Shaun Newman Podcast - #737 - Lloydminster All Candidates

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

I am joined by 13 of the 14 candidates running for the upcoming City of Lloydminster general election. Lloydminster’s municipal general election is on Wednesday, November 13, 2024. Please vote. Order of Candidates: Fred Sirett Sr. - 06:33 Jim Taylor - 28:03 Darrell Dunn - 50:47 Tanner Hnidey - 01:14:29 Dave Lopez - 01:37:04 Michele Charles Gustafson - 01:59:29 Sara Christie - 02:23:01 Michael Diachuk - 02:42:14 Tracy King - 03:06:27 Justin Vance - 03:28:01 Barry Helm - 03:49:26 Russell Moncrief - 04:11:51 Jean Mills-Applegate - 04:28:06 Cornerstone Forum ‘25 https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/ 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]

This is Chris Sims. This is Tom Romago. This is Chuck Prodnick. This is Alex Kraner. This is Daniel Smith. And welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday.

How's everybody doing today? This is an interesting one because obviously we've got 13 different candidates all jammed on to one episode. I'll be curious to hear what everybody's thoughts are. I hope a ton of Lloyd Minster gets to listen to this. And hopefully it informs you on some of the people that are running, or well, most of the people that are running for this election. One didn't choose to come in. That was Jason Whiting.

So that's the only one missing out of the 14, but 13 and the 14 on today. Before we get into a little bit more, let's start here. Precious metals can be thought of as an ultimate insurance policy against economic uncertainty and government incompetence, with deficit, spending, and fiscal irresponsibility unlikely to end anytime soon. Now is the time to protect a portion of your hard-earned savings with the former money that has been recognized for thousands of years. We're talking silver and gold.

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started. Kristen McGowan, she's running for Northwest School Division School trustee, and I've got her coming on with a group of ladies who are doing it across Saskatchewan. Obviously, there's elections coming up for school boards, and that has been a big topic over the course of a couple of years, and Kristen McGowan is going to be running for that. She says, I'm running for the school board trustee because I believe in the potential of every child and the power of education to shape their future. I'm committed to ensuring that our schools provide the best possible resources and opportunities for all students while also promoting fiscal responsibility and collaboration among educators, parents, and the

community. She says there are three key issues I want to see addressed in the election is parental rights and inclusive education policies, funding and resource allocation and curriculum changes and monitoring of new testing policies adopted. So if you're the Northwest School Division, Kristen McGowan is going to be running there. And she's going to be on with a couple other ladies who are running across the province. that I think should be an interesting conversation of people getting involved. I know we've talked a lot about different school boards and different positions,

you know, all these different elections happening here in Saskatchewan. So lots to keep our eyes on. Substack, it's free to subscribe to. We've been releasing a week in review every Sunday night. That gives you a snapshot of what happened during the week. It's free to subscribe to. There is a paid portion right at the end, which is going to give you a preview the next day.

So if you're interested in becoming a paid member, obviously that supports the podcast. We'd love to have you. But otherwise, it's an email every Sunday night. Super easy. Comes out. I'm not blowing your email inbox up a ton. I know that frustrates me at times.

So they're, subscribe to there. And we've been really having guest editions. This week, it was a professor, uh, lawyer Lisa Myron. So that was yesterday. She wrote out one on Bill 293,

Bill C-293, that is. SMP Christmas, party November 29th. We still have a couple tables left. If you're interested, you're one of those final businesses dragging their feet along, you're looking around at your employees and you're going, oh crap, I haven't done anything. Give me a text. We still got a couple

spots left if you want dueling pianos November 29th. The Cornerstone Forum returns May 10th, 2025. Yes. It's going to be in Calgary, Alberta this year. I've got to give my hats off to Silver Gold Bowl and Bowley Credit Union for

pulling the forum to their this year they without their backing two major sponsors of the event this year I don't think it would have been possible I you know I was happy to keep it in Lloyd to be honest and they made a very convincing case to take it to Calgary so that's May 10th tickets early board tickets the link is down the show notes you should click on that tickets aren't gonna be any cheaper than they are right now and we got an amazing lineup coming together Tom Luongo Alex Craneer Chuck Prodnick Kaelin Ford with guest host Chris Sims Tom Bodrovics

So Chris Sims, Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Tom Bodroviks, Palisades Gold Radio. And we'll be adding, believe me, we're going to be adding a bunch more and it's going to be a lot of fun. We've got a trade show happening at this one. So if you're business and you think, oh, man, that would be I could, you know, get some work or, you know, not get some work. Meet some interesting people because there will be that and showcase your business. That's going to be something that we're adding in as well. Okay. For today, once again, I want to walk back through my thoughts.

November 13th here in Lloyd Minster is our vote for city council members. Six get voted. There's 14 running. I had 13 of them in. And I hope, I don't know, I've never done 13 interviews in a row, folks. My brain was mush by the end of it. So I hope it just is a little bit of an appetizer as there's multiple people. people in town. You know, I brought up Kurt Price doing his interviews, the newspaper in town doing

theirs, and then the debate coming up as well. I think it's really important to listen to these folks, get involved in our city and vote, right? So November 13th, you can vote here in town for six of them, and you're going to decide which way the city of Lloyd Minster is going. and I think while I look forward to hearing some of your thoughts I you know I you know 20 minutes roughly a person there's a there's a bunch here and I appreciate them all coming in the one I did miss out on was it was Jason Weiding we you know it sounded like a couple things in his life going on and and he's got other interviews out there too So that's only one missing out of here 13 of 14 so it's it's a nice look at what Lloyd Minster Who's running and what they have to

offer and so well let's get on to the show shall we I'm joined by Fred Surrett Sr. Sir, sir, thanks for hopping in this morning. You're welcome Sean. You know you're you're the guinea pig the first candidate so I you know there's going to be a series of them back to back to back to back to back to back because I you know I I I'm bullish on getting involved in things that are in my community right and I've kind of been hands off for a little bit with the podcast So I thought, you know, when it comes to this municipal election, instead of, you know, we did a debate last time. We actually ran one.

And we got asked if we were going to do that again. And I thought, you know, like, it is a ton of work. Not that this isn't either. But I thought, what better way for people to hear all the candidates, let them give them a few minutes to have their say? And so that's what we want to do this morning. So I'm going to step aside and basically just ask a few questions. And we'll see where we're good to. We've got to roughly 20 minutes for each candidate.

So basically, Fred, to the voting public here in Lloydminster, who are you? Well, I'm Fred Seart, senior. And the reason I say that is because I have a son, Fred Seirth, that they keep getting confused. I'm the old guy. Yeah. I've been a pastor for about 30 years. And during that time, I've been involved in all aspects of business and of running the church in that. I've also been a farmer.

I grew up in Paradise Valley, farm until I was about 33. I was going to college and farming a little bit crossed over one another. Went to Augustana. Took a degree in sociology. Went to Vanguard Bible College. Got a degree in theology. Been in four churches. Last two churches were Nealberg and Chauvin, so they're right close by.

Retired, but five years ago, six years ago, we moved into Lloyd, and I'm here. This is who I am now. So why see? politics like what what is it about the city of Lloydminster that makes you go because you ran in the by-election and now you're running again what is it about this that you're like you know is it stage of life or is it something you're seeing or is it all the above why why are you running this go around it's probably all of the above uh i think when we're raising a family we're so busy trying to make ends meet and make it all work and happen those things get in the background

So as a grandpa, I see things going on and I've got more time to read, get more involved. Those connections happen. I have been fussed about where we're going in many levels of government. I ran in the Maverick Party because I thought we need to change there in the federal system. But local politics attracts me because it affects our lives so much. It's us. and so I just had questions. I think the crystallizing moment for me is when I went to city council,

and I'm going, there's questions I just dearly want to ask and nobody's asking them, so it's time to get involved. That's probably the short version. Well, you bring up one of the things I wanted to ask. You know, an eye-opener for me was actually going to city council meetings. How many, like, do you attend city council meetings regularly? Because, you know, I was saying to you before we started, there's differentiated, like people who, you know,

there's going to be some people in here who have already been council meetings. Right. Right. So there's different questions at it because they've got to be a part of, I don't know, the machine or the workings of it. Sitting on the outside, I go, well, have you attended city council? You already, you know, let me into it. Sure. You attend city council meetings then? Quite often. I, uh, sometimes I just watch them online too as well. But as you get involved in it, you start to see the issues. So you'll, you want to see how it works in that. So I ran into by-election. That was the first thing. And what a great experience it was. Uh, as you know, I didn't win, but I learned a lot about the workings and the challenges of doing, you know,

municipal governance. So I've been researching stuff and looking stuff and trying to get myself equipped to serve in city council. When you're watching city council, what is it that stuck out to you that maybe surprised you that you didn't know before you started, you know, like either, I mean, watching it online, holy mackinaw, you know, I, you know, to me, getting there in person has always been tough enough sitting and watching it somewhere else. I'm like that just feels like watching paint dry, no offense, standing in the city councilors. I just mean, you know, local politics

on the screen. But, you know, but that's just my own thoughts. What, what is stuck out to you? Like what are you, you know, you're sitting there, you're like, we need better this or we need somebody to ask that or why aren't they doing this? What is it that's, you know, stuck out to you? Boy, there's a lot there. I think the process has, has become more crystal to me. The administration looks after the financial things. It does all the accounting and the work, and the counselors are there to represent the citizens and to speak to them and direct the ship. So the counselors are the vision and the mission and the accountability. And so, and the other thing is that there's so much complexity. I mean, I was talking to an old alderman,

and he said, you know, before it was really finances. It was buying dozers and doing the work. But we're into the social aspects now in local government, and it's really complex, hey, and it's important that we have people of all ages, all interests who are passionate about our city to be on city council to ask questions. They asked some questions about replacing some machinery,

and I was surprised at how little the counselors seem to know about running machinery. but as a farmer, I understand depreciation and maybe living on depreciation of machinery for a while, while you get rid of some debt now. I understand those things. Yeah, that's the diverse of like different perspectives and everything. I wonder if, and I don't know if you have an answer for this, but what is it that you think you can accomplish by being in city council?

You know, we all have these grand ideas. We're going to walk in and, you know, like we're going to get rid of the carbon tax. Well, I mean, it doesn't take you long of realizing all the different levels of government and certain things are in a city's purview. Other things are not. When you, let's just play out this scenario. Fred Serak gets elected. He's sitting in there, come, you know, later on this year, because we're a few weeks out still. What do you think you can actually have impact on for the city of Lloydminster?

Great question. I've learned to prioritize over my, of experience in ministry and farming. So you need to look at root problems. And so what can we do? The first thing is what do we need to do? And the street kind to me is a root problem that we have to deal with so that all other levels work.

So that's on the table. The first order of business for the council that's elected will be dealing with the budget. Big deal. It looks to me like they are forecasting. We haven't seen the first draft or anything, at least a 7% increase in the budget, 11% increase in taxes was what was projected in their 10-year plan. So I need to be active the very first time, if elected,

on holding that abate, dealing with that. And my thing is that the first thing you do is we need to challenge ourselves in our spending. And I don't hear that question being answered in council very much. We can't change a lot of the things, but there's a lot, like, contracted work is one of them. And we need to contract work because we don't want to buy a track hole for one job. We get that, like we're contracting service for administration, for example, for the donations for the arena is one area.

FireMAC come in and Marquis come in and made a presentation, but they're taking 30% of the income of that to contract that work. And I'm wondering, why aren't we doing that? As a business, we would never do that contract work out that we ourselves do. That's our business. One of the issues that I've seen not only in Lloyd, but pretty much across the world, specifically probably in the last four years, but maybe longer than that, I'm sure people in maybe your generation would argue with me on the timeline.

But a community, community, basically the disintegration of it, you know. We have fractures in it. We don't have people bringing the community together. I could be wrong on that, and people can argue with me on it. But I see more division. And I'm curious from a city counselor position, do you have any thoughts on how to sew together our city? You know, to be, because there are lovely stories. Heck, I've had so many of them in here.

Yeah. of what Lloyd was 20 years ago and how everybody knew everybody. And now you've got growth and I get that and there's going to be, you know, it isn't a small town anymore. But is there a way to create or instill that sense of community that everybody rallies around? Yes, there is. And I see the erosion of it. And yet it's still there latent in Lloyd Minster.

The seniors concerned citizens, I meet with them. and today is their meeting day. And they bring guys in from the council to speak and different levels. And they get involved and then they take that out. But I think that's a good thing. There was a meeting for the east side to voice a town hall meeting over the street crime over there. None of the counselors, is that a problem? No, life's going to go on.

I don't know what the heck's happening next door. Somebody's trying to hammer on us. The existing council didn't go, and I get it. All of they're going to do is get a lot of heat, hey? But town halls and things where we're talking together and hear one another is a big thing. I'm on the Olive Tree Board. I was a founding president of Olive Tree. So I've been involved in the street stuff for a long time.

And there's a right and the left of this. So some people say, well, it's all got to be, you know, like we've got to look after all the street guys and other guys. saying, well, you've got to get rid of them because they're killing us. But somewhere's in them, it's both. We need to look after guys that are in trouble on the street. That's a Christian moral duty that we have as citizens to do that. But we also have counselors that we need to take charge of that.

And like you can love them, but you don't have to let them destroy your life. And it's a mess out there. So to build community is all about talking together, getting to know one another. The little block parties, I went to a few of them. I didn't think they were very successful in building community, but it's something we just need to get together. We've become very left and right, north and south, and it's a problem. So we need guys who can bridge gaps.

We can talk to people on both sides. Well, you brought up housing. You brought up homelessness, or I think, you know, that's the way my brain perceived it. I didn't realize you were the president of the olive tree. I'm not now. Sorry, you were. I didn't realize that. I think the olive tree has a very respected name in our city for what it does for the community and what it stands for.

You know, when you talk about, you know, I kind of lump them together. And maybe this isn't the way my brain should go, but I hear homeless and I hear crime all at the same time. If you talk to business owners or just people in general, you know, what is it, five years ago? 10 years ago, he would have never second guest walking downtown. Right. It wouldn't have been a second guest, Fred. No, I don't. But in the last little bit, you know, like, I've taken my wife to a movie down at the

May Cinema Theater. And we always go for a walk. We always show up, you know, half an hour early and we go visit all the stores and we poke her head in. And the last time, it was strange. Like, it was full on strange. And then another one is one of the sponsors has an office downtown. And she's talked about, like, in the middle of the day, it being a,

little bit unnerving. So that right away is a, you know, there's red flags popping up everywhere. How do you address that? You know, I see everybody talking about it, but from a city council point of view, how do you address it? Okay. There's things that need to happen for sure. In my opinion, the city council is not, has, the people are frustrated at city council

for not seeming to care for them. I don't think that's true. I don't, I think the city council does care about. people. But there's a breakdown there. Kagan Neen is just a new director at Men's Shelter. He's an incredible amount of heat for the men's shelter. He's the representative of that, and that's the big problem. But I know Kagan, I went and called Kagan and said, I want to have a coffee with you. So we had a talk, and Kagan identified some areas in men's shelter that have been a problem, and he started to make changes for him. I think there were positive changes. One of them was,

They just fed their own clients. They didn't feed the other guys from the streets. So there wasn't this 50 or 60 other people just kind of hanging around eating and being in the neighborhood. So he cut that off. And it caused some problems. And he took a polyheed from the very guys who were, you know, seeing a problem there. And yet it would help. And I actually worked in the olive tree that night when he quit feeding them, when they quit feeding the outside guys, which they're not commissioned to.

And there was quite a motley crew, and it made a flavor for sure in our supper. But working together and getting us in the right lanes and doing what we're doing, a lot of people think Olive Tree is about solving the street kind. We're kind of the umbrella organization for everything. When really the vision of Olive Tree is that we feed, first of all, do food rescue. We supply schools for feeding programs and support them through the food rescue. and we'll feed anybody. Now, if they're disorderly in our group, we address that, hey, but that's what that's about.

And so I just think we need to work together. And like, as somebody who's in Olive Tree a lot, I see an incredible variety of people coming to serve there and help there. And some of them in that for 10 years. And to be honest with you, they're gold for our community. They're out there helping guys in that. And we don't want to throw that out, Sean. So how do we, maybe, maybe, you know, because one of the things that will probably be different about my format

than probably other formats is I don't want to ask the same question to every single person. Right. Because you're all different, you all have different skill sets. And I look at it and I go, okay, this is interesting. Okay, fine, Fred. What is the bridge then between the common Joe public and the people that are seeing it firsthand, men's shelter, um, uh, all of tree, city council.

I don't know, there's probably like 10 others on the other side. There's just people are like, man, this sucks. The city is going to hell in a handbasket. Why can't I walk around and it not being a little bit eerie at times? Then you have people on relatively the front lines, and there then is a gap to bridge, essentially. So how do you bridge that gap to help solve this problem? Okay, I think I'm going to take a right turn from your question,

but it's in response to the heart of your question. Olive tree exists there for feeding in that. Men's shelters there for shelter. Women's interval home is for, you know, women that have become isolated, residents and recoveries for alcoholism. And they all have a part to play in bringing ministry and help and support to those people. Crime is a separate issue. I looked in, I'm wondering, in doing research, I looked up, well, what's going on?

How do we do this? So I got thinking about vagrancy, and I keep hearing we can't do anything because it's a different level of government. So the city council's hands are tied. So I'm going, is that true? So I started doing a research. And in town hall, two people stood up and said, Lloyd didn't, wasn't like this before. And when the men's shelter was built, the first five years it was fine. It was good. There was no problems. We, we even supported in that. The last five years, it's been just hell. And I'm going, isn't it interesting that in 2019, the liberal government, just literally abolished. all vagrancy laws from the criminal code. And so there is a problem, but it's up to us as a city

council to find ways together where we can address those people who are breaking laws in our street and getting them off our street. And I keep here in every council, at all levels of council, provincial levels, we can't do anything. And I'm going, when in the world has that been true in the history of Canada or in the history of Lloyd Minster that we can't deal with somebody who's got an addiction or is stealing in that how can that possibly be it's an embarrassment so are you saying there might be a way through city council to uh have stricter laws in the city of Lloyd boundaries absolutely and they they might endron that they got capone on tax evasion instead of the laws that existed what I'm saying is there's ways of of controlling that and I want to

say Sean. I think the city has tried in the last while very, very hard. And I monitor it all the time. The police are there. I've seen them talking to guys, bringing guys going. There's guys on the church. I've seen them several times needing ambulance care. I think our city's done well there. I don't have a problem with the police force of that, with what they're doing. But there's a problem. And I'm to the place. This is what you asked me what I'd do, is somebody, in one of the training sessions I had of campaigns talked about commissions. And if you got a problem, city council should, in my opinion, should, and we don't know what to do, let's get a commission of citizens, lawyers, developers, house moms, you know, all of those things, get them together

and give them some authority to investigate and say, okay, what is the problem? Because it seems like there's a lot of confusion even on counsel what the problem is. But for me, I prior troy said make it simple. The problem is we have people breaking laws and we're not doing anything about it and they're getting fairly arrogant about it. You got about a minute left. Is there any final thoughts? You know, I came into this with a plan, but I'm welcome to, I'm like in a regular podcast, I got all the time in the world to just mess around with things and throw a thousand questions. I get it. But with 14 of you running and I believe 13. 13 of them are going to come sit here.

I've had one decide not to come in, which, you know, that's their choice. Do you have any final thoughts? We're going to keep it 20 minutes and try and keep it so that people can tune in and get a flavor of each one of you before the actual debate and see who's actually stepping up to try and run for city council. In 30 seconds. It's a huge responsibility. We have $170 million. We have family. trying to make a living in that.

It's a huge responsibility on city council and everybody should vote. Community-wise, I'm glad for the election. My final say would be I've had more conversation. I've seen more people talking left to right. It's stirred up. And I like the process of elections. This election has encouraged me because I see I was in the last by-election. I know this is a bigger deal.

But there's just all kinds of talk about our things. and I'm encouraged about where we're going. And somebody asked me a question, what's the problem? Is that the people that aren't involved in the council or is the council not listening? And I said both. I kind of went on to that.

And when I went home, and I said, it doesn't matter. In Matthew 7, it says to judge not, lest you be judged. And it doesn't matter. What it matters is building. And so if you're on council, you need to be on council

and listening and involved. And we can build it. Like, it's not hopeless. Let's go to work. Fred, thanks for coming in and doing this. And while we'll see what happens here in the near future, but either way, thanks for putting your hat forward. I know this got said on both election coverages we did provincially for BC and Saskatchewan. But anyone has my respect who puts their hat in the ring to come and get grilled and have to talk about their thoughts and, you know, and on and on and expose themselves to the greater public.

I appreciate you putting your foot forward. I'll probably say this 14 more times. But appreciate you stepping in here. coming and sharing a bit about yourself. Hopefully it helps the public here in Lloyd Minster to make a more, you know, well-informed vote is what I hope. Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having me on.

I got Jim Taylor sitting across me this morning. Thanks for coming in. Okay. What I've been doing here, we've got 20 minutes. I'm going to stop repeating this. Otherwise, the listener is going to be like, eh. Yeah, I got you. But you're the second guy.

Yep. Just a bit of your background. Who is Jim for the average Lloyd Minster person? not, you know, like they're tuning in, they're going, okay, who is Jim Taylor if they don't already know who you are? Yeah, that's a big one. People think that just because you live in Lloyd, people know you. Born and raised in Lloyd Minster is a story for many people. But yes, I follow it.

Same kind of story. Born and raised, Lloyd Minster. Went through all my, you know, junior schools here in Lloyd. Had the opportunity to move away for other schooling and my girlfriend at the time and now wife also left town. And then after schooling had the opportunity to come back. You know, and reasons we came back to Lloydminster for business, for family, for friends. It's a great place to start a business, grow, business, start a family. Other things about me, I've spent time on boards as far as volunteering, coaching.

I still do quite a bit of that now through my store. I own grinding gears, bikes, and boards. It's a small business here in town. It keeps me pretty darn busy with two kids that are also running around town for sports, a wife that's also very busy and running a business for herself. So yeah, I'm a born and raised way minister, guy that, you know, been here my whole life, been through the changes, been through the ups and downs,

and wants to keep seeing the ups, keep going. So, yeah, that's pretty much who I am. Why are you getting involved this election, right? Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jim. Maybe I'm wrong on this. Maybe you've ran before. No, I haven't.

This is the first time. So what is, what is it? Because I listed on that and go, well, I feel like you probably don't have the time, but something's like, you know, a burden in your saddle, if you would. And you're like, we got to change some things.

What is it that you're staring at that you're like, we got to start talking about this. Well, talk is the big one. Communication and the stories and the conversations have been increasing. We're seeing more and more people that want to get involved that are taking the time to learn and to listen and to see and not just kind of go, that was today and let's just worry about tomorrow. I've got a small business that I watch the future of it. I don't know how long it can be around with increasing costs.

That's a big concern to me. I see new businesses firing up all the time, but I also see a lot of businesses closing and moving to maybe home-based business, other types of things to reduce costs. So I'm doing the same thing. I'm doing this for the guy that is sitting behind the desk that's wondering how his business and family is going to make it. And I'm sitting there going, it doesn't look great. It doesn't look like a great future.

I got to still keep working hard no matter what happens, whether I get in or not. So yeah, I think it's just that time to, you know, to really get up. And I've had a lot of conversations at my store. And I want to get those conversations from behind a desk where I can't do anything. And I think that's the biggest part is bringing some of that common sense. And the conversations we have the why nots and the why didn't we do this and why didn't we do that? And the day business struggles that I face and take it now to where I can actually maybe make a choice and not just complain. What's it, you know, from a business side of things, you know, you talk about costs.

From a city standpoint. Yeah. What have you been noticing that you're, you're concerned about, you know, when it comes to having storefront. Yeah. Because like certain things, the city has no control. They have no control. I think,

I think one of the biggest ones recently was the, um, the reset or the reevaluation of the industrial tax and the property tax of industrial sides. And that was a big one. Like we saw a very large tax increase. I'm not against tax increases when it's necessary, but it was a fairly fairly large tax increase.

And that goes right to our property owners and right back to the small businesses that are in my South Ridge Mall. So. I had to reconcile for a small business. Uh, I had to reconcile in 20, $2,000, an extra $1,600 I had to find just for that tax increase that wasn't budgeted in by my property owners that they didn't really see coming. And then, hey, here's surprise.

I owe $1,500 at the end of the 2020, three season in a shoulder season in the spring when I'm just getting fired up. So those are the costs that I see and it was a major increase. Wasn't even like a little bit. It was a massive increase for, for that entire big mall. So I'm looking at myself. and look around and look at all these other businesses. If I'm $1,500, there are $1,000, there are $1,000, there are $1,000 for their space.

And none of us all coming, right? And again, it wasn't something that I disagree with the raise in taxes to get it back to where I need to, but it was a big one all at once. I don't know, your thoughts on this, but it seems like the raising taxes is the only stick we seem to happen. We're going to raise taxes. We're just going to raise taxes. Do you think, you know, standing here as a business owner, a guy who's a, uh, you know, talking lots to the community, different parts of it. Is there something else that could be offered other than just raising taxes?

Well, unfortunately, we've got ourselves into a situation where raising taxes seems to be the only way to make up the ground in which we've spent a lot of money or committed to spend a lot of money. So I think moving forward to try to slow down the raising taxes, I'm not saying we need to cut services. Services, we need, we need special services. We need the RCMP. We need fire. We need those types of things. But I think everything needs to be looked at like a small business and where we, where can we cut?

Where can we join and the creativity to get like minded parts of the city together. You know, I see a lot of outbuildings. I see a lot of leases. And I know that goes on to a different part of the books and from owning businesses and buildings, but I see a lot of leases. You know, we don't own a lot of buildings anymore. We're starting to get rid of them. Historic buildings.

And I think the creativity and trying to figure out how to get these. under one roof. So we can limit the the cost of the insurance, the rent, the overhead, the internet, the phones, the power, all those types of things into one building. And so we keep building new buildings and the facilities that are currently there, instead of adapting and growing with them, you know, to maybe cut some of those costs moving head, we just want to build something new. You know, so I look at it. I can't expand as a business, right? Because if I want to open a second location, I have to absorb all those new costs. So I think, you know, as a city, we can look at that and go, how many buildings do we have?

