Shaun Newman Podcast - #753 - Brett Oland & Nikolas Morianos

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Brett Oland is the CEO of Bow Valley Credit Union. Nikolas Morianos is a Managing Partner & Director at Silver Gold Bull. We discuss the Cornerstone Forum, the meaning of Gold, the craziness of today’s world and soon a new option to buy fractional gold. 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 Ben Davidson. This is late and great. This is Tanner Nadey. This is Tom Romago. This is Chuck Brodnick. This is Alex Krenner. This is Jim Sinclair. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday. How's everybody doing today? Let's get to it, shall we? Precious metals that can be thought of as the ultimate insurance policy against economic uncertainty and government incompetence

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Substack, it's free to subscribe to every Sunday 5 p.m. is going to be the week in review. That's going to get you caught back up on these busy weeks where you're like, how the heck am I supposed to keep tabs on five episodes a week? Well, if you can't, slide over, sign up for Substack. you're going to get an email. And if you're not getting it, check your junk mail. Check to make sure that it's not going in the wrong folder.

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you're going to see something super cool happening with the podcast. The Cornerstone Forum is returning in May 10th, May 10th, not returning May 10th, is returning May 10th, 2020, in Calgary, Alberta, Tom Longo, Alex Kraner, Chuck Prott, and Kaelinth, Kaelin Ford, Matt, Air, Chase Barber, and a few more are going to be announced with guest hosts, including Chris Sims and Tom Bodrovics. Yeah, we're going to have an All-Star cast coming to Alberta. It's going to be a ton of fun. That's May 10th.

Early bird tickets are up. Just go down on the show notes. These are going to be the cheapest the tickets are. The price will go up. January 1st along with if you're wanting to buy a table with the Tom, the Alex, the Chuck, et cetera, et cetera, yours truly maybe. All you got to do is wait for January 1st and then those are going to be out on sale as well. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review, make sure to leave a

thumbs up, make sure to leave a five-star review. All of that truly does help. Believe me, if it wasn't for all you find folks, I probably wouldn't be found on anything. And you're such an amazing group of people. You might as well tell them what you love or hate about me, because I guess it helps, I'm told. All right, let's get on to that tale of the tape. The first is the CEO of Bow Valley Credit Union, the second managing partner and director at Silver Gold Bull.

I'm talking about Brett Olin and Nicholas Moriano's. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Numa podcast. Today I'm joined by Nick Mariano's. I'm Brad Holland. Oh, wow. I butchered it enough last night. Thanks for joining us, fellas.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Great to be here. Now, Brett, you've been on the podcast before, and Nick, you haven't. No. But I feel like it probably, it's been a while for Brett, actually quite a while in the number of episodes. So how would we just start with who the heck you two are for the audience? You go?

Okay, I'll go. My name's Nick. I'm one of the founding partners of Silver Gold Bull, probably familiar to a lot of S&P listeners. I've been doing the silver and gold sales thing for about 15 years. And essentially, that's in the gist of who I am and how I got to be in Lloyd Minster today. Well, that, for the audience member, Nick shows, well, both of you showed up in Dust Barn.

You know, like for most listeners, they probably don't realize. Maybe they do. I don't know. But when we do the Cornerstone Forum, and actually, if I take a step back before the Cornerstone Forum was ever a thing, it was Tom and Alex. That was, summer of, that was called. It was just Longo Craneer. That's all it was. SMP presents Longo Craneer.

And they showed up of June, 2023. Different format. Similar format. both had a keynote speak but then I gave them a like man it was a long time it was probably an hour and and change on stage where they laid out Russia Ukraine like that was pretty pretty much the night like when I look back on that you know like well you can go listen to it on the podcast actually regardless the night before we all got together we had this idea in Dust Barn he's got my brother's got a Roman arch barn that he built it's beautiful

and so we had this idea of like well maybe we should smoke some cigars and drink some scotch with Tom and Alex. And, you know, like I thought there'd be 10 people there. I think that night there was 19. I don't know why I remember that. But unbeknownst to me, Nick was one of the people because I didn't, I don't even know if I said hi to you that night. I have no idea.

I didn't know who you were. Right. And then Brett, I'd interviewed previously, so I knew who you were, but I didn't know you that well, right? Like, that's very early on in the relationship, you know, and to fast forward to where we are now. And how many times we've run into each other, obviously Nick and I, With Silver Gold Bull being one of the major sponsors of the podcast, we've talked a lot.

But Brett, we all seem to find ourselves in these same circles over and over again. Well, imagine that one of your previous podcast guests, Faisal, was the one that messaged me. Oddly through Tom's Gold Goats and Guns, Patreon saying, hey, I'm going to Lloyd Minster to see Tom. And I was like, why the hell is Tom going to Lloyd Minster? for the Sean Newman podcast. I was like, what's the Sean Newman podcast? And if you, if you fast forward from that point when I was here, that's that early summer, I think it was like four months later.

And we started a sponsorship. And it really was, yeah, I mean, we've been in each other's orbit ever since. And I can't seem to get away from Brett now. I mean, I don't, maybe, maybe he feels the same way. I love you, Nick. Yeah, back to Dust Barnes. I dragged my wife out to the S&P Cornerstone last year and we had this event before the hand and She's like well where are we going? I'm like we're going to a barn and she's like you're joking. We're not going to a barn

I'm like no we are literally going to a barn when well is there bathrooms in the barn I'm like I don't know I don't think there is any bathrooms in the barn It's like no seriously what where are we going and pull up and then Sean's there and literally the barn and Yeah she was a little surprised but But, yeah. If there's one thing I'm sad about the cornerstone form going to Calgary is that it's not in the barn. The barn was like, now to a woman, in all fairness, right? Like, I didn't think about that. I didn't really care, I guess.

I just wanted to, it just kind of, the night before just kind of grew out of nothing. Because all my previous events, there was nothing really going on the night before, right? I'm stressed out. Everybody can see it in the barn. I'm like, this is a terrible night. I'd rather do it Sunday night. So I can actually just decompress and enjoy myself because you're all worked up about the next night and getting everything right. But the barn became this kind of like you needed a nod and a handshake to get in, right?

Because there's only the last time there's 20 some people, 28 maybe somewhere in there. And it's an eclectic, eclectic group of people, right? That's how I meet John. That's how I meet all these different people in this barn. And you're like, I never thought about it from your wife's perspective. Where are we going? Oh, we're going to a barn. It's like, we're going where?

No, you're pulling my leg. No, you show up and it's a barn. But it was magic. Both times. Each time was a little bit different. And I don't want to create too much formal because obviously it was one of those things that sort of happened. And there couldn't be very many people there. But it was excellent.

And it was a great way for some of the various participants in and around the event to meet each other. Because a lot of us were coming from different places, be it, you know, people that were sponsoring or whatever. And getting to meet Alex and Tom up. close had great conversations with Dave Bradley at the time he's been on the podcast here and and actually on gold goats and guns too so it was just it was a great venue to to meet people as for Calgary yeah we'll have to recreate some of that magic down there well I was just saying like Tom and Alex were on for the 17th time and at the end of it I was I was saying it you know people if you enjoy this you got to make sure you get to Calgary they seem to be everybody

seems to be very excited about Calgary I'm probably the only one that's depressed that's leaving Lloyd Minster because it's like, we're going where? We're going to Lloyd Minster. Everybody jokes being the end of the earth, right? Or the edge of the earth or two hours east, I believe is what Tom called it. It's what Tom calls it. It continues to call it. But yeah, so be it.

Going back to Silver Gold Bowl, I don't know how much you want to talk about origin stories and different things, but I find one of the cool things, and maybe it's just me being a Western Canada kid, is it's a company that gets its origins out of Alberta. Yeah, absolutely. So the company was founded in and around 2009, and oddly it was founded out of the back of a restaurant in Rocky Mountain House. My genesis with it was really the O'8 Financial Crisis. I was studying law in the UK, had these aspirations of staying over there, be a lawyer, etc., and all that fell apart with the financial crisis. I got a call from a cousin.

He and his brother wanted to start this business. I was just about to move back to Canada. and lo and behold, yeah, it started out of this very, very humble beginning. We had a broom closet that had literally had inventory in it. In the earliest iterations of it, we actually didn't have like a U-line account or anything for boxes, so we would cut our own boxes out of other boxes. I think our first ever order was a fraud and cost us like $9,000 out of our own pocket, so that sucked.

