Shaun Newman Podcast - #843 - Kris Sims

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), a citizens' advocacy group focused on lower taxes, less government waste, and accountability. With over 20 years of experience in journalism and politics, she has worked in radio, CTV’s Parliamentary Bureau, and was a founding reporter for Sun News Network, covering issues like big government and personal liberty.Cornerstone Forum ‘25https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastSilver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionWebsite: www.BowValleycu.comEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail]

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We're going to get that rectified. And if you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube Rumble X, make sure to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review. and let's get onto that tale of the tape. She's the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm talking Chris Sims. So buckle up.

Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Chris Sims. Chris, I was just saying to you, it's a heck of a lot better when you're in studio, but appreciate you joining me nonetheless. Thank you so much, Sean.

And I might point out you're going to be on stage here in, what is it? That's like, by the time this airs, it's like four days and you're going to be on stage in Calgary. I'm looking forward to that as well. I'm looking forward to all the different people that are coming. It's, I think the final number is somewhere around 570 people going to be there. So that's going to be interesting, to say the least, over double the size of the first one. So you were at the first one.

Now you're at the second one. So it's going to be an interesting week here for the listener. We're still here. We've survived the last like couple weeks of like 12 hour. You were on the 12 hour. You were hosting your own. That was a crazy day. That's why I wanted to have you back on.

That was a bit nuts. I wanted you have you back on. It was only like a couple of weeks ago. I had you and Franco on. And then you were on the live stream. And I'm like, okay, new government in. And although we're going to be at the Cornerstone Forum talking a whole bunch of things before we get there, I just want you to break me down like, okay, we got a new government.

It is the liberals. Again, is there going to be any surprises here of like all of a sudden they're, they're cutting down the budget, they're getting rid of government, they're defunding the CBC, they're doing a whole bunch of wonderful things, or is it more of the same? So I always try to be an optimist and anything is possible as the last five years or so have taught us that I couldn't see some of these things coming. So anything's possible. my hope in my little heart is that Dr. Mark Carney takes a look at the books and says, you know what, this ain't working. I am going to figure out a way to balance the budget within my four-year term. I need to figure out a better way of doing things. I meant it when I said I was in favor of an energy corridor. That means pipelines with oil and gas going through those pipelines, not sunshine and wind.

That means trade corridors. That means train lines that are shipping, all that good stuff. I do hope that. I don't know if that's a rational hope. Because I think it's important to take people at their word. And as Maya Angelou said, people teach you how to treat them. So Carney has been saying repeatedly, especially through his book values, that he, believes that 80% of the world's oil and gas must stay in the ground, that he believes fundamentally

in a carbon tax, so much so that he's going to impose carbon taxes, brand new carbon tariffs on imports into Canada, so much so that he put that in his costed platform, that it's right off the hop going to cost Canadians about half a billion dollars, just that one tariff. So all that is to say, Sean, I am trying to hold out some form of hope that things have just gotten too bad that the gears are starting to grind and there's smoke coming out of this engine now and that a reasonable person would notice that, diagnose it and fix it. But I don't know if that's going to happen. So what are you like, okay, 80% of that world's oil should stay.

I know. What do you foresee, like, you know, at the CTF, you guys are constantly like, you know, you're like, we don't care what government's in. Just do the things that are right for taxpayers. right it's pretty self-explanatory um you know on his i don't know do we call it throne speech the victory speech whatever speech it is uh when carney won he talked about getting rid of uh the the trade i i don't know the interprovincial trade barriers trade tariffs whatever we're calling them by july first i assume you heard that and we're like well that's a good thing that's not a bad thing you know

like we we stare at these guys and we always go okay this is all awful uh this is going to be bad But then he says something like that. And I'm like, well, that actually makes sense. And I can't hate him for that. I assume that's a good thing. Are there anything else that you picked up from any of the liberal platform? I mean, obviously, they haven't formed government yet, and there's still things to be done.

But in the, you know, the short term that he's been the acting prime minister, is there been anything that you're picking up on good or bad, I guess? So the bad is that his costed platform adds more debt than even Trudeau was planning to do. So the whole notion of, oh, well, Carney's smart because he's got a PhD in economics from Oxford, and he's been a globalist banker of both Bank of England and Bank of Canada. So he must be financially sound. You must be good with money. People would be forgiven for having that kind of general impression of him, especially compared to Trudeau, who said deliberately, like, I don't think about monetary issues. Like, we know, we know Trudeau, you don't. And Kearney would never say something so silly as the budget will balance itself.

But I think that's gone, unfortunately. If we are to take him at his word and believe his costed platform, he's planning on piling on more debt than Trudeau was going to. Now, he calls it investing, but governments don't have their own money. This is all taxpayers' money. Governments spend money. That's what they do. If they spend or invest money, the debt goes up. So that's what's going to happen if he goes according to his own plan.

The one, the big one that's coming is going to be the industrial carbon tax. So he just, he just reduced the consumer carbon tax down to zero for now. We don't know what he's going to do with it later. But that's why we're generally seeing gas to be around 20 cents-ish cheaper per liter now than it was, say, three months ago. Like here in Lathbridge, it's about a buck, buck 23, a liter. around there. Before he reduced it to zero is around $1.45, $1.43. So it's about 20 cents off, which is exactly the amount of the carbon tax. The big one is the industrial, though, because he said repeatedly he is going to bring in a big industrial carbon tax. It frightened the steel industry

so much in Ontario that we saw trade unions endorsing the conservatives. I have never seen that before in my life. We saw those steelworkers and pipe workers say that it's going to quote, decimate the steel industry in Ontario. We saw Ontario Premier Doug Ford say exactly nothing about that. Not one peep, didn't go after Kearney, didn't defend the steel industry. So there's a lot to be concerned about here with both the strangulation of our natural resources, which we'll just continue. Because already since 2015, Sean, we've seen, I think it's about $570 billion worth of projects either canceled or strangled, like, through delay, since 2015, like gone. Like, we're out, like $600 billion. And Carney has said he wants to keep the No More Pipelines Law in place,

and he said he wants to keep the energy cap in place. So according to what he has said himself, unfortunately, I think we're in for a lot. The bright side, and I will give some bright sides, he did commit to reducing our income tax. So it'll save up to $800 for a year per working couple. That's money, okay? And credit where it's due, I thought his first press conference he gave was good. Just from a purely comms communications professional standpoint. He sounded calm. He sounded reasonable.

