Shaun Newman Podcast - #874 - Shane Getson

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Shane Getson is a Canadian politician representing Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland in the Alberta Legislative Assembly as a member of the United Conservative Party (UCP). Elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023, he currently serves as Chief Government Whip and Parliamentary Secretary for Economic Corridor Development. Before politics, Getson was a civil engineering technologist, owned a consulting company focused on construction and energy sectors. We discuss the Sask/AB meeting in Lloydminster, economic corridors and his intention to retire from politics at the end of his term. To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver 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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This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday. How's everybody doing today? Well, the number of ounces of silver needed to buy an ounce of gold at now near 30-year highs.

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you should stop into the store here in Lloydminster, and that's just another idea that you can do. Any purchases you make, just make sure to use the code SNP. It gets you in for monthly draws. And, you know, they also have a nice SMP knife there as well with RECTEC and Prophet River on it. Of course, go to Profitriver.com wherever you're at in Canada.

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Just up into Windsor Plywood today. Cornerstone Forum 2026. Well, I'm going to keep reminding people that it is coming, and we're a ways away from it, for sure. But, you know, I've got a week here before I leave on holidays. Well, end of this week, actually. And I'm hoping, I'm hoping that I'm going to have the date set by then. But, you know, I say that out loud. And then I'm like,

that might be unrealistic. We're hoping to have things ironed out here this week. I guess we'll wait and see what comes of it. But just to keep in the back of your brain, it is coming back. It is going to be back in Calgary by looks of it. And, well, I'm hoping that you will be there. The new studio is also coming in 2025. And if you're wanting to be on the value for value,

wall, skills, labor, materials, money, are some of the ways you can do it. Just shoot me a text. We'd love to put you on there. I just want to remind everybody with July around the corner that we slow down. It's going to be Monday, Tuesday, Thursdays, and Thursdays are going to be throwback Thursdays. I've already got my first ready to roll. And then Fridays are going to be twos with the new co-hosts for the month of July.

So July is when I slow down. Just want to keep reminding people if you wonder where the heck I've gone in July. I spend some time with the family. we get on the road and, you know, try and unplug a little bit. We'll wait and see if July and the world will allow me to do that. Either way, if you're wondering, you know, when there's no episodes on Tuesdays, that's the day that gets pulled out for July. We slow it down just a little bit, a little bit of a refresh, reset button, if you would.

And we'll be back in August going hard and heavy, I'm sure. Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. He's the current MLA for Lax-S-Anne Parkland. I'm talking about Shane Getson. So buckle up. Here we go. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today.

I'm joined by Shane Getson. Shane, thanks for hopping in studio with me. Sean, always a pleasure and a privilege to be down in Lloyd here. And anytime that it's aviation related, I seem to stay longer than initially planned, but it's all good. Well, that's the big guy lending me some supports. We could do this in studio.

You're like, well, we could just do it online. I'm like, since when do we do online? You're always in studio, and I would like it no other way. So having you in studio again is a real treat, because, you know, as I was just telling Adam before you walked in, like doing these in person is a thousand, maybe a million times better than online. Not that online's bad. It's just the in person is so much better. It's better to shake your hand and get to see you and see other people, I might add. And there's just, you know, it's always a pleasure to have people in studio.

So yeah, no, I agree. It's always good to see here. And every time I come in, there's little improvements or something else. You can see your personality and the time and little snippets and history here. It's getting to be pretty cool. You wait until you see the new studio. You just wait. You're not going to want to leave.

Is that right? So is it like a Tucker Carlson Hunchshack type idea is what you're up to? Um, I like to think I'm putting my own spin on it. But certainly, yeah, it's a 1960s shed, I guess. Okay. It don't look like that though on the inside. On the inside, you're going to be like, I'll show you a video after we're done. That's really cool.

But yeah, hopefully here in, you know, I've been, I targeted it end of April. Then I targeted end of May. And then, you know, just little things. You're a project guy. Yep. In my brain, I had been told, oh, yeah, I can get, the work isn't the problem. It's the materials getting in and then getting, you know. And so I've just had some.

setbacks and I'm not letting them deter me. It's, you know, it'll happen when it's good and ready. And we're getting close. Like it's getting, it's getting real close. And when it's done and you walk in, you're going to be like, holy mackina, right? Like I, I firmly believe I am building the nicest podcast studio Western Canada has. That's what I believe. Good for you. And so when it's set and done, I love this room. And I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into making it feel what it does, but I think the new one, every, well, I think, you know, I already sent it to, this is, I haven't told anyone with this, but I text to Brett Kissel, two days ago. No, no, it was yesterday. It was yesterday. And I sent him a video of it. I said, this is your fault. And he said,

because of you two years ago, I have had this thought and it's slowly starting to come together. And I would love if you come, uh, do an episode in the studio. And he just sent back, you know, laughter. He says, you should be charging rent for being in your head that long, but I gladly come back. forward to seeing it. So, you know, I guess, folks, I can say Brett Kissel at some point is coming back on the podcast. We got to get the studio built and I'm going to have to work around his schedule and everything else. But it's been a, it's been a, you know, well, you know all about projects. I'd never built anything. I mean, certainly this room and I got a ton of time for seeing an idea to come together, but like an actual idea that's larger than just, you know, a couple coats on

a paint on a wall and a table. Like, it's bigger than that. And I don't know, you've, you've projects all your life. All I know is it's way easier to predict a big project than it is a small one. Like when you've got small projects or home renovation projects or those things, those are the ones that will always, I don't know, set me back. Give me a pipeline. Give me a facility to put up a tank farm or anything else. We can dial those in really good. But, you know, like you said, little things. You try to work around those schedules and then it's a different world out there for contractors at the commercial and the residential side too. But yeah, it's always fun. There's always challenges. Well, you were sitting in Lloyd Minster here yesterday and today. And I think if Lloyd Minster didn't know what was

going on, I felt like a ton of people didn't know what was going on. But you know, you walk in a room and you see both premiers, so Premier Smith, Premier Moe. And then the entire SaaS party is my understanding. Yeah, we brought both of our caucuses together. This is the first time that I know this has happened. I think this might be the first time in history ever that we got everybody. in the room at the same time. So you can talk about the synergies we have. It was more like a family reunion. A lot of the folks I've met over the years in these transboundary organizations. And it's ironic that you can have more conversations. I think we talked about that a few years ago when you're actually out of your own country and somewhere else talking with your colleagues,

you know, those barriers. So what we're doing here is really breaking those down. Premiers have done a phenomenal job of doing that in the first ministers as well. And that's what it was about. It was talking about the challenges that we have ahead of us. The new federal government is, you know, the same old government led by somebody new. So we want to make sure that our concerns that we've put out there are taken seriously. And we want to make sure that it was really strong consensus going forward on some of the items that we've put out. And then potentially some of the strategies we'd also look at further down the field. Yeah, well, I was listening to the, I was sitting in the room while they were doing their live press conference.

Yeah, you know, politicians, they love to say a lot of things. and I'm like, if this doesn't show clear unity of like, it's time, you know, I think Mo said it, I think, you know, that actions speak a lot of them words, or at least that's what I summarized it when talking about the liberal government. I'm like, well, if this doesn't show, you know, you go first time in history, I don't know, first time in my lifetime, I've seen something like that. And to be happening in my back yard, it should send a clear signal if you don't get this right in the next six months. I don't know. we can go longer or shorter. I think with all the bubbling that's going on in Alberta specifically, I think that it's a clear indication of working together out west

and not letting Ottawa do what it's been doing for sure the last 10 years, but maybe even longer than that. Well, it goes further than just Ottawa too. Like there should be an appetite right now. You know, with the presidential campaign that took place, and we had a change there, thank goodness. I think we got the right guy. for the job down there for sure.

And then we had our federal election, which took a bunch of people by surprise. And it was all predicated on being tough with the U.S., which, you know, got them through and got them elected. And now here's the troubling part. How many of those old policies that the Green Gremlin had sitting on the table are you going to drag across and try to make come to pass here? The other one, too, when they're talking like C-5 as an example where there's projects of national interest that the prime minister has always had in the federal government, has

always had the ability to stroke a piece of paper and say it's a project of national interest. You don't need full consensus. It's in the national interest. The problem was that's been hijacked for a number of years. They've not done their job as the feds. And we're suffering for it. You can see with the trade, the issues that we're having globally, now everyone's scrambling trying to catch up and make sure you have diversification and other trade partnerships.

And other jurisdictions look very favorably at Canada, but they look at us like the kids that are running around with scissors sometimes too, because we can't fix the stuff in our own backyard. And that's where this is making a lot of sense. Get people together, agree in which projects that we want to do. It's not a one and done. I'll give you this little sucker go away. So we're not just saying, give me one pipeline or give me one tank farm or give me one port.