How many outbuildings do we have? Maybe we need to consolidate some of this stuff and figure out a way to cut those costs. Do you attend any council meetings? Well, being that they start at 1 o'clock, 130 during the day during my business hours, it's very difficult. So over the last year and a half, two years,

when this was starting to become an idea, I turn them on. I turn them on during the store. I've been to a few because I just can't make it. You know, and I would like to see maybe a special council meeting be after five o'clock once in a while so more people could attend. You're starting to see more people attend, but I'm looking around the room looking at all these other business people going, what are you doing? You know, I either have to close the doors, which I'm trying to do now. It's a shoulder season for me and winter's a slower time anyway.

So I started closing the store on Monday so I can get ready and see how it's going to fill out in my business to be ready if I do make it in, then I, then I'll have those Mondays free. But yeah, I haven't been able to attend as many as I want to, but every Monday that there's is a GPC on or a meeting. It's on in the store and I jump in. I asked Fred the same question. When you stare at, you know, city council meetings, is there anything in particular that you see that you're like, why is that going on? Or why aren't they asking this question? Or why aren't they doing this? Or I don't know. What problem do you have you, or I don't even know a problem, just what sticks out to you about watching or being a part of it? Yeah, it's a long

process. Those meetings can drag on. I do watch in the new land use bylaw. They're trying to clean up some of that red tape. So not everything has to come in. front of counsel for approval or, you know, disproval. So I see those types of things, but it's a giant package. There's a lot of stuff to go through. Um, so unfortunately the meetings, I don't know if there's a way to make them quicker or faster. Um, but I think, you know, when you start reading into those packages, they do pull out a lot of the Cole's notes and try to make it a little bit more abbreviated. So the regular person to understand, but there's so much wording in there that it's going to take some learning for anybody. It's going to be a learning curve for anybody.

There's a lot information in there. And I don't think it always makes sense to everybody. So it's going to take that time to sit there and listen. But the actual process of the meetings, I don't know if you can break them down quicker into smaller meetings, but they sometimes they do drag on. You know, there's, there's a lot to go on. So one of the things that's been getting a ton of talk around town about has been zoning. Changing the zoning, um, I don't know, is it laws or policy to allow for basically

more dwellings on a single family. plot. I'm being, you know, that's about the simple as I can make it. That's the easiest way to put it. What's your thoughts on that? Well, again, growing up here and seeing the open amount of land that we have and seeing the reduced or the reduced amount of sales that are happening in land use, um, I, I'm not in agreement at this point because there's lots all over. There's lots every part or zone of town, whatever we want to call it district, whatever word they're going to use these days. I, I just feel like there's open land everywhere and we're, and we're not using it to the best of our ability. In the past, we've sold off land that maybe could have been used for other

things, you know, roadways and different areas, but we've got open land everywhere. So at this time, unless people are banging down the door and wanting to build multifamily dwellings, I don't think it's an issue yet. And I don't think we're there. We have sprawling land everywhere that's not being used. Even downtown, there's been an empty lot on the across from City Hall and the police station for 25 years. And back in the late 90s, I saw, saw drawings that that was supposed to be a four-story building with retail underneath. And it's never been built. Why not? Not viable, right? The developers obviously haven't done it. The landowners haven't done it. So again, why not go ask those people that own these open lots

and say, why haven't you developed? Oh, because you probably can't fill it. You know, we're not at a 100% fill rate in Lloyd Minster. I don't think we ever have been. We have the lowest number on the on real estate that we've had in years. But there's still lots of open land if you wanted to build or if you wanted to, you know, take and remodel. So I don't think it's a concern yet to change the zoning. One of the things that's happened over the course of for sure four years, I mean, COVID was ridiculously tough on every family under the sun. Okay? My question is, because the way me and you ran into each other was for breakfast. And then, you know, I run into you now through the triathlon, the ATB triathlon. And one of the things that I've been trying to, well, positioned to every person who's

it is like community is so important right huge huge how do we pull community together I get asked that question a lot and it's on my sign community is huge that is probably the most underlying statement that I would like to see continue to grow I'm pulled in I'm one guy and I get pulled into bike rodeos and triathlons and volunteer and working with the schools and their classrooms and all these types of things I get two to three requests a week to come out to an event and be there I try to get to as many as I can. I don't get to, uh, attend the downtown street fest and those types of things because I'm running around doing other things. But every area of town, uh, and every

pocket and group, I think is working as hard as they can to build their own communities. Um, but I'd like see more of it, right? And especially in areas like downtown, right now people are locking the doors at 5.30 and getting out of there. It's getting dark at night. I would love, and don't get me wrong. I think the downtown, we're finally on a track with this downtown, uh, area revitalization. committee that they're actually getting a plan together and trying to, you know, cultivate some business downtown. But it's a generational change to build community, right? And, and for 25 years, I've been watching people run away from downtown. And that is a focus and attention for a lot of people right now. There's a lot of people that are, that have stuck it out and had their businesses

downtown and had their, their homes downtown and, and they want to see it grow. They want to see it thrive again. And so anybody that's, you know, there's a reason why I haven't gone downtown. I've had, I've had customers tell me, if you move down, and, and, and, you move down. And, and, and, and, you move downtown, I don't know if I'm going to come see at seven o'clock at night. And so that's a concern that we don't have that ability to build that downtown community and that core of people. So you take that idea and you move it to every other sector of Lloyd Minster. And I think every area can keep on going out and seeing high and treating people with respect and talking to people, shaking hands and just saying hi. You know, like I get to deal with on a regular basis, every walk of life can come

into my store. And that is a big eye opener when a bicycle is a bicycle, but sometimes that bicycle is that, that man's only prize possession. And when they come in the door, they want the same treatment and the same respect as the person that's coming in to buy the most expensive race bike. And you have to treat them that way. So you take that idea, you put that into running a city or even to building community. And I think everybody in the end wants to treat people well. They want to be nice to people. It's kind of tough right now, a lot of negativity, but you got to push past it. you know, swallow, you know, swallow and swallow it's nice. It's simple.

You brought up, because I find that, I just find, because I've, I've thought about it lots too. You know, like downtown, you move there after seven, I don't know if I'm coming to see you. I tell the story of taking my wife to May cinema theater and we always go for a walk around. And it being eerie the last time where I'm like, you know, I'm not worried for myself. But like, this is kind of getting strange. Like that's a different feel from what Lloyd was even three years ago. It is different. How do you, you know, like you get in city council.

Yeah. Do you think you have the ability to address that, to change things in there? I think if, you know, once you're on the city council side, you have a more indirect approach to, than more of the challenges that are, that are facing in those areas. And you have the ability to maybe go and hear from the city administration side. the challenges they're facing and not just seeing it as a, you know, high level problem that just Lloyd Minster seeing. So I'm interested to see what they're actually facing as far as struggles they see

with businesses downtown and building owners downtown and even the infrastructure that we have, right? It's an aging downtown infrastructure and it's terrible when we have to rip it up and wait two years for it to get fixed. And that doesn't help either, right? Like that last major construction downtown put a lot of businesses on edge and a lot of people on edge. And so it drove a lot of people away.

And now you're starting to see with some of the revitalization. you're trying to see more people, you know, in those areas. I have a sister who's just moving her business into another part of the downtown and still seeing the same problems she had where she was. And I said, you know, I said to her and my family, well, maybe because she operates after hours, you know, that she's doing lessons at night. Maybe you start asking the parents to come down and hang out front. Maybe you hang lights like, you know, Larry from Furniture Clinic used to do and play the music

and try to, you know, try to build some of that atmosphere around the area of your own business. maybe it'll encourage people to come down and hang out and grab a coffee and while their kids are in at, uh, you know, dance or voice lessons or whatever the case may be. Maybe they'll hang out and want to be there instead of running off, run home and then come back and pick them up, you know, and I think that's with everything. You know, when I drop my son or daughter off to practice, I want to stay and watch. You know, I get to talk to people and, and see how their lives are going and talk to them. It becomes our conversation piece. But you go to the multiplex, for instance. You're not worried about for the most part, almost people walk around there. No, at all. Yes.

Now you flip two and I'm forgetting the, forgive me, my daughter did theater, like singing and that type of thing. And it was in the old, right beside the old, no, can save still there. That's catch. That's my sister's place, center stage studios. Yes, thank you. Okay. Now she's getting a shout out.

Great. You're getting a shout out because she does. Of course, she was right in the heart of it, right? So she was facing all the same issues that the residents in that area were facing. Locking the doors. Right. Beautiful. Beautiful.

What she did with that place was beautiful. Beautiful. That's exactly what you want. That's what you want. People come in, put their heart and soul into it, make it their own, make it great for the kids and the experience. And then now she's, now she's over in the old furniture clinic building. Right. And so she had to move, right?

But she's not the only one facing that problem. You know, and I said to her, I said, unfortunately, you're not going to stop all, you know, the vagrancy and the walking around. You're going to get that everywhere. You get in the mall. You're going to get it, service sports center. I've seen people, you know, coming to the Russ Robertson and, you know, using a bathroom. You're not going to stop it. But, you know, you know,

you make it a lot more uncomfortable when you have a bunch of people hanging out, you know, in the area, you're not necessarily going to get that, right? I get it my business too. I'm not even in close to downtown and I get people hanging out in the bushes and out front and, you know, doing whatever. And I go and kindly say, hi, would you mind moving along and, and, oh, yeah, sorry, sir. And, you know, and they move along or whatever the case may be. But you don't, don't have to approach it with negativity.

Um, but it's going to take some, some courage to, to walk around downtown and to, you Don't take back to downtown. He'd say that way, but that's really what we're going to be faced with. You know, when you look at a city and it's budget and how much money it's got, you know, as a business guy, are you hoping to get your, not your proverbial like hands actually on the money, but just to like try and like trim up some of the excess. You know, one of the stats I heard, I don't know if this is, you know, I hope somebody just like shoots me a message. Like, Sean, you're off by 10 people. Yeah.

But one of the stats I've heard from before COVID is that city has grown employee wise by anywhere to 25 to 45 people every single year. Yes. It just keeps growing. Yes. To me, I go, how is that possible? I haven't able to hire anybody. I've had to let people go.

Well, right? I'm not the only business doing that. One of the things I'm curious, you know, with your background as a business owner, is that something that you're like, yeah, we got to take a look at that. I have to, have to look at it. I think this is going to be the first year in the budget where that is going to slow down. but definitely it's been said before i'm not the first one to say it but we do have a lot of administration there's a lot of employees and there's a lot of people working in the city there's a lot

to do so you got to take the balance you know on those days when it's just me working i get to mop the floors i get to open the store i get to repair the bikes and i get to clean up at night sometimes you have to do all those things very rarely do we see people working after five six o'clock with the city correct me if i'm wrong right but i drive by city hall six o'clock it's pretty empty so I'm not trying to use that as an attack but that is a visual to other people that when you're driving home from business and it's seven o'clock and you closed up your shop and there's nobody there you're going huh isn't that weird right but they want to add more people to the you know to the underlying budget so I'm not coming in either and saying that we need to fire and

get rid of people I've asked me so what are you going to do fire people no but we also need to find maybe a few more things. Would you be open to? I think a re-evaluation of what is going on in City Hall has to happen. And not City Hall, the entire administration where we are. What is actually going on. Um, and yeah, I think, I think there's, I'm not alone in that where a lot of people would like to see a re-evaluation within as well to see what can be saved or what can happen. Or maybe a wage freeze. Who knows, right? There's a lot of things that need to be looked at to find know what's going on. I don't remember the last time I got a raise. Matt, well, I laugh everybody. They see the inner workings of how this is going as I'm

a cameraman, sound guy. Yeah, you're doing all. I do it all. This is part of the job when you're an entrepreneur and you got nobody else to rely. You're just like, well, I got to do it. We're going to do. We're closing in on the end of this. So any final thoughts for the voting public here in Lloydminster? I mean, you know, one of the things I want to remind people, if they want to find out more direct questions, I mean, Kurt Price is interviewing. I was reading the paper. Yes. You have the all Canada. its debate. Yeah,

next Monday. One of the things I'm trying to do with this, I'm just trying to add flavor. I'm trying to give more background because I think it's really important. This election is really important. All of them are really important. And we're starting to see and realize that.

So if we can bring more people into what we're doing and listening to, it's better. So any final thoughts before I let you out of here? Well, just to go off of that is if you want to get involved, you need to get involved. If you're starting to ask questions,

you need to ask more questions. And we're seeing that. And that is only going to open up the conversations, right? And not everything has to be a positive conversation. We need to learn from the past on the mistakes that are made, learn from those mistakes and try not to make them again. But again, if you want to get involved, there's ways to get involved. Communication is huge. And I know the city has been, you know, slammed quite a bit about transparency and, and openness.

I feel they're doing a fairly good job as trying to get the word out there. If you want to know more, you're going to get involved. So yeah, I just really. really I've been here a lifetime. Other people have been here lifetime. I'm doing this for the reason where I want other people to make Lloyd Minister their choice for their lifetime. Just come here, start a family and see the positivity and the growth that they can have and not just come here like the old identity of Lloyd Minster. We are still a very hard work in blue collar town, but I also think Lloyd Minister needs to find its new identity and its new positive direction in

which we want to grow and that's going to take a lot of work and a lot of individuals to come together and not just council not just city right we need to find a good identity well you got you got me for one 10 seconds more yes now I'm like what direction do you see Lloyd taking two things come to mind communication and creativity I we need to find something we don't have mountains we don't have a river we don't have lakes but there's a lot of good things in Lloydminster and I want people to go find those good things and talk about them and celebrate them more right talk about the things. Let's find them. I know what I like. I don't need, you don't have to have the same likes as me. We've got lots of great things here and I want to see those great things

be brought up. Wouldn't the number one thing that Lloyd has over pretty much everyone, I don't know how far of a wide swath I can go, but it's a pretty wide swath is Budmiller. But it was pretty amazing. But Miller is probably, and it was really ridiculed back in the 80s when it was built. Yeah. But there's also a really great park on Saskatchewan side that has been forgotten about since I was a kid and it's never been developed. J.C. Park. It's awesome. grew up at Winston Churchill School, that park, we used it, we used it, we used it, we used it, they built it, never went back. So those are those types of things that I'm thinking about, let's look back a little bit and see what else we can go and work with instead of just going and building something new. So, yeah, thanks, Jim.

Awesome, thank you. I'm sitting with Daryl Duh. Thanks for, thanks for hopping in the studio. Pleased to be here. You know, I do have to give a little bit of a hat tip to you because it was yourself among with several others that had asked me if we were doing the all candidates for him. because it was for the kids' sake who did it last, in the by-election. And some people thought it was too much. You know, there's too much stuff going on.

And I almost got a little deflated by that. I'm like, too much. It's like, we're trying to find a way to get people to engage in politics, in how our society functions and operates when nobody's paying attention, right, except a select few. And so I do have to give my hat tip to you and a few others, for that matter, that we're bugging me about it. And that's where this idea came out of like,

well, what if I sat with each candidate for 20 minutes and allowed them to explain a few things about themselves? It isn't exactly a debate by any stretch of imagination. It isn't exactly, here's the list of six questions, and that's what you're going to do. But I keep pointing to, and I'm going to keep doing this, Kurt's getting some free advertising on the show, but that's fine. Kurt Price is interviewing everybody.

You've got the paper interviewing everybody. You've got all candidates for them. one of the things I hope for the city of Lloyd is that people engage go find their source go listen to the people running and then go out and vote right like we have this opportunity let's vote for our city council and so I guess I'm sitting across now from from darrell done for for the people who are listening who is darrell done and just tell us a little bit about yourself so they can get a feel for for who you are okay and that's always that's always a bit of a tough question because you you end up giving kind of your whole CV you're

background and what you've done and so on and so forth. And if you're at my age, it's, it's extensive. I've done a lot. I grew up in Western Canada, been with, spent about half of my life in the city of Calgary and almost a decade of that in a police car. Farm kid, so the work ethic, dealing with the whole farm issue in small town growing up kind of thing. And my folks are always very politically active, and it boiled down to whether you like politics or not, literally everything in your life is governed one way or another by our political system. Drivers license, you name it, anything to do with your home. There's all sorts of regulations, so on and so forth. So there's plus government is in your pocketbook all the time.

And so there's just a host of reasons to be engaged. The trick is, how do you be engaged so that it's meaningful? And there's two sides to that equation. One, there's the political side, those of us that want to be in that role. And then there's the citizen side. And those two have got to come together and they've got to meet. And at the end of the day, it's easy for politicians to say, well, nobody spoke. to me okay fine get out of your chair get out to where the people are and engage

with them if it's one thing I've noticed about you is that you're out of your chair all the time and you're out engaging you know I'll give you I'll give you complete um once again you know we brought April Hutchinson and Linda Blade two ladies I think very highly of and you know that at times that can be to a select audience I get it and there you are and we had an interesting chat after that because you like I didn't agree with everything they said but I do find it interesting I do enjoy having these different people with different backgrounds come in and talk about the different issues of society.

You're a guy that I think I've noticed, you know, once again, it was just the all candidates forum for the Sask provincial election. And, of course, I look over and there and there you are, I'm like, oh, there's Daryl's here. You know, you seem to be everywhere when it comes to this world. You've ran how many times to try and be city in city politics, or how many times have you ran to be in politics? Okay, that goes back. In the 80s, I was elected three times as a representative to Saskatchewan Wheatpool, and that organization had something in excess of 150,000-plus members, and it was very politically engaged in the ag industry at that point with everything from provincial through the federal governments and municipal. I ran provincially in Saskatchewan in the mid-80s in Ben-Goff milestone, and then moved away from actually running because of life circumstance.

And when we got here, I found the election in 2016 really interesting because it was a complete blowout. We're talking a change from mayor down to all of the counselors and everything else. And that was a, if you're a student of politics, that was a fascinating exercise to watch and understand why did that happen. And it happened because people wanted it to happen, and they voted accordingly. The new group had some tremendous challenges, and I give them all sorts of compliments because they worked very hard to make some significant changes that have been very beneficial. But the bottom line, again, I go back to the fact. that in 2020 I ran and I started getting more involved in city politics, 2017, 2018, just observing and seeing who the players were and seeing what the issues are.

I had been involved at the party system in federal politics and provincial politics prior to that, and that's a slightly different game. And to be, to make it very simple, civic politics are very small, are relatively small goldfish bowl. And the thing I like about civic politics is you're not dealing largely with partisan politics. It's not a question of left or right. That certainly has some influence, but that's not what the game is about here. It's the most direct access you have to your politicians. They're local.

You see them in the grocery store. You see them wherever you see them. And you can talk to them or you should feel comfortable talking to them. You don't always get to see your MLAs. You don't always get to see your federal people. But your local politicians are here and you can talk to them. You know, with your background in riding in a police car, as you pointed out, you know, one of the things that people talk a lot about in the city right now is crime or the vagrancy problem.

however you want to put it. It's been different discussions on that. On how do you solve that? Can it be solved? Can it be solved from a city council perspective? What are your thoughts on that? I'm going to use the word manage as opposed to being solved. Homelessness has been around forever.

But the question is, how do you manage it? And there are different ways to manage it, depending on your own circumstance. Vancouver has, a specific issue. Edmonton, Calgary have different issues. I walked the beat for a period of time when I was a baby policeman and you got to know your people on the street. You got to know who they were, particularly in the wintertime, when you got on shift by 11 o'clock, by 1 a.m., you had to know where your people were. And the reason you had to know is you could very easily end up with a frozen body in the morning. So at that point in time, we saw that point in time, we saw.

had some different tools to work with and if we had one who was really in rough shape we could put them in the cells overnight no charges just put them in the cells overnight and way they went in the morning and carried on but at least they weren't frozen solid so you had some different tools i spent some time talking with the have a have a coffee with a cop thing here a few days ago and i know some of the local guy and we were talking about about what they're looking at at the street level and you have to remember that there's two levels here there's a street level the guys in the cars or the guys are walking the beat or doing whatever they're doing answering calls and then

there's management and how do manage in a city like Calgary the police chief is responsible to the to the police commission the Commission says the what in terms of what the department is to do the chief talks about the how we don't have that same element here and having sat in council as much as i have i haven't heard a whole lot about how the management of the rcmp are looking at that problem i know they are because they made a presentation a few a couple of weeks ago but i don't know the how and i would like to hear more about that and having sat with a number of the folks that are directly impacted the the east side citizens Coalition, I think, is what they're called, some other folks, I think it would be worthwhile

for local RCMP management to have conversations with those people. If nothing more to at least hear what they're feeling and what they're experiencing and what's going on, because a situation like this can get out of control in a big hurry if you're not careful. So it has to be, there's got to be a lot of involvement. And as you say, one of the reasons I tend to be, where, I can be is and this goes back to the to the private investigator thing if you don't have firsthand information then you're not getting an accurate picture of what's going on so you have

to be there to see talk listen hear what people are saying using your your investigating brain because I'm sure once you have that skill it doesn't just disappear overnight no when you go to all the all these different events right because you know I can tell you that obviously you're paying attention to council meetings you're you're involved in that as i've pointed out you've been to a ton of different spots in lloyd including things i have put on and others have put on we ran into each other multiple times what's one of the things that your brain is seeing or your eyes are picking up that is concerning about lloyd that you would like to bring to the city council if you were put on it's not so much a question of our counselors listening to their people

everybody has a group of friends and let's take away the counselor uh counselor label for a minute here everyone has a particular group of friends a group of people that they're comfortable with similar similar likes similar dislikes all of those kinds of things if you decide you want to try and run for for this kind of a circumstance in my mind you have a responsibility to hear all of those different groups Whether or not there are people you would sit down on a Saturday night or have a Sunday dinner with or whatever the case may be. It doesn't matter to me whether they're the freedom folks or whether they're the professional end or whatever.

All of them have views. All of them pay taxes. All of them live here. All of them have children that are in school, whatever the case may be. When you're in this position, it's similar in some ways. I sit on the assessment review board, and that's the equivalent of a judge in administrative law. And what you do is listen to the evidence, see what the evidence is. And in some cases, go out and confirm that evidence, and then make your decision, regardless of what your own particular views might be.

You've got to know how to separate them. Well, and I hate to cut you off, but I'm going to come back to it. So to me, I'm like, okay, so you've been staring at this now. You've been talking to all these people because I've seen it. What are you seeing and what are you like, I guess I'll just ask it again. You know, like Daryl Dunn gets elected. City Council, boom. You've already done all this canvassing of everything going on.

What do you see is the biggest issue that you can have direct impact on being in City Council? There's a number of issues. I'm going to boil it down and again in this business, as much as you can simplify it. It's a complicated business and that's fine. But the homeless slash shelter situation, the shelter's got to move. It's that simple. It's not in the right physical location. All of the other stuff wrapped around it is fine and those things have to apply and so on,

but the location is the issue. It's going to blow up with residents that are in that area. Moving that is maybe going to require. some some involvement certainly of the the board of directors of the shelter and and various groups on and so forth that's fine as a counselor and again getting around to all the people bringing bringing those folks together and getting some some decisions that say okay here's where the compromise is here's what we're going to do about it another big issue is is obviously

affordability and finance I got to ask the other day when are we getting a new swimming pool. There's two economic principles. One is finite resources, scarce resources is one that we have to work with. The second is opportunity cost. If you spend $100 million in one location, you don't have $110 million to spend in another location. Unless you're the Trudeau government. Exactly.

And that, which brings up an interesting point, cities can take on debt, but they're limited. by law as to how much debt they can take on. And I think all of us were taught that, fine, you've got to try and live within your means. So, yeah, a new pool's nice, but it's going to be a while. What are your thoughts on the Sinovus Hub? It's a done deal. I'm going to be curious to see if there's a business plan, and I don't pose that question to as a hand grenade.

I just don't know if there is. I would like to see one because if it's going to have these events and everything else, hopefully we can get it to pay for itself. That's going to be an issue because if it's not paying for itself, then it's going to have to be covered with tax dollars. And that's, again, opportunity cost. One of the things I think a lot of us have noticed, I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to notice that it just seems like taxes just keep going up, right?

It's how we're going to cover all this stuff. Well, we'll just raise taxes. We'll just keep raising taxes. Yeah, and I mean, that gets us in. We had, I was at Rotary this morning, and we had a number of the candidates there that gave a quick little blurb. And it's always taxes. Taxes are too high. I'm a taxpayer, and I hate taxes.

Honest to God, I hate taxes. But here's the question. Where do we cut? Well, Mike, are you asking me? No, I'm just, that's a rhetorical question, but I, I'm, I would say, I hope everybody took the time in July and August to fill out the budget form on the city website because it's important to get that feedback. But the reality is, every time we clean snow, there's 253 kilometers of roadway in this city.

Every time we clean snow, that's between $1.2 million. Now, Mother Nature determines how that happens. But you've got just, you know, looking at our facilities, and I'm going to pull this out because for another reason. Service Sports Center has roughly 127,000 drop-ins a year, 127,000 out of this city. Swimming combined is something in the order of 83,700 to the BioClean Center and the outdoor center is about 5,100 visits. Weaver Park gets 2,800 visits.

The library, surprisingly, gets 90,000 visits. So when we're talking about, okay, where are we going to spend some money, there's lots of passion about things that we want. Do you have numbers on how much Bud Miller gets visits? Is there even anything to even? They have some very, very rough numbers. I bet you it's awfully high. It is.