But we went from that little tiny space. in the back. I mean, we even used, if you can picture being like a short order, like on a line in a kitchen. And we all grew up in restaurants because myself, Bob and Mihali, our parents are Greek. So restaurants. The fourth partner, Chris, he wasn't from that background. He brought the technical expertise. But we had those little rollers where we would pin orders like order chits. Like you were on a short, like a line in a kitchen. Anyways, we graduated out of there. We ended up in an office. or like, sorry, in an apartment where we would move bits of inventory in every day to ship, again in Rocky. And we would take pictures of the orders in these bus trays from the restaurant, like those, like a bus boy would use to take dirty dishes off of a table.

That was another six months. We finally moved to an actual office there, another broom closet, but maybe slightly sturdier door, which also had a vault inside, like that we had, was portable, large one. And then come 2012, we moved to Calgary full time and we haven't looked back. But that was it. That was the origin was Rocky Mountain House. It was just the wildest time. I mean, at one point, all of the partners and all of our spouses lived in the same house, too. When we, because I came over September 2010 and we were just like, it was just wild.

It was like bootstrapping to the nth degree, no salaries, no nothing. And then personally, I ended up in Fort McMurray because my wife ended up getting a job up there. So I would literally take orders at a desk day and night, never really leave, never go outside. And then every other week I would be down south. So it was a trip. It was awesome. Well, I think of in my brief time, my or like the first studio I ever had was an old storage room of an old house and had like mouse poop on the floor. And like we just gutted it and threw up a wall and started a bit.

bringing people there and I was bringing like former NHL players in there right and I remember thinking I'm like they probably probably think I'm going to kill them like I mean literally it was outside of town you couldn't see it you walked in the garage there was a the guy who lived there had guns scattered on the floor laid out in the corner bucket well I mean imagine placing a you know at the time the orders were still still sizable but like five 10 15 20 25000 dollar order and you didn't even know that your stuff was coming from a restaurant. I mean, we honestly got our first big break. And we just, essentially for us, this was a solution to a problem that we felt we had. I don't, we didn't know how many other people out there had a problem buying bullion,

but they didn't want to go to a local shop. They wanted to be more discreet and cost effective with transparency. And so we set out to solve a problem. But we didn't know where we were going to get our supply of, of bullion from. Nobody. had cracked that nut of getting product across the border, which sounds crazy, but most bullion, even if it originates in Canada, it actually ended up going to the states and coming back to us. It was so silly. It's just because all of the bigs are down there, the distributors. So we ended up catching our first break because we bought bullion from another dealer and he

left a little sticker on it. And lo and behold, that had one of the primary distributors who you otherwise would never have heard of. Got in touch with them. they managed to get the product as far as sweetgrass Montana. So one of my partners used to have to load up his avalanche like once every so often. And literally he would, he'd come across the border. And it was just like, that's not safe.

You know? And that's just like, again, it's a, it's a unique story, but it's really not for any of the business owners that are out there. I think it's really relatable about the things that you do to start a business. Because who starts it with a lot of money? like it just doesn't exist really, right? So, and I think it makes the story that much better when you, you know, for the customers that have now been to the new HQ and they've seen the depository and they've seen the distribution center where we move, you know, literally in a month, we'll move tens of thousands of packages. If you go to the, like the origin story of most businesses and probably almost all, if you, even the ones that get bought by big companies, if you go trace where the money starts and how they get going, I would say, most or majority of businesses have a really cool origin story of how they're just like,

as you call it, bootstrapping like you have no clue. And I mean, Brett, I don't know, you can add in your, your flavor to Bow Valley Credit Union and how you guys get, or how you got your start with a bank there.

But like what you've turned it into is really, really something, something that gets talked about a lot of, you know, we were talking last night, Ben Perrin and me talking about, you know, like getting shut down by one of the Alberta banks for,

a small transaction, right? Where did I go? I started to count with you guys, right? Because it's like I'm not trying to do crazy things. And yet at times the world, even the littlest thing, they deem to be crazy. I don't know your story on BVCU, but certainly if you wanted to share that fire away. Sure. Yeah. I know I'll touch on that piece. Like we constantly get that where people's accounts have been shut down, you know, specifically after the trucker convoy, we got sort of a big influx because we took a stance on that. And even today, we're having a conversation, I was having a conversation with our head compliance person. It's like, well, is this person doing something illegal? Well, no, they're just buying crypto. Or no, they're just buying

Ivermectin or something like that. Are these things illegal? No. Then why are we shutting people down? Like it just doesn't make a lot of sense in a lot of cases. But anyway, yeah, Bow Valley Credit It's been around for 70 years, 7-0 years. Started in Banff, Alberta, 1953. It's Banff Park Savings. That was the first branch. We sort of have grown and expanded throughout Alberta. Our latest branch is in Acheson, which is West Edmonton.

We have two more plans. They're under construction right now, one in Red Deer and one in South Calgary. We have two branches in Calgary. And so by this time next year, we should have about nine branches in Alberta with about 600 million under assets, which is relatively small for a financial institution. But we're considered a large credit union, and we sort of hold our own with products and services for businesses and personal use. And basically we're a full service financial institution. Anything that you can get at the big major banks you can get at Bow Valley Credit Union,

with the exception of if we've taken a really strong stance around hard money, specifically gold and silver, which is quite unusual for a financial institution. Like there are financial institutions that dabble in it and they sell, you know, your Scotia banks or your bemos will sell gold coins, but the premiums are awful. And we're really leaning into it and embracing the fact that people want sound money in their portfolio. And it's not like we're proposing that you put 100% of your assets into gold or silver or Bitcoin or something like that. But it is a useful tool to protect against a number of risks that seem to be very elevated these days. you know, the U.S. election, we're talking about World War III, inflation is killing people,

you name it. Just to have a bank that wants to just deal with your money. Well, it's amazing what you get when you're talking about a group that's looking out for their shareholders and their best interests rather than, you know, again, it's a, you know, SGB is a corporation, but you think about it. BVCU is looking after their shareholders. They're not looking after their corporate interests. They're looking after, you know, in our conversations,

Brett constantly references sustainability because it's important. But at the same time, for a 70-year-old institution, you're still nimble enough to say, hmm, what is it that we could add as a product offering or as a service that's going to benefit our shareholders, are members, but also differentiate us in the market. And I think that that's super refreshing. Not just because it's gold and silver.

It's just because, like, how often do you talk about with your various guests? Like, we were talking last night about, you know, I turned the tables on you. And I said, well, why? Why, S&P? What's the whole, you know? And a lot of it comes down to, I think you'd agree, community. And I know, whether it's Tom and Alex, who are two staples, they often talk. about when you're you're you know sort of studying yourself or whatever's coming you know in the

near future which appears to be upheaval whether it's financial geopolitical war what what have you community really is at the top of it and and i know thomas said this on so many occasions that having a relationship with your local butcher having a relationship with your local credit union putting some money in your local credit union because if you have a problem are you going to be able to get on the phone and talk to somebody in Toronto or India or wherever it is that you're talking to somebody, or is it going to be easier to call your local credit union that's just around the corner that might even know your name, genuinely, and can help you through whatever it is that's your problem in that time.

And like, these are the kinds of things that, I mean, Cornerstone is about that too. It all comes back to community and having a like-minded group of people around you. And being able to talk about the things that are actually going on. Damn right. You know, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's been impressive to me. You know what I was telling Mel this morning before I left to come here.

She's like, oh, who you got? Or like, what are you guys going to talk about? I'm like, wow, I mean, there's a myriad of things. But like, you know, my, I keep running into, obviously me and Nick run into each other an awful lot now. But like even if you take all that away, it's like you both are on panels now. You're both like everybody's, our circles are getting closer and closer, not further and further of our communities. of like trying to figure things out and seeing what's coming ahead and and understanding how how the system has been working maybe against us or just maybe how it works in general.

And to see companies actively and open to discussing that is refreshing. Like it's just like, oh, I'm drawn to that. Why? Because they're actually going to talk to me about what's going on instead of being like, oh, no, no. No, well, when people aren't stupid and it's like, don't try and snow people and say, oh, yeah, no, ignore it. I know this tomato's $8, but yeah, don't worry about it. You know, you're imagining things.

No, it's a real issue. CPI, no. It's a real issue. And, you know, when you see those grocery prices going up, $300, $400, $500 for a week of groceries or something like that, it's hurt. Well, look at the genesis of our relationship. I've talked about this. I've related to so many people. You came down to Calgary to the Grey Eagle Casino because you had an interview slated with Sarah Palin.

Yeah. Shout out to Canadians for Truth. I haven't talked to that group in a long time, but they were the ones that allowed me to do that. That was their guest for the night. No, that's terrific. And so I met you for the briefest of coffees at the casino. And you mentioned something. I was kind of sussing out, like, what's this all about?

What's the opportunity? And you mentioned something about COVID. And, I mean, to be fair, as, you know, a person who was really frustrated by that whole experience and have pretty strong views about it, I still said like, oh, really still with the COVID? And you basically slapped me down on the spot. And I was like, I felt bad. I went away and I thought about it and I told the guys, like, I think we need to support somebody that's still talking about issues that we weren't shy to talk about.

