out there. And especially being a new party, because we want to show that, no, we're serious. We want to provide the people of Saskatchewan with a third choice, right? So, you know, we're probably going to settle in that, well, we'll see where we settle. But right now we're with what we've announced and what's in the pipe we're sitting around that 35 reign. Forgive me for bringing up other parties on this, but since it is an election.

Yeah. Just looking at, I remember the Alberta election and having the Wild Rose, man, what was it, the Wild Rose Independence Party? And then there was the Albert, I don't know. Once again, I apologize, folks. I should know that off the top of my hand. I just remember looking down. I'm like, you know, if all those parties went together, but instead of having like half percent here, maybe a percent there,

maybe all of a sudden you start to conjoint. Buffalo Party. They ran last election. Is like just no, none of that, complete opposite to platforms? No, I would say they just didn't really do anything after the last election. So we're running, we're not running on sovereignty. You know, we're not running on separatism. We're running on, you know, mainstream solutions.

Like right now we've got issues with health care, education, all kinds of different problems. So we're running, we're always running, we're running on that rather than running on separation and being part of Western separation. Don't get me wrong, we firmly believe in more autonomy for Saskatchew. But I think you start with where you have, meaning like you start by forming alliances, say, with Quebec. Alberta, you know, and being like, hey, if Quebec gets those rights, we can too, because we're equal members of Confederation. Thank you very much. So there was, so the Buffalo kind of was doing its own thing. I think the Buffalo party, because of what they did in the 2020 election, they thought they didn't need to, you know, they viewed us as a threat. Just recently, the Buffalo

party and the PC party tried to merge. They went out and did a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, And when I say PCM, progressive conservative party of Saskatchewan. They tried to do a merger. They went out and press release that they were in talks. And then that fell through. So that's why we're just focused. Like for me personally, I'm just, I think it's good to bring up because once again, if you're sitting there in your Saskatchewan voter, you go, well,

SAS party has been the mainstay, right? Yeah. That has been the one that got the NDP out the first, not the first time around, but, you know, the last time the NDP were in power. And then there was this like shocking surge of Buffalo Party last election. Forgive me Saskatchewan folks because I vote on the Alberta side now. So this is just a guy staring across the border going, huh, I didn't see that coming, right? And now you have the Sask United, which seems, while it's already ahead of Buffalo and progressive conservative of it and, you know, the liberals and if there's a couple others, it's already ahead of all of that.

So it's just just curious. I just thought, if people. people are sitting in their home or out in their combine or wherever bouncing around going, what about the Buffalo Party? Right. I think it's just good to bring up. That's all. Yeah, yeah.

No, no. No, it's good. Our mantra right from day one was not to be a protest party because we want to, you know, legitimately govern at some point in time. So our, our ploy was to, you know, be as legitimate as possible. Sure. Run the most credible candidates as possible. and go forward that way.

And so, like me personally, I've just been more focused on Scott Moe and Carla Beck and going after them. And, you know, who knows where things will go. I think this election is going to be very interesting. I do think that, you know, the SaaS party has been really pushing the messaging of, you know, don't split the vote. Don't split the vote. This is between us and the, us and the NDP.

When in reality, I honestly think this election isn't about the NDP. at all. I think this election is a referendum on Scott Moe's leadership and where the SAS party has gone over the last six to seven years. Well, one of the things I think of Scott Moe, when I do the math, and I guess we'll see

looks like, you know, well, actually that's a lie. BC's Premier who is in during COVID isn't there anymore, right? Alberta isn't there anymore. Saskatchewan is, Manitoba's isn't. Yeah. He's the only guy left standing. That's not a shot across the bottom. I'm just pointing out

the obvious that and as it sits the conservatives in BC are, have surged to the top of the polls, right? Right. So you go,

when you talk a referendum on Mo's leadership, I think there's a lot of people, it doesn't matter what, uh, color you fly in an election are staring at how he's, you know,

and they, everybody always goes, well, we, we govern better than anyone else in the, in the country. It's like, well, you didn't govern that while,

right? Like, I mean, come on. Like, I mean, lockdowns and, fax passes and on and on and on. The one thing of sitting in this city particularly is I watched both

premiers back then, Kenny and Mo, do their press conferences. There wasn't much differentiation between the two. There wasn't. A few little policies, for sure, but overall, to say they got it better than is it kind of laughable, you know, like to say you got COVID good, for anyone to come out and say that is laughable. Oh, totally. I mean, I get asked this a lot at our town halls like, okay, John, well, what would you do different during COVID than Scott Mo?

And I always come back to this. You know, anyone can lead when the times are good. Leadership's not shown until the screws have been turned to you and the pressures on. That's when true leadership is shown. And I look at, you know, what took place in Saskatchewan. and I'm like, man, like the province is spread out. The Saskatchewan people are, you know, great people. And I look and I'm like, wow, you know, you have all of,

you've spent all this money on these emergency response plans and all of, all these consultant fees. And the first thing you do is you take it and you throw it in the, throw it in the trash and, you know, going to follow along and do everything everybody else has done. And, and, and not only that, but most importantly, delegate your authority. as Premier to an unelected bureaucrat like that

all the provinces did and that is just that totally negates the reason why you're you're the leader of a province and people forget how much power a Premier actually has they're tremendously powerful over their province and their subsequent jurisdictions

and so to do that to you know delegate that authority down to you know the chief medical officer or whoever I think that's just wrong and to not use your emergency response plans and and to not, uh, you know, take a step back and say, whoa, whoa, where are we going and, uh, and what are we doing here? Because, you know, by and large, Saskatchewan votes, uh, federally, the most conservative per capita in all of,