Bud Miller and I swim and I cycle. So Bud Miller with the bioclean and the cycle paths are very important in my life. But again, when the question becomes with Weaver, it's looking at something in the order of $10 million over the next decade to upgrade it as opposed to. And what I'm saying is where do you make some of those choices? Is there anything in your mind that you've seen across your travels that could be a net,

an idea, a creative project for Lloyd so that it can infuse, you know, and I guess somebody, you know, who's going to listen to this, who isn't from Lloyd, I think of Medicine Hat. Medicine Hat has its own natural gas, right? That they, you know, and I'm like,

man, that's a really interesting thought. Like, not that I want to go own a utility company, but at the same time, if the city is strapped by, we have this finite resources. How many people live here? How hard can we tax them? That's the only way. And then we got a few facilities

and that pulls into this pile of money that we go spend on trying to make the city better. It's like, well, how can we think outside the box? Have you, any thoughts on that? Or is that a poor idea? Oh, no, it's not a poor idea. I mean, back in the day in the 90s, late 80s and 90s, I worked for the province of Saskatchewan on the ag side,

dealing with things like, oh, just to throw out a name, Archer Daniels Midland and Canola. So, yeah, there's projects there. And from what I understand, there's a couple of projects on the book for Lloyd that are significant projects. I'd like to look at, from the economic development side, we've got Lakeland College. How much more can we do on education? How many other disciplines can we include in that? Do we have the potential, because we are halfway between two significant cities,

do we have the potential for technology? Putting together a technology facility for manufacturing isn't that. difficult if you have the interest. So is there things we can do in the economic development side? Absolutely. When you go from 2019 to now, our population has stayed stable, period. You can't keep raising taxes with just no increase of people. And there hasn't been an increase of people because while the entrepreneurial sector has done very well, we've got to do more and we've got to get more businesses in here. And the reality is, when you again, compare the two cities that were in between, it's a lot cheaper doing business here than it is in either of those cities.

As we run into time, you know, one of the things you, you know, you positioned it to me, I'm curious your thoughts before I let you out of here. You know, it's like, how do you cut some of the budget? And I, you know, one of the stats I've been hearing is that the number of city employees continues to grow year after year after year after year. It's government bloat in our small sense, seeing it across all of Canada, it doesn't matter if you're talking provincially, federally, certainly municipally, I mean, the same thing's happening. Would, you know, if you get elected, would you take a look at that on possibly reducing the size of our local government?

Local establishment. Yeah, I'm going to answer it this way. Take a look at because I don't have the data to answer that question. And I would like the data to see what the growth has been, to see where the growth has been in what divisions, what areas, so on and so forth, and get an understanding of the what in the why. And just, I mean, in very simple terms, counselors talk about the what the city is going to do.

Administration talks about how they're going to do it. And in that crossover is where the key is. And both sides have got to work real hard for that. For example, or a quick example, probably one that was entertaining at any rate, was the golf course maintenance shop. That was going to be $3 million? That was going to be $3 million. And it's, you know, to say, well, administration had its way.

No, it didn't. I was sitting in the budget meeting last year when they did the draft budget, and I saw the line item. And even if I had been on council, it didn't click. It didn't click, but it was there. And when it subsequently got out to the point where a decision had to be made, the pushback, put it back on the back burner. So is there an effective interplay between council and administration?

I would say yes. Can it be better? It can always be better. Here's, I just, I don't know, yes or no, or 10 seconds, because I should let you go, is if we get you on council, right? I don't mean me. I just mean the voting population, right? I don't direct. This is entirely an exercise on just trying to inform people. But if Daryl Dunn's sitting there, can we expect Daryl Dunn to take his eyes that he's been using to stare at all these problems and start,

you know, not let a line item just slide by, not let a thing, you know, you hear the people, you know, you mentioned the freedom people. One of the thing freedom people are frustrated by is nobody listens to them. And one of the things, I don't know if I'm right in saying this or not, but one of the things I see Eddie is you're at least conversing with them. I find that very fascinating. So if you're elected, are you going to take the same, like, that doesn't make sense, and bring it up to counsel and not just let things slide by? Absolutely. I mean, I've played, again, municipal politics is probably the easiest politics to play because it's contained.

You're not talking billions and billions of budgets and you're not talking masses and masses of people. but it demands like anything else it demands precision it demands examination and uh rightly or wrongly I'm a bit of a perfectionist and if you're going to do something do it right and ask questions and if you don't have information you can't make a good decision so ask questions always thanks darrell for all right one of the things I'm already learning about this is I'm like oh this is why I like podcasting so much it's because I like two hours to sit and chew on things. But today, folks, you're getting 20 minutes or right in that range. So, Darrell, thanks for hopping in. Thank you. All right. Welcome. I'm joined now by Tanner today. As we're, you know, people are tuning into

this podcast. They're getting a feel for it. We're roughly around 20 minutes, Tanner. And I think you're now the fourth. So, you know, like real interesting vibe to this because, you know, you know, sitting down with so many different people at times. It isn't exactly what I do. Normally I get to really pull out ideas. You've been a part of that lot. So I'm going to assume the podcast world knows who you are, but let's assume this gets shared around to all of Lloyd.

Sure. And there's going to be people who don't know who Tanner is. Start with, let's just do a quick, you know, two minute, one minute. Who is Tanner today? Sure. Well, I was born and raised here in Lloyd Minster, or a Lloyd Minster in the Lloyd Minster surrounding area. Went to school here, graduated from high school.

school here. And then when I did so, I went to the University of Calgary to get a bachelor's in economics. I graduated when the lockdowns were, you know, in full force. And so not a lot of jobs anywhere. And so I came home quite excitedly, I might add, and actually hauled grain for a bit. I drove truck for a while. And as I was doing that, I started a few social media pages in which I would take the economic lessons I'd learned in school. And I would look at what was happening in the world on that particular day. And then I would try and make sense of what was happening. in the world using those economic lessons. And so that grew and flourished. And from there came a few jobs with think tanks or a think tank. And I started my own business in which now I tour around

the province of Alberta talking about various economic issues to MLAs, MPs, city counselors, and of course, everyday individuals at a bunch of town halls. And I still produce content online and so on. It's been a lot of fun. It's been my privilege to run too for counselor. I've really enjoyed it and I'm excited to see what happens. Why, why this election, why run right now? What is it about this that has your, you know, you're like, I, I'm going to do this and put my foot forward. What's pulling at you? Well, so at these events that I speak at, almost inevitably at the end of the event, I talk about how important it is for individuals to become active and involved in the political process, right? We have a lot of problems or issues with government, and fair enough,

rightfully so. But of course, unless we become active in the process, we can't say much, right? We don't have much justification to be upset about those issues. And so I think my conscience was saying, you know, time to, you know, take your own advice and so on. And it's been a few years and, and you look at what's happening all around the world, right, all around the country. And I think we have an obligation to work as hard as we can to ensure that families are champions, right our children remain free we're in an economic mess right now we're going to try and solve that and so on right we're certainly not going to be judged by almighty because we tried so that's why you know when you you've actually i shouldn't say i should i i'll rephrase have you been to any

city council meetings yes yes not only in person but also online to be honest i've listened to quite a few online and i've been very impressed consistently with how at those particular meetings act of the city of Lloyd Minster or the residents of Lloyd Minster are. Like, you know, sometimes we have this romantic idea of what government participation looks like, and we think of Washington crossing the Delaware, or, you know, we think of these great last stands or Wellington, whatever it might be. It doesn't really look like that, right? Participation in government activity, whether it be a resident voicing your concerns or

complaints or actually acting on city council or in the legislature or whatever, tends to be very, from the outside world. banal, right? It is dull. It's a very dry exercise, but it's one that's absolutely necessary. It's like the watchman at the castle is the most important man in the castle at that time. Because even though his watch is boring, right, we've talked about this, even though looking into the night is very dull, he has to do it. Because on the chance that there is an army coming, you have to say something. You're the first one to say something. And so it's a necessary action that we have to partake in.

Well, when you, in your time spent watching online, which I'm finding out a ton of, this is why I'm not running at this, folks. I don't watch it online. I'm like, I don't have enough time to catch up on half the stuff I'm doing. And it's funny, you're like out of the four. I want to say you're the second, if not third, out of four that said, oh, yeah, I watched it online, you know,

which is really interesting. To me, I find that encouraging because you're engaged, you're staring at it. Yeah. When you stare at it, though, what things are you frustrated by or maybe it stick out to you, maybe frustration isn't the right word. I just, you know, when you start watching it, you know, what sticks out to you and what do you hope that you can add to it? Right. That's a good question. Well, so the foundation of my platform

is family first, right? Is family is the foundational structure of civilized, free, flourishing society. And so from that then branches the policies which I'm proposing, um, that will cause the family to flourish and thrive. Now, for example, one of those policies would be, yes, a reduction in property tax and a reduction in government spending. The two go hand in hand. Like you have to have it, right? Because when we talk about economic growth, we tend to mean an increase in the GDP. That isn't very accurate. It's better to say we want to ensure that citizens are able to meet the needs and the wants that they have and that their well-being increases. That's what I think economic growth looks like. And so we asked the question,

one, how do we do that? And two, if we do it, does it increase the well-being of the family? Well, manifestly, yes, it does increase the well-being of the family. You have more money. You can do more things and you're able to provide a better life for yourself and your wife or your husband and your children. So how do you accomplish it? Well, again, in large part, you cut taxes, right? You cut spending. You stop as a city spending so much. You allow residents to keep more of their incomes. And as a consequence, they're able to spend it on exactly what they want rather than what the city might want. And so you see a lot of, and this is not just isolated to Lloyd Minster. When you watch these events and so on, you see a lot of big spending proposals, you know.

And to be fair, some counselors ask good questions and so on and try and restrain the spending. But government, again, not just this government, almost every government is a machine that just eats as much money as it can. It's never fulfilled. Its stomach is never full. It never says, we've had enough. spending now we're good for now no it always wants more and so I don't believe you know a lot of people I think are on this agreement we spend a lot of money too much money too much money so one of the things then I guess you know if if Tanner today is

elected yeah one of the things man correct me if I'm wrong you would hope is that you can open up the the revenue the books yeah yeah and go why are we spending that yeah why you know one of the once again I keep saying this stat because it got you know I've had a couple different people text and knew this was coming. I had a couple different conversations. Yeah. Is that, you know, the size of the city employment has continually grown. Yeah.

Right? Well, I mean, whether it's by 45 people, which is the high number I heard or a little less than that, which is, you know, you go, it's continually growing. Right. And then you hear, you add to the stat, but the city of Lloyd isn't growing. No, it's right. So you go, okay. So can we look at that and can we start to remove some of that?

So maybe every year we aren't getting a taxing? increase. We aren't, we aren't just constantly taxing our base. Yeah, right. Is that something, I guess, you know, I'll try and phrase it in a question. If elected, is that something that you're like, yeah, we've got to take a look at the books. We've got to, we got to dig into some of this. Yeah, it's a must. Oh, it's a must. Now, council has power to hire or remove, as far as I understand, the chief administrative officer. That's that. It's called, we have what's called a week mayor system in Alberta, Preston Manning brought it in. John Hilton, O'Brien and I were talking about this last week, I was at a conference, which means that, you know, the city, um, the

Council doesn't have as much power to hire or fire every bureaucrat as one might think. Now, that's not to say there isn't too large a bureaucracy. There is. And again, that problem isn't just isolated to the city. That's true across the country. Right. You look at the difference between public sector job growth versus private sector job growth, and the results are staggering and they're scary, right?

Because there is a huge disparity, massive. So can or should ought counsel to take a look at the spending and trim off what is. isn't necessary. Yes, absolutely. I think that even starts at the pay reduction for counselors first. Like if you want to lead with that, then you have to lead by example. No doubt about it. There is so much, it's so difficult for government to spend money efficiently because they don't do it like a private business does it, right?

As a private business owner, you know if you're spending money inefficiently or if you're providing an inefficient service if you're losing money. It means nobody wants it, right? Or not as many people want it as you think. Or you can't provide it at a price which society wants or what might have you, right? And so it tells you to change, switch, transform, do something different to increase your efficiency and productivity. It doesn't work like that with government, right? They take a loss on a lot of things.

We're seeing that with the books. But because they don't operate on that private business model, they continue to provide an inefficient service, right? So, yes, open the books, take a look and cut. And, you know, I had someone ask, he goes, well, if you want to cut property taxes, how are you going to fund the services, or at least what the city is budgeted for the books? and the answer is you don't. Not all of them. You've got to cut that too.

Yeah, everyone else is doing it. Everyone in every home right now, or almost every home is cutting back on wants. It's a consequence in large part of inflation, a tough economy, but the city should do the same. We do not live in a world of infinite goods and services. It's finite.

You know, you talk inflation, you bring that up. One of the things I look at your background, you know, and I hope people go back and listen to a few different things or maybe even search you out on some of the things you're doing for the Alberta government. Because I look at it and I go, you know, one of the things that is in your toolkit is you're, you know, talk about economics and different things happening that side of the coin. When you stare into the near future, not, I'm not even going five years or I'm saying the near future, you can see economic time difficulties are going to continue.

Absolutely. Is there things that a city can do to help mitigate some of that, its citizens. Yeah. Well, the city can actually do nothing with inflation because the city can't print money, right? Inflation just means an increase in the monetary supply. We've heard it from our bureaucrats that inflation is an increase in prices. It's not. That would be like saying a sneeze is a cold. It's like, no, a sneeze is a consequence of a cold. So too with high prices. They're a consequence of inflation of printing more money. So the city of Lloydminster and its council has no control over how much money the federal government prints. We could say what they're printing is wrong and you know, they're printing too much, true, but we don't have a big red button by which we can,

you know, hit the printing presses stop. Now, what we can try and do is a council, though, is mitigate the effects of inflation for those residents in Lloyd Minster. And again, I go, I know property tax is the classic example, but I go back to it, right? If you can decrease taxes for Lloyd Minster residents, then even though inflation is still here, right, those Lloyd Minster residents aren't sending as much money, which is becoming increasingly less valuable, right, to government. And so they can retain a bit more of their purchasing power. One of the things about, I don't know, transparency in general, right? Yeah, yeah.

You know, like, certainly I think to anyone who wants to go watch on Mondays, it's sitting right there. I mean, I don't know if it gets any more transparent than that in one instance. Yeah. On the flip side of that, you engage with the public all the time. How many different speaking events have you done, let's say, in the last, I don't know, year? Oh, for sure over 100. Okay.

Yeah. So to me, I guess I go, that's pretty rare. Most people, you know, even myself. Yeah. Certainly podcasts. Oh, yeah. Okay. But like actually on stage dealing with people one-on-one, I'm probably at in a year

anywhere between, I don't know, 7 to 15 maybe. 15's probably on the high side, right? And so I guess, you know, when I think about you getting elected, I wonder what that can translate into. the city of Lloyd and trying to get more people involved in hearing the voices and talking and the transparency and all that together. I don't know. It seems like a big clump in your thoughts on that. Yeah, it is. Again, like to take finances, it's very boring to read financials, right? And it's actually difficult, right? Budget balance or balance sheets and budgeting papers and so on.

They can be very, they are very complicated to read and they're confusing for someone who, you know, isn't trained in the, in the discipline. And so, I think actually part of council's job or I'd be very much in favor of this is to not only of course they make they do make the books available right I can go and read I can read payroll accounts and so on on the Lloydminster government's website fair but I think as a council if we can if we can promote to the people to that you know Lloydminster residents or if we can explain to them in the simplest terms how the budget's working and why we're spending on what we're spending and why we're cutting what we're cutting and so on it becomes more palatable to people so i speak about economics

at these events and the goal of the events is to try and make difficult confusing subjects about economics with a lot of jargon and you know usually very dry more exciting you know you don't change the truth the truth is the truth but you can change the way you present it so that more people understand it you know um and again it goes back to usually looking at uh these budgets and so on part of that process of being active in government is boring and it's a consequence of well just government to be entirely honest but it's necessary and finally the cd how institute has just put out um a paper outlining the physical transparency of big cities actually multitude of cities all around the country and in that paper it's a long paper but it's good they make a series of recommendations and i'd be very much in

favor of adopting them now i can't remember them off the top of my head if i was smarter i could um but but cd how was brilliant, use their papers a lot. And they talk about the best way to make the finances as transparent as possible. Part of it includes, you know, timeliness or what time do you get out the budget. Part of it includes readability, right? How easy is it for the common citizen to understand what's being proposed? How much is being spent? And so on. So I think you ought to adopt those. You know, if I rewind the clock on my side, one of the, one of the council meetings I went to was talking, it might have been when Aaron Buckingham was still there. I want to say it was they were talking about how do you get the population to a know about what's going on

in the city council but two to engage with it yeah and i look at what we're doing here yeah and i've brought it up this will be you know another you know if you don't like this format or you want more yeah of different candidates there's curb price there's a newspaper there's the all candidates form they're all different things surrounding the same thing yeah when i hear you know you can't get to the public i'm like well there's different ways to do that That's right. You know, once upon a time, it was the evening news. Yeah.

I would argue it is no longer the evening news. I agree. Henceforth, you don't, I don't know, maybe Newcap. Sorry, New Cap. Maybe they are doing it with candidates. I don't know, but that's one thing I haven't stumbled across. And in fairness, I haven't gone looking. If you were to look at trying to get engagement from the public or them to understand.

And how would you do that differently? Because that's one of the questions I heard probably in the last year that that counts. didn't understand or didn't want to dig deeper on. And I look around, I see, I see different avenues, but I'm curious your thoughts. I like the independent route here. You're right. I don't think the mainstream media has the monopoly on promoting information like they used to anymore. I think people are much more interested in listening to independent media, reading

independent thoughts and so on and so on. Now, the honest truth is, and I'm not saying I advocate for this, this is just a truth. If you want to engage a population easiest, right, you make everything a controversy, right? You look at what's happening in America. You know, between Trump and Harris, everyone's engaged because there's an excitement there about it, right? It's sensational. And so it, politics is no longer boring, right, in that sense. If you, again.

It's one of the things I love about Alberta. I apologize because Alberta, that's exactly what's happening with 19. And I'm bringing in provincial politics here. Yeah. But 1905, take back Alberta, the infighting, this and that, Premier Smith, da, da, da, da, da. And all of a sudden you get 6,000 people showing up to the UCPA. AGM. Why is that? It's the sensationalism. It's this it's this WWE type presence in politics.

That's exactly what it is. And I think, you know, to be honest, part of that just comes naturally if one stands for what he or she believes to be right. This status quo of say nothing and just sit on whatever government boards you're on and make no change at all whatsoever, make no fuss or anything is nonsense. People are tired of that and rightfully so. When you stand for what's right, when you stand for what you believe in, when you're resolute and you're convinced, you will, by definition, generate controversy. Like, look at Jesus, you know. Here's a guy who stands, I mean, it's the man, right, who stands, he is righteousness itself. And look at the controversy that surrounds him, even today, let alone back when he was walking

the earth. Curious, your thoughts on this. This was a question that got shot over to me. If you had the opportunity as a counselor to propose opening the city of Lloydminster Charter, would you make it would you take a look into that and make amendments possible well it's a very so you have to you can't just open the charter right it's a very it's a heavy process you got to get approval from provincial governments and so on but yeah if there's anything that restricts freedom in that charter yes like there's a clause in there right that talks about how if the city wants at any time they can well commandeer isn't well yeah kind of they can use your private property for a road up to two years I don't think that's right.

It's my property. So if the city wants to build a temporary road on your property, the charter allows them to do so. I guess, you know, as time closes in here, I'm like, I don't know how to phrase this the right way. And I've been thinking about this as you've been talking. I'm like, it feels like this is going to be a heavy burden. You know, to like, or maybe you're just like, no, this is going to be a ton of fun. I can't wait to get going. I hear this.

And I'm like, this isn't just show up. Time stamp, I'm in at 1 o'clock, and at 4 o'clock, click and out the door and you don't think about this anymore. Some of the things we're talking about, you know, standing up for what you believe in, that's going to make you, at times, one of the most popular people. At times, one of the most hated people, because you just won't shut up and let things go along and whatever. And can't we just clock out and whatever else? Is that, like, when you hear that, you're like, well, that's what, I don't know. What are your thoughts when I say that? Well, I think Jesus has a verse which says, come to me, you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.

Cast your burdens upon me. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. So you're quite right. I think when, by nature, I don't believe politics ought to be, it shouldn't be something one looks forward to or is hungry for. I can we talk about this, right? Tolkien agrees. This is not something to be pursuant, like a wolf pursuing a deer kind of thing. That's not what we want. And it's a very serious, it is heavy. Christ says cast my or cast your burdens upon me. And so as a Christian, that's exactly what I do. Insofar as if you try and shoulder the responsibility of politics on your own, I think it ruins a man. It will ruin you, right? It's too heavy to bear. But if you cast it on Christ and then do what he commands and follow his ways and so on and pursue what is righteous and just, then it's successful. This is going to be a stupid question, but whatever. Do you worry about blend, You know, in a world that wants to remove faith, religion, from everything.

We're very secular now. Yeah, yeah. Do you worry about that? I don't know. I don't know. Do you just worry about that? Not at all. Well, so I would sooner maintain my Christian belief and not be elected to government, then lose that and be elected. What a poor trade.

It would be a very poor trade to forsake my Christianity in the name of enjoying power for a year or two. it's terrible. And not only so, but you know, you can't divorce religion from politics. Like even if you're a secularist, that's your religion, right? You will have a code of ethics or some standard of ethics by which you govern, whether it's atheism, whether it's agnosticism, whether it's Buddhism, whether it's Christianity, whether it's Islam. There is some standard. There is some core beliefs. Even if you say there are no core beliefs, that's a core belief, right, that you will hold to and govern by. So the idea that we can devourable, divorce, a foundational belief or a set of beliefs from government is just, it's irrational.

I forgot to say this to the last couple of people, but my hat's off to you for stepping into the ring. Anytime anyone, I'll say, kind of repeat my thought from a couple ago, is it just like anytime somebody steps in and puts themselves to be scrutinized by others into, you know, a form of popularity contest and then, you know, is going to be attacked or have to go answer questions and, you know, and on and on and on. This goes, I do. appreciate it because I think this is what makes our country wonderful and you know I'm hoping this is just my little part in playing on trying to shine a spotlight on all you people what which seem to be all wonderful to be honest coming in having the

right ideas and the right energy to try and change the direction of the city of Louis minister so any final thoughts before I let you out honestly none it's been a privilege to run thus far my campaign's available or my campaign platform is available on my website's my first and last name.com. So, Tannernaiday.com. Tannernaday.com. So excited to see what the Lord does

and how the election turns out. Thanks again, Tanner. Thank you. I'm joined now by Dave Lopez. So, sir, thanks for hopping in. Well, thanks for having me. You know, I think most people in Lloyd know you, but, you know, if I've ever learned anything,

it's not a way to start things. So in a minute or two, who's Dave? And let people know a little bit about yourself. Well, I'm married, father of two. Born into entrepreneurship, we moved here when I was three months old. We bought the motel on Highway 16 and 17. And then from there, we built derbies. And we've sort of branched out from there, went off to school, got my diploma in computers,

and then decided I did not like computers and did not like big cities. So I moved home. And I've worked in the family business since, well, we moved back in 2000. and been working in the family business and growing the family business since then. We've got Arby's, we've got commercial properties, we've got a construction company. So, yeah, busy life.

And you ran in the by-election, won the by-election, so you've been a counselor for how many months now? Seven months. Seven months? Yeah. Okay. In seven months, it didn't go, oh, I'm never doing this again, right?

Because you're back here again. So obviously it wasn't this horrific experience that you're like, I'm never doing again. No, it wasn't. And then I knew, I knew if, even if I hadn't won in the by-election, I wanted to run. I've always wanted to be in politics. I always wanted to do municipal government. And the time was right, right?

Empty nesters, both my kids are off to university. And now I had the time to dedicate to making sure I do the job well. And to tell you that I didn't like it would be a lie. I love this stuff. I love being able to, you know, know the inner workings and understanding how how things work and and and talking to like going to the Saskatchewan municipalities and going to Alberta municipalities and and talking to the politicians in other cities and other communities and saying hey like we've got this problem you guys have this

problem how are you fixing this problem what are you doing to fix this problem and it's um and it's neat to hear lots of times it's like well when you guys figure it out let us know right it's um And lots of it is with the homeless and with crime and communities feeling unsafe. So in the seven months then, because I assume it's kind of like introduction by getting two feet into the lake, so to speak, like you're just jumping full on in. What have you learned? You know, like, because like a lot of the conversations up to this point are people that want to get involved, but they haven't gotten involved yet. The difference you have is you've been involved now, albeit for seven months, which in some, circles is a long time and in most circles is probably like that's a cup of coffee but in saying that

you've got to actually sit in the chair you've got to ask some questions you've got to you know get involved in that discussion what have you seen that you're you're like okay i didn't realize this or or i don't know like what is the seven months showing you you know and i was lucky because i have so many companies and things like that i got to deal with planning development i got to deal with engineering i got to deal with assessments i got to deal with legal so lots of those departments I had already dealt with and knew the people that were in there and things like that. But there are things that you sit there and you're like, I hate this, that you guys are doing this wrong.

There's a better way to do it. And you get in there and you go, huh, okay. There's a different story to it, a different side that. And what's one of the things that sticks out to that? You know what? In the, in the, in the, in the, I guess with the, with the, the safety and things like that. Like, I keep going. Like, why can't we just tear down these in caps?

and tear them down and tear them down and and and and you realize that there's this whole social network that you know it's not it's not the the crime isn't happening from let's say just the men's shelter right the crimes happening from other places and when you talk to the police and the RCMP and the constables and things like that and they sit there and say we're not getting the phone calls right there and and you sit there and go what you're not getting the phone calls like Like if someone's, if someone's, you know, doing damage to my house, you would think first person I'm going to call is the cops. And we've gotten into that complaints and see where it's like, well, they're not going to do anything. So we're not calling about it. Right. So and those are things I didn't understand. Right. And then you sit there and you look in your own life and I go, well, when my windows got vandalized at my property downtown, I didn't call the RCMP.

I didn't report it. So that's a crime that wasn't reported. And there's numerous ones like that that don't get reported. So what can be done from a city counselor perspective? You get voted back in. Dave Lopez is there for four years. You know we got issues with crime, for one. You do have a homeless problem.

Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, it's pretty evident here in Lloydminster. And I go, okay, so what do you think can be done in the next four years that might be of interest to the voting public? So the one thing is like with the men's shelter. And I remember when they proposed this new building, I called the director and I said, hey, what do you guys doing? Like this doesn't make any sense.

And we had a conversation. He's like, look, we need more room. There's like, there's 170. And I don't know what the number is, but they're saying 170 homeless people in there. We've got beds for 23 or 28. And I said to him, I said, hey, like, this doesn't. doesn't make any sense, Mike. We, you guys are, and I said, you're a bad neighbor, right?

We have to get this good neighbor policy back in. We have to, as a city, enforce it on the olive tree, the native friendship center, on the, on the men's shelter, and make sure that they're good neighbors, that they are being part of the community, and we need these services. Like, it does, if we can't, we can't put them on a bus, send them somewhere else. It just doesn't happen. But these people that are here, a lot of them are local residents. And you know what? Ran on hard times, right? We see how expensive it is to live.