It just felt almost like I wanted to just repress all of that because it was so awful. And that whole experience and the gaslighting that we went through and everything. But no, you're like, no, we need to talk about that, not obsessed over it. but we need to keep it front of mind, make sure people never forget about it. And, you know, lo and behold, not long after, it was like, yeah, this is a good fit. I mean, if for nothing else,

supporting people that are putting their neck on the line because it's, obviously, it's an admirable thing. I think in the long game, we're going to be the ones on the right side of this. And the thing is you think about anybody that's throughout history, who's the ones that are trying to suppress, speech, free speech, who are the ones that are basically trying to tell you what to do? Who are the ones?

Those are usually the bad guys. So don't tell me differently because history has a very different picture. So it was hard at the time to talk about those things and discuss those things, but very necessary to sort of move society forward. This is going to be the weird, like kind of cool, but kind of weird all at the same time. So anyone who comes to the studio gets one else silver coin. And I'm like, I'm going to give. SGB, a silver coin pack? Is that where we're doing here? I guess so.

So this is not a fake smile. This is a genuine. You've driven all the way to two hours east of the edge of the world. And for your services, a one ounce silver coin. I'll take that all day long. It's amazing. So we're speaking to this group of Bitcoiners. And really great group of people, super approachable. And, but the one thing that that Bitcoin doesn't have, it has lots of good stuff about it, but it doesn't have this like visceral kind of a fun response.

Like, I mean, the best is we used to do these, we used to do these trade shows and honestly like, oh my God, it was, it was wild. We would, you'd have mobs of people coming to your booth and they'd be buying coins and this and that. And I mean, like lots of people just going there just to steal chocolates, but shit happens. it is what it is. But I do remember lots of people would come, and we were one of those few companies who were just really kind of,

we were chill about gold because we just loved it. I mean, we had this innate fascination with it. And we would put gold in people's hands for the first time. And this is back when an ounce of gold was, let's say, with, you know, you're talking like $1,800, $2,000 CAD. And they were like, you're letting me hold. Is this real? Is it real? But you could just see it was the minute it hit their hand,

their face just lit up. because it's tangible real wealth. To your point, you don't put all of your money in any one thing, period. That's just the one thing that I wish for Bitcoiners that they could experience, is that kind of a feeling of, instead of like, you know, digits in your wallet, it's just that feeling of that weight in your hand. Well, Chuck Pradnik every time he comes in, right? He's got to be getting, he's building a stack on being an SMP guest, right?

He's like, you sure you want me to take us? I'm like, I don't know, Chuck, you just drove two and a half hours to come sit and talk with me. Yeah, you know, the thing is I, I think I want to change that up anyways. Like we have those one ounce bullets. Like, I mean, I can imagine that Chuck would light up like a Christmas tree. Well, don't spoil it. Chuck, erase that from your mind.

Yeah, that won't happen. That won't happen. We're sold out anyways. But he talks about being Golan and playing with his stack, right, of coins. And like the sound it makes, everything. Like, I didn't know it until I bought my first set of silver coins, right? And then I'm like, oh, this is, this is something. This is super cool, right?

Well, one of you guys said last night, it's more symbolic, right? We used the word gold. But it wasn't, gold wasn't just gold. Gold meant something more to the three of us sitting over a beer, too, and dinner. It was about open-mindedness and community. I get home. So anyways, once again, this morning, I'm talking to my wife. She's like, oh, how was the night?

I'm like, well, we sat in the same spot for five hours and talked and didn't, stop talking. And I'm like, so I think it was a pretty successful night. She's like, oh, that's good. What did you guys talk about? I'm like, oh, everything. Like, I mean everything, but I did bring up the gold thing. I'm like, one of the interesting things was the, the idea of gold. It just, the word means more than just gold because it's kind of like, oh, you're, oh, gold. Interesting. Okay. And I'm sure the Bitcoiners listening would say the same thing about Bitcoin. It's true. It means more than just Bitcoin. Because if you understand Bitcoin or gold and what it represents, all of a sudden you're in a very, I mean, it's a larger club than

I give credit, but at the same time in our society, it's a pretty small club. Yeah. Well, and that's essentially, Bull Valley Credit, you needed to say thousands and thousands of words in basically something that you could just put on top of a sign. Well, that was the origin. Yeah. And so we basically just slapped gold on the side of our logo and people, go, I know what you're talking about.

And they know that you're talking about freedom of speech. They know that they're talking about liberty. They're knowing that you're talking about independence and protection from government inflation. You're talking, like, it's just this myriad of issues that boils down to basically one thing. And, you know, not that everything has to do with the financial system, but let's face it, it's a very emotional topic.

it's complicated. And if you can distill it down for people to understand, then we're way farther ahead with something like that. Things feel wrong. Something feels off, right? Like we, you know, it comes up often in conversation. You don't, you can't, like I don't have the solutions for life. I far from it.

But I realized that, and I was saying last night that I've had this gentle, entry into what appears to be just a crazy world. I came at it very organically. I was thinking about, you know, things like, why is there so much debt? What is the whole purpose of, you know, printing so much money? Why is this? Why are we on the trajectory that we're on from a financial point of view? And then the O8 financial crisis happens. Obviously, people get blown up financially. It's a disaster. And to me, that felt like a really, just a really easy and organic way to enter what has become, you know, banana land. Nowadays, like, you know, depending on how you feel about various issues,

imagine, like we said, like imagine being red-pilled now. And again, that doesn't mean anything other than just, imagine just opening your eyes to like, maybe things aren't quite the way that they're portrayed in the media. Doesn't, we're not going down any particular rabbit hole. were just saying in general, there seems to be an agenda. If you're, you know, it could be big agra, it could be military with the wars, it could be this, it could be that. It's just a lot to digest and come into right now. So I felt, I felt fortunate, but all along, you just feel like something's a little bit off. And I think a lot of people are looking for solutions. And for some of them, they want to work with people that they feel like are on the up and up and value them and value their

opinion because a lot of people, you know, they, they feel like people don't listen to them. I know that like for us, it's like when I do my, because I, part of my portfolio is, is the AML stuff, the anti-money laundering. And so I have to go through training with all of our new hires that are client-facing. And I tell them, you know, not really part of that, but you're a part-time psychologist almost, like without, you know, it's not really. your position, it's not your job, but you will get a lot of people that call you that will want to talk because, you know, it's not like this is a, it's, gold isn't a cultish thing. It's just, it, it means they've probably started to look at the world through a little bit of a different

lens. And this is how they're starting the financial side of their life. Maybe from a medicine standpoint, they're looking at alternatives, naturopathic, whatever, they're doing different things. But it's just, you know, that's just the world that we live in. And I'm sure that, that at BBC you, a lot of in particular the lot clients from the last couple of years likely are in the same boat. No, and absolutely. I spend hours and hours on the phone just you're right. It's, it's a bit of a psychologist. I got to get something off my chest. And I have a lot of time for it, to be honest, because especially now, I think we need a lot of empathy of how crappy that we were treated on the other side of this. I don't want to be when somebody's finally waking up to seeing what's

going on, be that person that's pointing, yelling, and I told you so type thing. Like, you need to have a lot of empathy towards people because we've all been through that journey and it's not easy. And it takes a big person to basically wake up and go, holy moly, I was wrong about X. And it doesn't really matter what it is. But it takes that psychology conversation that, Sean wanted to you wanted to do podcasting obviously as a

job but you wanted to talk to ex-NHLers or remember your story about saying you really wanted to do something with maybe the NHLPA and their alumni because they all have A pitch Glennhielion

Yeah they have fascinating stories I was explaining that to somebody recently and I thought well there's a lot of really good stories there but then there's a different calling you know the life throws a monkey wrench in the spokes of your bike tire and you were you were you were asking about the

the why of the SMP last night right and um you know or or the cornerstone forum and I was explaining and I think about it now like lots right because like that's where I was going that's where I wanted to go I thought you know if I could pitch Glenn Healy I remember at the time there's like 4,000 I'm probably off of my number but 4,000 plus NHLPA so basically alumni of the NHL alive still. And I'm like, I was doing the math of doing one a day and how many years I could do that for and think of the wild stories that would come with that.