We're actually talking most of us about building the country like you and I started talking about four years ago, five years ago. And for me, it's very encouraging to see these type of conversations that you and I had in here about economic corridors coming to pass at this point. And that is what's going to be able to pull our country back together. So if Carney and company don't take us serious, they'd better figure this out because, quite frankly, Western unity, not only Western unity, the sake of the country is at stake here. We have to pull up our socks and actually become a country again and get things built here because the world needs and wants our stuff.

Yeah, it's, you remember me giving you a hard time of these economics? When is it going to, when is it going to, when is it going to, when What is going to? It's happening. Well, it's, uh, it's, uh, the conversation is definitely mainstream. Yeah. But it has taken a long time to get there. It, it has and, you know, rose by any other name, right?

So call it something different, call an energy corridor, call it a ports to, a port to corridor to port, whatever you want to call these things. Call it, Pete, I don't care. But the fact of the matter is find some conduits where we can build linear infrastructure that ties us into ports, trades and commerce. that we can get our products and market to the world. And then the other iteration of that is put in some nodes along those corridors that you have pre-approved industrial zones, and then overly on top of that, foreign trade zones on top of that,

or free trade zones or foreign trade zones. That's how you actually change the economics. That's how you give a clear indication of how this takes place. And you have to have to have your First Nation folks there with you. And the ones I've talked to, the ones that are the most progressive in getting this are seeing the same thing. Do this in advance long enough that we know where we're, going to be building stuff for the next 50, 60, 70 years. And when we have the carrot on the end of the stick, like the barrels and kind thing,

I'm not sure if a lot of folks understand that in the Alberta side and the provinces themselves. The feds don't own the pen or the resources. Like back in the 80s, when everybody negotiated this law heathen company, they made sure that the provinces own the resources. So that's, that's a different thing anywhere else in the world. Basically, there's only a few jurisdictions they have that. We have that. So when we're signing and making these.

deals, literally other countries come and talk to the premiers to make the deal for the resources, not the prime minister. So once you understand that, it's a different game. And the ability for us to do barrels in kind is instead of just taking and exchanging the, the barrels that are being traded by others, you know, that actually own or own the assets that are moving the product and doing the development, when we actually take more interest in control and we make the deals. So we will say, you know, Indy, you get X number of barrels, Spain, you get X number of barrels.

USA, you get X number of barrels. We can speak on behalf of the province, the, the, the taxpayers themselves. And then that's almost at a, at a federal state level when you start doing that in other jurisdictions. So that changes it. So when folks want our stuff, we can make those deals. But when I'm on the road and having this message, both transboundary and internationally now in a couple files, the, the conversation changes.

And what I say to them is, okay, you don't just want our product on a spot price in the market. What you really want to do is you want to secure your energy supply for the next 50, 60 years, and everyone nods. Then what you really want to do is bring your investment dollars to us as well. And then their concern is, well, how do you build things? Well, here's how you build it within these corridors. Here's what we've done with this model. Here's the MLUs we have. Here's the First Nations folks on side. Here's how you can be guaranteed that when you invest your dollars in our jurisdictions and part of the infrastructure that you can secure that.

So you'll be secure in the dollars and cents. We can make the deal in the barrels and kind. And you'll have a safe place to secure and invest. And it's a safe place because we're not as influenced by the geopolitics. So here we are. Completely different conversation at that point. Did you go to the G7 at all? I sure did. And how was that? A little bit surreal for this old country boy. I mean, when you start seeing leaders rolling in and you're going through security and we had our premier host had a great one. It was on the Korean president was there with us. You got a lot of really interesting people in that room at one time and a little bit surreal when you're hearing, you know, Prime Minister Modi is literally in the same hallway that's going to be coming through and you've got a big buzz with all the international press there and it was it was pretty neat.

But you realize that, you know, and some folks online were kind of chirping a bit, which some folks online do all the time. But why would you have all these people here in the world? Well, honestly, it's Alberta. You've got the world not coming to Canada. And in my mind, you got them coming to Alberta just outside of Calgary, which is, you know, arguably our best showpiece for showing who we, who we kind of When the world leaders come there and they're physically in your backyard, you have lots of opportunities to have those direct conversations. And then when you see them further down the road and when their press sends you things down the road, they know for sure who you are, what you're about. Even something as simple as how clean the areas and how much water there is and how much space there is and how uncongested the roads are.

And on by the way, we have all that oil and gas doing there and we're not causing big issues. Like that was significant to be in those rooms. And they have some of those very frank conversations. And then the appetite for international trade with us is phenomenal. We're kind of seen not only just in Canada, but around the world as that place you go to where a handshake still means something and anything is possible. So it was pretty profound to be in those rooms and some of those conversations. Any conversations? I don't even know if I'm allowed to.

Well, obviously when we talk, there's no holds bar. is so you know one of the big things that came after the election was the independence movement started firing on all cylinders that conversation has dominated a lot of things premier smith came out the next day lowered the the threshold thank you for for getting a citizen-led referendum through and and different things like that any world leader even talked to you about that no well no not me i mean some conversations could be taken place, but not at that level where we're very careful and folks should understand that when

you're at that level, you do want a unified approach. You want to talk about some of your stuff. But quite honestly, a lot of the noise that we fixate on isn't near the top of point of mind as other people may think it is. Like there's some other big things taking place in the world kind of like the Israelis and the Iranians throwing missiles at each other. So when we're talking about some of the internal issues, it's more of an investment level. It's more several tiers lower than Like obviously the world leaders kind of look at it, but they know there's an undercurrent. The biggest thing that plays for us honestly is to be able to make sure that the voices and the concerns that people have aren't muted, that they're not displaced and more to ensure that our countrymen understand that. And then our federal leaders understand that that this is real.

When you're trying to talk about those big aspirational things and having safe places to park a bunch of cash to tie up resources, The last thing you want to give the impression is that you're a banana republic and you're going to just flip, flop and go one way or the other and then be an island within an island. So that would be bad business. So at those levels, there's a lot of candor that takes place, obviously, but there's also a lot of protocol that takes place. There's certain areas you don't just necessarily start talking about because you're in a room with literally every camera and television that has an outlet in around the world at that moment. Yeah. I wonder if they think we're a banana republic by electing the same government that's put us in the same predicament that says there's no case for any of our resources.

Yeah, it depends on who you talk to. But it was interesting, like I did that trip to India back in February. And the amount of connections that we have around the world are pretty outstanding. That last administration had soured that well pretty bad, really bad. But, you know, some of those leaders at very high levels. They were asking me, you know, when is Singh going to package out is and they already have his pension? So to travel halfway across the world and to know that some of these people are that engaged and understanding where we're at, the thing I was encouraged with is by having those conversations,

they knew that we were direct. You could still have a handshake. You could still have a coffee or a chai, as it were. And there was a lot of interest and a lot of doors were opened and afforded to me because I was from Alberta. like the ties with Alberta and India are strong and Saskatchewan's done a phenomenal job over the years and still maintain those relationships

in a very high level and will do that carrying forward and it's because of those long-lasting relationships that Alberta and Saskatchewan get a pass on a number of things and we still manage to have communications and back channel conversations taking place. How many years in a MLA are you know? six years, three months,

15 hours and 20 minutes, but who's counting? Yeah, it's about six years now. So I've got two years left. You're going to be, you know, like when we talked, 2022, you're on stage. So when we talked then, you weren't sure you were going to run again. Yep. And then you ran again.

And now you're, nothing's pulling you back. You're done? Yeah. No, I'm, I'm good. Like, so when I first got into this, I never planned on being a career politician, so that hasn't wavered. I've got a wife and four wonderful children that I did not get to see very much of in the last six years because of politics and other things. And I made a commitment to my wife, so I'm not going to go back on that.

My constituents, I think I've said that on the show before. Like, I treated it as a job interview and I also warn people, if you hire me for the job, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. So get what you pay for. And also let them know that I would give you eight years of my life. life, but I don't see giving you more than that. And the other part of it is too, I, I believe if you stick around too long, if you're in those areas or those rooms, then you, you either become that politician, that professional politician, or you become part of the wallpaper and you're just there. And with me, I'm very much still a project person. I'm very much goal-orientated. And it was never

about titles or positions. It was always about execution and getting things done. So I think we've got enough momentum. We've got world leaders coming here. We're having those conversations. If you've got our own countrymen talking about corridors, whatever they want to call them. And if I can nudge this over the line for the last bit, I've done my piece and others can do it. And quite frankly, I'm pretty confident in the team that we have there. And some of the polling results, and we'll see how that goes. Obviously, right now they're very positive. I think we just have to keep executing being the grownups in the room, keep moving the ball downfield. And I'll be okay because I would have made sure that we're, we're going to

what I did had an impact and others are there to carry on with it and then I can pop out run projects and be a dad and a husband again. Yeah, you won't be able to give me an answer, but there's, there's chatter about a snap election, like calling an early election because of the polls. Polls are very strong. Yeah, I think it would be fullheartedly. Like, it's not us. That's not our deal.