And if you're living on that verge, it's easy to be, go from having your apartment to couch surfing to being on the street. So we need to make sure that these services are there. We need to make sure that they're being good neighbors. We need to make sure that they are doing what they're supposed to be doing. And they're doing only what they're supposed to be doing. I think the biggest problem we had at the men's shelter is they were trying to be everything to everybody. And what we need them to be is the men's shelter, helping those 28 men that are hard on, you know, fall on hard times, trying to get back on their feet.

And the other people have to go to those other services. So if they need to eat or they need food or something like that, they have to go see the Altry or they have to go to the Native Friendship Center and start using the services. correctly. The one thing that I'm really proud of and it's it's funny for me to say it because is when the Olive Tree offered or asked for a grant to for a three year grant, $60,000 a year to hire like a social worker to help out people over their home-based program. And I was very against it. I'm like, there's no way. There's no way I'm spending money on this. If they want the money, they need to go find it, it can't be coming from the city, and you're having the conversations with the managers at the city, and they're showing you the crime rates, and they're

showing you the number of home house and things like that. And then you're sitting there, you're going, like, we're not doing it, guys. Like, this makes no sense. And I was one person against everybody else. And then they started talking to someone, these people that are trying to fill out this paperwork are on Aish and they're on other government grants. And they don't have the assistance or the knowledge to fill these out. So they're coming to the city and they're using city resources to get the assistance so they can fill out this paperwork. So again, we're not using the resources that are out in the community because they're they're overtaxed. So is it better for us to take 200 hours or 300 hours or 400 hours a year from city staff that should be doing

things for the city to support these people or do we give a grant to the olive tree and now we can sit there, go to these people and go, here, you need to go to the Alvary. They have a social worker that can help you with this. And those are things that I didn't understand. We look at the city and if I told you the city was running efficient, I'd be lying to you. If I told you that they're wasting a whole bunch of money, I'd be lying to you too. I think there's ways that we can streamline the way that the city works and some of the services that we have. But I really believe that as a city, we need to be making sure that we have the supports out there and not us paying for them all the time, but making sure that the olive tree in these places, the men's shelter,

things like that, have the supports out there to do the job that they need to do to sort of get these people off the street and to help with the crime. And I think if you looked at the men's shelter now that they've gone back to, they're only helping the people that are in the men's shelter. They're not feeding everybody. You're going to go around there and you're not seeing as much. many people hanging out there. There's not as many derelux around there. And I think it's working, right? Do we still have a lot of unhoused? Absolutely. And it happens in my restaurant. I sit there and I go,

you know, yesterday, just yesterday. I had a guy who was who was strung out on drugs in my bathroom. And, you know, my staff are sitting there and they're like, hey, boss, like, we got a guy that's laying in the bathroom and, you know, you've got to go and deal with that. So it's not just downtown. It's happening everywhere in the community. But we need to have the resources there. And we need to get the provincial and federal governments to start supporting these things, from the housing to all those things. I'm glad you brought up housing because one of the things that we'd been talking about

offline was the zoning and changing the zoning on what can be built on certain lots. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, I was 100% against it. Like when they first brought it out and it was, it was low, Sorry, low-density housing, and you could build a house as permitted, a house or a duplex as permitted, and you could get up to a four-plex as discretionary in low-density, so in a neighborhood. And I just, I'm like, we can't be doing this. Like, we've set up subdivisions the same way for years, where you start off with, on the outskirts,

you start off with multifamily, and then you go into entry-level homes, and as you get further, further in, you get to the more luxurious and fancier homes and more expensive homes. And we can't allow anything to be built anywhere. It ruins a neighborhood. And that's my true belief. And through the land use bylaw, we turned around and they came back and they're saying, okay, we're going to allow single family homes, but we're going to put discretionary that you can have a duplex or like a garden suite

or a threeplex. And I was still against it. I'm like, we can't do this. We can't allow if there's an empty lot somewhere that you can put a threeplex in there and have it beside a million dollar home or a $700,000 home. And then because all of a sudden you've increased the traffic, you've increased the number of families in there, you've increased the number of cars.

And it's always the, well, like, how would they ever build a threeplex on a lot in Lloydminster? And I just quickly, like I was sitting beside the mayor. I was the deputy mayor at the time. And I just drew up beside the mayor. I said, I can do one of the rainy buildings downtown where I can put the main floor as being parking on a 1,500 square foot, like, footprint. I could put four cars underneath there. I can have a driveway in the front.

I could put another three cars up there. And then I could build three single units above that garage because I can go up to 10 meters. And that's discretionary. And my fear was when I, and that's my fear, right? You have all these rules. but at the end of the day, if planning and development system goes, we're going to deny this, they can go to the appeal board,

and the appeal board could sit there and go, they're following all your rules, and we're going to allow it to happen. And then all of a sudden, you've got a three-plex or a four-plex beside a house. And I wasn't in favor of that. I wasn't in favor of that. I wasn't in favor from the time I saw it. And so I think there's enough housing.

There's enough entry-level homes. that are around that are for sale, that if someone wants one of those homes, they can get it. I think there's enough, excuse me, duplexes or apartments and condo style dwellings that are for sale, that if someone wants that, they can get it. And then if you want a fancy house and you want to pay the taxes on a bigger house

because they're more expensive to live in, there's those as well. So I don't think we have a housing issue. We don't have a housing crisis here in Lloydminster? Well, do we? Like I keep looking. We have multifamily laws that nobody's buying to put up apartments. So if we, so why is that, right?

If we have a housing crisis, you'd have developers and investors coming in saying, hey, we've got this problem. I can put up apartments and make a profit off of it. And they're not. So why is that? One of the things I've been asking different people about has been community. How do you build community? You know, we got to work together.

You came and saved us them. bike for breakfast, who am I kidding? And, you know, like different things like that really rally a community together. I've been a part of different things in this community that made me very proud to be from this community. And I think a lot of people felt that. Through COVID, though, a nuke was tossed on the entire world when it came to families and go larger than that into the community. How do we, how do we build back community? Man, that sounded terrible. I don't mean build back better, but that's almost how it came out. How do we, how do we like start to sew together community again and move forward and get these events happening that, you know, everybody's proud

to be from Lloyd Minster. You know, and I think the city's done a good job of that. They've got that trailer that you can do block parties with and you can rent it for free and it has a barbecue, it has games, it has all these events and you can rent it for your neighborhood and they can, they can, you can get a permit to block off the street and you can have a neighborhood block party. And, you know, it's funny. I was asking how popular it is, and it was fully booked all summer.

So they were having neighborhood block parties all over town with this trailer to the point that it's so busy they're thinking about getting a second one for next year. So we have to start with the neighborhoods, get our neighborhoods back together. And then from there, get our communities talking to one another. Right, absolutely. And let the past be the past, right? Let bygones be bygones, right? we maybe didn't agree during COVID on what it was.

But you know what? We can't forget our history, but we can put it in the past and we can remember we're all human beings. We don't have to agree on everything, but we are humans at the end of the day. You weren't counsel then, but if you were counsel in the future, let's say, I don't know, the big thing right now is climate. Let's say they came down with a climate lockdown. We're not allowed to do anywhere because the planet's burning to high hell. Would you sit and argue against that or would you go along with it?

I would argue it, right? I think anybody would argue it because you've got to show me the evidence, right? And I always put the analogy, especially with climate. I always sit there and go, I say, like, they always talk about global warming, and they talk about the Great Barrier Reef, and it's dying. And it's one of those things that we can't see it, right? So if you can't see it, then you're trying to, and you just believe it, it's hard to sit there and go, okay, it's happening.

You know, it's like, show me what's happening locally, right? My only fear is not to talk over yet. My only fear is that's what a lot of people would say about COVID, right? Is they, you know, like it was, they were trying to, and I would sit here and I would go through all the interviews we had and all the different things we were doing. And yet the pandemonium that was created when you have the governments of the world pushing from the top saying, we got to shut this down. We have to. And if I go from a climate thing, the thing that's really changed from then until now is I think people, we've lived through something that nobody. wants to go back to like you know at all and I would say a lot of people are saying similar things to

you in that you know David are like well listen we're not going back until they can like prove out XYZ and you know the city of Lloyd I just I put it as a thought process first this morning because you know you're sitting on council if we get our next elected I know a lot of people including myself want to know how what are we going to stand against when because it seems like more and more the top down approach is happening and maybe it's always happen. But it seems like we're getting force-fed things that we don't like. And I'm just curious from the people who are running

if they're, you know, willing to stand against the machine when the machine wants to do a certain thing, I guess. And again, you know, climate change, I've never dealt with it, so I have no idea. I'm not pulling in a climate change argument. Just, just, I can slide

it into another pandemic. Yeah. Tomorrow they announced that Monkeypox is coming through and we've got to lock everything up. Are we going to lock, are city council's all going to go, yes, we need to lock everything up.

I don't know. I couldn't give you that answer. You know, I never closed my, well, I shouldn't say that. I had to close my lobby because through the,

through COVID, but I never had to close my restaurant. Right? And I had to run it through it. And, and, um, and I wasn't that guy who, who,

who was sitting there going, like, do you have your certificate? Do you have your ID, things like that? When I did reopen my restaurant and it was, you know, at the end of the day, we're all humans and we're all adults. And if you don't feel safe, if I don't feel safe somewhere, I don't go there, right? And if you don't feel safe, you don't go, right? And it's like you have to make your own decisions when, you know, when things come, you have to make your own decisions, I guess is what I'm saying.

With, you know, when you look at the future of Lloyd Minster and you, you, you know, you, you know, You know, you played out Dave Lopez back on city council. What's one of the things you hope you can direct the city towards, or maybe that's not the right terminology, but, you know, what's one of the hopes of if you get elected, things can be done? And what realm would you put that in? Is it, you know, is it reducing the economics,

like how much money we're spending tax increases? Or are you looking at some key infrastructure things? Is it a couple of the, you know, land bylaws that, you know, you want to see change? what are you like we got to make sure we talk about this growth i honestly and and we've we met with scotmo when during the heavy oil show and and and the problem we have is we have two two provinces and one province thinks that lloydminster is being dealt with with alberta and then the saskatchewan thinks albara is taking care of lloydminster and then loretta thinks saskatchewan is

we have seven industrial lots on the saskatchewan side that are ready to go near rail you know full services and trying to promote the Saskatchewan government you guys are forgetting about Lloydminster when you get industry coming to Saskatchewan you forget that Lloydminster's here and you forget that we're ready for them we have all the services we have from water to to rail to highways everything right here so it's it's promoting them I think the one thing if we can grow if we can grow with an industry we get more workers we get more higher paid and higher skilled workers And that brings that tax base from away from the homeowners to the, to industry. And I think that's how you, that's how you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you're, as a homeowner and as a family, we're not, we're not, we're not paying it all.

And you get industry that's, that's, that's paying it for you. One final thought for me before I let you out here. Um, if you were talking to the, while you're talking to the, the voting population of Lloyd Minster, what would you say? to them before I let you out of here. Well, I think I ran on a mandate in February, and I feel that I accomplished what I said I was going to do. I question them on their spending. I question them on things, how they were doing it.

And I feel that I listened to people, what people were saying to me. I didn't always agree with them, but we were able to find a happy medium in there. And I think I honestly believe on that person that that will that listens goes back to council goes back to the administration says this is what I'm hearing. These are my feelings. We need to look at this differently. Well, I'll say it again. Thanks for running in the by-election. And thanks for running again because it's not you probably know this already from being for seven months in council.

It's not an easy thing to put yourself as much as you enjoyed. I'm sure there's some days you're like what on earn. earth am I doing as people who ask you about different things. But if we didn't have people such as yourself running and having some spotlight put on not only city politics, but just, you know, on the group of you all running, my hat's off to all of you doing this because we need people to step up. That's one of the things that gets talked about lots. People need to get involved in your community. You're doing it among others. And best of luck to you here in the coming days as the election comes up and the, you know, and the debates come up and everything else. I'll be watching.

lot of people are watching, but thanks again, Dave, for hopping it. No worries, thank you. Okay, I'm sitting with Michelle Charles Gustafson. Thank you for coming in and doing this. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Well, it's been a whirlwind of a day. So to the podcast audience, you know, like normally I sit down with somebody and we sit

in chat for like two hours, maybe longer, maybe shorter, but it's like we really get to ebb and flow a discussion on lots of different things. Today has been like, you know, one guest after another, after another, and there's 12 of you over the course of a day, which sounds like some people are like, oh, man, that don't. That's a lot of work. It's a ton of fun. I have my own podcast and usually I do solo episodes because I just have a message. But when I have guests, it's a lot of work to not only know someone, but also to ask the questions to get enough that the listeners get their story. It's a big deal.

Well, let's start here because, you know, I was sitting, we both stared at each other when you walked down. I feel like I've met you before. It was the Health Foundation a few years ago. So I think a few people know who you are, but let's assume the audience from, you know, this tuning in from Lloydminster has no idea who Michelle is. Tell us a little bit about yourself in a minute or two and then we'll get, you know, some of the things about running for city council. Yeah, sure, sure. I have been in Lloydminster since about 1987. We moved to Canada from the United States in the early 1980s.

We went first to Yorkton, so hi, Yorkton folks, then to Regina for a little stint, and then we moved to Lloydminster. My dad opened private practice and a dental practice here in town. It was amazing. He then treated generations of families here at his practice. Many of you may remember Dr. Gerald Charles and his care. in his dental office. So many people are afraid of the dentist. I hate the dentist.

I know, but you would have loved him. There are some wonderful dentists out there. I still get stories from former patients who go, I still remember your dad. I was afraid before I went. So I am truly his daughter in that he believed in excellence and he believed in service and I'm that person. So I graduated here, LCHS, the purple and gold.

And then I went to... I hate to date you, but what year did you grab? You can date me. It's fine. 1996, folks. 96. 96. 96. And then I went across Canada to Ontario, to Kingston, to study at the Queen's School of Business. And I spent four years there. I graduated with a business strategy and a marketing strategy degree. But my heart, my future husband, and my ambition brought me back west. And so I came, yes. The Lloyd Minster.

I know, right? My dad was also here. And so we actually started a business here. And the people in Ontario after my degree program thought I was crazy. They're like, why are you, why wouldn't you go to the Toronto and be in the big corporates and all the stuff? And I said, because I'm an entrepreneur at heart. And I believe in offering good service. So I opened up, it was called a mailboxes, et cetera, and a business services business where I helped businesses put themselves on display in the best professional way. And we did everything from, you know, prints and copies and marketing materials. So I use my marketing degree now as strategy for these small business owners. So I know how important it is for small business to understand their place in the economy. And I am all for it. And little do people know that back in the day, Clark from Read and Write used to come to me. I used to do some of his his benches and billboards in terms of design. Like it was back when they first started.

So it was super cool. So anyways, now fast forward 24 years later, I am still working with people to help them be their best. I have a personal development coaching business as well as a sales and leadership training business. And I work globally. I have clients across Canada, U.S. and Australia. Why are you running for city council? I know. What is it about this go around?

You're like, is this something, like, have you been active in politics before? Or is this something completely out of, I don't know, as your husband might say, left field, you're like, what are you going to run for politics? What? Why? I think I have a background in skills that I can lend well to city council. I see the role as city council as a steward, okay? They're holding the scales and they're trying to balance the tangible and intangible.

They're balancing the tangibles of money and. time on all fronts and then they're balancing the intangible like relationships and quality of life and on those scales they're trying to figure out how to manage the priorities of the city I was the president of the chamber of commerce at 25 years old soon after I got back and was running my business and I saw how important advocacy is in terms of groups that are in the city to help Lloydminster thrive So I'm not a stranger to governance, board governance, knowing your role and control, and then being able to build the relationships around you that help the whole thing thrive. So why at this time in my life do I think, you know, I'd be great at city council? I think I've got the skills.

I think I have a passion for making this town a place where we can be proud of. I know that at certain times in my life, I've had a love, hate relationship with Lloydminster. anyone who's lived here has. But deep down to my core, I'm a person of service and a person who knows that you can be optimistic around the problems. And when you cooperate and come together, there is a solution in that problem. You know, one of the things that has been discussed at length is been, you know, how do you, I'm going to use marketing because you've got a marketing backer. How do you market Lloyd Minster to people that are prospective, right? Because you're in the middle of nowhere.

Now, I'm just going to be generally here because I love this area. And grew up here all my life as well. But you're in the middle of nowhere in theory. It gets down to minus way too much. It's dark a lot. It's, you know, all these different things. And yet being from the city of Lloyd, I look at it and I go, you know, you want to track people here. I mean, we have Bud Miller.

And I look at Bud Miller in particular because if you look in the area, around us. Go for a few hundred kilometers in pretty much any direction. You're hard pressed to find things like that. Now, once again, I point on Bud Miller, there could be other things. I look at your marketing background. I'm like, is that something you can lend to the city of Lloyd to not only showcase what Lloyd has to offer, but then maybe try and find ways to get Lloyd Minster to start to engage with itself? I, you know, the beginning part of marketing, anything is understanding the understanding what value you carry and what your competitive advantages. And I think sometimes when you're from somewhere, it's like you can't see a forest for the trees

type of situation, you kind of forget what's really amazing. I've actually heard people who have taken developers around Lloyd Minster actually say that this community with that Budmiller Park is such a jam. And I think we undersell ourselves a little bit. I think, um, I think there are are things about living in a town the size of ours while it's still growing that provides a lot of just quality of life pieces and absolutely I would lend my ideas to economic development because I really think that selling this we've got to be we've got to turn into a salesperson of Lloydminster I've done sales training before for almost all of my career and a lot of that that training is in being able to communicate to people why?

Like what's in it for them to be here? Yeah, we're in the middle nowhere. Yeah, we got a lot of stuff. But we also are starting to have newness around facilities around, like you said, Bud Miller Park. I know we're considered a winter city, but I don't think we have to be. I don't think we have to hem ourselves into that. And it may be just thinking a little creatively,

maybe just putting some different minds around it. And I don't know. I think it's amazing here. I think we just have to turn into our own best salesperson. COVID, I'll repeat pretty much what I've said. I haven't brought up with everyone who's walked in, but I am curious your thoughts. COVID pretty much fractured every family that I know of.

Okay, that's, I, I, there are some that didn't, you know, we can get into, but like as a community, we fractured. How do you move forward on building Lloyd tighter into, um, You know, since you've been here since 87, I'm sure you have fond memories of a lot of things that Lloyd did, stood for, pulled off together. And at times we still do lots of those things. I don't mean to say that we don't do any of it anymore.

But there is a divide in society. And Lloyd's no different. If you were sitting there looking at that question, is there anything that comes to mind? I'm like, well, these are some thoughts I have on how to pull people together. I think listening to each other is really, really important. I think we did get fractured in COVID. I feel like people got siloed.

I think people went into their corners. And part of the work I do with customer service training, but also with people, is getting people to talk. And I don't mean share your viewpoint so we can argue. I mean, just I need us to find the commonalities, why we are more the same than different. And I think any type of events that allow us to show us our sameness, not our differences, are going to be beneficial. I think from a city standpoint, I see city council as, first of all, governance, then advocacy. But then I think it's leadership.

And I think the leadership of them listening, seeing the collective of all of us, and being able to pick up on where people feel fractured and offer the opportunity for us to listen to each other. Now, you're asking me, what is that exact event? What is that exact thing? I don't think it's one thing.

In fairness, I sprung this on you. I know. Yeah, and I'm walking with it in my values. And I think, you know, is there a specific thing? No. But I think what is interesting is that when I sat in the public hearing, I saw residents who were very angry. And in my line of work, anger comes from fear.

People are afraid of everything. And when you're afraid and then angry, It's very difficult to come to creative solutions together. And I think some of what the anger and the fear told us, what it told me was from my customer service background, when the customer is angry, they feel like they haven't been heard. And so what step did we miss either in our business or even in a city standpoint? What step did we miss that we didn't hear them? And I mean, really.

Not, you know, and sometimes I share with my clients that sometimes when your business, you can't see the forest for the trees. So you think you're listening. No, I know I listen to my customer. I know exactly what they need. But a lot of times when you're running your business, you think what you think about how you're doing it, but does that actually resonate?

And so when I saw, I really felt for people because when I saw that anger, I was like, yeah, they haven't been heard in a way that feels meaningful. It's one thing to just say, here's a forum, and I'm, yeah, and I'm writing down your answers or whatever. But listening to feel heard that is meaningful means people feel seen. And when people feel seen, solutions present themselves. Like tiny whispers, solutions present themselves. And then I think it's part of what you said before.

When those solutions start to present themselves, the focus shifts from, being in corners to going, okay, I can't hate you from afar. Like, or I can't hate you up close, I mean. I always say that. It's like, it's really hard for people to hate a person up close. So if I'm over there and I'm in that corner, I can very easily sling darts, shots, shots fired as they say on the internet. But if we're sitting in a room and we find, hey, you're like me, I'm like you,

you're a father, I'm a mother, we have a family, we have a family, we have stuff. We probably have the same fears. Up close. The thing, the thing when you go back to the last, well, one city council, man, that was land use bylaws, I want to say, where it was like people out the door, it was just packed there. And there's a portion of the population. I don't know what it is.

Is it 10%, it's a 3%, is it 50%. I don't know what it is. But COVID, they were not listened to. I can I can I can I can almost rattle off exactly what they what they're upset about how they were treated by society on and on and on and they see different things happening in society and they feel like they're not hurt and so they show up and then they they probably say some things that that you know and I can rattle off a whole bunch of them you know 15 minute cities land use bylaw the fact they want to change the zoning on building you know from from single dwelling to you know, quad or four person houses. I forget how to say that, right? Here's why I'm not running. And on and on.

And some of it people get written off for because, oh, that's never going to happen. But they just lived through. They were told in order to show up to a restaurant, they had to have certain paperwork because they didn't do so. And they're like, that just happened. And so that's a huge chunk of the anger or the fear of like, where are we heading in society? And why can't we talk about it? And I don't know.

I hear the listening portion of what you're talking about. I find that very interesting because certainly sitting here, that's what I do. I sit and I listen to people and I'm, oh, man, right? Because that's what the podcast has become. We get so many different opinions in. You sit, you listen because talking things through is where answers are found. It's where you can start to be like piece things together. And, you know, one of the things about being on city council is you're going to hopefully get to ask and talk questions about problems the city is going to face.

And that should be very interesting, I think. It's super interesting. Like, I've actually done a lot of learning. Actually, my husband came upstairs yesterday, and he's like, what do you do? It was after dinner. What are you doing? I'm like, I'm studying. I'm studying.

I like learning, but I'm also, I think part of my strengths and strong points and superpowers is that I'm a really big picture thinker. So I was actually, I've been actually walking and doing lots of what I call chit chats, beefs and bouquets. I have this little book and I keep writing people's stories for the last three weeks. What do you think? What do you think? Beef bouquet, whatever.

And I was saying to a local veterinarian actually yesterday, I said, it's kind of like painting. My mom and I paint oil painting. Okay. So if any oil painters out there, you're going to get this. It's kind of like painting. Oil painting. You get your canvas, it's empty. You take your HB pencil and you,

put your reference lines in. So perspective, the dot, focal point, all that. And then you start to scrub in yellow ochre. Yellow ochre doesn't look like anything. It looks like actually the color of your desk here. And you're scrubbing in shapes. Shapes. Doesn't look like anything, doesn't look at anything. And then you start to put layer, layer one, layer two, layer three, highlight, low light. That's what I'm getting right now. And that I think is part of the listening. And And part of what I'm really enjoying of already the process of what this looks like. Because as you start to color in individual pictures, what you notice is that they're all connected. I counted in like my my brain is weird, but it works visually.

I counted the different scrubbing ins of yellow ochre. And there was like nine of them already just on the idea of like how we deal with social program and all these things. Like, that's nine pictures to color in. Plus, you have to click them together. So it's very complex. It is so complex, guys. And everybody wants the really silver bullet answer.

And there isn't one. So when, when, when, you know, it's funny. We've been talking, I've got 20 minutes and I'm like, I better make a hammer. Yeah, we got to. So, so when you look at the city of Lloyd, what do you think is the number one issue you would like to help try and address the complexity of it?

If I look at my picture in my mind, I think that the one panel that connects them all is the feeling of safety. And part of my background is in marketing, obviously, but in marketing, we talk about consumer behavior. Consumer behavior is why people buy things, the psychology of why people buy things. And that psychology is based heavily on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which moves up, what base level needs, safety, belonging, self-actualization. And when I looked at all these pieces in my mind, the base level of where I think people feel disconnected is around the sense of safety. In some ways, basic needs, house, clothing, blah, blah, blah, right?

That's fine. but feeling safe affects everything so feeling safe to have my business feeling safe to have my home feeling safe to go to work feeling safe to safety so where and so but then when you break the safety picture down now you're looking at okay um you're looking at um crime and you know crime and presence, you're looking at criminal justice system, you're looking at, and then you're looking at the neighborhood level, and then you're looking at the empowerment of people in the neighborhood, and then you're looking at how people organize, which I think is great, and then you're looking at what can people do to empower themselves, and that's good, and then what's the education

around all of those? So I think part of being part of city council means that you're choosing a team to look at every panel in the picture and to look at it and go, how do we see that these fit together? I think city council is a team. I think you pick your players, just like you pick your McDoward, dry side of the line and they're going to be sweet together. There's going to be a mix like that for the next city council for it to be effective. You need people who can be team players together and then move through. You're a hand talker. I'm a hand talker. I'm a hand talker. and then move through the decision making together as a team. Teams don't work when there's adversaries.

But if I may, is there one thing that you're like, we need to address this? You said safety and then there's multiple layers to that, which I agree. If I was to just pin you on anything, you'd be like safety, so you're talking crime and the homeless problem or issue, wherever you want to call it.