And I'm like, oh, this would be unreal. Glenn Healy had no time for it. It was almost disheartened, right? And then, you know, COVID wouldn't relent and whatever. And you kind of get to where you are. Now we've gone through COVID. And, you know, like some of my critics will talk about how I'm like anti-vaccine or whatever terms of,

use and I chuckle about that because I'm like you don't realize where I sit I have loved ones who got vaccinated and so I hear all these stories and I worry for them right right like that's it that's it so I always go back to and I was saying the example last night is is back to the future and in back to the future you know like if you could go in a time machine and go back what would you do somewhere along the lines you're going to buy Amazon stock or Apple or all these different things you're going to buy bitcoin when it first comes out you're going to right i mean what is it at now close to or you're going to go back and buy gold right it doesn't matter you're all of the things you're going to do all the things because you're going to know you're going to win the lottery

first so you have the money to go and buy all of the things but here's the thing you where we sit right now if you just start paying attention like some of the things you can see coming well in advance it's it's kind of like a slow moving car wreck and i i just i just wanted i can't go back in the past because I haven't heard of anyone getting the time machine yet. The DeLorean hasn't been invented. You know, they can go fly back, you know, bring it back nostalgia for you. But we can look into what's coming and we can see that, you know, there's some things we should be talking about.

That's the whole idea behind Cornerstone is to make sure that we do not allow our loved ones or ourselves be taken advantage again by, is it, is it the government? Is it society? Is it world powers? It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter. Yeah. And it's not, you know, I was, I was thinking about it.

It's not a political thing. Like, you know, they've, like, there's obviously been a lot made of, you know, in Canada, red versus blue, you know, which side are you on? That immediately paints you as with these pejoratives or whatever about how you feel about things. But it isn't about that. It doesn't need to be about that. I don't, like, I don't know why everything always has to come back to politics. I mean, probably because there's interest that want that, but it just feels like nonsense. I just, I think, you know, I'm not some big student of history or anything of that sort,

but history seems to, you know, if not repeat, it seems to rhyme. And I do believe that a lot of people who spend a lot of their time in the podcasting world trying to have conversations, trying to talk to people who specialize in different fields are starting to paint a picture that makes a lot of sense, which is we've seen this before. Maybe we didn't see it holding an iPhone or what have you because those are some of the accoutrements of, you know, for. But big censorship, not big tech, but censorship of individuals, control of financial systems. Alex has brought up this incredible point where he's been he's been tying some of the things that have happened in in Russia and Ukraine to potentially sovereign debt crisis that's brewing in in Europe

and well doesn't that sound familiar because there's been a lot of conversation like now World War II starting to blow up again specifically World War II it's starting to become something that people want to talk about they're talking about it more freely there's a lot of mythology around it, that it's where it's foreboughton to go there. But in general, you're starting to see these little slivers of, oh, God, that looks familiar to things that I've heard about the origins of those big wars. And I think it's important for people to be able to talk about them. I mean, I think me and my partners have always been advocates for free speech. How are you ever going to solve a problem if you can't talk about the symptoms?

that you're seeing before your eyes. Or especially if you're being, you know, told there's nothing there, shut up, back to your corner. No, that's not right. Yeah, and you're right. It looks a lot like a slow motion train wreck. And that was sort of my biggest mistake during COVID, because I've always sort of been a bit of a paranoid individual,

but you sort of expect something just to bang, and it happens in 90 minutes like a movie or something like that. And it doesn't. And it doesn't. And, you know, I constantly talk to people and it's like, oh, the U.S. dollar is just going to collapse tomorrow or next week or next month or something like that. And you're like, no, it's not going to work like that. It's going to take effectively decades to happen. But it's going to happen at a snail's pace right in front of your eyes and you're just going to watch it happen and see gradually your purchasing power decline and decline until you look back and go, hey, that million dollars for that.

bottle of Coca-Cola, wow, you know, inflation really hit me harder. So it- Slow-moving train wreck is a-snecks up on you. It's a really good sort of visual for what it is. For what it is, except for when things, there are certain points when things can go really fast. I think of, you know, you think of the Trekkers' combo, 20 days-ish. And during that time... You should have seen that in our office.

Oh? Oh, yeah. That was wild. I mean, people that made a $50 donation and are literally pumping millions into metals because they're like, my account's going to get frozen. Now, they all did really, really well, by the way. Like, that was just, that was very fortuitous. But part of that is obviously the Canadian dollar being as, you know, continuing to weaken. But yeah, the paranoia, we did, we did, oh my God, I think we did two times in this one, the one month.

at March of 22? No, it was the end of January and February. February. Okay, it was February. Yeah. So we did like two years worth of revenue from what we would have done prior to COVID in one month. Yeah.

And we saw a lot of that and the credit union as well of people walking across the street. You know, within hours of Christia Freeland basically standing at the podium and saying we're going to start freezing people's accounts. Right. They must have been prepared. So RBC, BMO, ATB, basically people get letters. You're outside of a risk profile, find business elsewhere. And we still get those letters today of people saying, what the heck did I do?

I'm outside of the risk profile. And a lot of the time they come to us because it's like, yeah, way back when they did something that somebody didn't like. You can imagine my risk profile right now. Well, the thing is combined, we're on every list known to man in this. the studio. Well, and the thing is, you talked about it as well. And it's like, hey, all I want to do is something legal by Bitcoin and my account gets frozen or cut off or something like that.

And it's like, why? It's not like you're... It actually makes me want to buy more. Oh, yeah. No, no. I'm going to do it, right? Yeah, what is it? The fruit of the forbidden tree kind of a thinking, right?

Where you immediately want to do what it is you're not supposed to. I was going to say what was really interesting, too, for, in our experience in it, is that there's peculiar phenomenon in our part of the world in our industry where if one entity gets busy, they're all busy. You don't need to call around and say, hey, are you quiet right now? Because yeah, you know the answer already. Well, this was the only time that I could ever remember were people in the, like our partners in the States, we have a major shareholder that's down there. But like all of our other business partners, like, what the hell is going on in Canada? Because we were like a Hoover, like picture spaceballs where they have that giant vacuum that sucks all the oxygen out of that planet.

Really bringing up the nostalgia today. Well, you started it. But we were like that pulling all of the metal out of everywhere in the United States for probably about three months of gargantuan revenue. And they were like, what's going on? And it's like it's the trucker rally. It was, I mean, there are in the course of, you know, so many years in anything that you do for you, the podcast, for you, the banking industry, you're going to have these sort of seminal moments that you'll never forget, you know, 80 years, 90 years old. You're telling your grandkids, your great grandkids, whatever it might be, that that will be one that we won't ever forget. Ever forget.

Like it was, it was a very proud, obviously it was an insanely proud moment to be a Canadian, among many proud moments to be a Canadian. but it was unbelievably proud. We had lots of customers that have big outfits and had tons of trucks in it. I remember, you know, sheepishly, you know, you do think to yourself because at that point, we were very much letting people do whatever they wanted to do, but we had our own feelings about what we had just been through. And it's like, should we be doing this? Should we be going?

But you do worry. do wonder like what is this going to turn into what's going to happen what are they going to do to you so it was unbelievably um brave of those individuals to do that in the frigid cold as it were too um but yeah our little little tiny piece of it which was you know like it was just it was wild it was just something i'll never forget i was going to say that it's a slow moving train wreck until uh those seminal in those seminal moments everything speeds up real fast you You'd think of how quick they froze bank accounts in the grand scheme of things. Even if they knew whether they were going to bring in the Emergencies Act and lock bank accounts and all that,

like when you look at the grand scheme of things, they shocked the world real fast on how quickly the government moved. Well, I think they didn't think it through clearly. No, obviously not because, you know, I've heard upwards of like quarter of a trillion dollars exiting Canada within a week of capital. And it just, you, disappears, right? So they didn't think through the derivatives of that. Well, and who brought it to an end? I mean, officially, the government did. But unofficially, we only get bits and pieces.

We have to piece it together from reading op-eds and articles and whatever it is that was coming out over time. But it looks like the Canadian banks, the major banks, had a little come to Jesus with, the federal government said, you may not have thought this through, but this is a disaster. And over what? You know, everything that they did was proved to be illegal. And, I mean, it was patently immoral, but it was also wrong. They were wrong about all of their inputs and all of their justifications were just, we weren't true. But yeah, yeah.

I mean, this government's got to go. there isn't a week that goes by right now where I travel and meet somebody new and they've either contemplated leaving Canada they've already had a family member leave Canada or they've bought a second place outside Canada because they you know I mean you just continue to see the the erosion of trust in the government or take your establishment and they're all very concerned about Canada, right? So it's, you know, having this conversation with two guys that are running things in Alberta, I find very fascinating because, you know, it was Sean Alexander from Kalani, right?

We, uh, for the folks, they can't see it, but, uh, Brett brought us Bow Valley, uh, can'tina. And it's made by Kalani, right? A little water drug. And it was Sean Alexander when he came on talking about all of this as a business owner. and you can't find too. I mean, you can find a lot of them to talk about it closed doors, but to come on and actually talk openly about it is a, is rare. Yeah.