in all of Canada. And, um, you know, that, that was a real strong show that really showed where, uh, where he was at. And, um, and, and I, I, I, I just think that that was, uh, you know, at a time when at a time of crisis when when when the public is looking for leadership our leaders like literally ran and you know and deferred their leadership to somebody else and that is exactly the opposite of how I am I'm you know my my parents my parents were both teachers um my dad and my dad coached me a lot in sports and I used to play pretty high level sports and uh my dad used to always tell me, you know, John, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And, you know, that's what, that's, you know, that time frame was exactly that. So that showed a lot. And I also think that

where we're coming into as a society now, where we're coming into as an economy, you know, all of these things, things are going to get very tough. You just answered my question, or just let into my next question, right? You talk about, we all talk about COVID and how tough it was. when yeah there was parts of it you know when you look back that were really tough but like where we're heading as a country as an economy and this isn't just Canada this is this is larger than that you might get what you ask for you know like tough times because it certainly looks like they're on the horizon if they're not already here yeah you talk about inflation and anyone paying attention to the amount of money that was printed and the amount of debt that's been taken on and on and on and on

it goes. What would you say to Saskatchewan folks who are listening and you're like, listen, yeah, this is what we got ahead of us, but this is what we can do, you know, if elected. Yeah, well, exactly. And I mean, see, I'm a firm believer. Like, so you're right. Like, there's a lot of geopolitics in play. There's a lot of external forces. You know, and of course, Saskatchewan, Alberta being very, very similar, you know, very heavily export driven economies. So, very dependent upon, you know, world markets and geopolitics. It's of the utmost important importance to both Saskatchewan and Alberta, but I'm just going to talk for Saskatchewan.

It's of the utmost importance in Saskatchewan that you have a government who manages well because you have to manage what you can manage first. That is actually what gives you the most autonomy you can have. So if your spending is under control, if you're managing what you can manage well, then that gives you the ability to handle. shocks that take place geopolitical shocks, trade shocks, you know, like this canola spat because the EVs with Trudeau and all the rest of that. It just gives you that ability to handle and handle these kinds of shocks. But what we've seen under Scott Moe and the SaaS party is like

the spending skyrocket out of control, debts going out of control to the point where there's no ability to manage, there's no elasticity built into your modeling or there's no elasticity built into your budget. So basically, if you have sovereign debt bonds, like Saskatchewan debt, the bond rates start moving higher on you, you start dropping in your credit ratings and things like that, man, then you could be in trouble in a hurry. So I'm a firm believer that when you're, we're moving into an environment of a lot of uncertainty, as well as an environment of de-globalization because that's actually what's taking place. De-globalization is highly inflationary.

Okay, so we might be seen inflation come down a little bit now, but we're not through this cycle. So inflation can take off very quickly very soon. So you have to manage what you can manage well. So that means managing the size of your government, managing your expenditures. It's just like a household. You know, if there's uncertainty with your job,

if there's uncertainty with, you know, the kids' expenses and different things, well, maybe we don't purchase this. Maybe we, you know, give ourselves some buffer room. And what I've been seeing for the last six, seven years, steady out of this government is no buffer room, no willingness to even listen to anyone, tell them that, hey, you know, this is bad policy. This will have tremendous unintended consequences in the future. And it's just like, not too bad.

You don't know what you're talking about. We're headlong because who else are you going to vote for, John? who else you're going to vote for. When you say bad policy, what are you thinking I'm specifically? Well, I'm saying, you know, bad policy as it relates to, well, let's just talk country-wise and then go down into the provincial. Like this net zero thing is the most ludicrous thing I think I've ever seen. Net zero doesn't exist on anything but an engineer or an analyst Excel spreadsheet.

Net zero will be the death of Saskatchewan's economy. It will kill agriculture. It will kill oil and gas. It will kill industrial production. Because net zero basically means, well, we're getting rid of the carbon-based economy. Well, we're carbon-based life forms. Our entire economy is carbon-based. And the crux of it is all predicated on one simple fact.

when they changed the definition of CO2 to be classified as toxic. Now, we know that CO2 is not toxic. CO2 is plant food. It's the gas of life. But they made that distinction, and then they were under the EPA rules. They basically criminalized it. That's what they did. So they criminalized it.

Now, what people are starting to wake up to is the fact that, wow, man, is life ever getting expensive as we've targeted CO2 and as we're moving towards net zero and and and and these these policies that are coming down net zero itself as a policy is deindustrialization the average I will bet you anything that the average voter does not want to go and live back you know pre industrial revolution and yet these policies are designed to take it that way um so So that's at the federal level, but it's also at the provincial level. Scott Moe runs around and says, I'm against the carbon tax. I'm against the carbon tax.

While at the same time still pushes his net zero 2050 agenda. The carbon tax and net zero are one and the same. It's the demonization of carbon dioxide. Okay. You can't separate the two. So even when other premiers are stating, well, you know, we're well on our way to meeting these targets and that like, again, I can't understand why us in Canada were so far behind on this stuff. Look at Europe.

Look at Germany. They tried it. Look how they're being deindustrialized, like heavily deindustrialized. Look at how they shut down their nuclear and now they've restarted their coal. Because at the end of the day, energy poverty is a real thing. And that's what will come to Saskatchewan and Alberta if we don't get off of this net zero talk and thinking. So, you know, I go after net zero because I think it is the, it's, it's absolute lunacy. And so I just use that as a, as in a one for a policy.

Now, at the provincial level, Scott Moe is fighting against the carbon tax, the federal carbon tax, but most people don't, don't realize that the ministry of the environment, the provincial ministry of the environment has a carbon tax. you could call it that. It's a carbon levy under the large emitters in the province already. And excuse me, last year alone, he collected almost $500 million off of the large emitters of the province, including myself, which was an oil and gas producer. So people don't, people don't know that. And that program was designed to meet or exceed federal equivalency with the federal program. So when I saw this all taking place and this stuff coming down the pipe and it really started to really ramp up in 2012, 2013, I sat down with SAS power and I sat down with a lot of the government officials and I said, guys, you can't, you can't appease the radical environmentalists that are pushing this.