To me, they're all parts of the same picture. I was really encouraged by Staff Sergeant Sergeant Nut Brown, who was at the October 25th meeting, who shared some advancements that they've had in presence in the areas, in even in taking some certain folks off the street, in taking some known folks out of the game, in how he's taking a holistic approach to the area,

but also the city and comprehensively our area. And I think using the city being a leader in how it advocates and how it snaps that kind of picture into place is the role of city council. The city council is to help that come together. So ideas of pinning me down on what exactly is the issue, I think if you simplify it, you miss the entire picture. I always say to my clients that, you know, if you want to fix something, if it's a two-word answer, you have oversimplified the problem. You can't have a two-word answer.

Things ripple. Well, final thought for the borders of Lloyd Minster. Yes, it's flown by. And I've already went over time, which is some like, you know, I have one job, Sean. What would you say to the voters of Lloydminster? I really want to iterate to the voters of Lloydminster that you are choosing a team. You need to choose a team that can work together around the table, that even if they maybe don't think the same on something, that they have different worldviews on something, everyone comes from a different background on their life. But that they can look across the table and go, does this make sense?

for the whole? Does this enhance? Does this make life in Lloydminster welcoming for everybody who wants to be here? I just got goosebumps up my neck because the idea of making this place welcoming is the thing that will solve our economic development problems, our social connection problems, welcoming. That people feel invited. here and that they belong here. And if tracking back to that Maslow's hierarchy, after safety comes belonging. So nobody gets to be their best at self-actualization without belonging first. And I think people have to keep in mind who is going to spark that idea of belonging.

Put your vote against those names. Michelle, thanks for hopping in and doing this. Thank you so much for having me. I'm sitting here with Sarah Christie. Thanks for joining me from afar. You couldn't be in studio. But I appreciate you hopping on nonetheless. For the audience who's tuning in, let's just start with who is Sarah Christie.

Okay, well, first of all, I want to thank Sean for having me on. And I wish you would have took my V card. But unfortunately, I had to give it to Kurt for my first interview with him. Anyways, I'm from Lloydminster, born and raised. I'm 41 years old. graduated from the comp under Deb MacArthur in 2001. I went to university in Calgary, got my nursing degree with distinction, made the Dean's List. During that time, my father passed away from cancer, so I decided after I graduated to come back home and be closer to my mom and family.

And so I worked 16 years at the Lloyd Hospital as an RN, just recently resigned from my position. mainly because I was sifled there. I couldn't do what I wanted to do at the end of the day, so I needed to move on. I have a passion for change. I'm a world shaker, a world changer, planet shaker, and I want to see change in my community. I mean, it starts locally.

You got to change local before you can impact the world. So I'm doing this for my kids. I have three boys. They're all in hockey and school, and I want to make the future a better, place for my kids. So why this election then, Sarah? Why are you running this go-around? What sticks out to you? Oh, well, I mean, so many things need change in Lloydminster. Me personally, my number one would be the budget. Like, if the budget's out of control, my property taxes went up $1,000.

I don't see the reason why. A lot of people in my community, you know, they care about the property taxes like everybody cares about where their money is going if it's well spent so that initially was my priority but now getting to know members of the community and the needs of lloyd um another major issue is obviously the homelessness crisis the crime um so that's also on my radar uh as well as the housing authority they've been treating their people very poorly and that needs to be addressed and um kind of the housing authority needs to be reinvented, whatever they're doing. It's not right. So those three things probably are the three of the biggest.

Did you say Housing Authority? I think that's what I call it. What do you mean by Housing Authority? Can you expand on that? So the people that live in low-income housing, they're not being treated well by the Housing Authority. Here in Lloyd Minster. Yes. in Lloydminster, the Lloyd Housing Authority that Michael Diochucks on the board of or has some position on the housing authority.

He's part of it. Okay. And so if I, okay, so Housing Authority, where the money's going, and you gave me a third one and forgive me. I'm trying to rattle this off. And forgive me, folks, with the delay we have on this. I appreciate Sarah doing this on short notice and from afar. But there was three things. Housing Authority, affordability, and what was your third one?

Okay, so homelessness and crime, housing authority, and the budget. So day one, if Sarah Christie, you're on the RM Council, sorry, the City Council, what do you think can be done when you look at, let's start with money? You know, you open up the books. Are you hopeful that you can just open up the books and start doing things? Well, I mean, it's going to take, it's not as simple as that, obviously. We're going to have to get financial release, find out where the money is going. So it's going to be a bit of a process.

It's not like we can just be like, okay, here's a budget. Oh, we're going to spend it here, here and there. Like we need to investigate where all the money's gone, where it's going. Is it the right choices for Lloydminster? are the right people being paid? Are there positions on in city admin that could maybe be abolished? Maybe two people are doing one job. Maybe we only need one person doing that job, not two.

So we're going to have to bring in, obviously, like financial people, accountants, whatever, to dig into the books and see what's going on. I've been asking everybody who's come in here. Like, I get the sense that you've shown up and watched council meetings, but just in case I'm off on that, have you attended council meetings? Have you been there to see things live in action? Oh, yeah. So I, two years ago, I started attending council meetings very heavily. They all know me. They know me by name and face. And I never actually really met them in person, but it's funny how they say, oh, hey, Sarah, because they know who. I am. And then I've followed city politics all this time and I got busy with like personal stuff, but I started attending again in August. The first meeting I attended this year was middle of August. It was the governance meeting when they first brought up the land use bylaw update.

So I've been pretty steady. What has been something that stuck out to you from the council meetings that you're either, well, I don't know, just what's stuck out to you from being a part of and attending council meetings? The internet is actually really crappy here, eh? Yes, it is. I'm trying to move to see if it gets better. Is that better?

So, I'll ask it again. You've been attending, by the sounds of it, you've been attending lots of council meetings. So I've been wondering, you know, from all the prospective candidates that haven't been a part of council, like actively sitting on it. What are some things that have stuck out to you that you hope to address if you're elected? Like you're watching this and you're going, I don't know.

It could be concerns. It could be things that you just think you'd be good at and helping raise questions or concerns about bills coming through or what have you. I mean, you're attending these. What's sticking out to you about city council and the meetings? Number one, the closed session. They really bothered me. Like I, one of my first council meetings, I sat there with a friend of mine and Doug Rodwell,

the city clerk at the time, came over and was like, okay, time to go. And I'm like, why? And he's like, we're going into closed session. I'm like, why? What's the secret? And he's like, well, it's policy. It's, that's what we do. We go into closed session.

I'm like, well, what are you hiding? Why do you have to go into closed session? Like, this is a public office. What is there to keep from us? You, I mean, Doug wasn't elected by us, but council was and the mayor was. was so what's the secrets you're hiding I don't get it I don't I don't understand these closed sessions in a public office there should be nothing hidden and there isn't you can FOIP Freedom of Information and Privacy Act you can

poise the city for any information you want and they have to release it to you so we we've poised them for closed session meetings and got information from those closed sessions many people have done that in Lloyd and as a citizen you have you can you can easily submit your request and say I want the probation from this closed session and they have to give it to you. So that's a big, okay. No, no, sorry. One of the things we're dealing with is, you know, got to love technology, a little bit of a delay.

If elected, what's some things that you would try to, you know, one of the things that we've talked a lot about today has been crime in Lloydminster. Do you think there's an active role that the city council can play in addressing that? Yeah, like as council, we're advocates for the community. So we, the mayor has a very close relationship with RCMP. And I mean, we, some of our tax dollars go towards that police department. So as far as I'm understanding, the mayor meet with the chief or whoever, like regularly, semi-regularly. The mayor knows what's going on in this town. They know everything that RC&P can and can't do.

the mayor knows what responsibility are supposed to be on council and him and the citizens versus RCMP. So we just, for that solution, like we do, we need to develop a better, I don't know, relationship or what have you with the RCMP. Yeah, it's, you know, one of the, I guess another thing that's really come up is like, How do you involve the community more? You know, you talk about, one, you're talking about a relationship with the RCMP. And I wonder, you know, you've been attending a lot of city council meetings now.

How do you, you know, bridge a gap of getting the public involved with what's going on in the city? Town hall meetings are a huge deal and meetings in the evening so everyone can attend because people work during the day. That's why nobody attends council. It's 1.30 on a Monday. Who can skip work for that? It's good that it's live stream so people can watch it. I don't know if people are aware. You can watch it every Monday on the city's website.

But yeah, more evening and weekend events to engage a community because people work Monday to Friday. So you would support going to evening and weekends? Just not every evening, but you know, a lot of people want council meetings in the evening and they claim they would attend it. Yeah, every Monday evening instead of Monday afternoon at 1.30. Because the mayor's putting in overtime. He's there till like seven, eight or eight o'clock at night. Like council has to go until it's over. So like when we went to the MVP public hearing and they listened to us for three or four hours,

they still had to finish the rest of the meeting after that. So they were there till like nine o'clock that night. So they probably got paid overtime. I don't know. I don't know how it works. but through COVID um I don't know of a single family that wasn't you know I I've been saying fractured but certainly pushed to the brink with a lot of different things that were pushed down from the top um in the city of Lloyd the community how I don't know how do you build back

that relationship how do you uh um soot back together if you would how do you build community I guess is what I'm trying to spit out in your mind from a city council perspective well you have to get out there and listen to people's stories and how they were personally affected by everything that happened during that tyranny and get to know people, get to know their stories, ask them what they would want differently next time if it were to happen again. Yeah, you just have to get out there and meet people. What's the biggest issue you think Lloyd Minster will face in the next four years? Like if you're elected, what do you think is, you know, certainly we've, we've, you've rattled off three of like, here's some key issues.

But when you look maybe a little further into the future, what do you think you might have to deal with, you know, looking into the future a little further? This freaking Sinovus Energy Hub, that's $100 million and then some that we're on the hook for. Like the city back in the spring, I think, passed a bylaw that they could borrow money from Alberta, which is just going to put us more into debt.

we can they passed it we can we can apply for loans outside of the city to a greater authority and we're just going to owe more and more money and our kids are going to be paying that debt just like Trudeau did to our kids our kids are paying Canada's debt for years and years and years and Lloyd is doing the same thing to our kids we keep borrowing money we don't have to build crap we don't need. Well, I'm curious. Like, do you think, well, I mean, like the Sinova's hub, there's nothing much anyone can do about it now.

Like, I mean, it's, I don't know. Is it two thirds built? I don't know where it is on the scale. You drive by it. It's an impressive. It's an impressive structure. It certainly is. You know, like, when you look at that.

An important part of that that one of citizens pointed out to me was our infrastructure. Like, that road cannot maintain as is. the amount of people they expect going in and out of the casino and Cinovus Energy Hub, if that's the name, I don't know. But like, they're going to have to spend a pile of money on the road there to make it better to support the volume of traffic going in and out. And like, if there was an emergency and there's one way in and one way out of that place, the traffic's going to get backlogged.

So we're going to have to spend a pile of money on that. Maybe it's already in the budget, I don't know. Maybe they accounted for it. I'm not sure. With this, you're talking about this ability to borrow more money from the Alberta government. Is that something you'd like to see closed off then so that we're not spending more and more money? Yeah. We really need to just work with what we have.

And we need way more taxpayers' input on the budget. And, you know, the city always puts out these loaded questions. surveys. Oh, do you want to see better streets cleaned? Well, your taxes will go up this much. Like, it's like, I did a survey where it was literally a scale and it's like the more things you want seeing done, up goes the scale. Okay, your taxes are going up this much for that. Like, and and just very leading questions, like they loaded leading questions that cause you to answer the way they want you to, but you're forced to answer it that way because of what you want for your city.

Like whoever does these surveys, they got to go. Could I then say that one of the things you'd like to see, you know, as the city's trying to get engagement out of its public, is you'd like to see it put in a different way so that it actually people can explain their thoughts. Do we want our city clean? Yeah. But what's the cost associated with that? And maybe there's some more creative ways than just raising taxes?

Yeah, for sure there is. You know, if the taxpayers could think of ways. Well, I wonder, like, when you look at, you know, it seems like one of the things that I've heard is, is the size of city employment is continuing to increase, you know, over and over and over again. Meanwhile, the city of Lloyd Minster, you know, is almost stagnant in population growth. Oh, yeah. When you... Not only that, statistically speaking, in the last five years, our population has dropped. But yet somehow we're poised for exponential growth according to the MDP, the presentation they put on for the MDP.

And I called them on. I said, how can you say Lloyd is poised for exponential growth when statistically... And they're like, oh, based on statistics. I'm like, we've lost population in the last five years, not gained it. And our oil and gas and farming are under attack by the federal government. So how can we anticipate exponential growth in the next five years, unless you're bringing in immigrants, which Albert's is doing. He already signed us up to bring in 10,000 immigrants.

Sign us up on what? So the Alberta Rural Renewal Stream, he applied personally, signed the letter himself to the Alberta government, to get money to bring in to attract and retain immigrants for employers because he claims employers are crying out to him that they need employees. But yet you talk to anyone from town, they can't get a job. They're kids, university kids coming home at summer, they can't get jobs. Okay, teenagers can't get jobs because they're all being used up by immigrants. So I don't think we need more immigrants.

We need to start hiring local people. again who need jobs or Canadians with a about a minute left is there any final thoughts you'd have for the voting public here in Lloyd Minster I might my hats off to everyone who continues to get involved because I think this is what makes a democracy hopefully work is that when people step up and put their you know well I don't know going to this ring of public scrutiny and everything else but for the voting public here in Lloyd Minster there are any final thoughts that you got Sarah well I

With that being said, I'm not against immigrants. I'm, if you're coming to Canada for the right reasons to have a better life, to be free, to be a productive member of society, pay your taxes, I welcome you. There's a ton of immigrants in town that have set up local businesses that are doing very well, and they just want to be here because Canada is an awesome place. Lloyd's an awesome place. I'm not talking about those immigrants. I'm talking about the refugees that are coming to get handouts,

leaching off society and bringing in their family and collecting my parents' CPP that they paid into their entire lives. Okay, those are the immigrants I'm talking about and everyone knows. Everyone, I'll just leave it at that. Well, best of luck to you here in the coming election and I encourage people as I've been doing to get out and vote and I appreciate you hopping on and doing this kind of short notice and all the technical difficulties, but either way, thanks for hopping on, Sarah. Yeah, thank you. I'm sitting with Michael Dodguck.

Thank you, sir, for hopping in the studio. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. You know, one of the, you stand out as a candidate to me. Jason Whiting isn't making it into the studio. So, you know, like when I look at all the candidates that are running this year, you stand out because you've been a candidate for, like we were just saying, two terms, eight years.

Eight years. That's unique in this election run. I think, as far as I can tell, there isn't anyone else. Yourself, Jason Whiting, Dave Lopez has been seven months. Am I missing anyone? Did I miss anyone? Well, the mayor's. Fair, but the mayor is.

He's in the back commission. Yes, yes, yes. So I guess we want to start with just a quick one, two minutes on who you are. And then we'll get into some things municipally. All right. moved to Lloyd in 1998, married two children, a wife works independently. I worked with the Lloyd Public School Division for eight years as assistant director, eight years as director of education, retired in 2014. 2015, my daughter had completed five years of hockey at Nate and they had invited

her to be the president of the woman's hockey alumni association. She said, I don't know if I want to do it. I said, you got to get back and that's part of the process. And Nate's been good to you. And said, okay, I'll do it. What are you going to do? So I said, well, I'll run for counsel and thought no one will vote for me anyways, but I did make it in. And yeah, whoops. And so she did her three years and I did my eight and now I'm looking for 12. So it's, it's been rewarding and challenging at the same time. Well, I am curious, why run again? You know, when you said you got in and now it's been eight years and you're like, well, heck, why not more? Yeah, that's a good question. For some time I was,

you know, really pondering that in peace and looking forward to do some other things. And I'm an extrovert and I like being around people and I like doing stuff. I'm also in the middle of, I chair the Loebrenster Region Housing Group. And we're just kind of in that process of totally amalgamating the Pioneer Lodge as well as the regional housing group and looking at doing a knockdown, a replacement of the old 1960s wing. And so we're kind of almost a third of the way into the project. and I feel like I want to be there to sort of at least get it to the point where it's ready to go to tender

and someone can finish off that piece of it. I'm also on Vermillion River Regional Alliance, and I took on the role as chair of that group two years ago. And it's been really fascinating because I think, you know, what we've seen in the past has been a reluctance, if you like, to work with all the other members in the region in a way where you feel a little bit of vulnerable. And I work as well quite a bit in economic development, So I go out or two conventions and promote our city.

And one of the things that I do see is that people are not just all interested in living in Lloydminster. They like to live in communities outside of the city. So when I go there, I tell them, hey, we have all these other communities. You don't have to live in the city. And so I promote the region. And promote it at two levels. One is that it's a good place to live in the region and the city. But secondarily, opportunities for economic development and growth.

So for the first time, we've done a project where it would benefit all the members of the Vermilion River Regional Alliance, Manville, Vermillion, County Vermilion, Kittscotti, Marwain, Paradise Valley. And we did a tourism piece that we highlighted. And we're now looking at doing another project, which will do a video that will do an overarching kind of presentation of the region and then dive into each separate community highlighting its assets. And another part of the project we're working with is that connected with Nate and their fourth-year business students will do a project for you on coming into your community.

and it can be either an economic or a tourism project, but they will come in, and so we've provided them information, and they're saying the feedback we got yesterday was that, you know, it's a really solid proposal, but they will do a sort of combined economic development tourism proposal that will be here for the region in terms of developing it. So those pieces are, for me, are parts that I want to finish up. I'm also on the Lightminster Health, Regional Health,

advisory board, anyways, health district advisory board as a citizen of the community. I suppose I could continue that without being on council, but it's nice to be able to hear sort of the needs of the community from that table. We work with the representatives from the health region. I'm not entirely happy with Rerat. They're now doing another study here in the process of delivering an RFP

and issuing the contract, but the study that was done in 07 and the other one 15 really are almost identical. And they've made recommendations on construction, enhancing services, expanding services, and they've done zero. So I really feel like as a part of an obligation to be able to continue and support that work, if you like, for our community. You got your hands in a lot of different projects, is what I hear.

That's why you're taking. If I was to summarize that, you're working on a whole bunch of different things for the city of Lloyd and you want to see it through. Yes. Fair enough? Yep. You bet. So do you have a visit?

You don't have to answer this. But are you like, yeah, I got four more years and maybe four after that? Like, do you ever think like that? Or you're just like, no, it's day at a time. I think it's, I always check my wrist for the barcode to see if my best before date's come and gone kind of thing. And I still think I have lots to offer. I don't want to think that far ahead for another four.

I have a wife. I have kids. And, you know, certainly there's always that piece about your own health. And, you know, it'll be a director in terms of where you go. we as a council have lost a member over the last two terms, one each term as well. So I'm very cognizant of the fact that I don't want to be the third one and three terms to go as well.

So it's about being well, but it's also about being balanced in terms of what you do for your family as well as your community. So elected in 2016, correct? 15. 2015? Yes. I think it's 15.

Yeah, I think it's 15. Okay. Either one. Yeah. You got to, you know, you've had some. You think of the first eight years you're in. You've had some very interesting times. Yes.

The one I've been asking people about, now, this is why I find you so intriguing, because most of them are staring at it from the outside, right? If I was in council, this is what I would do, or this is what I see and on and on and on. COVID got into everybody's homes.

You were sitting in government at the time. Yep. What lessons did you learn back then that if ever we went back to anything that resembled that? you know, like another pandemic, a climate lockdown on and on and on, these world catastrophes, if you would, Gwent. Is there anything you learned from that time that you would move for knowing you had that knowledge and you could help with, you know, the incoming council?

I think one of the rules that I've lived by, I guess, is that certainly in education in 30 plus years that I was there, has always act with abundance of caution. you certainly don't want to do any harm. Certainly when COVID was announced and we formed our team, we looked at the kind of the conditions that we wanted to put in place to make sure that we would create, in essence, the safest environment possible. So from that perspective, you know,

we were relying upon the experts in the health field from Saskatchewan Health as well as Alberta Health provide directions, and we followed them and tried to make sure we followed them to a T. We were challenged in a lot of ways because we had information that, uh, Los Saskatchewan Health is in existence. example, would give us information on a frequency of COVID, but wouldn't allow us to share it publicly. So we were stuck making directions and taking directions, if you like, making decisions without being able to share that information. So it put us in a bit of a spot where I think we were

a bit of a target where people weren't convinced COVID was a real thing or other issues around it. But the reality was, is the health people were saying, yeah, here's the numbers, you've got to do something. When they released information in Saskatchewan, for example, in one community, the people were able to determine who the individuals were, and they were actually threatened, and they were going to burn down the house of that individual. So that's kind of the piece where Saskatchewan House said, no, we can't share the information just for safety overall,

because if they shared it for us, they'd have to share it for everybody else. So there were a lot of things that were going on behind that don't think the general public was aware of. So, you know, going forward, it's not a perfect science. You do the best you can if the information you have. I know people are asking for, well, you know, is it, you know, is it an absolute guarantee that, you know, if you do this and you get that.

The answer is no, you never get an absolute guarantee anywhere on anything. You buy a new vehicle, there's a recall. You know, even if you take aspirin, it says, be aware of this may not, you know, these are the side effects and so on and so forth. So I think what we're doing is trying to rely upon the experts in the health field to give us the best direction. And it's always act with caution, act with safety. If you're reckless and cause harm to people, that's not good. The only thing I might add to that is although an abundance of caution, It is, and at times was, reckless because it closed down businesses, different things like that.

There was more to it than just one aspect. That's why I bring up, is there anything that would be changed? Now, certainly, from a higher government, I would hope there would be things that would be changed. Just curious on a lower level if there was things, because I appreciate the insight. You know, but, you know, like all of a sudden you can't do certain things. Certain things can't be opened. Although in one aspect, well, we're keeping people safe. Another aspect, I mean, what happened out of that was there was a whole bunch of things happening over here that weren't addressed.

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that. I think, though, the other piece around that is that, you know, it's always important to understand what your locus control is and what your role is relative to what goes on around you. So through the course of the pandemic, we did have an economic recovery committee. And so we had membership from, I was about six or eight people within the community as well as the mayor and our city manager. and I chaired that committee. We focused on not just, we focused on basically retention as well as recruitment of business and maybe one second on recruitment,

but really focused on how to retain business within our community. So from that perspective, you know, the whole buy local shop, local piece, that was partly motivated by those discussions. And I think the Chamber and our economic development team sort of led the charge around that piece. It was challenging and difficult for a lot of people.

I also know people who lost family members. and so you're trying to balance, you know, so what's the value of one life? What's the value of business? And how do you strike the balance? And if somebody knows the right answer, let me know. Yeah, well, I guess, you know, the whole I lost a family member to COVID,

I can go the other way and say, I know of people whose lives have been alterably screwed because of taking the vaccine. So, you know, this is where I just, you know, I don't want to sit on COVID the entire time. You're just working government. And one of the things about being eight years, the difference I see from you and all the other candidates is just perspective.

I'm like, you've been in there. It's really interesting to me. And, you know, you get all these exuberant people going in, we're going to fix things, or we're going to do things in city council. And I wonder, sitting there, if I may, what do you think the biggest issue Lloyd faces, you know, here in a couple months when you got a whole new council in? And let's just play it out of the cards. Dietrucks back in there.

And you're, you know, one of the veterans, if you would, who's got the experience of being on council. What's the thing that you think is the big issue Lloyd faces today? Wow. You know, it depends who you talk to. And you're talking to me right now. So I guess I get to choose that. I really think right now one of the challenges that we really need to be able to address

is that the inflation is growing faster than we're able to grow economically. And our economic growth sort of has been slowed since back to 2015 with a drop in oil prices. and then COVID struck. And so we're still trying to find our way through that. I think once we're able to get more economic growth within the community, so we have coming at energy with that project in the northeastern part of the city, started off around 600 million, and I think it's, you know, nearing in on a billion dollars.

That'll be, are you familiar with that one? I believe so, but maybe just explain that. It's a kind of biodiesel, and I think they... It's over by the golf course, relative. Just south of the landfill. Yeah, thank you. That's a better description. So, you know, when they come in, that's roughly a billion dollars worth of assessment that'll go to the assessment tax base,

which means it'll allow us to not have to rely upon housing taxation as much in other business. It'll be spread out more. Secondarily, I mean, we had the announcement by Musgrave that says he has, I think, six businesses within the next little while they're going to come to the community with potentially a thousand employees in those areas that will work in those businesses. So from that perspective, when you have these businesses coming in, it takes away the reliance upon you. your housing tax to do the things you want to do and puts more of the emphasis back on commercial taxation. I'm curious, you know, forgive me, because you've just said some really interesting things, you know, in chats with a mayor and I don't, sorry, mayor, I don't mean three under the bus,

but one of the numbers that got thrown on was 10,000 people. I'm going, where the heck does that number come from? But when you tack in musgrave, talking about 1,000 employees, and then you start to add in, oh, okay. What's the average family size? Size and everything. You go, oh, well, I mean, immediately, like, okay, well, that's interesting. You toss in all these different pieces, and I go, oh, here's a question that has, you know, we're talking about the election runoff, but I guess I'll throw it back on myself.

This is a conversation, and I sit here and I'm listening to you, and I go, how do we engage the population more? What is, how do you get, because that rate there, what you just said, why isn't that being spread around the population more? It's been in a paper. It's been in a booster. It's been in the news. Covenants have been out there. And it's just that, again, part of the point is that. the speed at which they're moving is a lot slower than it used to be.

And it's really counterintuitive because when you talk to businesses that want to come into community and develop, they want stuff happening quickly. You talk to any developer, they want to have approval of the project done in a heartbeat so they can move and go ahead because time is money. If your project's delayed by a year, oh, anticipate a rising cost of 33 to 50% on your overall cost on the project. And we've seen that in Prince Albert with the hospital that went from, I don't know, 500 million to 750 million or something like that in terms of cost.

And when they brought the accountants out, they said, and here's why. When you delay the project out, here's the inflationary rising cost. These are coming in a lot slower than I would like them to come in. We, you know, the old Canadian tire has approval for three businesses to go in there. So those pieces are there. Hopefully the, I mean, there's a couple of other restaurants that are going to be refurbished and brought back on stream. That won't change the tax base because they're already paying taxes on those properties. But you really need to enhance that tax base so that you can,

offset the costs for the residential taxes. Right now, that 80% of the cost that it takes to serve and service each lot and home is covered by your taxation. The other 20% is made up elsewhere. So the taxes you pay are only a portion of what the true costs are to keep it going and relative to that. So you rely upon that other investment growth within the city. If we do that and get it right, then you have the capacity to do other things. You have money then available.