And it's, I think people are concerned about getting canceled and goodness knows I've been attempted to be canceled on, on several occasions. But the thing is it, it takes a bit of a special breed or maybe stubbornness type thing in that business owner that they're, they're not. collapsing, which I don't really understand because it's not like your Nike or Starbucks or something like that. And your market's just going to completely collapse on you. In fact, you might even have more people drawn to your organization like we had of, thank goodness, somebody standing up to these people because we're out of options and they're out of hope. So it's,

good for businesses like Kalani's stepping up. How long, how long have you been with BVCU? So I've been CEO for six years and I was on the board for six years before that. So I parachuted into the CEO position. Yeah, December six years ago. 12 years ago, how many branches

did BVCU have? Just five. And, you know, say 300 million in assets. And so we've effectively doubled our asset size. And would you not, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this, but at least from, I would never think of BVCU

being a bank that Lloydminster should get except for the things we've been talking about. I'm like, I can handle that. And I think a lot of people can handle that. And if I do your numbers, you've essentially doubled your portfolio and are expanding at a, I think, a rapid rate. I don't, maybe you guys can, uh, you set me straight on that. And would part of that be just the stance you've taken over the last four years? No, absolutely. So two years ago, uh, 11% increase in membership last year, 18% increase in membership. This year again, 11% increase in membership. And frankly, we learned our lesson too. We had to slow things down because the thing is we were growing so fast that we

couldn't keep up and give good service. And so we've had to sort of contain ourselves to some degree. So there is interest out there for a business that's willing to stick their neck out. It's not just, it's like, again, to paint like a picture. It's not that this is a club for certain type of people. There's no, you know, it doesn't, why, why do things, again, coming back to it, why do they have to be political? Like, why can't everybody just get looked after and just be treated the same and, and be treated with respect and have their capital respected and get courteous, prompt, service,

that is what you would expect, right? Like you pay for a service, you expect to get it. And it doesn't matter how you feel about whatever the issue de jour is. Like, you know, we're not an inherently, we're actually not a political company. I mean, we sponsor the S&P podcast. We sponsored Tucker Carlson coming to jointly to Calgary and to Edmonton. And it felt like it was appropriate at that time. I think, you know, we don't get the benefit of a lot of face-to-face interaction with our customers.

I think that's one of the really big things about Cornerstone that really interests me is we've never ever done anything like this. It's your event, but I said, like we're going to, at some point soon, we're going to put an email out to subscribe, like to the newsletter subscribers and say, you know, we're doing this in Calgary and it's a great opportunity to come together because, again, back to it. community and and giving back and in this case it's helping put on a you know what Sean's going to do a great job and put on a great show and in any part that we can play in it and foster conversation without specifically going at one topic and you know becoming all polarized is I think it's value like that's that's what people need well it doesn't want you know like of the six speakers right now you got Tom and Alex which I mean in fairness that's going to be geopolitics I'm going to assume right they

They come on and we talk about Russia, Ukraine, among a myriad of other things. But after that, you know, Chuck Prodnick, okay, military, but Chuck can go in a lot of different directions. You got Camel Ford, who's got the classical charter school, 1,300 kids in Alberta, and they're expanding. It's a very fascinating story. She is a sharp mind. You got Chase Barbara, who's Edison Motors. That's, you know, like, if you would have asked me about Chase Barbara a year and a half ago, I was against the idea of having them on the podcast, which is funny because I'm like,

When I hear that side of my brain talking, I'm like, that probably should. Because Chase Barber is talking about EVs. He's built the first North America's first electric logging truck. It's a fascinating story. He's a fascinating guy. And then Matt Aaron, you know, that's the latest, well, one of the two latest. And Matt Erick's all about Canadian history, right? And explaining to people kind of the dark and ferrous of how we got here from a Canadian's viewpoint

instead of tying ourselves in with the CIA, which is, you know, obviously the American side of things. And there's a part that Canada's played in that. So like the scope of Cornerstone actually goes all over the place. It isn't inherently political. It's more of like, here's kind of what's going on, or this is coming down the pipe, and let's talk about it, let's discuss it. And how many people last year, or in April, that came,

the best part of it was when they were eating and having the fiddle players play and they just got to hang out and discuss and meet the community. A lot of people really and really enjoyed that. I don't know. I was kind of curious because Brett's, well, actually, both of you really wanted it to go to Calgary. And I was, Nick can probably talk to it better than anyone. I dragged my feet hard. I was like, I didn't, no, I'm not going there.

Right? No. And I went on holidays this summer and Mel was asking me about it. I'm like, I just, you know, it's going to be a giant headache. I don't want to go, right? And then I got talking to Tom about it and actually Alex about it, right? And enough people, but I mean, I give a lot of time to the two of you for convincing or not, I don't even know. Convincing, I don't know if that's the right word, but laying out a plan of like, this can work.

And I'm like, all right, let's try it out. You said it. You said that what happened was it expedited it by a year. You said it probably was the right place for it maybe in like a further year down the road. I remember that. I felt like I was I literally dragged you around the city to go look at venues.

You drove to my house. You forgot your shoes or something too. It was super weird. I'll never feel like that was super weird. That was very bizarre. What were you driving with? I drove all the way to Calgary. I forgot about that.

And forgot my dress shoes. So I had I had shoes. I had sandals. Oh, okay. Gotcha. So I walked around all these venues and then I'm in sandals. My wife was out of town.

Thanks for bringing that. We had to drop my kids off at school and they were like in the back seat, like doing this like hostage hostage video thing in the rear view mirror like blink twice if we're safe. Like who the hell is this guy? Like the Sasquatch that's in the front seat. And yeah. And and I remember like I again, I think, you know, any part that we can personally play, I'm, I'll let you speak for yourself, Brett, but any part that we can play in helping bring a conversation to, I mean,

look, we have a unique insight into S&P because we see a lot of S&P customers that specifically come and they talk to Graham, shout out Graham for looking after all the S&P listeners. Like, there's a lot of people in your listener base that are motivated by what, that little thing that we do in the world, which it doesn't say. lives it doesn't do anything but it's it seems to resonate like you've got the most down-to-earth humble awesome group of listeners out there full stop i've told that to other podcasters that i that i know and i think again you bring them together you give them an opportunity to to to hear something you know some of them will think oh that that was bullshit or whatever i didn't that was i don't think that that

makes sense or i'm offended and that's fine but what you hope is that they go home and it spurs a conversation between, let's say, two spouses or family members, and then that spawns into the neighbors being like, have you thought about this? I listened to so-and-so speak. They may not know who that speaker is, but it plants a little seed, and the next thing you know could take two, three, five, ten waterings down the road, but a little green shoot comes out and that person starts to become inquisitive. And you're not trying to cause, like, upset the apple cart, but you just want to get people thinking because there's a lot of different. things that we need to think about.

Yeah, and that's, I think, a big problem in the world today. You see it all over is people just delegating their thinking. They delegate everything to the politicians. Well, politicians will look after it. And so at the end of the day, I don't think any politician is going to save anything. It's really going to be the people. But we have to start thinking about not delegating our thinking, delegating our kids, delegating health, delegating everything type thing.

And that's sort of where, you know, it comes right down to gold and silver and Bitcoin is like you're not delegating your financial well-being to somebody else and just be, oh yeah, they'll look after me. And I think that's really interesting because I see it a lot in my family too. And I was like, well, why would they ever do that to me? They'll look after me. And it's like, really? You know, when throughout history has, you know, the higher elites looked after people. And it's really interesting. What about, you know, You know, one of my favorite guests that you have on every now and again, we've been through this, Dave call him. I could listen to that guy, read a phone book.

And, you know, he has that really incredible little comment where he's like, how much space does it take to have a couple bags of rice in your basement, you know, in a dry spot? And it's like if you, you know, how stupid would you feel if you could have had six weeks of food, but you ran out at four just because you couldn't be arced to go and buy two more bags of rice and a few cans of beans or whatever it might be that fits into like, you know, this space in your basement that you other have otherwise have cluttered with stuff that you've hoarded for years. Oysters too, they're name. I don't know where that comes from. Yeah, yeah, you got to have oysters. and race. Okay. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, you said oysters last night.

What was he talking about? Smoked oysters. Oysters are fantastic. Sorry, I broke it, you know. No, no, no, no, no. But it's true, right? And again, we come from, you know, the banking background and from precious metals, but there's so much more to it.