I think the culture that you see, at least from, from my sense, Sean, I'm not going to say who may or may or may not do something, politics is a strange animal, but from any indicators I've seen and, you know, part of the organization I'm part of it's, Albertons gave us a mandate. I think Albertans expect us to go do a job. We're not going to dug forward it and do an elbows up campaign and jump on the wagon and doesn't, you know, damn the torpedoes, but what else might happen in the country and who else might take the hits for you to just win some political points and make sure you've got another one. And that was a decision. They made it worked out well for them, but that's not our team. Our team is going to play it

until the last buzzer sounds. And we've got, we're just coming up into the second half here. So we're going to make some more touchdowns. We're going to get some things done. And we're just going to play right until the buzzer rings. With a couple of years left, what are some things you think are going to happen in your, I don't know, what you have left? Because I assume there's some things that you're, you're staring at.

You're like, Alberta better buckle up. There's some cool things. Or maybe, I don't know, you can fill in the blanks. So where I'm at on this is, so part of it, too, And I guess the other thing is a bit of an outlier is normally politicians don't tell people what they're doing, sometimes even their bosses. You know, so if I was one of those career politicians, I would have not told Premier Smith what I was up to or a number of my colleagues. You know, they would have just ran it right till the end and let you know a month out before the election if you're going or not, because then you're still within the organization. I'm not that guy.

The organizations I've been part of, you always have secession planning. So I basically gave her a heads up on, we started talking about what a two-year transition one in a two-year transition. And one of the things that I really want to do is to make sure that we've covered off these next iteration. So the first iteration was to get the corridor conversation taking place. The next one is actually three parts. So India is an up-and-coming country.

Like if we don't pay attention to that's such a massive market, it's just would be absolutely stupid if we didn't do it. So we're not stupid. So we're going to take a run in India. So for the last year and change, I've been working and all these events that I go to. Most politicians go there, they take the pictures and then they go on to the next one and that's it. I'm always connecting people. Like if there's issues or challenges or problems or opportunities, I'm always connecting people.

So I basically started connecting a quasi project team when it came to the India file. And then we started looking at opportunities and then we managed to get that formalized. So now we've stood up just last week, officially, you know, all sanctioned everything else now. the Premier's India Advisory Council, which I'm the chair, and we've got people around the table that are going to actually direct and help direct policy to the Premier herself on India. The next one is going to be the Arctic slash Northern Europe and the Baltics. So there's a massive geographical region there. There's tons of activity that is taking place up north. I think we've talked about that a bit.

I went to Rikewik last year. Premier sent me there to go to this Arctic Circle Conference, which was profound, to say the least, of how many people are. clamoring for sovereignty in the north that they want the Arctic. And the whole reason behind that is Panama Canal is running out of water. It uses freshwater to do it. Your panamaxes are only so wide. It's only so wide your boat's going to be to go through the water. Oh, and by the way, the north is opening up.

China and Russia are running oil ships nonstop. They're doing joint Coast Guard activities the last year and change two years. So the whole north means it's opening up because you can actually have breakable ice or open water up there. and all that cartage and shipping is going to move north, it's going to go into our backyard. So you literally will save 10 days, 12 days, 13 days off of moving cartage around the world, and it's in the right location to get there. So the Arctic is, is our backyard. We have to pay attention to it, hence all the concerns and then why everyone's focusing up on the north,

including the president. So that's a massive one for us. And then the Nordic regions, well, we have so much in common with the Nordics. It's incredible. Not only the people that immigrated here, we've got the same, climatic conditions and we're really tech savvy at the same way. So any of these problems or issues that come up are opportunities. We literally want like a Woodrow Wilson Center except on the on the Nordics and we want to be part of that. So we're going to look at that and reclaim our

moniker's gateway to the north. Like that's literally literally what that is. And then the Baltics get interesting in Northern Europe because well they need our stuff. Again, you want mobility of labor. So you can build all this really cool stuff. And then the Baltics in some cases act as a proxy into the European Union. So you can give way to some of the constraints or the issues with the European Union by going through the Baltics first. That's kind of a loose proxy.

And then the last one was my favorite, which is Fortress North America. So take a look at Mexico, Canada, the U.S., look at our infrastructure, how it ties together, look at the assets and the resources we have, and then look at the regulatory compliance issues that we have in trying to get things done. Weave that together

and then get your ports of interest, start laying that out, and then literally get all that manufacturing, not just raw minerals, but to be self-sufficient, 100% self-sufficient is North America, and then to be able to manufacture and build, make things again, and then be able to export the excess and be self-sufficient on the food file as well. So I'm literally putting together three different advisory councils on that, and there'll be another second task force that be put in place.

And then that information would be basically the roadmap for the next 20 years of how the government could, if they wish to, grab that and go forward. So that's what I want to do in the next two years. And the other one I'm looking for too, so anyone out there is interested in helping me with that, I'm looking for council members. And the other one, too, is to look at subcommittees. So I'll be approaching a number of the chambers of commerce

and the different business communities. And literally what we're doing here will be moving at the speed of business, not the speed of government. So any early wins, we'll be connecting people and businesses in both sides of those ponds and those different areas. And then anything we can spool up and keep moving that forward. That's what we want to do. Okay, you just rattle off like three giant projects, possibly four.

I don't want to go back to the Arctic for a second because, you know, like I hear a lot. I would say a ton of chatter, but like it's not like it's mainstream conversation around the water cooler per se. It seems like this abstract, we're breaking ice and this shipping lane. Can you maybe paint a better picture than what I just said on the Arctic? Yeah. So and it was interesting being there because again everybody kind of looks and when I first gone into this few years ago even it was same as Hudson Bay. It's a great place to be for three months of the year other than that it's frozen over and it's

junk don't want to be there and a guy by the name of Stefan King who's the Coast Guard director of the Coast Guard Canadian Coast Guard I met with him and he goes well actually it's changed so the ice now isn't year over year over your ice you can actually break a bunch of this stuff so the the Arctic itself first you got to believe that the world is round you know, if you're flat, flat earth or this isn't going to work for you. You can't, can't math it out, can't make her work for you. But if you think it's round, then literally it's the great circle. So the closest point between any areas is, is over the top. And the difference between Russia and Alaska is all of maybe 2015 miles. Like literally, that's how everything is so connected. So you can literally get to Europe and you can get to North America all through the Arctic. So the whole thing of going around the horn of Africa, that's a long way around going through Panama. That's pricey and congested. And it's still a long way. If you can go that shortest distance, then that's the way you want to go. So now with the climactic conditions happens every 10,000 years, you had a glaciation period,

you know, the true climatologists that I pay attention to, look at those two bookends, the glaciation periods. We're at a point in 10,000 years, it's happened before, where you've got lesser and lesser ice thickness up in the north. So off the Russian coastline, literally there's open water. And that's where you have these oil tankers moving that are the phantom fleet of oil tankers because the embargoes really didn't work very well. They're moving oil and product all long there. You've got in open water again, or quasi open water, Russian Chinese coast guard vessels

and icebreakers moving with them. So think of the old days of moving stuff over to Europe when we were thrown lead down range at each other. You've got literally convoys and merchant ships going back and forth. So that's real. The next passage that China is really pushing for is to have open waters, international waters, which is right over the horn. So not hovering on the Russian coastline. if that comes to pass, then that'll be everybody's Panama Canal. And then the third option is ours, which is the Northwest Passage. So depending where you're at and how that ice moves and ships, it can be pretty thin ice, open water, depending on the time of year, and it's navigable. So hence the rush to be up there. So when I'm over at Reykjavik and you've got Arctic nations like China, India,

Japan, Korea, like they're all claiming Arctic status. They all have a massive interest in the Arctic, there's a reason why. They, they could say they're doing exploration and looking for minerals. They could say they're looking at the ocean depths and those things. They could say it's because of climatic reasons. And if a butterfly flaps its wing somewhere, there's a tornado somewhere else. Or if ice melts up there, it might affect a monsoon season. It could be. But the real thing that I look at is the dollars and cents and the conversations I kept catching was you have a tonne load of oil and gas that's up there. One well in the Arctic as an example on our own coastline, because the guys Back in the 70s, God bless you for doing all that work.

That's how we claimed Arctic sovereignty before as we were exploring the Arctic. So those old hands that were out there doing that stuff in the days of dome and golf and everybody else, what they're telling me is one well up there is the equivalent of 10 wells that we have down here, just on pure volumes. So now you've got a number of these that have already been capped off. We already know that they're there. Now you can get them to market. You don't have to push them south anymore.

And pipeline, 2,500 kilometers of pipe. you simply just offload offshore and start moving this stuff to the closest points to get to Europe. And that gets really interesting. Rare earth elements and critical minerals and everything else that China's really kind of cornered the market on it. They're all up there. So they're all up there for the taking, literally. We just have to put some of that infrastructure in place. And quite frankly, I think we need to reimagine some of the boundaries that we have had as a country.