He didn't give any big promises of what was going to happen with his meeting with Trump. And with him saying that he was going to give Pierre Pahliav a by-election, quote, as soon as possible, no games straight. I think that earned him a little bit of grace with some folks. We'll see if that holds. You know, it's funny. Like, you want to hate a guy, right? Or the party, you know, like the liberals have been in for a long time.

There's a lot of conservatives that are like, this is bad. I'd probably be one of them. You know? And I sit here and I'm watching this and I'm like, okay, so like, you know, is he going to do things? Because, you know, like, you talk about the carbon tax goes to zero. Everyone's like, okay, but he didn't remove it. It's just down to zero. So they can turn that back up at any time, correct?

Yep, they can. It's still on the books. It's still law. It can be brought back up. Or he could eliminate it, which would be great. But he also needs to get rid of the industrial carbon tax because all that's going to do is nail fuel refineries who, guess what, will then pass that cost on down to us per liter for gasoline and diesel. So he's got to do both. So that's why I'm holding my praise back because he said he's just going to shift it over.

and we don't know how much it's going to cost us. And we don't know, like, we don't know what that tax looks like. I know I had Michael Campbell on last week, and I briefly asked him about it. And, you know, and everybody's just kind of like, I guess we're just going to wait and see because it's just this new thought, or maybe it's an old thought of this industrial carbon tax and the carbon tariffs. And you're like, huh, like all this is going to come back to roost on the Canadian taxpayer, correct? Yes. So as of right now in Canada, we all. have an industrial carbon tax. It's similar to the consumer carbon tax in that there's

a benchmark, like there's a mandatory minimum, okay? And if provinces don't have their own industrial carbon tax, the feds will impose one upon them. Very similar to what we had with the consumer carbon tax. So far that I've seen, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has said, you know what, depending on where you're standing in Lloydminster right now, Sean, no provincial carbon tax. We're done with all carbon taxes to hell with all of them. Here in Alberta, we still have one provincially. And that is largely because the oil and gas companies insist upon it. Because it's easy to make money off of trading carbon credits than it is going and finding

stuff and getting it out of the ground. So the issue going forward is one, we already have a federal industrial carbon tax or at least a backstop. Two, we don't know how much he's going to increase that. We know he's going to grab that knob and crank it up. We just don't know by how how much. Like to give you an example, those steel workers or pipe workers, those guys that I mentioned that endorsed Pierre Pollyov out of Hamilton, in their letter, I have not referenced this myself. I have not checked. But in their letter, they claim that the industrial carbon tax was already costing the steel industry. I think it was $9 million a year. So I think that was the amount they

used, but it's in the millions. This isn't a couple of bucks. So it's going to go up. We just don't know about how much and we don't know who Carney is going to consider to be a big polluter. Like is that is he going to consider farming to be big polluting? We don't know. Car manufacturing, like we don't know. So there's a lot of question marks going on here right now and how much people are going to have to pay more for. And again, to get it back to what I always say, people are just broke. Like the prices of everything have gone up and up and up every year with inflation. We've got a 40-year high inflation rate. People are really fighting, like basic fighting to make ends meet. I don't know about you, but I was just at, I was at Valley Village

over the weekend with my kids, and I took them for a treat for some chicken. And I was sitting there with them in the chicken shop, and I was watching, and this lady, a little bit older than me, coming in, work and skip the dishes. And you could tell this is like her third job. And you see that all the time. You see people our age and older that are working their second and third jobs. You can tell just to make, just to make rent. So I wish I could give you better news. I liked his initial press conference, but I don't want to kid people because he's on the record saying a lot of crazy things like he wants to basically choke off natural resources, which would be very bad for Canada. Yeah. Well, that probably stems into what we've seen here in

Alberta, right? Like everywhere I go, certainly in this realm, the conversation of, I don't, I don't even know, is it Alberta independence, the Alberta separation, you know, there's a whole group of people that gladly join the United States. It's just this, it's this wide swath of emotion, I would say. Yeah. To, you know, everybody, I had the same feeling back in 2019, honestly, before I was sitting there watching Trudeau get in again. I'm like, what is going on? I don't understand this. And fast forward, folks, I understand it a bit more. And I'm just still like, it's almost hard to believe that they're back in again. In saying that, you know, you, you look at Alberta from put your taxpayer federation hat on squarely. I don't care where you sit

on the matter. Just like, okay, if Alberta, just, just assume, you know, and I hate to just like jump a whole bunch of steps because it's not that easy. I already know it's not that easy. But, Let's just say, for argument's sake, you could do one of the things, you could have a referendum come through and you could actually go your own way. A whole bunch of people are like, well, we're landlocked. We'd be, we'd be, we'd be screwed. We'd be all these different things. As a Canadian or an Albertan taxpayer, would it be beneficial or awful? Do you have any answers on that from a money standpoint?

So as you pointed out, we are the Taxpayers Federation, the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. so we don't take an official stance on this. But I understand why people are angry. I was born and raised in rural Western Canada. A lot of my family are from around Stettler. They run the rodeos. Like, I get it. But if you just want me to look at the numbers,

okay, let's say, yeah, magically, Santa Claus has come down from the North Pole and made us our own country. Just the numbers. So since the 1950s, Alberta alone, not including Saskatchewan, Alberta alone has paid out around $70 billion with a B, just an equalization to the rest of Canada, meaning we're out that amount. That is just equalization. I'm not talking about all the other financial transfers and nonsense that happens. If you start adding

those factors in, it balloons to way more that we are out. So let's just take equalization, that we had a referendum on actually in 2021 because we wanted a better deal. That's $70 billion. Okay. Let's take a look at what kind of natural resources are below our feet right now in Alberta. According to experts, I am not an expert, but according to mining and energy experts, Canada, Alberta is the third largest oil and gas reserve on the planet. I think we're behind just Saudi Arabia and I think it was Venezuela.