You have people that are willing contribute to have. help out in things like homeless. That's a challenge. I think some of the things we've done recently have made an impact there. You have other challenges. I think our health care system really needs to be looked at. We've had two studies that have said do a whole bunch of things and not much of anything's been done. The mayor's been able to bring the health ministers together here. He's been able to bring the premiers together here in the city. We've had some discussions around these pieces and there seems to be some commitment around it. But, you know, again, it's moving so slow in part because I think the economy's growing nowhere near as quickly as at what we're used to.

Hmm. Well, I'm sitting here and I'm like, okay, some of the things I was going to ask you, I'm like, you've kind of thrown that to the side because I'm like, this is really interesting. Because instead of it being like, this is why you should vote for me, I find this is almost like a health check on where we're sitting at as a city. And then I'm going, why, you know, you say the paper. And I go, hmm, maybe one of the things I'd be curious your thoughts on. It's like the world is changing.

I'm not here to knock the paper because, you know, when I was getting ready for this, I read the paper because the paper's been doing great work on local things, but specifically candidates, they had that. Kurt Price is a guy that, you know, has his show, and I know he's been interviewing you all, and I'm like, he does it a different way than I do. Here I sit, and I go, there's all these different avenues.

And yet I'm like, maybe we need to find a way to get the round table humming. Because these things are really interesting. I find them very interesting, and yet I haven't heard some of these things, Michael, which is strange to me. And I guess as a guy who sat there for eight years, you've got to see this problem partly persist

where the public doesn't get what's going on. And some of it can't be told because you don't actually have the finalized contract or whatever. But some of it, as you've just pointed out, is quite common knowledge. It's just that it isn't getting to the public. What are your thoughts on that? that? Well, there are two parts to it. One is that I think as a resident of the city have

responsibility to dig in and ask questions. So I'm excited by the fact that there's 14 people that want to get on council. That's an indicator to be that people are interested in what's going on and trying to make sense of it. I think a couple years back we had, or one term back, that's 17. But I think, you know, the message Musgrave gave was on the front page of the booster. So if you're not going to read, then I guess you're not going to get the message. He did give the presentation, I believe, to either the rotary or the chamber. So if you were in that room, heard it and I'm assuming there was that accountability to share that information. The Covenant Energy story has been out there.

Yeah, the Covenant Energy story, I think the thing of the Covenant Energy story is the pace, right? Because it got announced and then nothing happens and we're in this world where we expect things. And if I learned anything about building houses and the restrictions and the process it takes is there. But one thing I would position to you is people don't get their media like they used to 10 years ago, for sure 50 years ago, like it would take your timeline. People are soaking it up in different avenues. So although it's on the front page of the booster, I'd be curious.

And once again, this is no knock on the paper, but how many people read the paper anymore? How many people read, get their stuff from online? How many people are getting it now from sources like this? And it might be something for your brain and others to wrestle with, I guess. I think those are, you know, it's a really good question. And I know we've been asked that of counsel. And I think we certainly had a number of open houses where people can come ask questions and speak.

I mean, even on our municipal development plan, I think there were almost 12 or 13 instances where those open house over at Service Sports Center. And when we did want it, service sports center, I think we had five or six people show up, and then that was it. And so there's all those pieces where you try to reach out to the public,

and if they don't show up, you don't show up. It doesn't stop us from going out and making itself available. I'm trying to keep us to 20 minutes. I'm going to... I want to know your thoughts on zoning. This has been one of the things that's been talked about lots, about changing an individual lot, an individual home to allow for more people to be on one single lot.

Up to four households is the way that I've been framed it. Your thoughts on this sitting in council. That's been changed. At our last council meeting, we said that if you're in, it's R1 residential, single family homes, and that if you wanted to have multiple homes that you would be in R2 or 3, I can't remember what those differences are.

And basically what it would do is maintain status quo where we're at in terms of the existing municipal development plan. I think there was the other area that I think there's a big question, at least for me, is that, you know, allowing our planning department to have jurisdiction over 25% variance on projects. I'm concerned by that amount in particular. It depends what, you know, the variance is about. I think we currently have it's either 10 or 15%. I'm comfortable with 15. If a developer comes in and it's, you know, close, you know, within a certain amount, you can move a project along. and I know of cases certainly just coming from meetings at Eminton around economic development

where developer approach to your communities, the one that got back to him first got the project. So, I mean, it's red tape, it's time, and it's all those other pieces. But I think we still have work on the variance. Any final thoughts? Well, before I let you out, because this has passed way too quick. Okay. You said a few things that really caught me off guard in a good way, in a very good way. I appreciate you coming in and doing this.

It's making me wonder, you know, as I move forward, if I don't. don't try and devise my own former roundtable to have city councilors come in. You know, I don't know. It's just an idea, folks, take it or leave it. But any final thoughts, sorry, to the voters of Lloydminster here as we close in on not only the debate, but then obviously the actual election itself. You know what? I think people need to dig in and check on each of the candidates and make a choice on who they see, you know,

be able to carry forward the mission and the vision for the city. people have websites they have you know social media i'm on lincoln i'm on on ex formerly facebook and so have accounts on there people want to reach out and ask they can do that but i think again it's uh you know i really believe that over the last eight years that the work that we've done has sort of pointed us on the right path in terms of how we banished finances we had a forensic audit that said it says you have money that you don't have we fixed that we have reserves put in place. We're also stuck with this scenario in terms of timing of a cycle when buildings are aging out. And that's, it's like you go, you've got to be kidding, one more building

we have to deal with. The upside there is that I think people may be concerned about the finances. The province sets a limit in which you can have a debt limit, and it's a ratio dependent upon what your assessed value is. We've set the threshold at 75% of that limit that the province sets, and we're not near that level at all period. And whereas there are many communities are at that threshold at the maximum they can actually borrow and have his debt. So while it may look like we have a lot of debt in terms of comparisons to other cities, we're doing really, really well. And I think the model has changed going from the past to the present where the old model where, you know, you had to have all the money in place in order to do a project.

That doesn't work. Nobody buys a house now with, you know, $500,000 cash. And so I think there's a shifting in the model of two things. One is being able to set up our finances in the way we've done it. And I think the other part is recognizing that when you're involved in a project that are generational, that allow other generations to pay some of the costs as well. There's no reason why you and I should pay in our lifetime within the city for the total cost of a project that's going to be around for 50 to 60 years.

There needs to be some responsibility, if you like, going forward as well. But if you're looking for who to vote for, you know what? I'm hoping they pick me. Obviously, I'm running. I want to win. But do your research. Talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, find out, you know, who's this person running? What do they have to offer?

Are they going to really, they have credibility and do they have some substance to what they're saying, thinking? And make your decisions. But do your homework. I think in the past, and you mentioned, you know, we get our information from a lot of places. Sometimes we get it from our neighbor. It may not be right. It may not be accurate. Sometimes we get it from, you know, social media.

And I've read things on the Internet that is patently false. And yet it's there available for me to read. but I have to be a critical thinker and go through that to decide whether it's true or not. So I think the burden is higher today than it's ever been in the past because you have access to more information in a number of different places. And so the challenge is do your homework. Ask the questions. Ask the candidates. Reach out. Ask them what they think. And vote.

And vote. Mostly vote. Thanks, Michael. You're welcome. Thank you for having. I'm sitting with Tracy King. Thank you for hopping in the studio. You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

I just like to explain my voice. I'm just on the tail end of some laryngitis, so I do sound a little bit hoarse, but I'm feeling pretty good, so I'm good to go. I think he sound great. I don't know. Maybe that's just me. I think you sound perfectly fine. Tracy. Who is Tracy King?

Tracy King. Okay. I've lived in Lloydminster now for, being here for 36 years. With my husband Bart, we raised four children. I'm a mom and a wife and a grandmother. I worked in banking for 25 years, had a small family oil business, lots of volunteer stuff. And I think at this point in my life, I've looked at myself and said, I love this community. It's been great to raise my family.

People are generous and kind and community-oriented, and I just wanted to have, feel like I wanted to give back. Give back to the community that's given so much to me and my family. So I want to run for office. I want to celebrate some of the great things that we're doing and be involved in meeting some of these challenges that everyone's talking about right now. So that's who I am. I hope I bring some wisdom, some empathy,

some common sense, practicality to my role at City Council if I'm elected. You know, you mentioned common sense. I'm curious. When you say common sense, what are some common sense things? you're hearing right now where you're like, that just makes sense. Why aren't we doing that?

Well, and I guess it's not that they're not doing it. I guess it's just a matter of sometimes asking questions like, does this make sense? Can we measure the outcome? Is it money well spent? Is it time well spent? Because I think sometimes it's easy to make decisions that you think that everybody wants to do,

but sometimes you've got to stand back and say, does it really make sense? Is this the right thing to do for the right reasons? Something like that. And I think that I don't, have a specific agenda to do anything, you know, one thing or another. I have a lot to learn and I'm keen to learn and I have the time and, you know, so I guess that's just common sense. I think everybody kind of has it sometimes, but I think sometimes it feels like it could get lost.

Forgive me if I'm summarizing this too simply. So you're running basically because you want to give back and there's nothing like, you're not like, you know what, this is a big issue Lloyd's facing and I would love nothing more than to, I don't know, sink my teeth in isn't the right way, but, you know, like get involved and try and find solutions to X. Absolutely, I'm running for that. There are some big issues facing Lloyd right now. I mean, you just have to go out in the community and talk to everybody and it's public safety. Everybody's concerned. What's happening with the shelter? Where is it going to go? What does it look like? How do you run it? What do you do? Do you get rid of it? Do you not have it? There's a lot of talk about

that. There's talk about financial accountability. Big new Cinovus energy hubs going up. It's fabulous. It's great. But there's people that are concerned. They want more services. They want more something. Well, all those things come with a cost. And for me, I want to help try to meet some of these safety issue. I think is really important. I feel it. I don't. I don't. I don't feel it myself personally lucky me but there's so many people that do just even people talking about you know wandering around and where they are and how they feel about things and i'd like us to work to i mean that's it's a complicated problem i'm not going to sit here and give you a bunch of solutions i don't know what they are i think there's lots of studies i believe there's just a point in time

recent survey done on the homeless issue downtown i think it was done on the 16th and they're going to formulate some data they did it last year so they can start getting a feel for what does it look like like who are these people what are their issues where are they from how long are they being here and hopefully that's a starting point that you can start working on solutions with all the stakeholders involved yeah it's it's interesting to me you know you come from a different i don't know friend group if you would you know and and when you i was waiting to hear what like you know the big issue we're facing a lot of issues and the number one thing here in Lloyd Minster is and it comes up again right it's it's this it's this crime safety

homeless problem on and on and on but within that realm and it's it's interesting I'm like I wonder what the solution to that is and basically you know it's not like you're like oh this is exactly what we do we got to round them up ship put them on a bus and ship them off to Vancouver and that's that's the answer you're like I don't know I want to get my hands involved correct Correct. Absolutely. I mean, we, I mean, I think that as a community, you know, we all got to pull together. Lloyd Minster is resilient. We've gone through lots of ups and downs over the years. And oil patch good, the oil patch bad. I've been here for 36 years. I've seen it. I've seen what happens. And, you know, we all pull together. We have issues being on the border, you know, funding from both sides of the province.

I mean, I think I'm getting a really clear appreciation of how challenging. that is as I navigate through some of the stuff that's you know out there about why we why sometimes we feel a little handcuffed here as to what we can do and you keep trying and trying to get money for something I mean at the end of the day the city isn't funding the homeless shelter that's funded through my understanding is through provincial governments the city has some say over location and maybe some parameters or what that looks like and what's required.

But I, yeah, I mean, I'm hearing that, but I also want to celebrate the good things about Lloydminster, how it is a great place to live and raise a family and how we have great amenities in Lloydminster. We're so fortunate. I think it's like a small town feel with big city amenities. It's like our facilities are great, from Bud Miller Park to the multiplex.

I'm an avid golfer. I use the golf course. It's world class. It's great. I use the multiplex. I go to the library. I think there's lots of good things. If you, being an avid golfer, if you got to be a city counselor,

would you take a look at the, I don't know, the restaurant at the Lloydminster Golf and Country Club and figure that out? Well, they have put somebody in there. Again? Yeah, this year they put a new operator in there. So we didn't have one for, I think, three years almost. And I know the city worked hard on that.

So there is somebody in there. I've gone for lunch numerous times. It's good. It's great. He's working really hard. Who's in there right now? Forgive us. Yeah.

You know, I'm just trying. I don't know his name, but he's in there. And he would be operating now as curling season is up and going. So I think, you know, that problem has kind of been addressed, and it's there. And he's in there. And I've eaten there. And I don't know if I've met him. But I've certainly, you know,

staff and yeah. Fair enough. You know, I've been bringing up, you, 36 years, you said, living in the area, correct? One of the things that happened through COVID, and I keep bringing this up, and I apologize to the people who were listening to the 18th iteration of it, tongue and cheek, but regardless, you know, that really fractured parts of the community. And, you know, time heals most wounds, all wounds, right? And it takes time. But if you were in there, you know, you see community, you see, you know, I think one of the, things I've noticed out of everybody who's coming here, I think, is like, you know, there's a genuine affection for Lloyd Minster, which is cool, because Lloyd is a special place and I've

got to witness different things happen in Lloyd that I've been very proud of. How do we build or foster this community to come together tighter than ever? Yeah, I, you know what, I think that's a really good point. And I think that is something that we all have to work on. And I think it's, you know, with crime where the homeless is like thinking about knowing in their area particular, but all of us could do this, is know your neighbor. Like, let's get to know our neighbors again. Let's look out for each other. You know, people are engaged.

People are, you know, for instance, the new land use bylaw that was proposed. And the community spoke pretty loudly about that at a, before they had the council meeting, but they had obviously submitted their concerns before that because the council went in and they amended it. They did an amendment to it. Now, it hasn't passed, and I think it's going to go in front of the new city council, and it probably should because there's pretty big changes in there

that we all have to be aware of. I still think there might be some more amendments that might be required on it. But I guess I was really impressed that the community got engaged on the issues that matter. That mattered to them. and the council listened and they made a change. And sometimes community involvement isn't maybe where we wanted to be

because it might not be that important at the time. I feel like right now this whole crime, shelter, everyone's talking about it. I feel everybody has some complaints, like you say, ship them off. Most people don't. Most people have, you know, want to think about what solutions, like being realistic. I want to be clear. I don't know if that was. I just went to the most extreme.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, but we all know that there's people on all ends of that spectrum. Yeah, 100%. With those opinions. Build a giant shelter for them and bring them all in and that or just close it all down and put them on a bus and send them out. Right, right. The two extremes.

Exactly. And I mean, most people realize that that's either one of those isn't, isn't reasonable somewhere in the middle. So I don't know. I do want to bring our community together. I think one of the things that we should do is we should celebrate the successes. there is good work being done to address some of the problems with crime and the homeless in the community. And I think that people need to hear that stuff that know that there is stuff being done. And maybe it inspires all of us to say, you know what, we can fix this.

We can, we're not going to fix it, but we can alleviate the problems or we can do some things. But it's taken everybody, be it, you know, back to know your neighbor and neighborhood watch or citizens on patrol. or whatever it is that we can do to help people, you know, feel safer, help people feel that maybe, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure. Like I said, I'm just sort of, I'm reading social, you know, certain studies the city has done about housing, you know. Well, have you been, I get the sense that you have been to a council meeting,

you have paid attention to it. Yes, for sure. What are the things that, I don't know how to phrase this a proper way, but I guess I use the word stick out. But like when you're watching it, I don't know if it's frustration or you're surprised by it or you hope that if you're elected, you can, you know, you can shine a light on some things. Like what, what is stuck out to you in the council meetings over the course of you watching it? What amazes me is the city has a plan or a strategic plan or a plan or a feasibility study for just about everything. So they're not flying by the seat of their pants. Like there's a feasibility study on buildings in Lloydminster.

What the life expect, and all the life expectancy is that's kind of how we got the Cenovis Energy Hub without the pool. It's about cost, but it's because the Civic Center is at its end of its days where the pool isn't quite there yet. Is a pool adequate for a community of our size? Probably not. We probably need something bigger. But we couldn't do both. Just couldn't afford to do both. So they went with a rink because the Civic Center is just about done.

If it's not, it is done. So very shortly. So, you know, that information is there. If you want to go in and read about an RCMP report or what they're doing in the downtown area and the area to see what they can, it's there. I mean, I think it's just, there's a lot of information if you can go and look for it. It's not sometimes easy to find, but really it's there.

I find the city is more transparent than I kind of expected. I don't know what I expected, but I was quite surprised. I sat through a recent quarterly financial report was great. I do have a banking background. I was an account manager for commercial and agriculture, so I have some familiarity around reading financial statements and budgeting. And I was impressed with the report. It was very comprehensive.

It's all posted on the website. Again, it's just you got to go find these things sometimes or be told that they're there. And then maybe you'll go and read and see that, yes, I get people want things. But if you look at some of the studies, there's a plan there that the city is kind of going by. What got you involved? Have you always been interested in city politics? You know, I've always been interested in politics. I kind of pay attention to them.

I've always read about them. I like politics. I find them fascinating, interesting. It just never really felt I had the time because I did work. I had small business at home. I had four kids. And now I'm at the point where, wow, I have some time. And it's exciting.

It's exciting to be engaged and kind of. I mean your kids are out of the nest and you're like, well, I have one still in university at the U of S and the other ones are, yeah. Well, I mean, isn't that out of the nest? Well, I don't know because he comes home. So, you know, but he's, and it's all great. So I just felt like I really had the time. I have two grandsons and they're a little older now too and they don't need my time as much as they did before.

So it kind of felt like the right time and politics is interesting and fascinating and serving, helping people and helping our community. And it excites me. You know, one of the things, and it's already been, I think Michael Diatrach just said it, right? But one of the things that was coming through is, was going. coming through was zoning change, right? And that really stirred up people. You know, I guess it's more of a, what's the word I'm looking for, folks? I guess this is what happens when you interview this many people in a row.

Your brain starts to turn to mush. But I'm wondering is reading, you mentioned financial statements and that you have a skill or a talent because of the way you work to read through them. You know, one of the things that politics or legal documents, documents and all these different policies coming through is it is dry do you are are you a person and just like that isn't going to bother me I love digging into that you know or are you like this is going to be some work um I mean I enjoy reading it I think a lot of the studies or plans that the city has there is a lot of that in there but whoever has presented or or

completed those has a summarizes it usually in terms that are pretty under you know you can understand and grasp it usually summarizes it pretty you know it's not all it's not really legal jargon it's more just like you can grasp what they're telling you what needs to be done what's being done well what you should look at making recommendations it's pretty simple it's just there's a lot of information I think the one report they're like there's 200 pages like there's a lot of information So I'm not going to digest all that at once. I sort of go through picking and choosing and, you know, just getting an understanding how what's going on.

Like the land use bylaw, I did read quite a bit of that one to understand that. It took me a few times to read it to sort of figure out, okay, this is what this means. Yeah, well, and the land use bylaw, I think, is the one I think of because, like, hidden in there were some things that were concerning. That's what got everybody worked up.

Yes, yes. And so that's why everybody's showing. up and that's where you know and one of the things I think I'm looking for out of council is people who pick up on that for us right like that's that's what you're there for and I think what I could be wrong I'm putting my thoughts on to it and I want the public to listen this and go do you know and just go vote I want you to vote but one of the things I want is I want to know there's competent people in there you mentioned common sense use common sense and look at things and and you're

voted in to do that so we don't have things slide through that then we all go, oh, good, that ain't great, right? And can you miss a couple things? Okay, but overall, we want people to, like, stare at what's happening, read into it and go, this is what's concerning. Tell the public so they can get involved and help support. Yeah, and I agree with that. That's how it's supposed to work.

And I, like, my first council meeting I went to was that one over the land use bylaw, and it was a long day. There was multiple presenters, lots of emotion. And packed. It was very busy. I was like, wow, that was my first. And you thought, and I was, and I was, exactly. This is what it is.

This is unreal. And I was told by, yeah, this isn't how it normally is. And then I've gone to some sense and it's, it's, it's, it is a bit different. But you know what? That's good. You want people engaged. And you know, you want people to do that. Yeah, I'd like to say that we're all, you're going to catch things.

And, and, and we probably are. But you also want the public engaged. You want them to be paying attention on the big things. You know, I mean, the things that could have an impact. You want them. Like, yes. involved read tap me on the shoulder whatever it is in your circle who could counsel engage your circle or the population I you know yeah because it's

it's been this really I was talking about with Michael Diachuk right he goes well it was front page newspaper right and I'm not here to harp on any of it right I just think they're all different levers of the media sphere yeah try and connect with your different audiences with your audience or your area what have you What have you folks been talking about of like, I wish counsel did this, and is there anything, you know,

if elected, you would go do? Yeah, you know, like I had said one, at one point, I thought, oh,

I want a champion community engagement. And somebody asked me, well, what would you do different? And, and I sort of paid attention to what the city does. And I saw all these studies.

And they sent out surveys. Like, they're on Facebook. They're sent out. There's surveys. There's town hall meetings. There's, public meetings.

There's open houses. Like, it's quite, I find it's a lot and that they're really trying. They maybe don't always get the feedback, the numbers that they want. But I'd like to think that they got the numbers on the landmews bylaw, my first experience. I feel they're getting a ton of pushback on crime and the shelter. So sometimes it feels like, you know, the big issues they are. There might be some other things that maybe people should get involved in and they don't and then something happens.

And they're like, well, I never knew that. We're going to get that because, you know, when you send out a survey and you get 100 or 200 responses and the city's making, they're trying to use those to help them make decisions on these strategic plans or these things that are being, you're a plan for the future. So all I can say is, you know, you got to pay attention. You or talk to somebody. And I, myself, I've been talking to my circle. around me about some of these issues

and most people will go, the land you spy law, maybe they didn't know about that. So when I talk about it, they'll go, oh, I didn't know that. Everyone's talking about crime and the shelter. Might be because of social media, a little bit of that.

I don't think so. I think everybody's talking about it because they can see it. It's very, it's very, it's very real. It is. You can stare at a lot of things happening in different communities and go, oh, that's strange. Yeah.

When you walk downtown and see some of the things going on, you're like, you know, that's weird. That wasn't there five years ago. No. Your eyes aren't lying to you, right? No. Any final thoughts for the voting population of Lloyd Minster before I let you out of here?

No, I just, I think we have a great community, and I think we have lots to be proud of and celebrate. And I just want to help Lloyd Minster go to the future and use my skills, what they are, and we have some work to do. So, yeah, keep talking to people. Keep throwing ideas. Let's keep finding ways to. And our job of city council is to advocate the governments

and what we can do for funding. And that's it, really. Thanks, Tracy. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. I'm sitting with Justin Vance. Hi. The man with the great signs.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they stand out for sure. So I was fortunate. Well, I guess Sarah Christie has red signs. But, yeah, it was kind of the. first one out and uh you know it was a exciting experience to run an election i've never done it so you know getting the signs out was was uh pretty exciting for me but uh yeah yeah welcome to the the madness i'm just gonna jump in your face no that's fine i'm gonna i'm gonna i keep adjusting the volumes i'm

sure people are listening oh it's up and down it's up and down i'm moving the mics everything else no the signs i was wondering did you did you did you did you go look at Donald trumps and go that's, I'm just going to go. Yeah. Well, the funny thing you say that, so I basically took a JD Vance sign. Oh, a JD Vance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I'm like, well, that is already a perfect template.

And, you know, name recognition is a big thing. So I saw his sign. I liked it. And I've been getting, you know, some hard times over the red being associated with liberals in Canada. Oh, I didn't think that. But, yeah, yeah, some people have came up and asked me. But, yeah, I just wanted a standout color. and something bold and there's no question who's running on that sign.

So that was kind of my goal. Wait a second. Are you a liberal? No, no, we better clear that up. No, I actually got the opportunity to campaign for Stephen Harper in the 2015 election. So, yeah, I've always had conservative roots. My parents have always been, you know, a conservative. I've got to ask a really, because you're the first candidate I'm going to do this to because I'm like, but I got it, 2015.

How old are you? Well, I'm only 23 right now, 24 in February. So getting a young start to me. You were 15 and essentially. Yeah, right around there. Right around there, 14, 15. Yeah. And involved in the politics.

In politics, sorry. Yeah. In the politics. In politics. Oh, yeah, it's just crazy. I've always been fascinated by U.S. politics, I guess. I don't know. It's a little bit more entertaining.

But, yeah, even at home here in Canada, I've always been concerned with the direction of the way things are going. and Stephen Harper was a guy that spoke out to me. And yeah, so I campaigned for Shannon Stubbs, I guess. Sure, sure. Who is running? But, yeah, no, I've always supported them. Well, who is, you know, we start this off by, like, okay, who is Justin Vance?

You know, like, tell us a story. You got a couple minutes. I mean, obviously, I don't have a long time. But, you know, if people are tuning in, they're like, okay, who is this guy with the fancy science that isn't a liberal? Yeah. What can you tell us about you? Yeah. So politics has always been deep, deep roots with me.

It's always been something that I was fascinated about. And it started in middle school. I was on the middle school council. And it was like, well, Justin, what can you do for prices at the confectionery? Well, I'll make a meal deal for you. And let's pile up. We'll do a pizza, pop, and whatever, a chocolate bar for five bucks. And, you know, like things like that just stuck with people.

And I'm like, well, this is kind of fun, making students' lives better. and then the opportunity came up for the Lloydminster Youth Council. I'm like, well, this is kind of a bigger stage. Why don't I jump into this? And then I got involved with that. And it was exciting. We would hear youth issues, what people want, you know, under the age 18, who can't have a voice, who can't vote, and they want to be heard.