You know, when you get in front of people that are talking about macro issues, like, I won't lie. I remember we talked about Ben Davidson and you're like, well, I'm going to have him on. And that was the second time I'd heard him speak in a podcast for him. And it was the second time he scared the bejesus out of me. But it wasn't like a hopeless conversation. It was one that was actually, you know, just calm, cool, collected,

you know, let's do these, let's take these preventative measures. These are big issues. They may not come to fruition. But really, do you care about 50 bucks or 60 bucks in dry food? that goes off in your basement, you just cycle through it. And you just keep it there. And it just seems like such a little thing, but you need to have somebody that plants the seed in your mind that says,

it's probably a good idea. You might not need, you know, 10 tons of toilet paper, but you probably could use some food. Well, I think one of the things about seeing around the narrative or seeing the narrative for what it is or whatever thread you're pulling on because it opens up a myriad of like,

oh my God, right? Like you kind of look around. And one of the things you're going to get to is like, well, what big issues do we face here in Alberta compared to Florida, right? Two different worlds, truthfully. And then you're going to start to go, oh, I could probably just do a couple simple things. Some of it's going to cost you money. Some of it's just going to, is skills acquiring. Like some of it's easy.

Some of it's just time. Some of it's reading a bit. Some of it's just getting to know your neighbors. Some of it's so simple. You're like, why didn't I do this before? and with that comes a like a new understanding of how the world works because I remember interviewing Carol Crosson

and she's since passed and she was a lawyer, a constitutional lawyer and I remember saying something, you know, like really silly why would the government do that? Like, you know, because in my brain, you know, government's got the best first all, you know, our best interest and she's like if the government never broke the law, I wouldn't have a job.

I'm like, oh, yeah, when you, shoot, when you put it that way, right? And she goes, and I'm busy. Okay. You know? And like, no politicians come to save us. There's no white knight. You know, you read the Bible, you got faith, or you got your...

That's another big part of it too. Right. There's a probably, as someone who's not terribly well-versed, there's probably a spiritual element to all of this. There's something weird. There's an ick. There's just, it's like, almost like a malaise or a Paul that has just come over the world. And it seems to make people do. really crummy things to each other. And it's inexplicable. It doesn't make any sense.

Like why in this of all countries, this wonderful country that we're in, why does it have to be so, why is there has to be so much animus? You know, it just feels weird. A government, I'm like, I'm looking behind you at Parliament in that picture. A government is essentially, it's an entity that is, it's a living, breathing thing as it adds more people to its people. bureaucracy, are those people going to immediately look for efficiencies to to shrink itself? No. It is a runaway freight train. That, you know, they say directly or indirectly, I think the government is employing probably north of 50% of the country. Now, that includes some really important things, teachers and firefighters and police and all kinds. But in general,

like, this is a runaway bureaucracy. It is not there to help you. Now, that doesn't mean I'm advocating for anything at all. In fact, I don't even want to leave. I love Alberta. I don't, I can't see myself leaving Alberta. I believe in Alberta. It's hard to run a business and God, it's hard to start a business in Canada now. They've made it really, really difficult and they've taken a lot of the incentive out of putting your capital at risk if you're, if you're a business owner or a potential business owner. But, I mean, I look at our company and I look at the people that work for us and I look at the the opportunities that we've really tried to create for new families, for, you know, young people, for, you know, we have every demographic, every everything. And it's like that is

the foundation of this country. That's what makes this country so amazing. And it's those jackasses that are kind of trying to spoil it, but kind of, we just can't let them. Trump announcing, well, he threatened, I think, 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they don't fix their borders. yeah he's a negotiator so like i'm i'm glad and you know i don't know if i'd say i'm glad but the thing is no doubt frankly because we've we've been living on the apron strings of the u.s and frankly a lot of the world has for far far far too long and we just expect oh well the u.s is just going to bail us out with their military like in and you've had people on it's like our military is pathetic and and it's only going downhill until we fund it properly and the thing is

that's just one piece right so what about education what about the legal system what about the police system um the borders that type of thing so you know frankly i'm glad somebody slapping us in the face and giving us a bit of a wake-up call and it's like listen you're surviving because of our good grace and frankly we are like we're we're no better than any other country in the world out there. We just happen to have, you know, the strongest big brother that shares the biggest longest border with us is really what it is. So I'm glad they're going to do it something like this and basically maybe it'll wake up Canada so we can start being productive again. Or put the final nail in the cuff and for Trudeau. Yeah. Yeah, well, 100%. I didn't follow the story

that closely, but obviously, immigration was getting a little bit out of control in the country, so I'll choose my words, you know, carefully. But it was ironic that within hours of Trump winning that election, programs that had just gone live were shut down within the day. I mean, like, there was like a panic, like hair on fire. And I, there is a conversation to be had. We've talked about it privately off off air that what the hell is going to happen with our border they you know there's there's there's there's a number of undocumented in the states like they say it's somewhere north of 10 million it could be 15 million we i have no idea but if they fear genuinely being deported deported well there's this unmanned monster border to the north yeah it's cold but you know we generally look after

our own, actually look after other people more than our own sometimes. That's a scary thing. With regards to him saying that he's going to slap tariffs on us, well, I believe there's a conversation there where there are a lot of drugs that are moving all over the place and they're crossing borders without checks and balances. People are migrating. There's a lot of problems that, and I just, it's inexplicable. It's just, it doesn't, again, it comes back to that conversation about the government's

not going to come and save you. sometimes it feels like they're trying to do the opposite. Like it does none of this stuff make sense, which is why we come back to the individual and to the family and to the community. And people, I think at this point, especially I feel like it, it's really prevalent in the prairies. People are coming back to the family and they're coming back to their community and they're trying to shore up the things that they can shore up.

And that just means, you know, tighter relationships, conversations, thinking about different issues that maybe I don't know much about finance, but I'm really blessed to know someone like Brett that can tell me how banks work and how I can work within the framework of having a bank account, of course, like everybody needs, but maybe do it at a local level where I just feel more comfortable. And other people know things about growing food. You know, your community is full of all of them.

These are important things. It just takes, we've got threats daily now of countries that want to law. up nukes at each other. And it's, you know, like, can we have a moment here and pause and just think about the fact that you idiots are talking about something that's existentially important and you're just saying it like off-the-cuff remarks? It's just wild. So all we can do is we can look after ourselves and try and make our little corner of the

world a better place to live. One of the listeners had asked me when he knew you were coming on, Brett, about, um, Some of the different, and you probably can understand this and explain it better than I can, but in order to get like a loan, you have to provide maybe your, I don't know, is it your ESG score or environmental things? And they were talking about, is that going to, like, does that can affect Bow Valley? Is that can affect all banks or is that bank by bank? Does that make sense?

Maybe you can maybe elaborate on it better than I can. This is something happening at the national level. So it doesn't really impact us unless you want it to. at the provincial, because we're regulated differently, right? So we're regulated by the province. The bigger banks are regulated by Osfi, who happened to report to Christia Freeland. Specifically, probably what your listeners talking about is B-15. And so B-15 is the Climate Risk Mitigation Act.

And it's basically, it's a pretty benign document. And it talks about, oh, you know, we have to reduce carbon and greenhouse gases and things like that. But it does link to another bill called S-243, which stipulates the amount of capital that a bank needs to hold. And specifically on oil and gas loans, they increased the capital requirements to give out those loans by 1,250%. So effectively what that means, rather than needing like 8.5 cents a capital for your loan to go out for every dollar, you need $1.56.

So basically it comes too capital intensive for the bank to do the loan and they won't do it. Otherwise, they'd have to charge upwards of like 35% on the loan to an oil and gas company. So effectively, this bill is trying to snuff out oil and gas. But part of the challenge is it also integrates into other sections. And they're focusing on oil and gas, of course, but it's also mining, trucking, forestry, anything that's carbon intensive. And productive. Productive farming.

It's all on this bill. It's just they're focusing on that. And if you don't think it really affects you and it's like, well, I deal nothing with that. Think about agriculture because maybe they'll make it very difficult to get lending for agriculture. Or residential housing is on there too. So perhaps if you don't have the right windows or the right insulation or the right solar panels on your roof or something like that, rather than paying four or five, six percent for your residential mortgage, you could be paying 18, 19, 25 percent for your residential mortgage.

So effectively it becomes two-cost prohibitive for most people if you're not following these magical ESG scores, that type of thing. It's worth noting we're not following these standards and we don't need to as a credit unit, but the bigger banks will likely force it on specifically oil and cash campaign. Which do you, I don't mean to say wish that upon the bigger banks, but won't that drive people to you? Well, yeah, absolutely. But part of the challenges is we don't have the capacity either, right? So if there's this massive wave of people that wake up, it's a problem, right?

So Nick talked about, you know, doing more revenue in two months than you did in two years or whatever it was. And it's like, eventually you're going to run out of inventory if that keeps up. Oh, you can't. Yeah, you will. You're into delays and you're into all kinds of things. And so, yeah, no, it'd be good for our business. But the thing is we're a small, small, small, tiny fraction of the financial services sector. RBC has 1.2 trillion in assets.