added all up together, we're talking like crude, we're talking natural gas, all of the elements that would be referred to as the oil and gas industry, generally speaking, I think the amount that they were estimating was like a trillion dollars, like with a T, based on how much stuff we have. And that's just the known reserves. So that is why, to my friends back east, that I worked with very closely, especially in government and the press gallery, they have to take this very seriously, like very seriously. Because a lot of people will stay in relationships for a long time that are well past their due. And the two main reasons they often stay in a relationship that's past its due is financial, financial dependence. You can't break up because you rely on each other

monetarily and historical shared affection. Both are bruising right now, big time. So Alberta, generally speaking, the folks who are pushing for more rights against Ottawa are basically saying something like, you know what, we don't need this money headache anymore because we have plenty of cash in the bank ourselves, or at least potential, because it's not in the bank, it's stuck in the oil sense. We don't need the money. Two, this affection part is wearing kind of thin right now. And that's because a lot of people feel insulted and upset. Now, emotion generally cools with time. So a year from now, will people feel the same way? I don't know. But the reason why I would strongly caution Eastern Canada to take this very seriously is because we don't just have a couple of people in church basements who are

upset about this and no offense to the folks who are organizing in church basements. That is grassroots democracy. But we have a premier that came out like I think less than 12 hours before the votes were counted. She was pretty mad and she basically said, hey folks, listen, you only need what 177,000 votes to get a referendum going on whatever question you all want. I'm not telling you what to think or say. And then we had Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe paraphrasing here saying, you know what if Saskatchewanians want a referendum too i'm not going to stand in their way but i'm not going to say other way how i feel about this particular issue but like democracy is a good thing and now we have Preston manning the reform party founder i forget what the the group is called

but he's basically been tapped to chair like an inquiry group like an examination panel on where we stand within confederation and how Alberta has been treated over the decades these are some serious players now involved in this. And so I don't know where it's going to happen or where it's going to go, but there's a lot of money on the table here. And there's some very serious people that are talking about this. So I would just, again, even from just a federalist perspective, if it means a lot to you to be able to go from like, you know,

Coombs, Vancouver Island to, you know, Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia, and stay in the same country, we have to pay attention to this, guys. Yeah, it wasn't lost on me when she came out with her press conference at the time and everything. I'm like, well, if that doesn't get Mark Carney to fly out or fly in Daniel Smith, would take your pick and take seriously the things she's talking about.

You know, because you talk about all the money we've lost out on or all the projects, sorry, since 2015. I think we were all paying attention when different countries came here looking for our natural resources. And Trudeau was like, yeah, there's no business case. And everyone's like, what is going on? Right. And I mean, that's just one little example of a relationship turned sour over the course of 10 years. I mean, you've been in and around politics a heck of a lot more than I have.

I've talked to a lot of Albertans who've been around the reform days and, you know, and seen. some different movements come through. In your mind, you know, when you're listening to all the conversations going on and all the different rooms you're in and maybe the odd church basement, you know, as you talk about grassroots democracy, have you seen it like the temperature this hot or is this harken back to maybe the 80s? This reminds me a lot of early 90s. So going back to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation formation.

So back in the late 80s is when the Reform Party started, largely because, one, a lot of Western alienation, people were still smarting and hurting from the first Trudeau, Prime Minister. People had lost their homes. He had just, you know, obliterated almost the oil industry through his NEP. Like, I don't need to remind folks listening to your show what that was like in the early 80s in Alberta. And it affected all of Western Canada, of course, because a lot of the men from all over Western Canada would fly into work. They called it the patch back then. So, and then in 1990 is when the Canadian Taxpayers Federation started, and it was a union, funnily enough, between the Alberta ratepayers and the Saskatchewan ratepayers. And they were so, pardon my language, pissed off at Ottawa, largely over things like the GST and not being heard.

that they started the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and we had rallies like scrap the tax rallies it was pretty barn-burning and even as a child I remember seeing the footage from that combined with the reform movement now back then the aforementioned Preston Manning said the West wants in we want in meaning quit ignoring us Western alienation is reaching a fever pitch people are handed around Republic of Western Canada pins and trucker hats, okay? We need to fix this. Let's get in. Let's get in. And then it didn't work out so well for Manning with reform.

He was mocked by Eastern Media a lot. A lot of that disrespect started showing. However, things kind of cooled off because Prime Minister Stephen Harper formed the Conservative Party. They brought the Canadian Alliance and the progressive conservatives together and he was able to have, I think, three different terms of government, one majority. So Western alienation really dropped then. But boy, like, I haven't, I've just even walking. Now, to be fair, I'm in Lethbridge, okay? I can, like, I can see Montana from my house. Okay, so this, this is going to be an area where this is a hotbed. But I'm trying to speak with

my friends across Canada. I don't remember it feeling like this since, like, 1990. Well, everywhere, you know, like, I was trying to put it in my brain the right way this morning, because, you know, I don't drive around and see Alberta flags waving everywhere. And the reason I point to that is, you know, when the humble Broncos bus crash happened, there was, I don't know if you could have gone three houses in my area without sticks being out front on the door. Same. Yeah, even in BC it was like that. God, that was awful.

Sorry. Yeah. Well, it is brutal. And the thing was is, the reason. why it touched I think so many of us is I for one rode on buses like that for about 20 straight years and you know to hear that it just it hits everybody in the fields yeah and then for it to be Saskatchewan on top of that I don't know why that mattered to me but that's that's the home province probably right yeah and the next time is the freedom convoy and you see the flags

everywhere like I mean immediately and with Alberta it's it's this it's it's not that I see that. But what I see is everywhere I go. I just saw there's a lady cleaning building and she looks to me and she goes, so are we out? And I'm like, out. I kind of chuckle. I'm like, well, I know it's not that fast. I know you can't just snap your fingers. You can't do the Santa Claus analogy and you're out. I know that, you know, from from figures of the APP, it's well over 100,000 now. So I've been told, you know, they got to, you know, they got to, you know, they got to go through those all. They got to make sure they're all legit and blah, blah, blah. But it isn't 3,000. And I'm watching, you know, the Daniel Smith conference lowering the threshold and,

and allowing to have a referendum. Now, can you get a successful referendum? Geez, I'd have to go back to Ben Trudeau when he was on the podcast not that long ago. And he'd been a part of the Quebec referendums. And he goes, it's, you know, referendums aren't one on facts and logic. It's one on emotion. And so you go like, Okay. So this is, what's interesting about this is everywhere I go, this is a conversation of, you know, the hot topic, I guess. And yet it's like, yeah, but it's still got a ways to go. Or maybe, maybe I'm wrong on that, Chris. Maybe you can fill in some blanks I'm missing. Oh, there's so many ways to go. So even as a kid, I paid very close attention to the Quebec separation referendum and what was going on there. And then some political analysts, argue that we got the sponsorship scandal as a result of, you know, keeping them here, of keeping Quebec here, getting the no vote. Because for folks who don't remember,

back when Quebec held its second separation referendum, right, people might remember the footage from downtown Montreal where there were thousands of people in Montreal. It was a huge moment. It was on live TV back before they covered stuff live very often. And there was this Canadian flag that It was huge. Now as a child, I'm probably inflating it in my mind. But to me, it looked like the size of a football field. It was huge. And they were passing it over their heads, this huge crowd. Now, that wasn't just some magical grassroots thing that just happened on its own and people got there on their own ticket. No, the federal government, in order to, in their view, save the Federation, bust people in from all over Canada, especially kids from Ontario and the