The boundaries, I'm not going to say as fictitious, but as, as, as, rigid as they become between provinces and territories. I think we really have to look at if we are redrawing the map, how would we, how would we make that work and how do we get ocean front property for the two landlocked prairie provinces? And to me, that's, that's north. That's where the party's going to be. So redraw it so that there's more province to the north.

Yeah. And like, you know, I pitched that out there. So, you know, you kind of brought it up with the folks that are mad as hell and they're going to take any more and they want to separate. going okay and then what and I get it like we're all just as frustrated about this and and because we're looking at different options doesn't mean we don't have the same egregious concerns or don't have the intestinal fortitude to deal with things but it's the what next part you know I'm a project person I need to know what the plan is and I need to know I can execute that plan just running headlong

and then running over a cliff doesn't work for me so I need to know that there's an exit or someone's up ahead building a bridge or someone's strapping a parachute to my back. Like you have to have that next plan. So when I started looking at it, Peter Zion had kind of notioned it back in 2014 as when I had seen it first and he was talking to a Midwest conference and he talked about the position of the possibility of Alberta becoming independent and what would happen to the country and everything else. And it was the demographics on how we're younger than everybody else. And you know, the pension plan proved that out and we make more and how we're kind of an outlier in the country. But what happened

there was when I started looking at the economics, of it, well, you have to be either a joiner because you can't be a quitter. So you either join up with the U.S. or you join up the north with the west. And when you do that, the economics changes entirely. So constitutionally, it's easier to do that than to leave the country, I believe. Like if we were looking at near recent events, 1905, that's when Alberta and Saskatchewan both got carved off of a territory and became provinces. So that's not unheard of when the Northwest Territories, you know, a qualet was just carved out and put over there. That is, that is done.

And when I started looking at it constitutionally, you need a super majority of premiers and the prime minister and they can do a pen stroke and it's done. So when I start looking at this, the Northwest Territories in the Yukon, they have all this stuff. They hardly have any people. They've got all this potential deep sea port access. They can't get roads built. They've been asking the feds for years just to give them some cash. They build some roads so they can get their minds built and everyone's treating this like a snow globe up there.

And those good folks, they're sitting on this all this wealth and they can't, they can't extract and they can't do it. They can't get it to market. They can't get it because the economics are there. So build them some infrastructure, get some roads, some corridors, get some ports open up, which are there. You've got all the volumes of the gas and the oil, which people want and you can pay for it all. So if I started looking at that process, you could literally have a marriage there and look at these new corridors, between Alberta and Saskatchewan heading further north, tying in different parts and pieces,

then the folks up there become part of whatever that province. You could call it the same name or change the name, whatever. But I'm, again, just tactically looking at this. Once you do that, the permissions then go away too because the frustration with a number of us is we can only build for our provincial boundaries. But you can build within your provincial boundaries without a lot of permissions from the feds.

So just expand the provincial boundaries to places that we need to go. So one dusty cowboy boot sitting here in the prairies and the other one touching the salt water, which happens to have a little bit ice floating in it. To me, that makes a ton of sense. Well, I just pulled up the map. That's what I was, because I wanted to see, like, in my brain, I'm like, I can kind of see it. I would really push on people to just look at a map of what you're talking about.

Because if you went, like, you'd basically double the size of Alberta if you did that. Oh, yeah. Like there's trillions of dollars of assets that are trapped there for a hundred. And Saskatchewan for that map. Yeah. So there's trillions of dollars of assets sitting there that aren't being. explored and developed for a couple hundred million dollars in roads like billion dollar you know railroad 25 30 billion dollar you think you think the future lies to

the north yes absolutely 100% and it's not just me it's everybody else that's why you've got all these people like you know Trump saying hey I want Greenland there's strategic importance in the north all of those trapped assets everybody is going there you know the other thing is it used to be this big massive buffer between us in the north but now you see Mach 15 missiles being launched and being used it's not just One nation has them, several nations have them on the chain. So the distance for strike distances and everything else have changed too. So you need to have a presence up there and to have a presence up there.

You need to have people and to have people up there. You need to have a reason. And if all those ocean going vessels are going there anyway, that's where they're going to be. And the other one that was, was a, um, a marine biologist kind of laid this on me and it made total sense. And basically what, what she had said is fish aren't stupid. Like, okay. So when you're talking about right, you know, you think about, but fish aren't

stupid. And the next part of that was they're not going to stay in a place where they're not comfortable with. They're just going to move. Fish are also mobile. So if you have water temperatures are changing in the ocean. You see more fish life. The fish are going to move north and south. Well, with that goes the entire global fishing fleet. All the piracy, all the good stuff, all the bad stuff goes with the fishing fleet. It's done that for ever since we could figure out to paddle a log out in water. All of that goes with it. So our shore lines now are unprotected. and the whole world is going to be on our back door. So why wouldn't you want to develop?

Yeah, so whether, well, whether we want to or not, what you're saying is over the next, let's say, 50 years, if you just do the fish analogy and you're a fisherman, you follow the fish where they go. So if you, you know, you mark your map area, man, they're going a little further north. We go north, well, do we want to get paid or not? So we go a little further north.

And eventually what you're talking about is if you continue with that analogy of the fish go. you know, where they can, you're going to have people up north of us, you know, because there's the big, giant Arctic Ocean sitting there. Big time. And as it warms and it becomes more. And that's why the rush to build icebreakers. So the other one too is, you know, when I start looking at this,

why aren't we building ice breakers in Alberta? Like when I'm having these conversations with, you know, some of the international shipbuilders, they're looking at me and then their eyebrows cock and then they were passing business cards back and forth. So to me, and just hear me out on this one, because again, I'm lateral thinking a number of times in a way I'd put it to some of my colleagues. I was talking about corridor six years ago. Everyone was looking at me, including the former premier, so, well, that's just a pipe dream. And now you've got it on national stage, the prime minister and all the ministers are looking back.

How annoyed I was with you in the first year where I'm like, Shane. When's it going to happen? Well, I'm like, this is ridiculous. We've talked about this. Like, when is it coming? Like, when are we getting anywhere near this? And I firmly, I'm not just because they're talking about it now, the thing that, that I enjoy about that is everyone's talking about it.

But talk, once again, is pretty darn cheap. We want to see some action on it. Carry on. Yeah, great. And hence why we had two caucuses come together and go away. Hence why it's interesting to see both premiers and the entire SaaS party and the entire UCP party under one, underneath one roof in the border city, which is pretty cool, if I might add for the city, you know, regardless.

Yeah. And that's it. Right. So we went past talk to policy and execution and also timelines. So so with that, yeah, the whole fleet moves up there. Um, with us looking at wiggling the lines that works, everyone is interested in the Arctic and the ice breakers themselves. So when I'm having these lateral ideas and I remind my colleagues of that six years ago, I was talking about it, now you've got everyone else talking about it. And one of, you know, our colleagues there says it wasn't even in our lexicon and here it is.

So it's like, okay. Now the next step in the next iteration and I'm talking about building ice breakers. and all of a sudden you're looking at the issues. So we haven't built a bunch of boats in a long time. And God bless the folks in Eastern Canada and even on the West Coast and everything else. So if you've got an industry that isn't flat out busy all the time, they tend to grab on to that last job or the next job like it's going to be their last one. They drag it out and there's a ton of inefficiencies and everything else where we're not that way. We're boom and bus cycle, but we've got a massive industrial complex and we're really good at building stuff.

pressure vessels, really good at building with strange materials because of the energy sector. We've had to develop the skill set. And this is the get it done province. Like literally, you make things happen. I mean, you just start rolling on it. So I'm talking to these big shipbuilding guys. And then we start having a conversation. They go, you know, actually we were thinking about Texas.

I go, well, we're Texas north. So if Texas needs any big pressure vessels, we have the biggest bandrills and the cones that's done an ad in an exchanger, they do all of that for the entire North American market. internationally. That's what we do. So to me, we're knowing a little bit about their business, I said to me an icebreaker is just a pressure vessel, a double walled pressure vessel that's laying on its side. That's all it is. It's just a tank on its side. And I said, and internally, what you have for your components is basically a fluid transfer system because what you do is you rock up on top of that ice, you get fluid transfer going back and forth with your ballast and you wiggle your

way through it like a beached whale. And he goes, yeah, that's how it works. So I said, so here's what I can propose to you. Everything you have there, we modularize it. We have mod yards all over the place. We can do all those internal components, mod this thing up, stitch weld it, get it out to you, ship it on a train or or by rail, whatever we, you don't want to do, or by ship or by truck, if we have to truck components. We already have the high load routes because we've been bringing mods up to the north for years, a lot of them offshore as well. We'll get them to you. We'll get them to you. You stitch them up and weld them on there. And I said, the best thing about that, our productivity is going to be high because we'll just, work this in with all the other existing work that we have.