But imagine a world. Like, I honestly, I've never heard this before. Like, I've heard about the emission caps that they want to do. But. you so succinctly and really quickly walk through what to me appears like sepacui for a country like i mean it's just nuts yeah this is complete there's no hyperbole i don't mean to sound like you know i genuinely it just takes you back it just you're trying to you're thinking about it it's like how do you want to provide every service for every person

and employ everybody with no fucking revenue. Like, this is where we're going. They, this unbelievable. We have this unbelievable gift that this country was given, which is resources. And there are sustainable and practical ways to harness those resources. And it's like, it's unbelievable

that they wouldn't, that they would actively try, to shut down any ingenuity, opportunity, productivity that seems to come about. It's shocking. And ironically, you know, the whole carbon conversation, good, bad, or indifferent, seems to have pushed aside something really practical like the conversation about the environment and keeping your area clean and keeping your natural habitats clean. like we're just obsessed with this like myopic view of of of of the world and it's just carbon's going to kill us all but yeah that's shocking i'm it's just it's just all outs so your virtue signaling saying well you know Canada is the best because we're not producing any carbon yeah you are

you know even if you know somehow you have a job maybe that's the case and you can actually buy things you've just outsourced all your carbon to Asia that's all you've done it's not like you're saving the You've still basically just, oh, you know what? We don't have any mines here. We don't have any oil fields here. We're magic. And it's like, no, that energy needs to come from somewhere and needs to be manufactured somewhere.

You've just outsourced it to China. And probably you've increased the emissions in the environment because you got to bring it over on a boat. Yeah. And they're not, you know, I, um, it's interesting. I believe it's Jordan Peterson that I heard once say that if you want to, if you want a better world, if you want people to respect their environment and look after it, give them opportunity.

Like people that don't have any opportunity, people that are destitute and, you know, really, you know, in unfortunate circumstances, they don't care about the garbage on the street or they don't care about looking after the forest. They're really just trying to feed their kids. Whereas if you give people the opportunity through, typically cheap energy to lift themselves out of poverty and to have a future, they actually care about where they live. They don't want to live in squalor.

Nobody wants to live in squalor. They want opportunity. They want to live in a place that's clean and they want to look after their family just the same as they did before. But those are the opportunities that we have at our fingertips. And, you know, and it just defies logic. But that's such of the times. That's why we have to have conversations. That's why people like Brett and people that are smarter than me need to share their views and their expertise and to larger audiences.

And then those people go home and talk about it. And they discern what it is that they heard and they suss out what they think is crap from what they think is nuggets of truth. You know, before I shut this off, we should talk about you two. Like the part of the reason of bringing you guys out here is you got stuff going on at Bull Valley Credit Union. Like, maybe we should, maybe we should talk about that. Uh, bring people up to speed on SGB and BVCU, uh, working together. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, you guys can explain it. Sure.

You want me to start? No, I think, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we recognized in, well, silver gold bowl recognized as well that there's, there's, you know, there's a number of things that, that are an issue with, with, uh, make it less convenient to buy gold and silver. And, uh, you know, it's, it's a physical metal.

So you have to be able to store it somewhere. You have to be able to insure it. It's, there's only so much you can do about putting it under your mattress and that type of thing. As well as premiums on smaller coins like the silver coins are expensive compared to, say, like a thousand ounce bar. So really silver gold bulk came up with the idea of tokenizing a thousand ounce bars. So the premiums are actually a lot lower. and people can get into gold or silver much more reasonably down to a hundredth of an ounce. And so a hundredth of an ounce is like 35 bucks of gold.

A hundredth ounce of silver is about 45 cents. So really accessible to people. And you wouldn't be able to do that. Nobody can afford that thousand ounce bar. But the thing is when you fractionalize it and break it down, to hundreds of an ounce pieces, all of a sudden, there can be hundreds and hundreds of people that actually own that thousand ounce bar of gold. And so we wanted to be able to move from your store of value into your medium exchange to buy, say, a cup of coffee in a very

sort of seamless manner. And this, what silver gold bull has built is basically this base layer of being able to do that. So you have your store of value, which is in, your gold and your silver, we're effectively acting as a unit of account because we basically know transactions in Fiat. And then we also have the payment rail systems like your Interact, your Visa, your checks, your cash, that type of thing. So we've come up with a solution called E-metals. And really what it is is you can move very quickly between that store value of that gold and silver and getting to Fiat within minutes if you time it right during the day. So you're moving seamlessly through that transaction.

So you can actually store your wealth in gold and silver and still live your day-to-day life buying coffee and whatever else you need to transact with. So really the way you do that is you get a Bow Valley Credit Union account first and then you say, hey, I want an e-metals account and we'll set you up with Silver Gold Bull and e-metals account. And you can fund that account with your Bow Valley Credit Union checking your savings account and basically say, hey, I want to put $100 into my e-metals account. And then you use that $100 to buy that tokenized gold or silver. And so, and if you ever want to sell it, it can basically sell your gold and silver that's tokenized. It converts back to Fiat and then you just

transfer it back to Bo Valley Credit Union to spend it, whatever you want to spend it on. So it's a really sort of seamless way where you don't have to worry about storage, you don't have to worry about insurance, the premiums are a lot lower. And so it's a more versatile product of tokenization of a real hard asset, which I'm really impressed with. And this is the base layer. We're still working on it. We only launch it this next week on Monday. But yeah, it's going to be really interesting. I'm trying to bring, like, something that it's like one of the oldest industries in the world. It's one of the oldest commodities in the world. It's been a medium of exchange for forever in a day. And the goal here is to, I mean, democratize it is kind of a bit cliche. It's been

said a million times, but you want to make it essentially easier for people to participate. And they don't, you know, it's one of the beauties of Bitcoin. And it's, you know, it's, you know, Lots of crusty old precious metals people don't want to talk about Bitcoin. But I think Bitcoin in some respects has taken maybe some of the wind out of gold sales. But on the flip side, how many people at a younger demographic that are really fascinated with digital forms of money have had real solid conversations about fiat and its faults and its problems and how there are other forms of, of sound money. So this is another way to slowly introduce an old, like an old commodity like silver and gold to a younger demographic, make it easier for people to just dip their toe in without

feeling like, oh, you know, I put too much money in. And they can slowly accumulate. And then ultimately, they have lots of options from there. They can turn it into physical and put it into a storage account, segregated. They can take delivery of some stuff if they want to sell their e-metals account and then buy some physical. And then, you know, to their credit, BVCU is doing stuff that nobody else is doing. Like they're providing leverage if you want or collateralizing is a better way to put it, physical precious metal. So it's really, really neat. It's a, it's honestly been a blessing to have a partner locally that we can work with and we can kind of beta test things on. And it to, you know, upstanding members of the community that are just trying to move their industries

forward in their own corner of the world. Yeah, and that's really what we see is unlike everything else in the world, banking is changing significantly. And so we, you know, are trying to be on the forefront of that. And we have one foot over one side of the fence and one foot dangling on the other side. And it's like, what's going to be next? Because the thing is, I think people are pretty sick of Fiat. And they are getting more and more awareness of this is where a lot of their challenges are.

And so if we can help facilitate something new into the new, more tangible world around finance, we want to be in that place. And Silver Gold Bowl has always been a fantastic partner to be able to do that with. It's pretty crazy that I think of Alberta. And I'm like, man, there's a lot of cool things going on within our borders. You know, like I just had one scan, I'll bring up Ben Perrin talking about the Bitcoin market. And, you know, I went to the Bitcoin Rodeo, got to meet J.P. Sears this past summer. And that world centered in Calgary, very interesting, unique, eclectic group of people there.

And then, you know, you got BVCU and you got SGB. And, you know, and then you got some of the other people coming to the Cornerstone Forum. They're all sitting within our borders. I'm like, because every time you think you've gotten, oh, yeah, I kind of figured out all the things going on. It's like, nope, you have another conversation. It opens up a whole new door of people doing super cool, innovative things here in Alberta. And I'm not sure exactly why that is, why this isn't happening in, I don't know, Manitoba. I mean, I have a thought of it.