Maritimes into that area of Quebec and Montreal, the two cities, as part of the stay, please stay, we love you, like argument for Quebec. And then we barely kept it together. That was a very close vote, okay, where it turned out that just enough people voted to stay, the remain or whatever term you want to use. After that, Sean, it was in those years after that that that we wound up with people might remember if they're a long-time political nerds ad scam. Okay, that's where I'm paraphrasing, okay, but this is generally what happened. The federal government paid money to advertising groups in Quebec in order to literally get like the Canada, government of Canada logo at like hockey games and tractor poles and all these

areas basically plaster Quebec with federalism. That doesn't happen for free. So the problem there is that they weren't keeping her seats and things got out of hand. And this is back when the mainstream media did a lot of investigative journalism in the early 2000s on this. And that turned into what's often referred to as the sponsorship scandal. They were literally sponsoring ads and events in Quebec in the wake of that 50-50 split of that referendum. And there's a big reason for that. And this is why I'm bringing this up as a cautionary tale. this isn't just a quick one and done and we're leaving and we're magically like you know the

Republic of Buffalo no you get into stuff like okay how much is your share of the federal debt what's going to happen with the armed forces what passport are you going to have what currency are you going to have what about first nations people what's your relationship with the crown like things get really complicated really fast and i'm not telling people to stop their grassroots like Totally fine. Like I deeply respect grassroots movements, but I do want to be practical here in that there's a lot of variables involved with something like this. And now that we've got the added factor of U.S. President Donald Trump saying stuff all the time, including over the weekend. I don't know if you saw that. Did you hear those clips? Yes.

So he's still saying things like we don't need their oil and we don't have more of it. That's not true. But like we have more of it and we don't need their lumber and we don't need their cars and like sure they should be 51st and calling Trudeau governor again just like dumping gasoline on the fire again. We are in for interesting times in the next four years. Yeah. I don't know if I had my mind made up on like I at the start of the live stream I wrote down everyone's predictions, right? So we did our predictions and I wrote down liberal minority. Me and Clyde do something did that. And I was just like, but I could really, really go for just,

can we just get away from the insanity? And I'm not sitting here saying that that wouldn't have been a different type of insanity. I'm sure it would have been. But instead, it's like when you're talking about the interesting four years, I'm like, Chris, didn't we both watch when, well, I don't even know. There's so many different things to pick. I'm going to stick on Donald Trump for a second. When Zelensky was in his Oval Office and you're like, what is this?

What am I watching? This is wild. And I'm like, you know, I'm texting you. You know, like once again, I kind of feel like a newbie in this, right? I'm doing a crash course as fast as I can. I feel like I'm getting a PhD in Canadian politics. You are. And yet I'm like, this is, this seems wild.

Like, is this normally happened? Like, I don't normally watch these. Like, on our election day, Trudeau or Trudeau Trump throws out a tweet. basically saying elect, you know, the guy, and basically he goes through it all, and it comes back to the United States. I'm like, this is why, this is a sitting president saying.

Yep, super helpful. Thanks, man. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm to the point, I've kind of given up, kind of predicting now. I'm just kind of like watching.

And this is why, again, I'm trying to be optimistic. And so with Mark Carney, okay, he's calm. We've noticed that. He's pretty articulate. Like I said, he's got a PhD in economics from Oxford. So maybe he can get down there and get on that man's good side. Like really, I think we're to the point where I'll put it this way. I don't know how much you followed Trump back in the day before 2016, before he became president the first time. But I followed him relatively closely, like not a...

obsessively or anything, but I did read his book way ages ago, The Art of a Deal. So I kind of got to know his kind of big New Yorker type deal-making brashness. And that's good for a New Yorker real estate guy who wants to get in there and mess things up. In order to make a good deal, he'd knock over your waterglass at table, right? Like that kind of stuff. De-stabilize you and then make a good deal and then be done with it and win. Then his apprentice show was a really big deal. he was actually in the WWE several times.

He's one of their official Hall of Fame guys. Linda McMahon, the wife or ex-wife of Vince McMahon, is literally one of his cabinet ministers. So our version of a cabinet minister, she's one of his principal secretaries. Like, that is all tied together with a lot of Americana. The idea that now, think of it this way,

he doesn't have another term coming up. This is it. this is his like final season as Donald Trump US president. What's he going to do and say? We don't know. And this is why again, I'm very hesitant to make promises to people or even give warnings because I think people have done enough fear. I'm tired of that. I think the smart thing to do is urge all of our MPs. I don't care if you're listening from downtown Toronto. urge all of your MPs to make smart decisions that make Canada as economically strong as possible. No matter what. It doesn't matter if Trump's in the White House or who's in the White House. If we can take care of ourselves, we won't have this gnawing anxiety of let's check Twitter every morning to make sure things aren't going to hell in a handbasket.

And the beautiful part is, like I just said, we can. We can. Canada has the third largest oil and gas reserves in the world. We are not some tiny island nation that needs to create microchips in order to stay alive. No, we've got so many natural resources. If we're just smart about it and we extract them well and sell them at market and lower our own taxes and quit driving away our young people with crazy high taxes, we'll be good, we'll be strong. It's kind of a prepper mentality, right?

Always make sure you've got extra bottled water and flashlights on hand. don't wait for the storm to hit you. Because right now we're in the middle of the storm. And we've been kind of caught with our pants down because we've been choking off our own resources for 10 years. Let's stop being that stupid. Yeah, I was thinking about my speech for the Cornerstone Forum coming up. And what I started off with last year is, you know, the idea is, you know, to stare out

into the horizon, you know, of the next year and just to try and navigate, what is to come you know to if you see storm waters or you know a storm ahead on the rough water you pull into somewhere and you outweigh the storm and yet i look around and i'm like it just feels like you just you almost have to venture out into the storm because right now it is it doesn't look like it's going to relent as you pointed out for four years alone the next year you know one of the things you know specifically as we sit here and do this you know one of the things i asked michael camp was how worried he was about censorship you know because you know because Because like, and I know you're, you know, like, I've seen the announcements from Carney that basically, you know, CBC, great.