There's no such thing as appeasement with these people. They're ideologues and that's what they're going to push for. So most of them took this idea that you could appease. You could even see it under the Stephen Harper's era when he was the prime minister of Canada. They all started to try to appease to earn a social license in order to be allowed to, you know, keep the oil and gas industry moving forward and investment come. Of course it didn't work. And of course the targets kept getting changed.

And of course, you know, and of course the industry started to suffer significantly for it. So, but, but these policies have now run full cycle. Like they, they're, they're fully embedded now into the regulations and they're fully embedded into the cost of doing business. And that's why we have an investment problem here in Canada as a whole. And that's also why we have a productivity problem. Because as these regulations have made their way into into, into, through the ministry of environment of oil energy and resources and through all of this all of the the bureaucracy what happens

is the cost of doing business rises so much the risk rises with it and that's why capital inflows have not been coming to Canada for quite some time and so until Canada figures out that you know what this doesn't work because the fruit of this long term is going to be so bad nothing's going to change. And so that's why me, where I stand as leader of the Saskatchewan United Party and where the Saskatchezing United Party is, we will never sign on to anything with net zero, because that is it, that will absolutely be a catastrophe to the province of Saskatchew. I will always go even further and be like, no, CO2 should actually be something that's celebrated. CO2 in the atmosphere today, the concentration is about 400 parts per million.

ideal for plant growth is between 1,200 to 1,400 parts per million, roughly three times the concentration of CO2 that's currently in the atmosphere. That's why greenhouses use CO2 generators. They pump it in there because plants grow better under those conditions and utilize less water. In Saskatchew, we understand CO2 is a good thing. Like, I would literally make it a provincial holiday. We'll have a CO2 day. We'll have a parade.

we'll put green shirts on and green flags and march through the streets and celebrate CO2, because that's how important it is to our province. I literally was literally, so this will be episode 712, I believe, and on episode 316. So imagine go back a few hundred episodes at Dr. Robert Moron. Patrick Moore, Patrick Moore, sorry, from Greenpeace. And I'm chuckling because this morning and like, two in the morning I couldn't sleep and I got up and I was working on a project and anyways that's the that's the one I was watching at 2 a.m. and he was saying basically what

you just said you know were some of the numbers a little maybe different sure but he was just saying that you know when he started Greenpeace or was one of the founders of Greenpeace you know they started off to save the whales and they started off to stop nuclear war and they stopped off and they successfully completed all their tasks and so then what happened is an organization had thousands of people and they needed to justify their jobs. And so what did they do? They've made CO2, right?

Yeah. Like criminal. Like this is bad. This is evil. And he said, and from that, human beings have become bad. And so it's interesting when you talk about basically just not going along with the words, right? It's one thing, well, we'll get there in 2050 and we'll just kick the can down the road. the problem is is the can's still going down the road and we just need to get off

kicking that can right like we need to start to look at the world differently yes and you're starting to see i feel like uh you know if we chatted two years ago oh man i would have been like oh this is going to be fun i can just i remember i had patrick more on and people some people were just raw raw other people are like this guy is not i'm like what are you talking about now i'm like i don't know we're at the point where you know we've had in elbris Alberta, almost a brown out, right? Like I had back in January, and Daniel Smith was on the last time, or the first time this year, I guess, we were talking about the warning that went out to All Alberta, where it's like, reduce power immediately. Look outside, it's like minus 38.

Like, what the hell are we talking about here? And we're going to do more of this while we try and get the population to go the other way, it's like, what do you think is going to happen? More of the same. especially when you continue to demonize what makes this part of the country light up and light up the rest of the country and oh wait, Germany wanted it. All these countries wanted what we have.

But we play this game and we keep playing this idea of like their words. And words I'm learning, you know, if anything I've learned over the course of 700 plus episodes has been if you play the game of their words, right? Net zero, all these different things. you're still signed on to it and you eventually got to get there, which means you're aiming at maybe the wrong goal.

Maybe your thoughts. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, it was in January when you guys had the brownout and the grid alerts and all of that. Like it was actually Saskatchewan's coal-powered plants that came to the rescue. The same plants that are scheduled by the Scott Moe government to be shut down, the same plants. So why did Alberta have such? When are they scheduled to be shut down? I believe it's 20.

The one that has carbon capture on it can go to 2035, I believe, and the other ones have to be shut down by 2028 or 2030. Somewhere in there, like, very soon. I'm just curious. What are people in your circle or when you're talking with any of these people say about China, like just ramping up to coal production or like buying Alberta's best coal and it's all getting shipped over? Like, does nobody, does anybody talk about that?

Yeah, well, I mean, people do that are that are paying attention to this. And now more and more people are paying attention to it because it's starting to really affect their pocketbook. And unfortunately, a lot of times that's what it takes for policy to actually, you know, start to rear its head on the effects of policy, right? But you're right. Like, I mean, why did Alberta have the problems that it did? Well, because Alberta has put on so many renewables into its grid and shut down its coal that your grid has become unstable. because renewable, like electricity flows down a copper line like water flows in a pipe, meaning it can't flow in two directions at the same time.

The more wind and solar you have on your grid, the more intermittent power you have on your grid, the harder it is for the grid manager to manage that grid. And that's exactly what happened. So now what we're seeing in Saskatchewan is SaaS power by the direction of the Scott Moe government is ramping up their investments into renewables, wind and solar, as well as they're also ramping up their, you know, their departments and getting ready for small modular reactors on the nuclear side, which, you know, I'm all for nuclear. Like I said, I'm an engineer by trade, and that's a very dense energy source. But small modular reactors are a long way into the future.