It's happening in the West. I think, you know, you're this town, this unique town that straddles a fascinating border between two incredible provinces that are, they're kind of just, you know, they're playing within the rules. They're pushing back as much as possible, but they're kind of just saying, like leave us alone and just getting on with life. And it's difficult because obviously we're playing within a, you know, federal framework that has a lot of overarching, you know,

powers. But, but yeah, there's a lot of neat stuff happening here. Edmonton's booming. Calgary's booming. I think, you know, it'll be interesting if you get Marty Armstrong on any time soon because I just read an article this morning that I was sharing with Brett about he put something out on Armstrong economics today talking about that Trump might green light either Keystone or some analogous pipeline to it

real quick because the U.S. has walked away from energy independence and they want to get it back. So I think, you know, if we can just get a couple things right here at the federal level, namely kicking all those bastards out. I really think there's a chance that we can take that next step forward, and it should really be a bright future. It's funny. I was trying to see if their team had emailed back, because I sent Martin, or I sent his team an email early this morning,

thinking about some different things I'd like to chat with him about all the things going on. One of the last dispatch, I don't know, one of the last things that they sent me was on CBDCs. And, you know, there's been a lot of talk about that. And then, and then it kind of just quietly, I think, went away. I don't know. Maybe not on your guys's end.

Do you? Yeah, I know a little bit about that. So I think it was in June, 2023. The Bank of Canada came out with a survey. Basically, it was a very skewed survey. And they were basically asking, hey, how would you use a central bank digital currency? And it's like you had to be very. liberal with the comment section basically saying this is a bad idea it's been tried

um night nigeria i think tried it and and failed miserably but the the the air apparent for trudo because i think they'll probably punt him out of office before he even goes to election is mark carney and this central banker he was the central banker for canada and he was the central banker in the uk loves central bank digital currencies and basically wants to promote them to basically pay for the green agenda. So some Yahoo like that, that's a central banker that I don't have a lot of time for to start with, getting into power is a really scary thing, especially with a central bank digital currency. Thankfully, since that survey came out in June 2023, most Canadians basically said,

no, we don't want this. And they got 90,000 respondents because of it. And the Bank of Canada has since sort of put it on ice and say, hey, we're not thinking about it. But I bet Dimston Onuts that they're working on something in the background to basically brush it up and sugarcoat it a little bit. And they'll come out with the rainbow currency or something like that where, you know. But, you know, this isn't new either. Effectively, Soviet Russia had something like this. They had one commercial bank in Soviet Russia.

and then the central bank. And so if you lost credibility with the one central bank, you were effectively debanked. So thankfully, we have a few more options in Canada. But I see the commercial banks and the central bank and the government getting closer and closer and closer together, especially when they come out with climate risk mitigation bills that tie hand in hand.

I heard rumors that the banks are actually the ones that told, the Trudeau government how to shut down the bank accounts and had shut down the trucker convoy through the tool of FinTrack. They seem to be putting a whole lot more money into FinTrack these days. They are. It's just a whole much, they're throwing AI at it, they're throwing more resources at it, and that's a scary thing. Like the compliance forms that we need to fill out are ridiculous.

But in and in and of itself, that's not necessarily, you know, not to go too into the weeds on it, but that's not a... There's aspects of FinTrack, like everything, right? It's always the baby goes out with the bathwater. Canada, it appears as though Canada has a money laundering problem. There have been

tons of op-eds, tons of articles in the major papers, Globe and Mail, National Post, etc. This isn't a secret. You mean, you see Vancouver housing prices and you see the individuals that are buying those houses or traditionally have.

and how they sit vacant. Yeah, there's a lot of money coming into the country that's coming in through dodgy means and you would like to think that those things which are making housing unaffordable, which are driving up the costs in general of life in the country, those things should be curtailed. They essentially are feeding a runaway freight train

of a housing market and a bubble that, God forbid, if it were to burst, would be, you know, cataclysmic. in this country because there's an over-reliance on people's net worth in their house. And that's what creates consumer confidence in a lot of the country. So I think there's aspects of it that are, that should be used more. It's ironic that they're really trying to go after people who are, you know, for political means. And it's just, just crazy. I don't. So again, I agree with you. I see it firsthand. That's part of my portfolio. I do see a lot of, you know, a lot of ramping up a FinTrack,

which is ironic because the portal's been broken forever. It's actually true story. But, you know, it's back to CBC's. I mean, I don't have a real big take on them other than I find it interesting to hear the Alex Krainers of the world really hammer home that message about it was Nigeria where they tried this and it failed. It failed. Who, you know, there's lots of stupid ideas that half the population seems

always willing to go with, who's actually interested in or what's the upside to somebody putting all of their money in an even more centralized system where they give more control to the government? Like, who sits at home and says that would make my life a lot better? No, it doesn't... Well, my concern is, is like, if they make life so miserable and so bad and people get desperate and they don't have a roof or the heads and they don't have food on the table, some slick politician sticks up their hand and says, I've got the solution to you, all you need to do is sign up for the central bank digital currency and I'll put a thousand units into it every month for you and they go I'm desperate I have to take it universal basic income type of thing yeah I don't know I to me it doesn't it doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have a big catalyst which again is that again I'm not I'm not saying I know this but why is it that no matter what happens they keep escalating these conflicts

You know, we could go on for hours about this, and I know we shouldn't. But that, you know, these things are not necessarily completely disparate. They seem like what the hell does FinTrack and CBDCs have to do with, you know, sending, you know, 155 millimeter shells or attackums or whatever and lobbing them into Russia, you know, when they're like, you can't do this. This is our border. And if you do it, we're going to nuke you. And they're like, nah, you won't. Let's just do it. What do these things have in common with each other?

Maybe nothing or maybe something. But if we're talking about, you know, a big seminal moment that triggers the need for a financial reset, which then, you know, causes us to have an opportunity or causes them an opportunity to say, okay, well, here's what will save you. CBDCs, then I kind of see it. And again, those are things that we might not be able to do much about other than maybe at the ballot box or, you know, know by emailing our MPs and our MLAs and being like, can we stop the crazy and just get back to being, you know, hockey loving people that don't take sides and things. You know, that's probably where we're at. Any final thoughts, fellas?

Appreciate you making the trip here. This has been a fun 24 hours. Yeah, no. Well, just thank you for what you do, Sean. Like it's becoming more and more important, I think. And then we were even talking about it last. night there seems to be a little more thinning of the independent media whether you know the mainstream media seems to be collapsing as well but it's important to support

podcasts like this I think because it does give a fulsome conversation around what we really need to hear and and whether people want to hear it or not that's nice and you don't have to agree with anything that we have to say but I think it's important that you noodle it around a little about a lot of things, especially around gold and silver, Bitcoin, the financial system and what it means to you. Yeah, I echo the same sentiments. I'm really appreciative of the fact that we have these forums to have a simple conversation that people can choose to listen to or they can ignore. and I am really looking forward to the opportunity to meet more people from your community

face to face have really interesting conversations, disagreements, be passionate. Like I just think those are the things that, you know, they just make you feel alive. They make you know that the person opposite you cares because they're really thinking critically about where we're at in the world and what's going on. And I, yeah, to the extent possible, I would, you know, I would basically implore people listening. Like give it a thought, come out to Cornerstone. I mean, if nothing else, it's going to be just like last year.

It'll be thought-provoking. It will be interesting. And you might meet people that you didn't realize are pretty close to home for you. And they think along the same lines. One of the coolest feedback I got from any of my events. Like, so if you go back to the first, you know, you can either buy a table or you can buy individual seats. And the people will buy individual seats always talk about the eclectic group of people. sit with and how all of them have interesting stories.

I bet that's a, well, it's always interesting for me to hear people come from all over the place and then sit at a table with a group of random strangers. And by the end, if you walk by their table, they're having like this heated, not heated, like argument. Like, the discussion is so lively. Like, it's one of the beautiful things that I didn't realize was going to be, uh, happen out of the event, you know? This community, if nothing else, is a passionate group.

It doesn't matter who it is. if it's a Bow Valley Credit Union account holder, or if it's like one of our, we've got about a half million account holders, or if it's an S&P listener, like these are not boring people. These are not people that sit on the sidelines and, you know,

are like your quintessential milk toast. No, no. These are people who have interesting stories, have lived interesting lives, have perspectives, some of which may make you blush and may make you fear for yourself because you're like, that's a little out there.

But on balance, they're probably going to be, again, community oriented family people who care about, you know, the people in their spheres and adjacent to their spheres and are just there to talk and to listen and to share and to just have a good time. Yeah,

and make things better, right? So we see those problems in the world. They want to help make it better. And it's, It's really interesting because, you know, some of my better friends I've met in the last three years. And not to say that my old friends are just skin deep or anything like that, but like these are meaningful relationships that I have with the people that you connect with. Well, you don't walk.

You better like, I think of all the people that come. You can't just be like, oh, hey, how's it going and walk away? No. Well, what do you always say? You better buckle up. You better carve out a good chunk of time because you're going to talk some things through. And if you're not ready for that, right? Like, it's, it's, yeah.

Anyways, thanks again. Yeah, thanks for coming in, Jets. And safe travels back home. Thank you. Thank you.