It's connected. All these things. They're going to do more investments into local news. And they're going to, you know, on and on and on and on and on. And I'm not forgetting this is also the guy who talked about, you know, finding ways to control some of the big sites, which I assume is X. Maybe there's others. you know, when you hear prime ministers saying things like that, in our realm of what we do, what comes to mind?

So this is going to be my talk at the forum this weekend, and I'd love to give it directly to people. But this is what, as a longtime journalist, like that's my trade. I went to trade school for journalism. I graduated early because I got a full-time job when it was 19 years old, and I've been in the game ever since. I love journalism. I think it's a calling.

I think that certain people attract storytellers who then want to tell their stories. And fundamentally what journalists are supposed to do, apart from the human interest stuff and trying to raise awareness about people being ill or something like that, which matters a lot, fundamentally what that estate is supposed to do is supposed to speak truth to power. It's supposed to hold the powerful to account. and nothing is more powerful than the state. So that is why the old CBC investigative journalism show was called the fifth estate, because it's supposed to be juxtaposed against the powers, the halls of power.

I see this as a clear and present danger right now if it stays on the current course, because this is basically like a two-sided vice. Okay? If Carney sticks with what the liberals were doing before he picked up the reins, I hope that he goes in an opposite direction and goes for free speech and free expression. But given what we've got in front of us,

if he keeps things like Bill C-63, if he keeps the censorship laws, if he keeps C-11, if he keeps funding the CBC, on one side of this vice, we've got government-funded media. So, we do not have a free press in Canada. Free press does not mean some paper boy with a bunch of rolled up newspapers there on Times Square handing them out for free. That is not what free press means. Free press is free from the state.

We do not have that in Canada because apart from the CBC, separate and apart, a huge chunk of the mainstream media is now on government payroll, meaning they wouldn't be able to keep their employees employed, those journalists working in the newsrooms if they didn't get a handout from government. That is not journalism. That is a walking conflict of interest and a contradiction. So we've got on one side, the CBC, $1.4 billion per year. Carney's agreed to jack it up to about $2 billion per year with a B, okay? And we've got a ton of mainstream media now dependent utterly on their existence on the state. So government-funded media on one side of this vice.

Crank, crank, crank, crank. Here comes the other side of the vice. C-Sensorship. So we've already got Bill C-11. Under Bill C-11, now the CRTC, which used to simply regulate what you saw on TV, okay, which is one of the reasons why Sun News Network never made it. The CRTC now has the power to regulate podcast providers. So not the individual podcasts, but the providers.

So that would be things like Apple, YouTube, Spotify, like name it. Rumble? Like who knows who else they're going to try to regulate? And of course, the Trojan horse, Sean, is always, oh, it's for Canadian content. Yeah, right. this will give them the power to be able to amplify or bury various podcasts. Okay? Once you give the government control over something like that, you lose your ability for free expression. And I would say the same thing if the Blue Team was in. The government

trying to control your free expression is wrong. Because if you cannot express yourself freely, you cannot speak truth to power, you can't have those grassroots meetings, and you can't fight for things like lower taxes and less waste. So unfortunately, if things stay the way they are and continue to get worse, like Bill C-63, which I will remind people, wants to give the power to anonymous individuals to complain about you or me or any of the other podcasters that we're on with, that they will commit a future crime of hate speech. Meaning you haven't said it yet or tweeted it yet. But this would give them this power. It's crazy. And then you could get a fine, or you could even get house arrest. Like some of the language that was in that bill was just

gobsmacking. So maybe he's going to scrap it. I hope he's going to. Maybe he's going to take it and like completely, you know, uh, bisect it so that you know what? We're getting rid of all the censorship stuff. But we're keeping the actual harms to children, which was the real. reason for them creating this bill. And we're going to give that to justice. So criminal justice department's going to handle that. If you're doing bad stuff to kids, you are a dirtbag and belong in jail forever. But all this stuff about, you know, pre-crime about feelings being hurt because based on expression and speech, all that stuff that would affect podcast, even speech you don't like, which is the point of free expression, all that's gone. There's been a big, to be fair,

there's been a lot of really thoughtful broadcasters, podcasters, lawyers, experts who've worked in bureaucracies before who have been urging the government to do that, to separate the bill, get rid of the censorship stuff, hand the super bad stuff of the bad guys over to crime and justice, over to the Justice Department, and they were stalling on it. At last week, noon, before the election, breaks were being tapped. So, and this is from left-wind. people too. This is from like very left wing oriented people that are saying, uh, no, we can't criminalize people's thoughts or what they say. Um, what are we doing here? So there was a big push, like a multi-pronged push from a lot of different people, um, to do that. So let's hope that's what Carney does.

Otherwise, good chance I'll be on house arrest, folks. I'm just like, there's, I, I'm like, terrified of it and I'm like at the same time I'm like what am I you know like what can I do you know I thought this and I had multiple I remember back in the COVID days when I was started to talk to doctors and everything and I made everybody uncomfortable including myself you know I was getting these texts like are you still there they haven't put a black bag over your head yet and I'm like well those are reassuring texts to get in the of this you know thanks yeah thanks yeah great but yeah you look you look at another term of the liberals in the way they were going and what everybody was like this is this is getting to insane proportions my um you know i'm like you know i wish i could be hopeful about it but i i guess i have an idea

of who mark carney is and i guess we're going to wait and see because that's you know as it sits here where you can prepare and lots of people have been preparing and as a podcast or I sit here and I go like I wonder what's coming down the pipe for me as far as like you know making it hard to find check uh shadow bands different things like that having your youtube account nuked for a certain word on and on and on I can just check my bingo card at this point and go like if they continue down those trains of thought I mean it's going to be no different than what was happening in COVID that I guess that's the way my brain goes is like you know there's just going to be certain topics or certain words they're going to

trigger an algorithm and they're going to go you bad right it was Spotify that had the warnings this is you know they had all the warnings YouTube if you said certain words you got warnings or eventually removed and so this isn't new it's just that it's the government pushing really hard for it and we'll wait and see if if the bills come to pass big time um two things one for the taxpayers federation i was also well i am concerned about having independent media be strangled because that that's the best way to cover things is for free, voluntary, you know, donations and sponsorships and advertising. Like, you should not be forced to pay for media through the government. So depending if, I don't care if it's right wing or left wing, uh, independent media

company should raise their own money. So that's the smartest and best way to do this. People can do that through substack and all sorts of different folks. Um, so from the taxpayers Federation perspective, um, remember about six months ago where we still weren't allowed to say, that we should axe the carbon tax and get rid of the carbon tax. I remember distinctly being on mainstream media repeatedly over and over again, TV and radio. And I'd come out and say, we shouldn't be punishing people for filling up their minivans and heating their damn homes. We shouldn't be punishing farmers for growing food.