There's been two companies that have been trying to do that in the U.S., and they're pushing $28, $29 million a megawatt. To put that in perspective, like natural gas combined cycle, you should be at $750,000 a megawatt. Like, this is 20, 30 years down the pipe. That's why, like, me in Saskatchew, and I look at it and be like, why don't you let the rest of the world figure it out first? And then once they get the economies to scale right, and then we'll make the investment. In the meantime, people ask me, they're like, John, how long should we burn coal for? And I always tell them, until we run out. That's what we have.

Alberta's got tons of natural gas. Like you got, I swear, you could drill just about anywhere in Alberta and hit natural gas. You know, Saskatchewan doesn't have that quantity of natural gas, but of course we're on the right side of the pipelines for natural gas coming from Alberta. So we've got access to Alberta natural gas. We have a bit of it ourselves. But Saskatchewan has a lot of coal and the type of coal that's good for power generation, right? Whereas you guys have coal for great for power as well as for, you know, making steel and different things. And that's what ship, like, it's amazing that people don't realize.

So you have all this coal in Alberta that you're not allowed to burn for power generation. And yet it all goes through the port of, you know, Vancouver there, that the big Westmoreland terminal. I think it's the largest coal export terminal in North America. All goes right through there going to China. So obviously, you know, I think China's adding two or three coal power plants per year. And I think China or India is following close on their heels. So you know what? If you don't want to freeze in the dark, you should embrace hydrocarbons.

I do not call them fossil fuels. I'm, you know, like I said, an engineer by trade. They are hydrogen and carbon. They're hydrogen. They're organic. They're organic. Hydrogen and carbon. Are you saying they're green?

You know, I used to tell people that because it would blow their minds because I'd tell them actually oil's organic. And they'd be like, well, it can't be. It can't be organic. I'm like, yeah, it's hydrogen and carbon. It's like, it's the basic building blocks of organic chemistry. Anyway, I'd just like to have fun. But it's true, you know.

But they've done such a great job demonizing fossil fuels and hydrogen. And I don't, that's why I don't, they use the term fossil fuels. I use the term hydrocarbons because that shows where it is. These are elements, part of our periodic table. And these are, in my opinion, like God's gift to mankind to utilize effectively lean efficiently. You know, you look like I like how Dr. Peterson talks about it. Like, this agenda of killing hydrocarbons is anti-human. Like the biggest, the biggest killer of people worldwide is poverty. You want to keep people in poverty. You keep them in energy poverty,

where they're burning dung, you know, for cooking, you know, and then you want to talk about particulate matter pollution, like just a matter. imagine burning dung in a hut and, you know, and doing that as compared to natural gas, Sean, is so clean. You can burn it for cooking in your own house. Just think about like, man, what a gift. It's such a gift. Anyway, so you know where I stand on that. I don't think he was fired up about that at all, folks. One of the things that I feel like maybe, I don't know the timeline on the Sask United

but one of the things was what was going on in schools. It was when the A to Z sex cards came out, et cetera, et cetera, and we had a bunch of people on here and talked about it and then you ran in that riding and that was, you know, a big, I don't know, that was pretty shocking

for a lot of Saskatchewan folks. Where does Saskatchezanid sit on all that? assume it's going to be one kind of but maybe you can differentiate yourself from the sass party i have no idea well absolutely like for example to me personally um like sask united believes in female safe spaces and i have yet to hear at premier moe even stand up and state that he believes in female same space safe spaces and when i say that i'm talking about um biological males not being allowed in biological females bathrooms, biological males not being allowed in biological females change rooms, biological males not being allowed in biological female sports. I make no bones about it.

That's what Saskia United Belize. I'm going to hop a question here because I tell this story a lot. I've never shared the name. I'm not going to again because it's kind of a, I don't know, there's a closed door meeting. So I feel weird. But one of the things I can tell about it is, John, do you know what a woman is? I'm just curious. I sure do. I sure do. I know exactly what a is. My belief is that there's two genders. It's as simple as that, X, Y, and X, X, X. What do you think of the thought that cities are a voting base and they have their own way of looking at this? Well, I'm glad you brought that up because what we're seeing in, because this comes up a lot with vote splitting questions, because I always separate in vote splitting the rural

and the urban. So let's talk about cities since you brought it up. What we're seeing in Regina and Saskatoon and when I'm talking to cities, I'm going to talk about the two big cities in Saskatoon. Regina and Saskatoon. What we're seeing is the baseline NDP support is about 30%. 70% of the cities is center or center right. Okay. Now, why do the NDP win in the cities? Well, the main reason why the NDP wins in the cities is because most writings get less than a 50% voter turnout. But the NDP are very good it getting all their supporters to show up to vote. So when you only get 50%, but 30% of that is made up of NDP, that's that's where it is. So like my offices have always been like through through my companies have always been in Regina.

So I run in and meet people in Regina all the time. And this whole idea that, you know, Regina or Saskatoon is just all NDP and they're just activists and they're they're against the family unit and they're, you know, want the state to or plant the family and and and they you know are they're all participating in marching in pride parades and all of this type of stuff that's hogwash that's that's not not true at all um you know uh i would say that they're maybe not quite as uh socially conservative as a whole say as rural Saskatchewan is sure that's definitely a fair statement to make but at the same time i don't throw them all in the in the same uh in the same broad base um so yeah

when it comes to, you know, yeah, no, I know what a, what a woman is and what a man is, absolutely. And that's why, like, going back to your question about, you know, this stuff in schools. Like, I, you know, we have to get this ideology outside of, get it out of the classrooms. And, you know, because this, this question comes up a lot because because I break education up into two different, the issues with education into two different streams. Number one is curriculum, and then number two is kind of like the delivery and all of the infrastructure and the resources

and everything associated with that. Curriculum can be solved very quickly because that is 100% under the purview of the province. It's 100% under the administration of the Minister of Education. And so like we have seen as a whole that, you know, kids and schools that, The curriculum has kind of moved away from, you know, your basics of, you know, reading, writing, arithmetic history. And there's been just more and more, call it society type of, a social type of topics being discussed and things of that nature.