Now you've got continuity of work. Your skill sets and your trades are up. You have productivity and we're going to hit your schedules. These are the grown up conversations that are taking place at senator levels as well. So when I'm pitching this stuff, it's that the new game in town is the north aerospace aviation defense. We can't forget about that, but also the ability of using the people and the skill sets we've built to years to build more stuff and to get it off those coasts, again, those big corridors. before I forget.

Oh, what do we have here? Challenge coin? Oh, every guess that comes in person gets a silver coin. It's been a while. Very cool. Oh, Charles is on here. Look at that. The king.

It's my first king coin. So silver gold bull being one of the major sponsors to the podcast, we give away a silver coin anyone who comes in studio. I'm going to come back more often. Yeah, well, I know. What do you do it in 20 minutes? I'll come back again. Yeah, well, when you were going to do it online,

I'm like, well, he's going to miss out on a coin. Oh, that's cool. but instead you're here so yeah um no really cool that uh you come in person and then you know obviously the deal i got with silver gold bull is to give out a coin every time oh that's cool it's i don't know it's uh it's got to be one of the cooler gifts i think that a that a guy can get yeah that is uh that is something special so thank you for that you talk about um my man i'm looking at the map right now and i'm like well you're looking at a flat map get yourself google earth roll that baby up and make it into a planet like it's built and then it really starts to make sense because the distance

is really short when you look at it that way and then if you overlay even the roads and the rail stuff you can see that there's this big wishbone and it just drains everything from the north to the south so now the whole paradigm is to turn it the other way look at the world as if it's the top of the map not the 49th parallel and then that's when it really starts to bring in that perspective and again we're prairie people we're not marine going people so anybody that's on a big boat and they're moving around. They get this right off. Aviation people get it as well because that great circle.

And that's why we have the polar routes. And that's why all the airplanes fly overhead and not everything else. Because it's literally the shortest distance anywhere in the hemisphere, the Western hemisphere. And that's why they're going up top. You think I can figure that out while I'm sitting here? Probably not. Yeah.

Well, we'll clip it in afterwards. No, I get what you're saying. Like, you're just talking about distance between. Yeah. Like, and, you know, the short of the distance, you just think. of all the costs that are going to drop off and you can just see everybody's eyes going to like. Here's the best thing, right? So if you truly believe that we're impacting the climate and you want to burn less fuel to go there,

perfect, go the shorter distance. Yeah. Because your product and your productivity goes up and your certainty goes up. You don't have all those massive storms that take place down the southern and closer to the equator. It's, it's more predictable. You're burning less fuel and you're getting more productivity and you don't have to worry about how wide your ship is. You can build ships bigger and wider because they're not restricted to go. going through the Panama Canal anymore.

Like this changes so many things. And that's why you've got Russia that has absolutely taken full advantage of this, building ice breakers like you wouldn't believe. Um, China's doing the same thing. India's flashed up. They're building ice breakers. Like this is what's happening out there. Korea's building ice breakers.

And we had the ice pact, um, that we're going to be looking at there as well, that we should be doing it. And when I'm, you know, talking to, uh, the ambassador of Finland and Norway and a bunch of the consulate generals and everything else, that's what I'm really stitching together is this coalition of the willing and every time I've spoken about this, um, not at this length, but you know, within half hour meetings, all of a sudden, the lights are going on and they're going, we want to be part of this. So that's part of it. We just have to figure it out. We have to get over ourselves and do it. Well, um, you know,

as I get older and maybe it's just all the conversations I had, I've started to look at time a lot different. You know, I used to think, and I repeat this over and over again, but used to think a year was a long time. Hey, summer holidays last forever when you're a kid. Yeah. Well, you're not wrong. I was wondering, you know, the Panama Canal when it was built was a big deal. Big deal. 10 years. That's what it took them to build the Panama Canal.

So if you, you know, the thing about, you know, these energy corridors or even this giant idea, because I think it's a lofty idea to extend basically double the size of Alberta. Well, it's to not necessarily double the size of Alberta, but it's to right size the country again and make it functional. Because again, if we look at things, the U.S. benefited by a number of things. firstly they're get it done attitude there's no question if you're american you you get it and god bless you folks for doing it you never lost that i think we've lost our way a little bit you know we went from being canadians to cantonadians for so many years and uh so they had that they're aspirational the next thing

they had was the rivers went the right way for them they went north and south so the river system actually worked for them so they could do uh lowest cartage of goods right and then they built out the rail system they didn't stop with two rail lines we did and if you're you're If you look at our population, it hovers around those rail lines. And then the other one was they didn't forget who they were. They're still exploring, they're still building, they're still doing those things. And when I hear this pushback and some people, well, it's too big. It's too big of a project and I'm going.

No, that's a ridiculous. But they do. And I'm going, do you have a nickel? Like what's on the nickel wall? The beaver. What's on our crown? It's the beaver. Why do we have a friggin rodent that knocks down trees on our coin?

Why do we have it on our crown? they start to think. It's like, okay, so you're telling me that building a railroad or building some deep sea ports or doing an inland port to port corridor is too complex and too big for us with all the technology and the hydraulic and diesel fuel we have today. But it wasn't so complex for some guys to get in a little wooden boat with some bed sheets to go across the Atlantic to then go and jump in a portage into areas that don't even speak the language to trade with indigenous as peoples to go knock down rodents to take them all the way back over there and make him into hats.

That wasn't as complex as what I'm talking about, about building a corridor for crying out loud across the territories. If I don't think that's where, where I agree with anything you just said. The problem we have is we have a government that ties everything up in red tape. You know this as well as anyone. So when you look at it, I go, I think why people go, it's too large is what? is what they don't mean too large or at least I don't think they mean too large and how ground dose it is or or even the idea itself it's like yeah but we're not factoring in

that you've got to work with Ottawa and Ottawa has been who what's the word difficult is that the easiest way to put it yeah it's been worse it's been an orchestrated thing to shut us down out here so hence why we've reached this point so again the conditions around the corridor you establish what those rules are within that area. So it's kind of like a spec book. You lock in your specifications at that point in time, no changing it. You harmonize or you do basically the best of. You do meter exceed type clauses in there.

So within the corridor, here's your operating rules. You agree to that. Each jurisdiction has those. Provincially, here's how you get caught up. Provincially, I can build whatever the heck I want within my provincial boundaries. I'm oversimplificating. that are simply flying this for guests, but within those provincial boundaries, you can do that. The feds get involved when you cross provincial boundaries or on certain files environment.

There's a little bit of a shared thing depending on how they far they go. So number one, follow the blessed constitution, one of the nine points of what both premiers agree to. Second one is take away the superfluous things that are basically trying to short circuit that in the first place. Arbitrary caps calling different things, something else different to just do an end-round, knock that stuff off. So get your environmental concerns, legitimate ones, on the table. Get your regulatory compliance items legitimately on the table. Put the predictability back into it and within these designated corridors, these national projects of interest or whatever the liberals want to call them,

set the rules. The rules are set within those areas. Next, what you do is you put pre-approved industrial areas on those corridors. So you put nodes on there so you know exactly what can be built and it's basically pre-approved before it is. The corridor is an extension of that. Then you lock it in. And then anywhere else in the country, you want to dream up some fairy tale pixie dust stuff,

different conversation. But those corridors, those are sacred because those over national interest, not only on commerce, but on livelihoods of people, socio-economic items and impacts, pulling a ton of millions of people literally out of very poor conditions. So you're not spending $22 for a jug of milk. You get actual trade routes going. and you pull the country back together.

That's what you have to do. That is a national interest. So dream up your other stuff, do those other things. But when in those corridors, it's locked in. And then your investment community knows that they can bet on that and they can build these things because they're basically pre-approved. That was my story from day one. I still maintain it and that's how you fix this stuff. And if the government of Canada doesn't do that, this whole thing falls apart.

Literally, we cannot keep going the way we are as a country. And I put it in context. And, you know, it's that one. line from sex in the city, well, she's just not into you or he's just not that into you anymore. That's kind of where we're getting. We're just not that in to doing this anymore. And it shouldn't be a bad thing. I think initially people thought Canada was going to be a great place and it is and it got to a point where it's mature enough.

Okay, it is. It's just time to take that next iteration and say, okay, here's what we look like for the next 150 years. Because when you go to these old countries in the world where you've got civilizations that have been there for thousands of years, 150 years is about the age of an outhouse. Maybe it's time we did more than have the clapboard outhouse and did something else here. Let's build for the future. Let's put these things in place. And the proof is in the pudding wherever we put those railroads. That's where our population lives.

That's where the cities thrive. That's where people did it. That's where a trade was because it was all there. Japan did something similar to. So Japan, they didn't have much, but they knew how to build railroads. And that's how they put their country together. And now that's how they brought everything along. It originally was those railroads.