This is insane. Scrap the carbon tax. And me saying that had mainstream government type people calling me a monster and saying I was a denier, which is a disgusting term, because it's supposed to echo the term for Holocaust denial, which is revolting that you would say that to someone. But it was that bad. And lots of people said, you shouldn't be allowed to say things like this. And I had other people going after my hosts who had actually given me a chance to speak. Why are you platforming this person? Because I was saying to get rid of the carbon tax? Like, what are we doing here? So, and remember also, we had ministers of the

crown, accusing the taxpayers' federation of misinformation or disinformation because we were blowing the whistle on things like the risk of a home equity tax, or the fact that one of their studies was recommending a pickup truck tax, which they were, and it was. They're like, oh, it's, you know, disinformation. It's not. So when we have the state involved with saying and deciding what is truth, we're getting into some really murky, troubled waters here. Because it's it won't just be like, you know, hot topic social issues that you're not allowed to talk about. This was dollars and cents I was talking about. And they were still getting mad at us. They were still coming after us. And I also remember I'm writing an op-ed right now on why we need

to defund the media, why government shouldn't be paying journalists. And I remember distinctly, not one. I think there was three separate liberal MPs at different times. Getting really mad at, say, the national post or post media, basically threatening to pull their funding, like directly on Twitter, going after reporters and columnists and stuff. It's wild, Sean. I want to end, I don't know if this is a hopeful note, but I may- Let's try. Well, one of the things about election night, obviously you knew we did 12 hours and at the end of it, we had 88,000 people watching simultaneously. We had in the first 24 hours, it was over 400,000 people had checked out for different durations and a shout out to all the people listening to us who tuned in for more than nine

hours. I had people who turned, one lady, I think it was a lady, forgive me, said, I tuned in for 12 hours, except for 34 minutes. It took me to run and vote. And I still got 700 plus texts. I'm working through, but every time I seem to narrow it down, it seems to balloon back up. So I'm working my way back. I'm trying to answer by everybody who texted that.

day, which was a super cool day. And I continue to say, and I'd be curious your thoughts because, you know, like I do this show, you get to be a guest on a ton of different independent media, whether it's shows like this or part of their online news forums, et cetera. Isn't, haven't you seen like an absolute growth or just like, you know, like I think of like Jasmine Lane, I had her on? I had no idea who she was. And that's just the latest.

There's like so many more that I keep running into now in Canada that are talking openly having these platforms and running shows. Isn't that a hopeful note for Canadians of like, listen, the media media landscape is changing in front of our eyes. It doesn't mean the CBC isn't getting funding or the legacy media. They are. But there's a ton of independent media that are maybe starting to change the status quo or am I wrong on that thinking?

No, I think you're right. And again, it is so important to have free and independent media. And again, nothing is stopping somebody who absolutely, you know, wants to save the rainforest and save the whales and all that stuff from starting their own media foundation and having their reporters out in the field. Like, that's a really good thing. If it is funded through free will donations or advertising or whatever it is, don't rely upon the state for your information. because then you aren't speaking truth to power. And so, yeah, it is wonderful to see people like Jasmine Lane, to see Clyde doing this, to see Northern Perspective gaining so much. I don't know about you, but I tuned in to the Pleb quite a few times when he was covering the election just because he's joyful.

Like, frankly, he's able, I don't know if he's got a background in wrestling or something, but he can hype up a crowd and get, you know, while he's doing selfies with people. And he was just so friendly about it. And so I do think that we've got a growing and burgeoning independent media landscape that is a bit of a mix of journalism, online print journalism, influencers, columnists, activists, all sorts of them. My concern are twofold. One, I hope that it just continues to grow in a good way and get stronger and ask really hard-hitting W-5 journalism questions. So it's not all just for clicks and reaction videos and stuff. No, no, no.

Get down there. File the Freedom Information request yourself. Do the research yourself. Break news. Break real news. That's outstanding. Do documentaries on what you find. I can say this, folks.

It's always good when Chris Sims calls me and says, you just broke news. And I'm like, really? Oh, wow. I didn't even know what I was doing. It's great. And that's what changes the game. That's what moves the narrative along or changes the parameters of it. So there's that.

So that is a wonderful thing to see. Again, though, this is where my concern about Bill C-63 comes into things, and the combination of that will Bill C-11. And so I would just, okay, this is a minority government, pretty strong minority. I'm not going to lie to you, because the NDP doesn't have a leader right now, so they're likely going to vote with the government, all that understood. However, your voice still matters. So I would just urge everybody to pay attention, part of this army of free expression, okay, tax fighters and whatnot. Always be in touch with your local MP, even if they aren't the party you prefer, because that shows that you're on to them, okay? It shows that you know that at a minimum they get paid 200 grand a year, plus all their expenses, that if they're a cabinet minister, they're getting paid more than $300,000 per year plus a car allowance, okay? And tell them that you want free expression. If we can focus on that and to cut back spending for the love of all that is holy,

because unfortunately again going back to my initial comment we're seeing the guy with the PhD in economics the central banker planning on putting more under the debt that the drama teacher was folks we all pay for this like the interest alone that we're paying on the federal debt now is more than what Ottawa sends to the provinces for health care okay it is shocking amount of money and that's all coming out of our pockets okay it is very similar to inflate in the form of it's like a hidden tax. This toxic eating debt is like a form of hidden tax on all working people in Canada.

So just keep up that fight. Stay in touch with your MP because we still have a democracy and I would urge everybody to stay in the game. Chris, appreciate you hopping on and doing this. And, well, I'm sure we'll have a little bit of fun here this Saturday in Calgary. I've sent out to Beacon to all of my supporters,

all of the CTF supporters in the Calgary area. Hopefully they're going to swamp the area. Franco Tarasano is going to come along to the event, the Cornerstone event. We're going to have books there. We're going to have defund the CBC bumper stickers. They're only handed out in person. So people come out to that. And just straight up, Sean, your election night coverage was awesome.