So I'm a firm believer that we have to get back to the foundations of education. And again, like my parents were both teachers. So like this isn't foreign to me one bit. we got to get back to reading, writing, arithmetic, phys ed. Like, man, look at me. Like, I'm like ADHD kind of guy. Like, you know, if I didn't have phys ed when I was in grade school, like, I would have been at the principal's office all the time, even though I probably was at the

principal's office all the time. But anyway, it would have been worse, right? But, you know, like, we got to get back to that. And we also got, and part of our policy is we also have to bring back in standardized testing. I think standardized testing is a fantastic thing. It allows the ministry to, it provides accountability within the, within the, the whole program and within the structure and allows us to, to see where there's issues in, in order to address them quickly.

Like, we're seeing now, like, so many things have been hard on education. COVID was hard on education, right? The kids, you know, being sent home and, yeah, here, read this, learn this. And, I mean, we don't blame the teachers for that. or the, you know, the admin that was just what they were told to do. So that, and they tried to make it work the best they could. So there was that. Then there was the masks and, you know, kids, when they're learning, especially speech,

they actually, there's been a lot of studies on it. They look at the mouth a lot. And that helps them to articulate and pronunciate. And so we had, what, a couple years of not seeing mouths and, you know, and their social issues and just the level of anxiety around everything. and then we wonder why we have a mental health crisis, well, you know, ramp up anxiety for years and let's see what happens, right? So you have all of these issues.

And then in Saskatchewan, too, like we've always had in Saskatchewan where this whole idea that, well, we need to be so inclusive in the classroom such that now the teachers are, you know, responsible for doing like three, four, five, six different lesson plans because you've got, you know, Sally, who's basically a genius, and then you've got a lot of like special needs, and then you've got some that can't speak in. and all of these things like the class complexity is insane like teachers I give them credit

you know because that is it that's a tough job but at the same time I mean like what do we expect you know like there's classroom complexity in schools in Regina and Saskatoon like there are some classrooms that like 95% of the kids do not speak English as a first language or barely can speak English at all what do you expect a teacher to do with that like you know these are the types of things that we need to address. So whereas if you look at say rural, rural maybe doesn't have that complexity, but what rural does is they're just, they have a hard time finding teachers and they don't want to lose the school. Because, you know, in a rural community, you know, if you lose two things, your town's dead, right? Your rink or your, you know, your community complex and the school.

And so a vastly different needs. And of course, we have a government under Scott Moe and the SAS party that firmly believes in centralization. He has done nothing but centralized services and regulations and he's like he's Mr. One Size fits all. And, uh, and for a province is diverse as Saskatchewan, you know, what works in Estevan isn't what works in North Battleford or, you know, what works in Tuxford doesn't work in Regina. Um, so we got to get back to more regional autonomy within Saskatchewan. And we got to give, uh, and we got to get resources flowing to where they need to go. And so that's where standardized testing would come in nicely because it would allow us to identify these needs well in advance and be able to and be nimble and be able to

allocate resources where they need to go and to provide that autonomy at the local board level. Because what took place in Saskatchewan in education is quite interesting because in 2011, and it started even a little bit earlier, there was a massive consolidation of school boards. It was all done under the guys that we're going to save money in the bureaucracy. But in reality it didn't take place so so yeah no Saskatchewan has a lot of challenges right now um on your travels have you stopped into first nations communities because i mean the the big i mean i just googled it quick i this could be outdated folks but it says uh Saskatchewan is home to at least 70 first nations various maytee communities it contains 782 reserve reserve settlements and villages um so

just curious and if there's a way to um you know i i don't know if i'm factually correct in this so i i'll be the first to admit that i could be wrong but one of the one of the things that i'd been told early on um on alberta and i assume it holds true in saskatchewan is that first nations aren't a a big turnout for for voting and i'm like well what a huge opportunity to to to go and talk to them and and see if there's ways to bridge gaps and you know just the thought and if you if you find folks had had you know gone down that path yeah well we have one of our one of our candidates Pam carpenter she is running in Regina Elephantstone Center that the heart of that riding is is is central Regina which does have a lot of first nations in it that's actually where she grew up

so no she's on the doors and she's talking to a lot of first nations we're like are we're of the belief that good policy is good policy is good policy and that would work for anybody, any resident of Saskatchewan. So like I look at our First Nations as people as just the same as any other resident of Saskatchewan. I think it's an absolute travesty that they are suffering through the issues that they suffer, you know, with their clean drinking water and things like that. I honestly think that in Saskatchewan, even though it's federal jurisdiction, if we should just go and if you can run clean water to them, just go run it, you know, like things like that. Because rather than waiting for the feds and their bureaucracy, and I mean, there's been issues there for, you know, generations.

But at the end of the day, they are a citizen of Saskatchewan, just like the same as everybody else. And we treat everyone the same in Saskatchew. One final one, because it came up through Daniel Smith when she came on in January, right? The big giant thing that exploded was immigration, right? that went like to the moon and back and what she said you know if you went and listened to the entire thing is you know the basically she wanted to double the population because by doubling the population you you know you get a bigger seat at the table and i guess i'm curious you know Saskatchewan has a population of just over a million people you know you know in order to get a bigger seat at the table uh you either got a you know if you're going the population way

you're going to be bringing in a lot or you're going to be incentivizing your your population you know, like I brought up with her last time with Hungary. I'm like, all right, guys, start having kids and we'll find a way to incentivize you that way. Or do you have a different thought on how to find a way to be a senior partner in Confederation? Did I say that right? Yeah. Well, I'm going to address it. Number one, I'm going to talk about immigration, and then number two, I'm going to talk about Confederation.