So let's go get those beavers. Let's line up where the gold is. Let's figure out what our resources are. Let's start the manufacturing. Let's put those things in place. Those pre-approved industrial zones. Things are locked in. And the next one is to put those foreign trade zones over top of them.

They're not unheard of. There is a couple pockets of them here and there, put those together. So when you're bringing stuff in offshore, you can move it within these foreign trade zones without breaking, breaking it apart and taxing the heck out of it, make stuff again. What do you think it's going to take to get that? I think it's going to take everybody working on it. So I'm going to push for the next two years to give all these good ideas. We're going to get a bunch of people claiming it that's their, it's their, idea, which will be awesome because it's way easier for having hundreds or thousands of people

running around talking about this. And then we need to employ the business community and make sure that your trade and your commerce are dialed into this. And we're going to get people on both sides of the pond doing it and the national defense grise. So we're coming to a head then because one one or two things is either going to fall, right? I would think if you do the math over the next couple of years and you go, we either get to where these things start to become a reality, whether or not the borders get reshaped.

national projects could get put in place. The borders reshaped is aspirational, but when I'm giving people options of pulling the pin and going it alone or restructuring our nation, so it takes away and politician proofs us for the next 60, 70 years easily, 100 years, I would say arguably. But if we do that, those are things that we can do. The other one that is really easy if everyone's getting their dander up, that pension plan. Like if people actually want to get their heads around this, we can do a ton of things with that. Just just to start re-looking at how we do things again.

But we have to do this, Sean. Part of us, we keep getting in the way, I can't because of red tape. Well, we can't because of that. Well, for crying out loud, I'm looking at a bunch of trucks on the back of here. There was a bunch of things that were happening and we changed that. So why don't we take that energy, drive it in towards something constructive and say, this is what we want as Canadians. We want to be a strong country.

We want to be that energy superpower. We want to actually do our share on the world stage. We want to be reliable. And by the way, we don't want to be dependent on our big brother next door all the time for everything. Because quite frankly, he told us to grow up, fight her own fights and maybe clean up our room while we're at it. Maybe we should take that instead of throwing our elbows up and taking it. You know, yeah, maybe we are. Maybe we should remember who we are.

We're the true north. We're the strong. We're the free. We are Canadians. So let's get some stuff done. Well, and I just go, I come back to it. It's going to come back to a head. because one of you know it's it's kind of once again going back to what moan smith were talking about

was you know like we're going to see they're doing lots of great talking right now out of the east and we're going to find out real soon if they mean what they say because if they don't it's all going to come to a head but in fairness as a citizen I'm like might be the best outcome that a guy is maybe some finality to like let's just get to where we got to get like are we going to do this we're not going to do this I was talking to a guy from town here after the press conference. And he goes, what did you think? And I'm like, I don't know.

Kind of feels like Groundhog Day. And he's like, that's exactly what I was thinking about. I feel like we've been here before. And we just keep saying the same things and nothing changes. And the only thing that maybe this changes, changed, is especially when you see Moe and Smith get together with their entire groups, that's a change. You know, I said less than 12 hours after election, the, the, you know. threshold for citizen lead, that's changed. Things like that are changing.

And what are those? Well, on the big game of statesmanship across Canada, those are clear signs that, okay, you don't want to play ball while we're going to change the game board here. So that we're either going to have you play ball or you're going to continue to do what you're doing, which is going to fix an outcome the opposite way, right? We've got to have options. But here's what's happening, though, too, and a lot of folks don't see it. So my counterpart, who is a parliamentary secretary to,

Doug Ford is doing the same thing I'm doing. We're talking. And where did him and I meet down at the presidential inauguration? Like this, this is a different set. So now they're looking for places in James Bay of where we can start dropping in ports. You've got a, uh, where's James Bay? And it's in Hudson Bay. It's in the Hudson. Yeah. So the ring of fire, that type, type of thing. They want our energy going there. We want to be able to export things. We're working together. You've got, um, Premier Wob canoe said, yeah, it's a good idea and maybe get some oil over in the Hudson An NDP Premier is saying that. I think we're at a point, to your point, Sean, it's come to a head.

If we don't do this and collaborate and work as a country, then the country doesn't work anymore. And we can't keep sending our money down east for something that doesn't work. Well, the crazy thing is, you know, like when you look at a map of Canada, you're just like the possibilities are endless. Yeah. The problem is, is we got stupidity. and probably more than stupidity. And we got lazy. We got fat and lazy.

Sure. Over the years, honestly, as a country, guys, not as Albertans. I'm not taking a run at yet, but we have. We've had a lot of good things. We could bulk it out. We could get it done. We were okay with sending everything one direction. It was okay.

It's not okay anymore. The whole geopolitical sense has changed. The economics have changed. We cannot, we cannot function as the second largest country in the world with hardly any population with all the stuff that the people in the rest of the world need and want. Because if we don't take care of it, they're going to take it from us. I was just going to say, if you don't figure it out, you know, it's common.

They're going to come. And here's the environmental thing. So back in India, I went over there on that trip, right? I ended up meeting with the Secretary of Energy. I met with the Broda Productivity Council. I met with a bunch of film and television guys in Mumbai, which is wild banking guys, everything else. I met with basically the premier's chief of staff over there in Mumbai. Everybody was open arms.

Everybody wanted to talk to us. once we, you know, talk through some of those other rub points, like you said, they're, they're open for it. They're open for this. And trying to get my head around there. So that advisory council I put together, they were telling me of how fast it's moving over there, how many things are happening, the sheer volume of people. Like, you can't get your noodle around it until you're there.

And, you know, a bit of a funny story. I'm incognito going over there. I got a ball cap on kind of, like I am. I'm on holidays. So when I'm meeting with these people, it's I'm not the MLA. I'm not representing the guy. government. I'm in holidays. I'm going over to your energy conference because I'm interested in that. And if you happen to have a conversation, here's my other card. If I'm back at work and we can

talk maybe somewhere down the road, but here's my personal card. Everybody knew that going in, which actually alleviate a lot of pressure because we could have some pretty open conversations over Chai. So when we're having these conversations, oh yeah, in this little energy conference they're having, right? Three years in running, 70,000 people is what they have at this conference. It's only three years old. The reason why Prime Minister Modi wasn't there is because Trump had him over and he was trying to sell them $10 billion more worth of gas. When I'm sitting with the secretary of energy there, he's talking about how India works between Russia and the USA. That's how they survive is working with both organizations and both groups. They're not predatory like China is, the Communist Party of China.

They're not that same sense. They collaborate that. That's their whole thing. When we were talking about Trump's sense, MOTI another 10 billion dollars with a gas per year. I had to articulate that well, that's where Trump gets his gas from is Alberta. Like 99% of their imports come from there. We're sitting on trillions of cubic feet of gas like actually giga trillions or something like that. So it's it's massive amounts. You know, third largest known

reserve in the planet for proven reserves. We're sitting in all that. So when I said to them when you want to secure a supply because he was concerned we might disrupt that. I said when you're getting from the US, you're actually getting it from us. So I said, if I were you and you're going to need it. all this energy because they're going to need 20 to 25% of the world's energy that they consume annually within the next five to eight years is physically how much energy they're going to need. If you had that much of a demand, why would you not want to secure your supply with the guys who are supplying your supplier?

So we'll still keep trading with the U.S. pushing it flowing south, but you have an opportunity to do barrels and kind with us to invest in infrastructure here that guarantees you have supply for the next 70 years. Why would you not do that? different conversations. So out in Laxanen, we have this little pilgrimage that takes place every year. We get about 40,000 people. That's where the Pope went and blessed the lake.

So they were having a similar pilgrimage in this one of these areas. And it's an annual event. And it was the first time in 140 some odd years, 12 planets aligned in a certain configuration. And they're telling me about the numbers of people. So they were anticipating about 45 or 450 million people to go to this thing over a 10 day period. They actually were short.

They were shy. was about 630 million people. So population of Canada is what? 44 million people, US, 440 million people. Take half of Mexico maybe. So the entire North American continent went over to a pilgrimage in that weekend. So you think shutting down our energy sector

and doing all this other bonker stuff is going to do anything for the pollution? The air quality index in Mumbai was 116 when I was there. And you could only see about a mile and a half, two miles. So for us, it would be the similar thing when we get choked out with all that forest fire smoke. Our air quality index was two back here. What they're really looking for is energy so they can have natural gas to cook with, not burn garbage in the streets and not burn stuff. Like that's literally it. But they're not waiting to

develop all the infrastructure they are. They're going from slums to trump towers. Like there's no in between. So when I'm in Mumbai and I'm looking at this stuff, it's like some of the most expensive real estate in the world is there. And I can only see about that two mile distance. And they built this massive infrastructure out in the bay because you can't build in the city because it's already all so built up. Like you're talking 40 million people in that area, 35, 40 million people like right around that immediate area. When I looked out, I couldn't count any less than 37 tower cranes going up. So I'm talking to the film and television guys going like what's going on here. He says, well, here's what they're doing.