So I was kind of that voice, you know, talent shows. There was many incentives that we would do events and stuff. And we would go to City Hall, so I attended council meetings and, you know, stand in front of the council and tell them our concerns. And that kind of, you know, put a whole, whoa, you know, this is something I really like. I felt comfortable with it. And, you know, speaking to those guys that, like you said, I was only probably 15 or 14 at the time. And speaking to 30, 40, 50, 50, 60-year-old people about, you know, my little issue. issues here. It kind of, it was a neat experience. And then, so after high school, I guess, Lloyd Comp, I went on to take environmental science at Lakeland College. And yeah, after that,

I always had a passion for blue collar work. And that's kind of where my roots are. And that's what I've always liked doing. I like working with my hands and building things and working on things. It's, you went to Lakeland College and my brain just spaced out and took what? Environmental science. Environmental science. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

Forgive me. Yeah. You folk, you know, people listening are probably chuckling because, you know, you're like, I think number nine now or somewhere in that range. Yeah. Yeah. And my brain just like added, like, oops, it's just skipped. Anyways, environmental science is here and like. Yeah.

Yeah. So after that, I got to work for a contractor in Lloyd. And it was, it was pretty sweet because we worked for the city of Lloyd. And it was a perfect year to do it. It was a summer role position just. to get, you know, my hands dirty in the subject. So we got to work on the wastewater treatment plant. We got to work on the big Highway 16.

You probably remember the concrete expansion, fire hall number one. So, like, just seeing how a city project is built and the time and money that goes into them, it was a neat experience. And like I said, it was a summer job. And then after that, I got a role in at Vantec as like an environmental coordinator, doing like field assessments and orientations and more of a shot manager now I guess but yeah it's a small company so whatever role they throw me in for that day is kind of where I sit but yeah I I love that that city work like just seeing how things are going and it's always frustrating

looking outside in like well why is it taking so long why is it costing so much money so to see how things are actually spent and that's where I kind of kind of wanted to run was making sure those dollars are spent wisely. So, why this election? You know, like, you know, you're young, I think between you and Tanner, I think, I think you maybe have Tanner beat slightly on age. A few years, yeah. Yeah, but you're awfully close.

And when I look at the rest of the candidates, you know, you know, probably, I don't know, I'm trying to rack out my brains. I'm going to say maybe late 30s, early 40s, then, you know, up and up and and you get into probably late 60s. So, you know, you're on the young age, and people always look at it and go, we need young people in politics. Well, here's another one, yes, that's getting involved.

Why this election? So a lot of frustration on spending and the way things are going with homeless hospital, and you've heard me probably say these issues. But what actually kind of struck me, it's funny, I went to Moose Jaw for the first time this summer, never been there, never been to Moose Jaw. And we went through the,

city and it was a breeze we drove through the whole city you know in five 10 minutes and I you know it felt like driving through vermillion like just the way the traffic moves the way that people are it was just like a nice small town home feel and I look at the stats and they have 33,000 people and I'm like that is that is what Lloyd is we're right up there 31 32 thousand people and why why do we have all these struggles with traffic flow traffic issues and overpasses. That was another thing I noticed in Moose Jaw. They had seven, eight overpasses. I counted on their train lines. And I'm like, we're just doing something wrong at home here. Like, why haven't we pushed for an overpass? Why haven't we connected our city at the north and south areas of town?

Why haven't we put our needs like infrastructure projects first before once? They have a brand new hospital there in Moose Jaw. So, you know, I look at it like clearly their administration or you know, the provincial funding is one thing, but clearly they have people on the inside that, you know, or maybe pushing a little harder, working a little harder to secure funding. And that's, that's kind of what set it off for me. I was like, well, there's an election coming up in my hometown. And why don't I make, try and make some of these differences here, because we really lack on those issues. But given Mooseja does have a tourism side of it, you know, they have the tunnels and things like that where we lack. But yeah, overall, it's, you know, It's a very comparable city, and it's not comparable when you see between the two.

So, yeah. It's funny, though, you know, you say they got tourism. They've shined a light on one of the most notorious people in, you know, the last 100 years who went there and did illegal things, and now they profit off that. Now they profit. It's turning part of your history into something people want to come and gravitate and see and everything else. And you look at Lloyd and listen, I don't have the answer for Lloyd, but I think there's probably things that can be done to all sudden. bring thousands of people in more consistently. If that's what you want to do,

it just takes a plan and starting to figure it out. So I guess if elected then, what you're saying is, I think, is you know, you're looking at some of the things that are bothering you and going, okay,

why don't we have these things? How are our tax dollars being spent? And I would really like to open the books up. Is that a fair assessment? Oh yeah, 100%. I just feel like things are out of touch and we're spending on wants over needs.

And we need to address our main needs in the city first before. You know, like I want all these things that they're saying, like public transportation, you know, a beautiful arena. Those are all things I really want and I really care for and I think it'll grow the city. But unless we address our core needs in the city, our basic flow of traffic, our basic health care system, our homeless issue, we're not moving forward in my opinion. Those are the main bones of a municipality, and we need to address those issues first, I feel, anyway. And I've spoken to many people about it. And, yeah, lots, especially on the north end of town, they share the same beliefs. And that's kind of where I want to be their voice, too.

I feel like they haven't been heard as much. And, yeah, I want to make sure everyone's heard in the city. One of the things I've been asking everybody who's come in here is, you know, like, have you, and I think you've already answered this, but regardless, I'll bring it back up, is like, have you paid attention to council meetings? Have you gone to council meetings? Do you, do you understand the realm of the world you're getting into? I know you've presented to them, but have you sat there and watched some of this. And if you have, what's stuck out to you and when it maybe do you think you can add to it? So yeah, like obviously on the youth council, I had to sit through through a few of them. And I've sat through like live streams and stuff like that. And, you know, they can be thick, right? There's a lot of information. There's a lot of work to be done.

And, you know, what's stuck out is just the whole process in it, just how, you know, they'll vote on something, you know, kind of behind closed doors. And then they come out as a team. And everyone's on a team. We're on the same page. This is what we're going to be doing. you know, just there's no end to transparency. There's no way that you can say, okay, we're there. We're as transparent as possible.

There's always more ways that you can push and engage with public, and, you know, it'll never end. And the problem is people tend to be more upset about issues after a decisions made, I've found. And then it's like, oh, that decision is terrible. You know what I mean? And if we can just engage more before, decisions are made and you know the city does try their best but how would how would you how would you you know but you your youth council and everything else right I'm very

curious about this because you know I was I had so one of the Michael Diocuk was in here yeah he was talking about a few things and the things is that I was oh like well how did I miss that or why isn't this common knowledge in the Lloyd public yeah and he said well we put it out on the front page of the paper yeah and I go nothing against paper and I keep harping on the paper I'm sorry paper I I love what you do. Yeah. But I'm just saying the times are a changing.

Yeah. And I'm curious, you know, like on how to engage the public. Yeah. Have you thought about that? Oh, yeah. On how the city could be better about pulling people in before decisions made. Yeah. So that they have a shared like we had to play in what's happening.

Yeah. Yeah. Like being a young guy, like TikTok is a big thing, Instagram, Facebook. And if we can make it more social media friendly in any way, I think that is a great way to do it. Like, by all means, the city website, I don't know if you ever been on it. Yes, absolutely. Thousands probably of documents and information on that city website.

Everything's on there. You can look at salaries. You can look at a meeting from 2004. You know what I mean? Or even probably beyond that. The records or archives are phenomenal. But who's going to do that? Who's, you know, going to take the time and go through that whole website?

Like, you know, you got to kind of know what you're doing when you go through that website. But yeah, I think being on a young perspective, like you said, the paper resonates with a few folks and, well, quite a bit of our population, but there's a new generation coming. And if we can just push social media, maybe a counselor can join in on your podcast or Kurt Price or, you know, for examples, like something like that to go on Facebook, go on Instagram. I think that's just a great way to get people involved. Like obviously we're not going to have a podcast every time, hey, we need to do a pothole on 36th Street. But when we're talking about a $110 million arena, we really should advocate to people like yourself, to any social media person, hey, this is what we're doing. We need to hear some serious feedback before, you know, the deal is closed. Yeah, because the ring's being built.

I mean, at this point, we can bicker all we want. Yeah. I mean, it's an impressive structure to drive by. You're like, holy crap, look at that building. Yeah, it's going to show really well. And yeah, you can't beat a dead horse on it. Like you said, those doors are going to be opened in whatever later, 2025 or whatever the date is. But yeah, it's just all I can say, as of now, without arena getting built,

I can say going forward, I want to be more of an accountable spender and making sure we're getting the best bang for our buck on any facility that's getting built. Like, for example, the Sonovis up going forward. If anything like that comes across our desk, we need to say. Which there is going to be, right? There's going to be big, yeah, there's going to be big projects coming. Not left, right and center, but I mean, like, you just, you know, people want things. Right.

And that's going to get thrown on you. And then you're going to have to debate it. And you have to get, okay, well, this is what it's going to cost. And how can we make it affordable? You know, like, um. Yeah, like there's talks about an indoor pool. People are wanting an indoor pool. So when that, when that day comes that we feel like we're ready to have an indoor pool,

then we need to really look at other communities. Look what they built for the same price. Look what, yeah, look how they spent the money. So how do you think you would deal with, you know, like, once again, to me, you seem like a pretty confident young man. And your background on some of the things is really interesting. I think it gives you an understanding of what's going to happen in city council, probably more so than me sitting right here. But I think about it, you're going to be, if elected, probably the youngest city councilor sitting around that table. Yeah, yeah.

Are you at all not concerned, that's not the right word to put it, but like, you know, when you're sitting there and you're arguing with somebody who's 70 years old or 55 or is running a, you know, a million dollar business, does that factor into anything in your thought process? Yeah, like, the problem is, is, you know, people taking me seriously. You know what I mean? People probably haven't seen a 24-year-old on a city council before. So, like, worried about that, I guess, just basically going forward, I think just putting myself out there and showing people that I'm serious, I'm no joke, and my values are strong and, you know, not stepping down from a fight, basically, if people want to, you know, question me more on my age or or my experience. I feel like I have, you know, just as much experience

living in the city than any candidate, you know, like I've been here for 24 years. That's a, that's a long time. I've never left. I've stuck to this city and I've always supported it. And yeah, I just, I think my, my roots run pretty deep here. So, yeah. It's, but I think you've, I don't Maybe it's just bias here sitting here, folks. But I think you've pretty well spoken for a guy who, you know, is, I don't know, not at the start of your journey. It's not like you're 14, right? Like, I find that really fascinating. But I know from the podcast side of the world, there's a ton of young people that are lit up in politics right now that are really sharp.

Yeah. And I think they have bright futures ahead of them. I think the same thing for yourself. I don't know. I, you know, as far as the city election goes, I have no idea. You know, like my hope with doing this is engagement. I want more people to go vote. You're right.

And I want them to engage and understand who you are and everybody else is. So it isn't just like, well, I kind of know that guy and boom, I go vote, right? And that's on me to bring all of you in. Yeah. Now it's on all of you to talk and talk to the public. And hopefully, you know, this come this fall, or later on, closer I guess in November, we get a new council. And that'll be very interesting. It will.

Yeah. You know? Yeah, it would be nice to see voter turnout. That is, you know, it's our democratic right and it's what, you know, why we're celebrating or why we have remembrance state coming up. You know, it's because they fought for our right to vote. And I encourage everyone to do the same. You know, we have 16,000, I think eligible voters in the city and 3,000 voted, you know, in the last election. So I'd like to see those numbers up and everyone has a voice and use it.

You know what I mean? It takes all of 20 minutes or whatever to show up and cross the little X off. And yeah, I hope that we see a big turnout in this election for sure. You said you wouldn't back down from not a fight, but you're where you stand on certain things. You know, one of the things I've been bringing up over and over again has been, you know, different things. One is COVID. Another is supposedly the government of Lloyd Minster, so the city of Lloyd Minster's employees have continually been growing and growing and growing.

You know, you, you, you can take it whichever, you can take it socially or you can take it economically. I don't want to pigeonhole you into either one. Yeah. But, you know, like when you get into hot waters and you are standing on things that you believe in, are you all concerned about that of like the... Being pressured. Yes.

Honestly, I'm not. Like, I've always stood up for what I believe. And that's just, you know, a count. spending at the end of the day and making sure that everyone's safe and happy where they're living. And I think if I don't sway too much from those strong roots, I think no one in this world can change how I think about life and how I view this city. And yeah, I think once I set my mind to something, there's not a lot of voices that can change me for sure. One final thought to the voters of Lloyd Minster before I let you out of here.

Yeah, so it's not every day that a 24-year-old that is interested in politics for one thing and knows how to change oil in a truck. You know what I mean? Just a vast variety of skills that I've equipped myself over the years. And it's just, I'm a very different candidate from the others, for sure, just on age and experience. And yeah, I hope that the voters can see that and see. that I'm a simple guy with strong roots and just a local guy who loves his, loves his community, and yeah, wants to get the best, spend the best money-wise, I guess, on tax dollars.

I didn't mean to interject. I know. But he paused there, folks, because I was about to say something. Are you married yet? No, no. I've been with a girl for six years, though, so. All right. Well, just curious.

You know, I was always curious marriage kids. And, you know, at this stage in your life, then, time is on your side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's something hopefully in the near future we see. I'm putting them on the spot now. Yeah, yeah. Justin, thanks for hopping in here and doing this. Yeah, I appreciate you hopping in. You bet.

Thank you. I'm sitting across from Barry Helm here, folks. Thanks for hopping in the studio and doing this. I appreciate it. Thanks for the invite. Walt, you're saying it's, he says it's going to be the most boring interview. We'll see what we can do about that. Tell us, you know, if people don't know who you are, let's let's let the city of Lloydminster and, well, whoever tunes into this.

No, who is Barry? Certainly. So I own two businesses in town. One is called Squeegee Boy, and then one is called Pine Year Landscaping. See, I've heard of Pine Year Landscape. Squeegee Boy. Squidgey Boy, window cleaning company, trademarked and everything. So I started that in 1999 while I was doing my post-secondary education.

And it was a summer job, basically, just to make money. And I remember just going door to Nor downtown asking for business to do windows, neighborhood to neighborhood. And that's how that business started 25 years ago. So 25 years ago? Yeah, that's 25 years ago. So I borrowed my dad's old 1988 Mazda B-2200 truck, bought a used ladder out of the classifieds in the newspaper. That's where people still read paper copies of the newspaper. and just went out.

That's how the business started years ago. So how it developed into Pine Year was shortly thereafter. We had a request from Pine Year Lodge at the time. They had just added on to their facility. They needed someone, A, to come in and do their windows, and B, to come in and do some pruning and a little bit of light duty landscaping around that facility. And they asked me to do it.

So it was a huge step for me to take that. And so the name Pioneer Landscaping is actually a shout out to them who were my first big, quote-unquote, big job. So that's how aisle got started. Fair enough. So you're a business owner here in town. That's right. How long have you been in Lloydminster? Well, my grandparents settled out here.

I think it was probably the early 30s. I'd have to check. And my dad grew up farming on a farm just east of Lloyd towards Marshall, just east of Albrefeldy. Okay. When Aberfeldy used to have its own elevator and went to the comp and Nevillegoss School. Neville got school first, obviously, that was an elementary school. It's no longer there. ES Laird and then LCHS graduated in 1989.

So, yeah, I've got deep roots in the community for sure. Why, you know, I keep a root, you know, the one question I keep asking, and I'm like, why get involved in this election? Like, what is it about this time around where you're like, it's time? Well, I think that's a, I'm all over that question in my mind. And really, I have a difficult time answering that. I have, there's been another number of people that I know in the community that have said over the last several years that, hey, Barry, you've got some great ideas. We'd be good in civic leadership on council.

And when the nomination forms came out, I hemmed in a hawed about it. And probably about two hours before the closing. I told my niece, Stephanie, I said, Stephanie, here's the nomination papers, and she went out and got 25 people quite easily. So maybe I don't see things in myself. Maybe I'm that insecure about who I am, but other people do. And I think just to honor them, also to honor who I am as a person, a person who values vision and positivity and fairness and communication and those types of things, being a team player. being a business leader. I think those are all attributes

that kind of led me to this particular moment in time. What's the biggest issue then? You see, you know, like, you're staring around Lloyd, you're like, hmm, we got to do something to boat ass. I'm going to say this. I think 25th Street, College Drive needs to be connected to 40.5. Thought that for years. So you know where College Drive comes out at the dealerships?

Yes. And then you just ends in a dead end? Yes. Continue that on. Please, someone to 40,000. Oh. See? Who else is talking about that issue?

I mean, if you're tuning in from anywhere in Lloyd, yeah, I'm living Lloyd, and I'm like, what is you talking about? Like, oh, right there, yeah. Because you just, you go down and then you turn right into residential and you're like, you know, it's this big, this major road we have. Yeah. That ends in the middle of, well, it just ends. Yeah.

I'm being slightly facetious. I know that we're, you know, listeners of yours and people who are involved in this election and members of the community all know the issues that are involved. And I think for me, a lot of that just stems from having like a longer term vision for the community, a vision of community, who we are, what our values are, where are we going in the future, thinking in terms of more than the next election cycle, but towards the next generation. And I've listened to, I have to admit, I've only listened to one of your podcasts, and I apologize for that.

No, no, no, you don't, whoa, you do not need to apologize, nothing. But you haven't listened to any of my podcasts either, so. Fair enough. Well, I don't have any, but, but I think this is true specifically, and more probably acutely in federal politics and provincial politics, where we see, as soon as an election is one, they start campaigning for the next one. And there's not that long-term positive vision being cast for, for the country.

So, or for the province. And I know this is a municipal election. Curious, what's the one podcast you've listened to mine? The one with Tanner Nadee. Oh, Tannard and Day. Yeah, his dad was my school teacher, grade 12, trigonometry. I think a lot of us can relate. Yeah.

Okay. When you talk about values, vision for Lloyd, these different things, what do you mean by that? Like, those are nice words, but what do you mean by that? Like, what vision of Lloyd do you see, uh, or do you want to, I don't even know, fight for or push for the next generation. Right. See, you're doing a great job at asking questions. And I think now what you have just done is a lot of people would see me as fairly

intelligent because I've got the glasses and I know a few big words. But once you scratch the surface, you see that I'm pretty shallow. And again, I'm being facetious. In terms of having a positive vision for the future values, I think some of the specifics go into things like urban design and land development and those types of issues. Where are we actually physically growing the city? And I think one of the other issues is often it's perceived that Lloydminster, some would see Lloydminster as just this community as we're Lloydminster,

we're so special, we're a border city, instead of seeing ourselves as part of a broader region. and I think sometimes that's even reflected in some of the in the museum for example it's a Lloydminster museum rather than seeing as part of this this region so having said that I know that there are strengths that we have as a region in terms of teaming up to do things like the the ace water supply that you're familiar with with that project where we've actually teamed up with other municipalities and done an incredible project that will help keep those communities alive for a long time. And I think there's other opportunities as well by partnering up with those municipalities. Sorry. I'm, I've got to forgive me, folks. I keep coughing and it's bugging me. It's COVID. Oh, he's funny today.

Hey? He's funny. Now, I'm getting off track because now you got me thinking COVID and you got me coughing and you got me worried about water. these different projects of the area. You know, what comes to mind with that is, you know, when I look at Cold Lake and Bonneville, you know, as a kid, we grew up playing those two, and what were they called?

Was that Lakeland? What were they called there, folks? Ah, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's called Grand Center Tri-Cities. Tri-Cities, everything else. When you're talking about Lloyd Minster isn't just Lloyd Minster, that's an interesting thought. Because when we did bike for breakfast,

we rode bikes, raised money for breakfast, programs for the area. But I always said, Lloyd Minster isn't just Lloyd Minster. Lloyd Minster is like Lloyd Minster in the surrounding community. I'm a homeowner boy. But it was hard not to say

you weren't from Lloyd Minster because you do everything in Lloyd Minster. Right. And so when you say that, that's an interesting thought of how to bring in those communities to work on a bigger vision on things they want.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's 100%. I think one of the issues that has come up is with the care for seniors for facilities, things like Pioneer Lodge, Jubilee Home, those types of things. Years ago, those projects, particularly Jubilee Home, that was a team effort between the RM of Britannia and Wilton,

and I imagine others, in the city of Lloyd as well, to actually pursue the provincial government and get together, come up with a plan, and encourage them to build that facility in Lloyd Minster. So that would be one such example where during the, I guess that was probably the mid-70s, or no mid-80s when that facility was built. So that would be one issue where we have teamed up with other municipalities,

and I know that's an issue for many people now. And I am shocked that we haven't built more beds on the Saskatchewan side for the seniors in our community. Like if I were the province of Saskatchewan, I would be very embarrassed right now. And you think is that something, you know, like voted in. You're sitting there. You think that's something that can get done. Not quick. I don't even know what quick is anymore.

But I mean, you think that's something that if the right spotlights put on it, these things can happen in the city of Lloyd in relatively short manager manner. Yeah, I believe so. I think sometimes it might mean being a little bit more creative rather than going to the provincial government and saying, hey, please, sir, give us some money. I think it may involve doing a private public partnership or setting up a cooperative, for example, where we can actually get a plan in place and start financing these projects and actually do something about it. Where we don't, and I suppose that would be one of my longer term visions for the city of Lloydminster,

where we can develop ourselves in terms of additional revenue streams. That's a very easy thing to say, I suppose, but develop additional revenue streams where we don't have to be as dependent on taxes for the community. Tell me about this revenue stream idea. This is the, what are the, because what I hear, and maybe I'm wrong on this on what I've heard today, you have income, or not you have taxes that made up, I think the number was 80% and then the other 20% is like money coming in, let's say through the multiplex and I don't know, different facilities the city owns, right? Those two things make up the money you have to then go spend on the community. Right. When you're talking about revenue coming in through different channels, what do you mean? So,

I'm going to say something from a broader philosophical perspective first before I answer that if that's okay. I think what we see happening in our governments is where the power to determine the outcome of a given community has been taking away or starting to erode and has been eroded for decades, where that's being taken away by higher and higher levels of government. so that, for example, we pay taxes, and I really believe that those taxes should be spent where the communities are. And I find a very, found it very, I don't want to say angering because I'm not that type of person, but it comes close to that sort of feeling where we have to beg our federal government, beg our provincial government for the things that we need.

And I don't think that's right. I think we've got that upside down in terms of where that locus of control is for that revenue. And I don't think I'm not deceived enough. I don't believe in my own power or abilities to change anything like that, but that just gives you a sense of who I am. That it really angers me that we have to beg the governments to which we pay so much tax money for money to help the residents in our community own. community. So I know I digressed. Additional revenue streams. Are you looking for specific ideas? Sure. If you have specific ideas? Yeah, I have a few specific ideas. And again, I'm not the brightest person running for council. And I haven't researched all these. But there are a few ideas. And I think part of it

is just there's a lot of vacant lots, industrial lots, residential lots, is working towards getting those filled. I think Lloydminster is a great community to live in. You look at the house of the prices of housing in other communities, even Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Canloup, Colonna. And I'm sure that there are people out doing this, but actually marketing this community, and I know we're doing this. And I don't want to deride anyone who is employed in the city to do the, but once we fill up those lots, because right now those lots are costing the city, once we fill up those lots, that's additional revenue streams. But I think there's advantages that we have in terms of having two major rail lines come through our city.

And I know, for example, that I believe it's Canadian Pacific, or CN, Kansas City, something, they've changed their name, they've emaginated. But they're going with hydrogen-fueled rail cars. So is there an opportunity, let's say, for the city of Lloydminster to team up with them, perhaps with Sinovus, to actually start producing hydrogen fuel, and this becomes a refueling hub for both those rail lines, just because we've got the land and we've got a captive audience between those two train tracks.

Another would be for the landfill. We're dealing with issues in terms of where are we growing with the landfill, running out of space, dealing with garbage and expense. Is there an opportunity? And again, I may be just exposing my ignorance to the bigger manners because I'm not an engineer, but is there an opportunity, let's say, to be converting that waste into energy

and generating our own power from that waste. Because there are other jurisdictions that are doing it. Is that visible in Lloyd Minster? Can we then become a regional intake for, let's say, what other person's waste is and be turning that into energy? So those are just kind of two ideas. What other jurisdictions are doing that?

The energy is one. I think that there is, and I don't know this, but there's a country in the Middle East that just built the world. largest waste to energy plant. And I know that there are some closer to home, probably stateside, but where they're actually... You're giving me podcast ideas.

That's what you're giving me is, right? Because I hear that and I'm like, I'm always interested, because, you know, like I look at it and I hear, you know, as you're talking, I'm okay, so you add more residents, you get more tax dollars. That's at 80%. Right. And I'm waiting for like this idea of like,

this is thinking outside the box. Right. Your last one is thinking outside the box. Can it work? We both don't know the answer to that. But in theory, we have an issue. And the issue is we have garbage. Right. And as time goes on, that becomes, you know, it's, it's constant moving out.

And I'm sure they got their plans on how they're going to do that. But you go, that's, that's literally a sink of money. Yeah. And if you could turn that into something that helps benefit the population, now it turns into jobs. And cost, like, like it starts to make affordable things, you know, cheap, I guess is what I'm trying to spit out. You're talking about not being the smartest guy in the room. I can't spit out my words today. And that's fascinating to me because one of the ones I always stare at is Medicine Hat and them generating their own natural gas.

I'm correct on that, right? I think it's natural gas. And me going, I don't know if we need to get into those realms, but to me that's thinking outside the box. Lloyd's already got this wonderful area. Tons of wonderful things. Wonderful people. A ton of blue-collar entrepreneurial outside-the-box thinkers.

That's how, as I've learned sitting in this chair, that's how Bud Miller got built that's how the golf course got built that's how a ton of projects got built here and I go how do we push the needle forward in a way that makes people go oh that's cool

that makes sense we should try that right yeah and I think that's great and I think you brought up the example of medicine hat but we have one next door it's the county of vermillion river counting of vermillion railer yes I always forget about mentioning them and so I think is there an opportunity

of teaming up with them perhaps to become our own retail utility provider. I know a lot of people in town are frustrated with, if I can say it, direct energy in town. I don't think you're going to piss anyone off. Direct energy is annoying all of us at some point in time.

It's so frustrating. I live just at the north end of town just on, like I can throw a rock and I have a pretty weak throwing arm. I can throw a rock onto the Alberta side. And I'm forced to use direct energy. I can't use Sask Power, which I hear word in the street, is less expensive, but because of where I'm located, I can't use that.