Sure. Okay, so I, the SaaS party under Scott Moe, has roughly the same. basically the same uh... uh... uh... uh... plan as what Daniel Smith was talking about

uh... so the SAS party has a 20-30 plan that they want to bring in so basically from now till 2030 another 170,000 people to the province uh right they've already brought in since the SAS party has come to power about 200,000 the majority of them being immigrants. Okay. But now they want to ramp that up and do it over the course of the next five years.

Because they want to hit 1.4 million people in Saskatchewan by 2030. Unfortunately, what's taking place in Saskatchewan is a lot of our professionals, people born and raised in Saskatchewan, multi-generational Saskatchewan, people are actually moving to Alberta. Or they're moving to Ontario because the management class of people that work for, especially in private industry. Alberta is definitely has a lot more jobs and is growing their economy faster and stronger than Saskatchewan, so they're moving. So basically the people that are moving to Saskatchewan right now are immigrants. I firmly believe that what's the government of Saskatchewan under Scott Moe is doing with our immigration policy is irresponsible.

disrespectful to the current citizens of Saskatchewan and 100% irresponsible. And here's the reason why. We have people in Saskatchew, we've got a vast, vast percentage of our population that can't even get a family doctor. We have issues with accessing needs and hip surgeries and accessing medical care and accessing education and class complexity issues that we had just talked about. We've got issues in our infrastructure all over. the place and we've got issues in housing okay um you know and and so to bring in more people right

now i i i honestly think that's irresponsible completely irresponsible so i firmly i i i 100 disagree would you would you agree with the thought just once again and this is just me talking to enough politicians and just thinking about it i'm like doesn't the cause like when i was in saskatchewan growing up right grew up there as a kid everybody went to alberta because there was opportunity there and if that operation The opportunity was in BC or Ontario or the states, wherever. People go where the opportunity is. Yes.

So if you take a province like Saskatchewan that has the opportunity to have a ton of opportunity, right? Oil and gas, agriculture, coal, I'm sure I'm missing about 10 different things, uranium, on and on and on it goes. Because Saskatchewan's just brimming with resources. Resources. Yeah. You could probably build a province that becomes a juggernaut like Alberta. and people would flock there because opportunity would be insane. And I just keep hearing story after story specifically about Ontario, to be honest.

Yeah. Where, you know, like a young couple, it's got a, you know, they're pre-approved for $580,000 house and the houses are $640,000. And you're like, how do you make do with that? And when you look at where we're at, you know, you got jobs, you got natural resources out the years, you got opportunity out the years. and if it's managed right over the next 20 years, your population is going to increase.

Absolutely. But naturally, because people want to come here instead of forcing it in when you have issues and the issues when you have that many more people coming in to basically push on the issue. It's going to only make it worse. It's not going to make it better, right? Bring more people in when you don't have enough resources

for them already. It's only going to, I'm looking for the word, but I can't spit it out regardless. It's going to make it worse. There's a word. It magnifies the price. Thank you. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Somebody's screaming at the, you know, I can just see the guy driving the common. He's like, Sean, just spit it out. Magnify, man. Magnify! Anyways. Maybe I'm wrong on that.

I just, I look at that and I go, why are we so hell-bent on pushing as many people in? When we all know, Saskatchewan, more than anyone. When it was the NDP growing up, everybody fled to Calgary or wherever. We were like weeds. You talked to any Albertans. It's like, man, you, because everybody left. We went and got jobs on the other side of the province. Or on the other, the next, the neighboring province, I should say.

And now it feels like it started to turn a corner maybe a little bit back. Yeah. And if managed right, I feel like it could be a huge growth opportunity. I couldn't agree more. And see, and that kind of leads into the place in Confederation as well. So what you're talking about is immigration, right, rather than immigration. So we're like, I couldn't agree more. And this actually even leads into like on our health policy.

So in our health recruitment policy, like we're a firm believer that, You do not need to recruit health care workers from outside of Canada. Canada as a whole within all the universities produces a whack ton of health care professionals and high-grade health care professionals that know exactly what they're doing. Is whack-ton? Yeah, whack-ton. I got another word for you with my cabuberate. That's another word I've used before.

They chuckle because he's the engineer. He comes in with all these stats and then he says a whack-ton. I'm like, oh, man. Well, you know. You know, the farmer gets it. He's like, totally get what he's saying. Lacton, yes. So we would institute a program that would be similar to the Royal Military College Officer

program. So we'll pay for your education. And in return, we want years of service. You can do that for nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, all kinds of things like that. So you would just, so you're saying I got a daughter and she's still very young. But let's just say she was off to college. Yeah. If she wanted to be a nurse, she could go to the U of S.

No, any university, we would do it for any. university in Canada because that opens up see that gives us way more opportunity so what would they have and so then you'd pay for their education and if they'd come back and give you years of service years of service that's right so just think about it like just you of A you of C McGill I don't care where you go to university just think about the potential pool big pool big pool then of course we would add seats to our own you know universities sure but but to me I'm like it doesn't matter. Hey, you want to sign a contract that will pay for your education and in return

you come back to Saskatchewan. You put in your years here. We know, we know just like you're saying, Saskatchewan's got a lot of resources. If you could just open it up and create an entrepreneurial environment in Saskatchewan, people are going to come. They're going to flock to Saskatchewan. Well, minus the minus 40 weather, minus the minus 40 weather. Because I brought a girl from Minnesota to Hillman, to Hillman, and show out to Helmand. And then now we've since moved into Lloyd but I mean well it's not much cold it's not much different weather here is it oh 100% oh really oh 100% so so Minnesota oh okay sorry Minnesota yeah no no no I meant Hillmont to Lloyd no home home one to Lloyd is not that much different okay but in fairness yeah you know