Like, I listened to the vast majority of it, even when I wasn't on. Like, it was funny, it was edgy, was insightful. You had people from all different perspectives. It was, I didn't see glitches. You probably noticed a bunch because you were the, creator, but it ran smooth. I can say that now without knocking wood. It ran smoothly.

That was really cool. Good on you. Like I haven't seen 12 hours of that kind of production flow like that, like ever. That was really cool. That means a lot coming from you because you're a lady in the production world. So I know enough about you and your background and your career history to know that. So I appreciate that. It took a, it's taken to the audience because somebody said, Sean, you sound tired. Maybe you just need to take a nap.

I'm like, it took probably a week. Like, I'm just starting to feel like, oh, I'm starting to feel like good again. And then the Cornerstone Forum's going to hit. It's going to wipe me out all over again, right? Like, if you've never been to the forum, everybody knows I run a tight ship when it's on stage. And that'll be a good day, but a taxing day. And appreciate that because we put a lot of effort into making sure, you know, it wasn't just the same conversation happening over and over again.

And we brought in a lot of different people. And I appreciate them coming on and trusting us to lead a show that was worthy of their time. Because you know, like you think it, it was funny. We had you and Franco on and Tristan Hopper. That was so funny. Yeah, he's making fun of like, I work for the, I worked for the legacy media, right? He was talking to it. And that was an interesting, just dynamic in general.

And that wasn't the only one. There was plenty of that all day long. And hopefully, you know, Lord Wellen in the years to come, we'll be able to provide similar production value and guestless and, you know, a focus on what's going on Canadian politics. That's the hope anyways. I think we'll be able to, man. Congratulations. Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday.

Yes, you as well. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. Welcome back to the Sean Newman podcast. I'm still joined by Chris Sims. We just topped off to go listen to Danielle Smith give her address to Alberta. And I thought, Chris, you might have just come right back on. We could talk about it for 10.

minutes and then I can let you on with your merry way. But, um, you know, we both said if she just showed up and it wasn't, you know, anything to, to really talk about, you know, there'd be no point coming back on. But of course, um, separation, uh, the conversation of separation referendums was a big chunk in that. She had, uh, I think four demands, uh, access to tidewater, uh, basically repealing the no pipeline bill. And, you know, like, what did you think of, what Danielle had to say about, I don't know, just addressing Alberta because, you know, this isn't just off the cuff. You know, we talked in our interview that the day after it isn't even been, you know, literally five minutes fresh. It'd been 12 hours and she'd come out, guns of blazing,

reducing the ability for helping the ability, I guess, reducing what it needed for citizens to get a referendum through. Now, about a week later, She's on with another thing, you know, basically saying a whole bunch of demands. And then she speaks directly to Albertans saying, you know what? If you want out, you're not a traitor. And if you want to stay, you're not some dummy. And then there's a whole bunch in the middle that don't want the status quo and that she puts herself firmly in that camp.

I'm generalizing the entire thing. I would push people to go listen to it, especially if you're from Alberta. It's on X. I'm sure it's on YouTube. Chris, your thoughts. So not surprised. Again, it was based off largely off of what she already had to say, but in a much more kind of stateswomanly manner, like kind of a fireside chat sort of delivery. Because of course, not everybody watches the press conference, but the formal address to the province sort of stuff, that gets a little bit more of a different audience. So what really piqued my interest was the language she used in relation to what we do going forward with Ottawa. And remember how we were talking, comparing it to Quebec and what happened at the referendum there? Yeah.

So she used the term Alberta Accord. For those of us of a certain vintage, we'll remember things like the Meach Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, which were part and parcel to that big referendum vote on separation that Quebec had. The, what some may think of as a positive outcome from that is that Quebec is still a part of Canada. It's just a distinct part of Canada, which is why it's very interesting that Premier Smith used the term sovereign Alberta. She keeps repeating the phrase, a sovereign Alberta within a strong United Canada, which is interesting because sovereignty doesn't necessarily mean separation. Sovereignty means that you're under your own rule and that you're under your own control.

Basically you're a master of your own destiny. And if you take a look at Quebec, for example, Quebec controls its own immigration. It decides what kind of immigration they want into their province. Provinces usually don't have that ability. Quebec, for the most part, is able to decide what kind of healthcare delivery system they want in their province. Like there's a lot of things. They have their own pension program.

They have their own provincial police force. Quebec is definitely a distinct society. I think it was Prime Minister Stephen Harper who put it well when he said Quebec is a nation, nation to be born. Quebec is a nation within a country of Canada. And I think that's what the Premier of Alberta here is aiming for. If Alberta can have control over its own things like pipelines and access to energy corridors and maybe have things like its own pension program, who knows, own police force, all that stuff. there's this big billboard that I drive past as I'm heading up the number two to Calgary and it basically says more Alberta less Ottawa.

I think a lot of Albertans would be real happy if we can get a lot more just Alberta and a lot less at Ottawa. It doesn't necessarily mean we have to separate. Do you think Ottawa, you know, like if you're sitting there and you're Mark Kearney and you hear, you know, repeal this bill, access to tidewaters. We want the same treatment in, oh, why is the term spacing me? Oh, in equalization. Thank you. Thank you. You hear those and I'm like, it's great to say it out loud.

I don't know if they can, like, can they actually do those things? Yes. So that's what I found really interesting. And shout out to Nigel Hannaford and Derek Filderan. I think they're still doing their live right now on Western Standard. And they made a great point. Nigel did in that these aren't constitutionally triggering questions that she's putting forward. So she's not putting forward something really dramatic that would require, you know,

reopening the Constitution, which would be like opening a bag of gigantic snakes. Like there's so many things that go along with that. These are political options, meaning, yeah, he'd be able to do them. The key element that you're keen on there, and I've got the number here in front of me, generally speaking, she said that she wants Alberta, I'm paraphrasing, to have the same amount of equalization dollars coming back to it that the other big provinces do. So she's leaving out, you know, the chronically have not, won't develop their natural resources provinces largely in the maritime. Okay, separating them. She said that, basically we want the same equalization payments coming back to Alberta as the other big provinces do. The other big provinces, by her definition, were Ontario and Quebec. And as of right now, these are rough numbers. In 2024, 2025, Ontario got $576 million in equalization.