The government is giving away 10 acre lots, like literally 10 acres a lot of this pristine real estate, how they're solving the homeless issue because 40% of them live in the slums. and they're a big voting population, by the way. So they have a lot of stroke. The poor people vote. There's a lot of votes there. So what he said they're doing is 10 acre lots, two developers, they'll give away all that land if you take care of the homeless. So what the developers are doing is they're throwing up and taken two acres of this

and they're throwing up apartment buildings. So the homeless going to the apartment buildings. And the rest, the other remaining eight acres is candy land wherever they want to develop it. So they're not stopping. They're taking that iteration. One of the guys in New Delhi, I was talking about the congestion and the traffic and everything else. And he goes, yeah, he says, we'll have that by 20, 27 all sorted.

I'm going, how are you going to do that? He goes, we're just going to have drones. I'm like, what? He goes, oh, yeah. He says, as soon as it passes with the Emirates, they're already looking at that. We'll just have drone taxis all over. And I'm going, how does this work? And he goes, well, there's two economies.

He says, there's the economies where we're here and we're willing to pay $5 for a Starbucks and everything else. And he said, and there's the other economy where you pay 50 cents for that same drink. He says, we're comfortable with the two different economies. They're not stopping. They're literally building all this stuff. They're film and television area. It's three times the size of Hollywood.

They're literally building a new city out of Gota, or Gautara, I think it is. I messed it up. I'm sorry again for folks. I still can't get my head around it. They're literally building a new city that's going to triple the size of their already three times the size of Hollywood. They're building 30 kilometers of four-lane highway from the international airport to get to this film city. Like it's, it's amazing.

It's amazing. So all the stuff that we want to do for the pollution, all the people we want to tie into, uh, all the stuff that we want to have, um, offshore connections around us, there you go. And the first person I run into when I'm incognito going off that plane was the minister of agriculture from Saskatchewan. Put my head up and it's like, Shane, Darrell, what are you doing here? Well, I'm one of the high commission thing. We're working these pulse crops.

What are you on holidays? Oh yeah. He's, we start to laugh. The Saskatchewan guys and the Alberta guys were there despite. fancy socks messing up the relationship. They want to do business with us in the biggest way. And it's an absolute market that we need to pay attention to. And if we don't pay attention to all the resources that they need,

they're already building icebreakers. It's not for going across the Indian Ocean. It's just cool to hear, I know, I know Jack Squad about India, right? So you just take away all the politics and everything. You just hear about building things. And in Alberta still builds things. But you think of all the red tape that, has been put across everything in this country, you know, like I just think of pipelines.

And I'm just like, I don't know, in my lifetime, they just get so held up, you know. It's stupid. But we had that conversation, right? When you go down the rabbit hole, why are there? Why is that? Because you've hired a bunch of politicians or a bunch of bureaucrats that are easily influenced by other jurisdictions that don't have the resources or they do have the resources and they're competing for it.

So either we fix it and we actually grow up and we have these arguments and we become more worldly, hence the world leaders having these conversations, hence why we have 17 different trade offices, hence why we're doing that, why Saskatcham is doing that, Alburo is doing that, hence why we're going to be more collaborative. We're going to actually put down the walker, we're going to put away the training wheels, and we're going to actually act as strongly as we can as the provinces within our constitution, as we should have been doing for years and not allow whatever federal government of the time to be the sole face of Canada. So this is the inflection of the turning the game time turning point.

This is it. We're in the second half. It's time to go build this thing and kind of go win the game again. Well, it would be fun to see things being built. Yeah. Whether we can get there remains to be seen. You know, because once again, this conversation has been going on, this specific one for four years. It was 2021 when you first came in here and told me, but I'm like, holy man, that's an idea.

Yeah. That's a really interesting idea. Well, it is a good idea. And here we are four years later. and the direction that parts of it are heading, you're like, that's really interesting. But I think we can both agree, we're not exactly there yet. But to be building things again, well, I mean, I go back to the studio.

I'm building the studio. It's one of the coolest things I've ever done. You know, I've got to experience lots of things, but building things. WestJet started up with three or four guys having pizza one day in a hangar. You know that right? I didn't. Yeah, that's all this stuff gets done. A lot of these pipelines we have, they started on the golf course.

Like, this is how these things happen. Well, I had a military, a green beret on tell me that, uh, what did he say, folks? Was it the seals? No, it wasn't the seals. I don't know. It was one part of the U.S. military got started in a bar. He's like, all good ideas get started in the bar. They do.

So that's when people can speak most freely and do those things. It's just in those environments. It's just an idea. So then you figure out the idea. So the problem is, well, the problem. One of the problems is the rest of us isn't so busy working and doing things, well, we've allowed other people to mind the store. Other people that aren't disqualified. Other people have different intentions.

Maybe people don't know where that stuff comes from anymore. They're not making it. People are easily influenced by other means, again, by those competitive natures or otherwise. But that's the issue. So the only way this happens, like those good ideas, is you've got to call a couple other buddies and you're going to make sure it's happening in different jurisdictions. So this summer, as an example, these trans boundary groups, So my friend Roger Victory, who was a senator who was up here two years ago, waving the Alberta flag. He's the guy that invited me down to the presidential inauguration who also connected me with the guy in Ontario.

These are all the good people that you connect with. There's only so many degrees of separation. I'll be down in Washington presenting on the corridors model again in Bellevue for Penwar. Then I'm going to be jumping in the plane flying over to Oshkosh to talk about Alberta and stand in a studio kind of like this and talking to all the things that we're doing. And I've been asked to fly back and go into Saskatoon because the council of state governments, every 15 years, they show back up in Saskatchewan. All our U.S. senators and representatives and business people are going to be there and I'm going to be on stage, presenting about corridors again.

We're going to keep doing that. Then I'll be up in Alaska in the fall with the Energy Council that I'm a member of that it was appointed to. So you have to make sure other people get it and they're carrying the message. And when I'm talking to these senators, they're wanting to join that North America team, the Fortress North America team. Shout out to Brian Chavez and Jeremy Olson as well. These are other guys that I've met over the years that they're working. And Lauren Godero, you can check out ports to planes, organization that's trying to move everything

from Texas up to our borders and now it's extending into our borders and to Alberta. There's a lot of really good folks working on this. So it's not just one. It's an army of many now getting that momentum. Well, I appreciate you coming and doing this. You've flooded my brain with a whole bunch of different things. And I'm like, I don't know. We come back to this bloody energy corridor thing.

And I'm like, I'm half intrigued because I see what you're seeing. And how it's become more of an everyday talking point. You know, when you first brought it up, I don't. It is. How many people were talking about it back then, Shane? Not very many. Not a ton, but I'm the only politician who was a pipeline or pipelineer turned politician to try to figure out how do we get corridors.

Because again, all of the politicians were screwing up my business. I got inspired to jump into it to try to fix things, especially after that election when we went. socialist for four years. That's it. What did, what have you learned from being a, you know, all those ideas you probably had up running in politics and changing the world? I don't know if that's what you thought, but I just wanted a corridor like at the core of things. My wife and I were talking about that. So, you know, project orientated and everything else, right? You get frustrated and how slow things move and how many people you have to talk to and you've got to

get them up to speed. And then there's the politic or political thing. Like, why can't just somebody just give me the thing and let me go after it, right? So you got all this other internal churn and stuff and then we had COVID rolled into it at the same time. Like it really distracted. But at the end of the day, my wife said like, look at why you got into this in the first place. You wanted to get pipeline right away and you wanted to get infrastructure and you wanted to build trains and you wanted to get that so you could get thousands of people working

again. So you could be proud of your country again. You got other people taking those ideas and running with it and that seems to be part of the solution. She goes, are they going to have your plan exactly? Probably not. But they're going to have a plan that's right around that basis thing. So how much more do you think you can do as an MLA or as a, as one person?

Just maybe look at that. And again, we, we do that oftentimes. We look at our failings or things we should have, would have could or done better. And sometimes we lose sight of it. And I think there was, uh, I can remember which astronaut it was. There was one of the guys was nine on an expedition. They were literally sitting on the moon and the, the astronaut guy goes and taps the scientist in the shoulder goes, will you stop for a minute?