minus the weather because you know if you want to live in Florida I get it like Saskatchews maybe not for you Alberta's probably not for you but like you come out here and you see that the big sky and the wildlife and you get into it and then you start exploring Saskatchewan because one of the things I think Saskatchewan does poorly and I think they're doing it a little better. I could be wrong is like there's a ton in Saskatchewan that is like, well, a ton of people's like dream, you know, like a dream spot. And it just seems to me every time we take the kids exploring, you find a new one and you're like, oh, this isn't, I didn't know about this. And I mean, I grew up in the country here. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

province with a bunch of wonderful people. Yes. And I mean, it's got everything just sitting there. I say this about the West all the time. Heck, I see this about Canada all the time. You got everything sitting there. Yes. Got a bunch of morons running it. Yes. And we're just running it in the ground. And in like 10, 15, 20 years, is it less? Is it shorter or is it shorter, as a longer folks? You know, like you could be way over here. You can be way over there. And it feels like we're going way off course. We're hitting the iceberg. We're going to sink the ship. We're all going to be on life rafts and go, gee, Cole doesn't sound so bad right now. That's right. And I'm just, I guess, you know, your message to me is I hope what we're starting to hear out of politicians, you know,

and once again, you got an election coming, is just speaking to the issues. Let's not dance around it. There's issues. We've got to speak to it. And I don't know. I'd be curious to see how everything goes. Any final thoughts for anyone sitting in Saskatchewan in particular? I know I'm going to have people listen all across Canada. And I know the phone, the text line's going to light up. because they're going to be like, oh, John sounds like my kind of guy. Is there anything else you want to talk to specifically Saskatchewan people who are going to be voting and trying to get them out to vote for the Saskinette? Yeah, so, like, I mean, I honestly believe that if we can bring some good management back to,

back to this province, that we can make Saskatchewan, you know, the envy of Canada. And because it's, like you say, it's got so many resources and such a small population. We know right now there's an affordability crisis that's taking place, and that's why our pillars on the affordability is we're going to cut the PST in half from 6% to 3%. We're going to eliminate the provincial gas tax completely, so that's saving 15 cents a liter on gasoline. Between those two alone, that's going to save the average family in Saskatchew in $2,000 a year. Then the third thing we're going to do for affordability is we are going to give our seniors,

So those age of 65 and older, a 65% discount on their property taxes. Because, you know, our seniors have paid property taxes their whole life. You know, it's a great way to honor them by giving them a discount. And it also addresses a lot of the issues of affordability because they're on fixed income. So we want to do that. You know, the other thing is what we're going to do is we're going to cut immigration. That is absolutely something that we're looking at. It's a priority.

We have to focus on cut immigration. And the fifth point is female safe space. because under no circumstances are we going to back away from that female safe spaces is what needs to take place and we're going to move forward with it you know the lovely thing sitting on this side John is once upon a time I sat across from Danielle just like just like this now her way to get in was through a UCP you know leadership race this is a little more head-on new party versus old party and and then others you know but the one thing thing I got to tell her back then was, you know, if you get in, it's on record now. And if you don't follow through, there are going to be a lot of pissed off people. And then they're going to, then they're going to be like, Sean, you got to get John back on because he isn't holding his end of the bargain. And I'm going to have to sit here and I'm going to lose too many nights to sleep to it as I wait for you to come back in the studio because you're on record now.

Yep. And I can, I can hear lots of people being very hopeful and gee, that sounds great. people got to go vote. And I don't, one of the things I try not to do on this thing is I don't tell people who to vote for. I bring people on and let them speak so people can hear them. Heck, I'm not even Saskatchewan folks anymore. I do, I mean, my family, my parents still live there and I got a very soft spot in my heart for Saskatchewan. So if there's one message I would have to people in Saskatchewan and BC, for that matter, because you've got an election coming up too, is to get out and vote.

If you don't vote, it's going to slide by. and then, I mean, you get what you get kind of thing. So appreciate you coming in, John. If you got any, you rattled off a bunch at the end as well. I don't want to cut it short, but I feel like we've covered a whole gambit. If there's something that's at the top of your mind, I'll give you a couple of minutes. Otherwise, I appreciate you coming in. Awesome.

Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I also want to talk about our health care because, you know, man, as long as I've lived, you know, as long as I can remember, health care has always been an issue. and we keep doing the same thing over and over again or just throwing more money at it and hoping for a different result. What we want to do, what we're going to do is we're going to bring in universal private public health care into Saskatchewan.

So it's universal coverage. So that means the government pays and the services can be performed or delivered to the population either through a private or a government clinic. So things like MRIs would be the first and then imaging. And then, of course, it would lead to other things. So we have to start thinking about health care. differently. And we've got to open it up to the private sector to be able to come in and to build

out that, to build out our service delivery and go that way. So it's called universal private public is what it's called. That's a mouthful. It is. But basically the easiest way to think about it is no cost to the person. The person, the government pays for everything that you're receiving today, but you as the person get the option whether you want to go to a private clinic or whether you want to go to a government clinic to do that. So that's something that I think is long, overdue for Saskatchew. Remember where Medicare originally came from, you know, the web area near Swift Current area of Saskatchewan, and I believe it should be Saskatchewan that leads Canada into a new way of thinking about health care. Just sticking on this for one last second. Okay, so

universal public no private public yes how is that going to be different than what we just have right now so right now basically what you have is no doctors right now we have no doctors you can't get in anywhere it's an absolute shit show and i mean that and i don't like throwing out a swearing folks but i mean at the end of the day the doctor shortage in this country is insane it's a going show anyone you talk to just like yeah i just can't get in you know like we're running to pharmacies to go get like you know to give simple stuff i got a sick kid it's like well we could get into the pharmacy and they can at least give them something i'm like you know you're not like what kind is that like we can't even get into our family doctor right so like this isn't just this is a a big problem

to me it's a big problem so go back to it universal private public how is it going to change that so basically it opens up so right now the way the systems are designed typically and i'll just speak for scycatch sure i won't speak for um so the The way it's designed. You have to forgive me because I sit right on the border. I just blend it to all the time. You got your straddling both sides here. The universal system.