And Quebec, this is the big one, got 13.3 billion with a B. in one year. So that's what she's saying she wants. She wants that. She wants access to tidewater through a guaranteed corridor and she wants Ottawa to stop strangling our natural resources. Those are all politically doable. Like Carney could do it as soon as he reconvenes parliament. Yeah, whether or not he can actually do it is, is the is, we'll be, we'll, we'll, we'll see. You know, I don't know about you, but when the leader of Alberta starts spitting fire at the east, I'm like, it's about time. It's literally about time. And seeing this, to me, it's very clear, right?

Because if he follows through a whole bunch of things, it pretty much takes down a huge chunk of the independence movement, doesn't it? And if he doesn't, it only flames it more. what I would want speaking personally is for more rights for Albertans to decide what they want to do with their own money and their own jobs like basically no interference from Ottawa. If I could have my way, I would add a whole bunch of stuff to that. Like she had the plastic span on there. So we would have our straws and our bloody plastic grocery bags back as a mom who shops. Yeah. Heck, I'd add on to that, scrap your stupid EV mandate.

Like how dare you, number one? one, tell me what kind of vehicle I'm allowed to drive. Number two, we can't afford this. This is a really bad idea. So if I could, I would have no interference from Ottawa and allow Alberta to be, you know, a master of its own destiny within Canada. Because as she puts it and she puts herself in the camp like you described it, she puts herself in the camp of those who have an attachment still to Canada, who take it seriously.

And with all due respect, there's probably a ton of listeners to your show right now. that are in that camp. That's right. And who were in literally the armed forces. Like they fought and risked their lives under that flag. Like it means something to them. And there's all sorts of Albertans who love Alberta, who weren't born here, myself included. There's lots of folks from other parts of Canada who really love Alberta, but are still, you know, culturally attached, familially attached to other parts of Canada, but want us to stop being screwed by Ottawa too. So I think that her taking this firm stand defending Alberta's sovereignty, not separation,

it's the same thing, it's a different thing, defending Alberta's sovereignty and standing up for our natural resources, standing up for our taxpayers, I think this is going to go a long way. And when she brought up the referendum question, she specifically said that she herself, meaning her government, the government of Alberta would not initiate start a referendum with the separation question. However, she said that she wouldn't disallow that question to be on the ballot. And I think she said 2026. So we're looking at about a year and change here. So she's she's talking about leading a panel of smart people. I'm going to put that in quotes. Brainiac. We call them brainiac. Yes. To go around Alberta and engage the temperature of what everything is. I can tell you

what the temperature of everything is myself. And I feel like I'd be, you know, do I know every corner of this province? Certainly not. But I feel like I have a pretty good pulse on it. And I can imagine what she's going to find when she goes around this province. I could be wrong, but I've been in way too many conversations. I'm pretty sure I know what she's going to find. And it'll be interesting to see what they put on a referendum.

And then, you know, knowing, you know, whether, you know, whether she'll make any of those referendum questions. Binding will be the next question that I'll be paying attention to, right? Because, I mean, obviously we've had a referendum on equalization. And what most people say is, yeah, what happened? You know, nothing. Because Ottawa didn't heat it.

Yep. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of people that are frustrated. It's, on one hand, it's a lot of fancy talk to be like, yeah, we're going to go look into this and we're going to have up another panel and it's going to go around. On the flip side, when you go, Karnie gets in, 12 hours after she comes out lowering the threshold. I think that's a pretty clear indication of what she is, you know, stands for or is watching Ottawa and goes, you know, if this is where it's going to go, we're going to have some tools in our tool bag.

Because I mean, like, it's only a week or two ago that I had the group from APP on. And they were talking those numbers. And I've been hearing, they come on again after this episode. So the listener, they'll be on tomorrow talking, I'm sure, about the thousands of people that have been signing up. And that wouldn't be lost on Danielle at all. I'm not saying she's for it. I'm just saying that wouldn't be lost on her. She's a smart lady.

And to have a referendum now into 2026. And if things, you know, what does she say something along the lines of Albertans don't like talk? They want to see the actions fall through. Once again, I'm paraphrasing now. And if the actions don't follow through, you can see where in 2026, I guess this is, as someone who wants change and knowing government doesn't move at the speed of light, I go, 2026, well, you were saying four years of interesting. The next year just got a whole lot more interesting to pay attention to, right? Like, there's going to be things going on here over the next

eight months, roughly, seven months, I guess, that are going to be something to pay attention to. Big time. She also said that she wants, I think the language was no more access to our emissions data. And folks probably remember it feels like a year ago now, but it was only like a few weeks ago when she came out and said that federal agents, meaning the federal government, are no longer permitted on Alberta property to even find their supposed quote unquote emissions data. And that even used terms like trespassing if something like that happened. She also raised, I will point this out, almost forgot. the completely unfair gun grab. So the targeting of law abiding, responsible, legal firearms owners in Alberta, in that she won't stand for that either. So there were a lot of things that she mentioned there to explain, number one, why Alberta is fed up and they've had it. And number two, while Alberta is distinct. Alberta is a special culture. It absolutely is. I've lived in most provinces of this country. I even lived in Quebec for a short period of time. Alberta is distinct. It just, just doesn't have its own language. So that's why it doesn't stand out as much as say the French

speakers in Quebec. But she really seems pretty determined about this. So again, I was stressing this on a mainstream national radio show today to my folks who are back in Ontario in the press gallery and stuff, do not ignore this. Yeah. Like this is for realsies. Like this is really, really for real. So yeah, basically what's happened is she's made it official, what she was already saying. And And she's going to chair in Alberta next panel. She's going to get some smart people together, probably people similar to Preston Manning, okay, who are going to go and listen to people and find out what they want to do. And she also has made it easier for people to hold a referendum.

And while they're not going to spearhead one themselves as a government, that she said that they wouldn't stand in the way of one happening, I'm waiting to see now what Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says. And what Prime Minister Mark Carney says. He's going to be meeting with Trump tomorrow. I bet you this is brought up in that scrum. Isn't this going to be interesting? Yeah, buckle up, folks.

Chris, thanks for hopping back on for 15 minutes. Your insight is much appreciated, and we'll look forward to seeing you again here on Saturday. Thanks, Sean. Stay tuned.