And could we come up with? And I know that, again, I'm not an economist, but can we use the resources that are around us to become our own, create our own retail utility company, where we're actually buying that power wholesale, distributing and selling it back to Lloydminster, residents and businesses, at perhaps a discounted rate if we do it as a market. and still making money. And then still making money. Which would help offset, you know, you can just see the trickle effect.

And I'm a man, that sounds almost too good to be true, except other people are doing it. I've gotten a completely sidetracked, but I appreciate your mind. You know, business, I got a couple of minutes here left. You having a business background. One of the things that, you know, people get talking about not only in the city, but you go larger and larger, is government. So the city, the size of the employment here in Lloyd Minster. that's one way of reducing cost is to go in and look at redundancies or see like why do we have this and this and this why aren't we producing this do we need all these employees etc etc if you get elected you know like

one of the things about running a business i don't think i need to tell this man folks but like you you stare at things and if it isn't making you money and you're just bleeding it out you're probably trying to fix that when you look at the city of lloyd and if you you know let's let's play this game out You're sitting around the council table. Is that something that you're like, yeah, we got to take a look at that? Yeah, I would 100% agree with that. I think that's almost a rhetorical question. I think those where we're losing money.

But in fairness, there are things that this city has that we need, that we want, that are going to lose this money. I think of the library. Is that a moneymaker for us? 100% now. Do we need it? Yes. The museum.

Is that a moneymaker? No. Do we need it? Yes. I would argue that the swimming pool, I was going to call it, the bio clean. Does that make the city money? No. It costs us tons of money, but we need it. And we want a bigger one. And actually, I would throw, the pool probably, you know, like it's all out. How much money does it actually lose us? Right. The one that probably loses us more money than we think is probably the outdoor pool. But I go, look, the outdoor pool is, for the time it gets used is a buzzing. Kids love it. Families love it. It's like, don't give rid of that one. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And these are all great.

This is what makes a community a community. And so when we talked about bringing additional residents to the community, these are the things that make it feel like home. Instead of the fear is for us, and I use that term, again, fear loosely, because I'm not a fearful person. I'm not afraid person. But that we become just some industrial wasteland where we're just dependent on oil and gas and everything is only there to service those two industries, oil and gas and agriculture,

and forget everything else. These are the things, the museum, culture, arts, swimming pools, sports complexes that make this home for people. One final thought from you to the voting public alloy, Mr. What would you say to all? I don't know if you're going to hear this from anyone else, but I really believe that the three incumbents need to be re-elected back. I think for what...

So Michael Diocchuk, Jason Whiting, and David Lopez. Yeah, I really feel that they should be elected back. For the sake of continuity, the city has got some challenges going forward, and I think we need that experience back on council. And then you've got 10 other people who I think would be great choices for the city of Lloydminster. Well, the one thing that stood out to me, in this series of interviews.

Now, Jason Whiting chose not to come sit in this studio. So, you know, busyness and everything aside, I'm not throwing shade or anything. Just that he's not in here to share his thoughts. The one thing that's different about Michael Diacek compared to all the other candidates is he's been active for the last eight years. He can talk to some of this things directly,

which is really interesting chat. So that, but you have an interesting, you're the first person to sit there and go, I think we should reelect the three incumbents. So I appreciate you coming in and doing this. And, well, best luck, people go vote. And hopefully we can have a bitter, or not a better, a higher turnout of people voting. And I appreciate you putting your hat forward into this race.

Thank you, John. Sean. That's embarrassing. Oh, that's the way they add today. John, John, John. I'm sitting from Russell Moncrief. Hello. Thanks for coming in.

Yeah, you bet, buddy. I'm here. You know, it's funny. I just, you know, I just had the. while you get to witness a screw up on the back side of things, which is you're apologizing on the first time we recorded that you're late. Now I'm going to apologize that I let things get too full, and we had to start over because we only got a minute and a half in,

so it's not the end of the world. But memory cards got full on the old cameras. I'm like, oh, that hasn't happened in a while. So thanks for hopping in and doing this. Technology isn't always your friend, but hey, that's the way it goes. Yeah, I'm Russell Montcrieff. I threw my name in the hat there to become a... Who is Russell Moncrief?

You know, this is your minute, two minutes of like, this is who I am, you know, and what's led me to this point? I'm a tradesperson who has decided through retirement thing to step into the political arena, following up on semi-technical information with being a union representative in a large organization. And now that I'm retired, I decided that I could still do something useful.

I'm a tradesman. I'm a radio operator guy. I love talking, listening twice as much, hopefully as talking. I believe there's some things that need fixing. I'm a Mr. Repairman guy. I have a licensed handyman company here in Lloyd. And I've been working my way up from the bottom, including starting without running water when I was a child.

And so now I'm technically trained and communicative and would like to do something in City Hall for the people. Well, why this election, like, I'm sure you're like, well, part of it's just timing. Is there anything in particular like this election is really important and this is why I'm running? I believe this is a pivotal time. We seem to have a crisis situation in our city at this point. There's many things coming apart simultaneously. We've overspent a whole bunch of taxpayers' money.

And somewhere along the road, we have to start becoming physically responsible. and we have to be long-term planning about what do the citizens really want and need. Now, a want is different than a need. Right now, there's a lot of people want a lot of things, but our needs seem to have gotten sidetracked. When you say things are coming apart, what are you talking about specifically

that you're watching with the city? Like, what specifics? Well, the biggest one right now is the homelessness and the crime that comes with, some of the homelessness characters. These are some of these guys are legitimate. They just got a hard time. They're not all criminals, and some people like to brand it that way.

When you get in and actually meet with them and talk to them, you realize that some of them are just down on their luck, and there's no capacity for them. There's only 29 beds in the men shelter. There's only about the same in Slim Thorpe. But you've got 200 people out there, or more, they say. Who's talking for them? Where are they going to get the help they need?

This is one crisis. You know, our spending is another crisis. We've committed to some huge arena that's costing the taxpayers lots of money, and we already had a bunch of arenas that just needed some retrofits. So this is some bad decisions, in my opinion, bad decisions have been made, and I don't think the public really had their say with it all. When you're talking the arenas, you're talking about the Sinovus Hub here in Lloyd Minster, which is build at, I don't know, 100 million-ish.

And I say that, and I'm like, man, that's a giant number. Yeah, sticker shock. When you're talking about rinks could have been retrofitted, are you talking to the Civic Center? Civic Center is one that was scheduled to get some kind of retrofit, if not demolished. We've got the Archie Miller, we've got the Russ Robertson. There's many places.

And then the Synovas or Synergy Center way out south there. There's already four sheets ice in there. Maybe they're not official Olympic size or something. I don't watch hockey much at all. So I don't really know exactly what they needed for a. but it doesn't appear that we needed one that large in what the public is telling me when I'm talking with them. Well, what does the public think? The public, you know, this is the interesting thing about having this many candidates on to talk about their different circles they're talking with, right?

Because you point out the homeless crisis and what's different about you, I think, Russell, is you say, well, who's talking for these people? They're not all degenerates. They have issues and they need help, and we're in a position maybe to do that. In your circle, right, if a rink isn't the need, what is the needs that you're hearing about? The people that I spoke with were kind of varied.

The one was a gentleman just down on his luck. He's suffering from colon cancer. He's got a colossomy bag. He's waiting for a spot in the men's shelter. There's no spot for him, So he's sleeping in the bush, and this is just one of the guys that I talked to. Another one, busking guitars for some money. There are people that just need a little bit of an edge,

and right now we don't have the capacity for that. To be able to get these people off the street, winter's coming. What are we going to do with them? How can we help them as best as possible? I mean, I suggested some at-go-trailer-type buildings combined with the mass transit information that we could be moving them around to and from various facilities. And it's a community effort.

It's very difficult. So the need you see is the homeless crisis. That is the like, I'm walking in day one, I'm on city council, we got to do something about this. It's a crisis thing now. And coming with it is the people kind of roll it all together with crime. And they're not all criminals. Some of them are hardcore, some of them aren't.

and how do you paint with such a broad brush and not service the community, the citizens of Ludminster? Real people down there that are not homeless are being really subjected to abnormal conditions in their own home with the crime that comes with some of these people that are wandering around. I wouldn't want to live in that. I used to live in that area a long time ago.

It wasn't anywhere near like that when I moved in here 40 years ago. What do you do? There's still people. And the ones that are breaking the law, we need to crack down on them. I heard the RCMP, I just witnessed it. They are trying to ramp up their services. Right now, Saskatchewan's not footing much of the bill for the RCMP policing done in Lloydminster.

That's a provincial issue. But Lloyd Minster is the one, the people are the ones that are suffering because of it. If, um, hmm, what other needs do you see? Lloyd having. You know, you talk about things or you go, you can't get past the first one, or you mentioned also the spending. Just look at needs, because I find needs versus wants an interesting conversation. Well, here's the thing. As a counselor, you have to put your personal agenda aside because if the focus shifts somewhere, they miraculously solve one issue, there'll be another issue on the back burner. And it can't be your wishes as a

It has to be what the people really are going to support and their voices aren't being heard. It is so difficult to actually get through to counsel right now to say, I'd like to speak in front of counsel. I've got to submit a letter several days in advance, tell them what I'm going to talk about. Unfortunately, this and unfortunately the same time has become a crisis situation and they have had some open mic sessions down at City Hall. I've participated in those. I did represent a couple of the homeless people in one regards.

So if council was more open to the public, we wouldn't be in these crisis situations. We'd be resolving stuff at a lower intensity level. And that's a feedback loop. That's what communication is all about. And radio guys, we love to communicate. Listen and then figure out what you can do. Do you think the, you know, from a communication level, if, you know, you get elected, you're sitting on city council.

What's the best way in your mind to communicate to the public these issues? You know, because you get into that realm of city council, and I know that it's available online and you can go watch and all these different things. But in your mind, you can run a ham radio. You talk to people all over the place. That's what that community is about, as you say, communicating. In a community, how do you start to bring the population in? Because I don't think we're all callous people.

I think we're just probably busy and running around with their heads chopped off trying to make ends meet and a bunch of other things. How do you bring the population into these conversations? Well, that's what these committees are all about. There are right now presently 25 different committees that council members are assigned to or appointed to feeding back from things like the Lloyd Mr. Chamber of Commerce, the Sinova, Friends of Sinovus Hub, 25 different committees. I had a hard time even figuring out who sat on what committee. I did eventually get that information, but who sits on the people that sit in these committees? That's very difficult to achieve.

We know that there's large bodies of people representing specialty interests projects. That's who the public needs to know who they are, so they can actually become more involved. When the public's involved, then the public's opinion gets put forward. Council is the voice of the people, not the voice of the counselor.

I'm going to assume, you know, like you've already talked about speaking on behalf of a few of the homeless men, have you been watching council? Have you been to council meetings? Have you sat there and seen how it interacts? Like, is this, or is it something foreign to you? Oh, no. No, I've been taking up a regular space down at City Hall there for their governance and priorities. So what is the one?

I keep saying stick out, but maybe I should change that. I don't know how to, if you could change something, or maybe one of the things bothering you. When you're sitting there, what, what did it set in a fire to you to be like, I got to run? I need to be in one of those seats because we need to start doing X.

We need to start getting more information from the public before it hits crisis levels. Those people that lined up to speak against where the men's shelter was going to be relocated, the people that were speaking up saying, listen, they were denied their development. development permit and there was another huge public meeting. The place was packed. There's been town hall meetings scheduled by other non-city related entities, voices of Lloydminster, Lloyd

Minister watchdog, what's happening in Lloydminster. These are people that have town hall type meetings and those meetings are packed, but somewhere the communications breaking down because they're still not seemingly addressing these issues in a timely matter. And here we are. Winter's coming. And people are going to be in jeopardy. They're people. They need to be heard. They need to be looked after. What solution do you put forth then for the, you know, whatever the number is of

homeless sitting in Lloyd right now with winder around the corner. You get elected. You go in and you, you know, you talk to council people and you, like, we got to solve what solution is there? Well, one of them is let's actually pick up some of the criminals because there's obviously a criminal element. You don't have the type of situations that have gone down, three homicides, drive-by shootings. This is something that the RCMP is ramping up on, but it didn't happen overnight.

It's not going to get solved overnight, but as long as they're working towards it, and maybe we could really push to get Saskatchewan to start chipping in some of the funding that we lost when we moved the RCMP to the Alberta side. Now it's only funded by Alberta. Saskatchewan washes their hands of it, basically. Why is that? the same way they wash their hands from the long-term care beds in Saskatchewan side. There's a breakdown between city council, not so much council, but the provincial governments

aren't stepping up to the plate. And things are falling through the cracks in an alarming rate. 1958 is when they had the long-term care on Saskatchewan side set at 50 beds. 65 years later, it's still 50 beds. There's been no improvement, and I'm a senior citizen now. I might need one of those. Other people we know need them, and they have to get moved around to different cities, different facilities. And it's just wrong that we've let it get that bad.

Well, I wonder if the communication to the public in knowing some of these things is part of it, right? Like you talk about the communication breakdown of the public going and talking to city council. but I and I this isn't to harp on city council but I I go the way we converse with the P with each other the ham radio is a not this brand new idea but but today's world is shifting real fast almost at times too fast but so be it and we're moving away from traditional medias of how to communicate what's going on in places and I mean geez look at how we're doing this right now yeah and there is a disconnect maybe I might argue the opposite way of like how do we distill out of a Monday council meeting or maybe once a month.

What's happening in our city and how to get that to the public so they can chew on it and start to become involved in this whole process? Well, you have to track your past of it. Okay. Like looking back at what we were doing that wasn't necessarily working in the health care, in the policing force, all these things point to us in a direction where we need to be moving. as a body, as a community. So everyone that, you know, some people hear them complain about,

oh, the RCMP are busy doing minuscule crimes. They're busy. There's bylaw officers that can deal with bylaw issues for like tinted windows or running a stop sign or things like that. Let's let the RCMP focus on their stuff like they're doing, ramping up, trying to catch some of these criminals in the act and get a handle on that. And then let's stay the pressure on the provincial governments.

to deal with the health care crisis that you've got. You've got an aging hospital. You've got an antique, old, long-term care facilities. Right now, people are being displaced because these cracks haven't been filled. If you had any final thoughts for the voting public of Lloyd Minster, you go, vote Russell, this is why. Or maybe it's something completely different than that. What would be your final thought of today? You know, because once again, there's going to be multiple interest.

I've been talking about Kurt Price. off and on here. But you got Kurt Price, he's going to be doing interviews and has been. You have the paper that's come out with different things on this. You have the all candidates debate forum. And then this is just an addition. So

to me, this is a, you know, I hope, a little snapshot of who Russell Moncrief is, what sticks out to you, what you're concerned about, what you want, Lloyd to be. If you had final thought for Lloyd Minster, what would you say? I've got the time to listen to you. I've got the voice to speak for you. And I will take your thoughts and actions required forward through the proper chain of command.

We'll get it sorted out. I'm going to listen and I'm going to be your voice. And I'm going to do the best possible job. I practice public speaking. So I'm not going to end up you to death. Appreciate you coming in here, Russell, and doing this. Thanks for having me, bud. All right.

I'm sitting with Gene Mills Applegate. Thank you for popping in with me today. My pleasure. I've been, well, starting off. You're the final one. You're the 13th. And as you said, the lucky number 13. I've been starting off with just, you know, tell me who Jean is.

You know, like I think a lot of people stare at the list, see some of the names. And when I first saw it, I'm like, oh, I know who that is. Don't know who that. Don't know that. I don't know that. And one of the things that I wanted to make sure I did here, and hopefully, you know, on the 13th one, people can go, okay, I got a good sense of who each one of these people is before, you know, they go read anything or go listen to anything else or show up to the debate. So who is Jean? Gene is me.

I am a long time resident of Lloydminster. I used to work for the city of Lloydminster for 16 and a half years. I moved to Lloyd Minster for a job. I moved to Lloyd Minster for a job. So I moved me and my three children to Lloyd. And I was doing nursing. I did nursing back in Bonneville. Then I moved here for a nursing job.

I used to be a CNA. I don't know if you know what a CNA is. It's a certified nurse's aid. Okay. and I really enjoyed doing that. I worked at the doctor-cooked nursing home. And so you know, like I got to know the ins and outs of what it's like to be an old person. And, you know, a lot of them are stuck there and they don't have family.

And so that's why I want to get into council because I want to. to make sure that these old people are looked after. Because one day you and I are going to be old. And what's the future looking like for us with, you know, minimal nursing homes? Yeah, you know, you're not the first person to bring up specifically the Saskatchewan side of Lloydminster where it hasn't changed in essentially like, I don't know, over 60 or maybe. maybe even 70 years, 60, 70-ish years, which is kind of shocking, I guess. Like, once again, that's one of the interesting things about sitting here.

I guess why this election? Why now in your life are you like, this is the time to get involved and try and get elected? Well, I thought about it for, it's been quite a while. I've thought about it. And like I said, I worked for the city and I've seen a lot of changes, lots of changes. And some things just kind of weren't dealt with, you know. I want to be the voice of the people. I want to be that voice.

If, you know, if they can't go to meetings at the council level, I want to be their voice. I want to talk about issues like. You know, seniors' housing, homelessness, crime in the city. You know, I would like to be there to challenge these issues that we have in the city. 16 years working for the city of Leibnester, correct? Yes. What is that experience? You know, I don't know if it's taught you, but maybe prepared to work as a counselor, right?

Like, you know, you get 16 years. I don't know of anyone else running that has that background. So that sets you apart already. What does that translate over? How does that help you? Well, like I said, I've seen a lot of changes. I've worked with numerous mayors, you know, in the last 16 and a half years when I was there. And they just kind of come and go, you know.

And so one time at our union, I was really involved with the union. And one time at our meeting, I suggest to my union members, maybe it's time we have a full-time mayor, somebody that will get paid to be in the office full-time because the rest of the mayors just kind of were there once a week or twice a week. you know, it wasn't a full-time thing for them. They didn't get paid a wage, you know. And so we voted on it, and it was, they took it to council, and it was approved.

And that's when Mr. Mulligan was a mayor. So he was the first one to be full-time, in the office, full-time, back when he was elected as mayor. So I guess, you know, where you sit, you've been on the inner, like on the opposite side, I said essentially of this group of people, right? The counselors and the mayor. You've seen how that system works. Yes. Is there things that you could walk in immediately and know how to get through, I don't know, I'm going to call it red tape, but I don't know what other way to say it is.

When it comes to, you know, you're talking the homeless crisis, you're talking different things like that. Is there ways to expedite things and having the background you have? Well, you'd have to do some really, you know, like extensive research. And that is why I'm applying to sit on the board at the men's shelter. It really, the men's shelter is something that, like everything that I talk about on my flyer there. and I just see so many people, like men, that are homeless. Like, we don't know what they are going through, right? Why did they leave home?

Why did they leave where they were living from? What is their issue? Something like that, like I want to get really find the answers, I guess. but, you know, I want to have more interaction, I guess, with the homeless people. I live down, downtown, and we see a lot of homeless people walking down our back alley. Like, I don't know if they're homeless. I shouldn't say they were homeless. You know, it's not good to speculate.

Yeah, but at the same time, you're noticing a. trend and you know yes yes but then on the other hand when we were you know there used to be a family across the back alley from us and that house turned into a drug house and we seen a lot of people coming and going right and see we i think we have to stop stuff like that happening like these drug houses, like, how do we stop them? How do we stop them? That's a good question. Because, you know, I mean, I think how do we stop them is I think the landlords have to be held responsible

for who they put in their houses and what goes on in there. Because I've heard a lot of people say, oh, that one is a scummy landlord. Like, what do you mean by scummy landlord? Well, they just let anybody move in there and, you know, people come and go. There's sometimes there's 15 people living in that little house, stuff like that, right? So I think it has to go back and the landlords should be held responsible for, you know, what happens in their houses, don't you think? Well, I guess, you know, that's an interesting philosophical question, right?

And I look at city council and I'm like, can things be done if you're elected that can then impact the city of Lloyd and how they deal with tenants? I could make recommendations at the council level, right? And I, what I just said, like, you know, we should implement something where the landlord is held responsible. right so that's why I want to get in that's why I want to get in as a for the listener Jean keeps bump in the mic she's a hand-talker folks I'm French and you know I mean oh that's the look I got earlier the French look I knew I've seen yes yes I'm kidding and so you know I want to get into council to help the other counselors and the mayor, you know, get some info, get, you know, solve some problems.

And one of the problems that you're seeing is homelessness. Absolutely. And then maybe even tacking into that is, you know, crime or the drug issues with housing. Like we don't know what these people are going through, right? just because one day, if I'm walking down the street would have ripped the pants and an old jacket, am I going to be labeled as a normal person or am I going to be labeled as homeless?

You're going to be guaranteed labeled something. That's right. I mean, you know, and depending on the time of year, you're really going to be labeled as something. So, you know, these people, who knows, like maybe they have nice clothes at home and they choose not to wear them, you know. and we're always willing to label people.

We always jump to that conclusion, you know. But how do you change that? From a city councilor's position, I've been asking, you know, about how you create community. Instead of pulling it apart, how do you build it up or how do you piece it back together? Because we went through COVID, and COVID tested us all. Exactly.

So how is a city counselor, can you maybe instill some community values? and try and, you know, peace back. You've been here in a long time. Lloyd Minster is not this city of a million people. It's smaller than that. It's a wonderful place. But at times, you know, we've lost parts of what made this place,

you know, a real strong community. Exactly. You know, and the thing is say, like, I was invited tomorrow to the Native Friendship Center to go and say, speak about this, why am I running for counsel? And, you know, and just to sit down and get their views of what they expect, you know, and they nominate me. And they vote for me. And what did they say? I haven't done it yet. Oh, you haven't done it? I was supposed to go tomorrow, but I'm

busy with this, because I, like I told you, I made this commitment a month ago. Yes. You know, and I can't back out on it. I'm not that type of person. I won't bail, you know. And so I phone them, which is very important. Like, you know, because this girl that invited me, she'll be expecting me tomorrow, right? So I phoned early this morning and I explained that I won't be there tomorrow, tomorrow for, you know, the soup in Bannock, but I will be there next week, you know. So I have a calendar of my own and I write my appointments down.

It's just like making an appointment to go see the doctor, right? If you bail out on it, you're not going to get in for a while, right? It's just, I don't know, I just want to be, when I first moved here, like I used to work at the Native Friendship Center, and I've seen a lot of, you know, people come and go, it's not as bad back then as it is now. You know, you see them hanging around outside. and whatever, right?

But friendship centers are there to help people. You know, they go out and they buy Christmas gifts for kids and adults, you know, mainly kids. And that's to show that they care. You're pointing to

like structures that are there to help. Yes. But what's happening is, And I don't know the extent of it. So this is just my general thoughts, and you can have Adder, is it's starting to become issues surrounding those structures, which are there for the common good. But now the problem is starting to reach a boiling point. Maybe it's been boiling for a while. And the question, you know, that you're that you're positioning is like, how do we fix this?

How do we get there? And here running for counsel, that's your main, one of your main goals is to solve the issue with the homelessness. So on Wednesday, when I go next Wednesday, you know, I'm going to sit down and ask these people that come there for the soup in Vanek or whatever, you know, I'm going to ask them. Like, what is, like, where are you from? What are you doing here? You know, different questions, right? We don't know. Do you think, I don't know, do you watch the council meetings right now?

Are you involved in that at all? Somewhat. Not all the time. I don't watch all of them. I was just curious if you've listened to any of the conversation around this. Because this problem has been getting talked about. I feel like quite some time. Yes.

Have you heard any thoughts in there that you would like to, you know, if I was sitting there I would have countered with or is there anything that you're worried about that the council is overlooking? Well, I read some of the, minutes and stuff like that, but they're so vague. You know, they don't really I guess I'm not

seeing the answers I was looking for. Like, so they talked about this. What did they do? What was the follow-up on it? You know what I mean? And I'm that type of person that I like to know. Say, if somebody got killed

on behind my back alley like a month down the road I want to know what happened to that person but it just gets washed up and just disappears swept under the rug yeah exactly

nothing gets talked it doesn't get talked so you want more transparency that yes and then I guess you know with time closing in here you know one of the other things you've mentioned is health care or

what's the word I'm looking for here folks like elderly care I don't know I can't spit out the word I'm looking for this is what happens when it's been 13 in a row you know if elected you're you're looking to solve one of the big issues of Lloydminster which is homelessness crime and try and get to the bottom of that I think a lot of people are looking at that

the other one if I may and if you want to talk on it or just tell me I'm wrong is beds it's for the elderly, you're trying to look into that issue as well, correct? Yes, right, right. And what do you think can be done about that, right? If I elect Gene, Gene walks in and what can we do about it? Well, I think we should build, instead of building an arena, we should have built two nursing

homes, right? That's my thought. I don't know what everybody else thinks. but I had an experience here three years ago where I wasn't feeling well, so I called my doctor, my doctor sent me, told me to go through emergency, so I went. I got there like quarter after three in the afternoon, and my husband took me. And so anyways, they took me in, they did the ultrasound, yep, your appendix are going to burst. surgeon comes in

and he was one of these surgeons that come into town to cover for other surgeons that go on holidays he was for vagina and so anyways he comes in and he says I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do

this was like 3 30 in the afternoon he says I can't do your surgery till tomorrow morning at 10.30 I kind of felt like I was he was prejudice against me and like to make me wait that long

no and full well my appendix were going to burst and they did burst during the night and so they dope me up with all kinds of you know is that prejudice or is that like a lack of I don't know what it is but

you put yourself on my shoes what would you think it was I don't know I'm like that is a scary state of health care It is. It was. So after that, I was in a hospital five days, got sent home four days later. My stomach was like the size of a nine-month pregnant woman. So I went in, I went back in and the doctor took out, this other doctor took out ten staples and pushed my stomach out and all this poison come out. But for three months, every day during the pandemic, I had to get a health nurse to come in, to come in. To come home. and changed the packing on my stomach. And they started off with three feet of packing. Oh, man.

Okay. That was, it was negligence, really, on the doctor's part, you know. Had nothing to do with the hospital, like, you know, I mean. If you were speaking to the Lloydminster voter and you're saying, A, get out and vote, but if you had one final thought for them, what would it be? vote for me because I am going to be your voice. Thanks for hopping in and get into the studio, Gene. I appreciate it. You're welcome.