So basically, you know, whatever's covered in the provinces will still be covered. But currently the way it is, it's like a system that is full of gatekeepers. And so basically it doesn't allow the physicians. Basically, you couldn't as a physician really work for anyone except the one and only health authority, right? You can't be entrepreneurial. You can't be like, well, we're going to, why don't we invest a group of physicians come together and say, we're going to invest in our own radiology clinic. We're going to have our own MRI machine.

The provinces already know exactly what every procedure is worth. Because, say, for example, so you're from Alberta, but you're in Regina because you're visiting Henry Sidlitz and you're having a good time and you need to go to the hospital for something. So you go to the hospital. the government of Saskatchewan keeps track of everything that it gives you and all the services that it gives you and turns around and bills the province of Alberta for it. So it already knows the cost of everything. So a universal private public would open up the system where private enterprise could come in, it could build out the capacity, put up the capital to do it, hire the physicians themselves, okay? And then for every hip, this is how much the government pays. Oh, for every

broken leg, well, this is how much the government pays. For, you know, the time, this is how much the government pays. And it doesn't matter because whether you go to the Regina General for it, or you go to an ambulatory care clinic for it in Regina, a private clinic, it would be the exact same amount. Am I right in thinking that that would reduce the centralization big time? Correct. Because instead of just handing over, how much money goes to your health care in Saskatchewan right now? Oh, five and a half billion dollars? Like, it's very plus. So that's just through the, like it's a massive percentage. Even if it was a billion that went the other way, all of a sudden, now they got to get their act in order.

Yes. Well, and to put it in. Because once again, if I'm the one choosing and you get to go over to Bob and he's in the private sector and he gets to come in and just looks at your knee because you got a knee injury and you don't have to wait a month or you go to the public sector and you wait a month and you're like, what the heck am I even coming here for? Right. Right. I could have just went to Bob been in the first two days. and that would spread like wildfire because people would talk about it.

That's right. Competition. It'll incentivize efficiency. You know, there's, you know, and this isn't new. These things, like, I always say like, why. And take it one more step further. If I'm just thinking outside the box, if I was a guy going and getting my schooling paid for,

then I could come back and I could take a loan out to start a business because I don't have all the debt to get said occupation. Exactly. Exactly. So now you're incentivizing. people not only to come here, but to come here and start businesses. Right. And you're that, that incentive, because a lot of people forget, a lot of physicians, they're quite entrepreneurial,

you know, they want the opportunity to do that. They don't just want to work for one employer. They want the opportunity to grow a practice and, you know, put down roots in the community and, you know, bring in other like-minded physicians and focus on building something, just like a businessman and build families, or have families. And then, I don't know, buy a house and all the things that come from owning a business and staying in one spot exactly so why would the medical sector be any different well it's it's a giant amount of money yeah i know i'm in alberta we got a giant so like one statistic i always use is uh is canada has 20 times the health administrators per capita than germany one more time canada has 20 times the number of health administrators per person

person per capita. So basically 20 times the administration in its health care sector. I thought you were going to say we got 20, 20 times the amount of doctors or something. No, no. It's the administration. It's the administration. It's the administration. Yeah.

It's the administration. So that's why, you know, there is plenty of ways, you know, I always say, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. Saskatchewan has some tremendously bright people. You put good people together, bright, you sit down, you tackle a problem, and you be like, We're not leaving until we get this done. The other component to it is when I used to, you know, manage people in the oil world, you know, I used to tell my employees, I'm like, don't tell me the 99 ways it won't work. Find me the one way that it will.

Until you find that, don't even bug me about it. And you, by the way, own it. Take it, own it, and go find it. And you know what? They will. And that's actually the same attitude we have to bring to governance that we have in the corporate world. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming in and doing it as a lot of fun.

studio, you know? I, uh, I, oh, you know what? Just before I get you out of here, everybody's like, where did Sean go? Sean almost forgot, you know, the guy who comes in the studio and I found, you're not in, you're not in politics yet anyways, but I'd be remiss if I didn't give you a one ounce silver coin for coming all this way. Oh, kidding. Awesome. Thank you. So silver gold bowl and, uh, wow, this is a major sponsor of the podcast, right? So, right. One of the things we do with people coming into the studio to sit and do it across for me. It's, you know, I mean, if you get silver, you're like, oh, man, this was amazing. If you don't get silver, you're like, well, I mean, it's a small token of appreciation.

How's that? But thanks for coming in and doing this. And if you listen right to the end, I didn't forget about the coin. Oh, my goodness. Sean was, he walked in and he's been absolutely sounding off information with a fire hose at me. So thanks again for coming in. I should ask. Do you collect silver?

I don't. I do collect gold, though, but I'm going to add this. So, yeah, no, it's good. I appreciate it. That is awesome. Yeah, that definitely is one ounce. Yeah. Well, the greatest thing about doing it is like, most people don't see it coming.

Heck, half the time. Yeah, I was like, what are you doing over there, man? Just grabbing a chunk of silver and throwing it down. That's awesome. You know, nine out of ten times, people light up the same way you are, which is pretty sweet on this side. So thanks again, John for coming. Thanks for having me, Sean. I appreciate it.

Absolutely. Okay.