Look at where you're at. He's all concentrated on hammering on this little. rock, right? He's fixated on the task. Look at where you're at. Look at where we're at right now. So I think that's Sean, we're going to look at this turning point and say, here's where we're at. We got enough people coming to this point and saying we can't carry on like this. So change it. And if you don't change it, we're going to make you enough. We cannot enough is enough. So you got this much rope left to do. We need some measurable things that are taking place. Or we're going to do it without you. But I do want to give people hope that are ready to pull the pin that there's other

things that we can do. If you're mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore and you're concerned because we can't get permissions, just, they're just lines on a page. Just redraw the lines. But what do we need? I need deep support access. We have a ton of work in the Arctic to do. We got ruling trading partners. We've got other countries in the world. Are you getting very predatory? You want to develop the north? Imagine giving Alberta access to the north. What would happen? Well, unshackle the West. Unshackle Alberta. Like, let us do our stuff within our country. But you give us that, Saskatchewan and Alberta? tying in with Northwest Territories and Yukon.

And we've got through us is that gateway to the north right into Alaska. Alaska has a hard point. They're no longer an island through us through rail or roads or pipe or however we tie in the infrastructure. They want it just as much as we do. So if Eastern Canada can't figure it out, we're going to do without you in Ontario and Quebec and everybody else that keeps getting a big paycheck from us all the time, we've got to talk about that.

You guys got to develop your own resources. Let us develop ours. and since you're not taking care of the north, I think you get the northerners, they're rugged, tough people up there that live in the north, unshackle them, let them have some options here. Give them the cash they need,

and by the way, it's our cash that we're sending there that you're not giving them anyway, so just cut out the middleman. And then if you look at the transfer payment schema, I think that equalizes a bunch of it too because now you're spending all that extra cash on the ledger side of the sheet. We've got a massive expenditure there.

We've got a massive, you know, asset, but there's a ton of liability with it. that liability should balance it out. So maybe we won't be sending so much money down east. We'll just be building up our own province. Like we can do this. So that that is easier to do than just pulling the plug and then then what? Because you know one person had told me, well then we go into negotiations. And I'm going, haven't we been in negotiations for 50 years to your point? Like that's that's the end that we're going to sit across the table and negotiate some more. I want to just do something constructive. Get out of our way. Give us these corridors.

Give us these nine items we want on by the way. Let's wiggle that line between us and the territories and let us get that fixed. Well, we're negotiating. And right now, by getting together as provinces, we are negotiating without actually being at the formal negotiation table. And pulling the pen is the beginning of negotiations. But those negotiations are, you're sitting at the table and you're like, you either come sit with us or we're gone. So you look at it. And all this is negotiation at this point from now, you know, for, I don't know, has it been, if it hasn't been the last 50 years,

certainly the last couple years, the negotiations have been heating up and heating up. And it's interesting to see both premieres in a joint press conference. Basically say, here's your timetable. Because they've listed off a few different things, you know, six months, roughly is where my brain kept going. It's as close enough as this Friday.

I agree. Like there's some things where they start looking at these bills. If you don't put pen to paper and if you don't take away some of the double speak that you have in there, It's as close as like we're talking weeks out in some of the sense of urgency. So they've had a run on the election. They've got a house now.

Start making good on these commitments because again, this thing falls apart if they don't. Yeah, I agree. Appreciate you coming in. I'll let you get back on the road. I'm glad we could do it in studio, you know? Yeah, I got, I got cashed out here. So I'm not as much to claim this with the ethics commissioner, I think. I think you'll be all right.

If Daniel Smith can take one, I'm sure Shane Getson can take one. Well, now you got both. of us having to talk to ask, no, it's okay, but no, it's well within the value. It's all good. The other one I did want to mention too, because you brought it up there earlier was if anybody thinks we orchestrated doing all the electoral reforms and everything to exactly coincide when the feds may or may not pull the trigger on an election, wasn't as much grandiose design as you might think. There's a lot of moving parts that have to take place. Did we tip the scale a little bit in our balance and rush a few things through to make sure it was expeditious?

Yeah, you can look at the voting records. and you can look at what we had to do to move legislation. The longer I stare at politics, there is statesmanship there. So to try and convince people that it wasn't, you know, put in a certain date and everything else, there's an art. There's an art to it. There's an art to it. But I would suggest, and here's what I'm telling you, full on, like if in the legislative process, you have an idea.

It goes through all those committees I talked about before. And then you got to get into the legal. you have to draft all that, and then you have to get it into the house. So once you've done all that other stuff, now you've gone into the house. The only ability that we really have to fast track things or move things is once it's, once it's in that house. So to try to line up all those things to coincide with an election that may or may not have been called federally, like if folks thinks that we can figure that one out, that I'm telling you

God's honest truth, that you cannot manipulate. The time in the house, like I said, you can look at the voting records and some of the legislation we use to be able to time. allocate, that's how we can make sure we can pass legislation within a timeline. I agree and disagree all at the same time. I just live the dream, unfortunately. I know, I know. I was just like, you know, there is statesmanship.

There's a game being played at the national level and the world level. Absolutely. And so when I look at it, you know, you can tell me that it could have been two months later or two months earlier, maybe. Well, it's kind of like we said there before, mess around and find out. There's always tools in the toolkit. Yeah. And you just, you're using all the tools.

in the toolkit. That's all it is. I look at Moe and Premier Smith getting together, Premier Smith and Premier Moe. And I'm like, that's really interesting. Right? You can look as deep into that or as shallow as you want, but well, here's one to consider like again, um, first time we've met since, I don't know, 1905. Think about it that way. Like when I went to Regina, I looked at, uh, their assembly because we do these capital visits and I'm going, this friggin' building's huge. Like, you guys are about twice the size of ours. And it's like, well, yeah, Historically, it was conceived that this was going to be the legislature for what was at that time or what would have been one big province, Saskatchewan and Alberta combined. So somewhere down east, they decided that would be too powerful at West.

Correct. Right. So again, coming back to our country's history, maybe it's the time we looked at what Canada could be. Maybe there's a staged approach. That's okay. We're up to the 150 year mark. Do that etch of sketch and see what we can do for the next 150. 50 years. Having collaborative efforts with, and I said it in the front end, like a family reunion,

there's a lot of like-minded people. Saskatchewan and Alberta have always worked very well together, ebbs and flows, those type of things. People go back and forth, heck, we cheer for the same football teams, depending where you're at, in which day in the stadiums. That's always been there. It's the same people that settled and did the same things. We're built the same way. So notionally, again, aspirational otherwise, Sean, why not? Start doing the etch of sketch, looking at what we could be when we grow up you can't you can't not look at the north and you can't not look at the south someone bringing the people back together is just time and pressure right like I mean we had 10 years of Trudeau and if you didn't think certain things could ever happen

they happened and continue to happen then we had COVID and I mean we did say with that none of that it ever happened and then it happened and so the pressure has been building and then you thought Pierre Poliav is getting in I heard it over and over again and it's funny though on my piece of paper the start of our 12-hour live stream I wrote liberal minority I'm like, I hate myself for saying that, but that to me is what I've seen, and that's what happens. Liberal minority. So at some point, you just got to go, the pressure just keeps getting ratcheted up, where if we don't come together, then we will have no oil industry.

We will have no. And it's that part of the gilded cage, right? So you know that there's walls around you at this point. You know that there's a ceiling on you and you're seeing that door swing. But the person that's doing, it's whistling a different tune. is the door going to move slower or but all the same people behind them are the same characters. So if you don't hold that to task, then full well, yeah, that door will be closed and here's the inflection point.

Hence why you've got a lot of people working in a number of areas saying, okay, we want this thing to work, but we're not going to get fooled again. It's not the Pied Piper approach and you're not going to swing the door closed in that gilded cage. Here's where we're at. We'll give you the benefit of certain doubts up to a point. here's your timeline, here's your thresholds. Take these very serious because we're very serious about it.

You know, Bruce Pickford to shout out to him. He has two sons that were snipers and one of the things, tongue and cheek, and this is probably going to get me in political hot water as always, but one of the things that he had said is, you know, even when you're executing your, your mission, tapping somebody from a long distance, you don't have to be mean about it. You just have to be serious. It's your job and you have to do it. You have to be professional about it. about it. So you can do these things without being mean about it without jumping up and down and holding your breath. And the thing that I told my caucus that concerned me when it came to, um, a number of folks that were very frustrated with what's taking place and are talking about separation because they're, they're valid concerns. The guys jumping up and down with the fire and brimstone. They're always going to be jumping up and down. What I saw was folks that were, were not mad.

They were sad. They were sad to the point where grieving, grievous enough divorce, all of those type of things. When you've got soccer moms at the Starbucks talking about this, this is something deeper. And where I put it to folks, it's the difference between watching that action film and watching old yeller. Old yelder made me sad because old yelder was real and old yelder got put down. It became so bad that that family pet was actually rabid and there was no other option. And every man out there knows what I'm talking about when you have to provide and protect and do those things and you need to take care of business.

That doesn't make you happy to have to do that, but it's what you have to do. we're at that point. So please, whoever is listening federally, understand. It's not without kindness that we're saying this. Please take it serious before old yeller gets put down. Shane, as always, thanks for coming in the studio. Appreciate it, John. What a way to end it.

I'll put an old yeller down.