Shaun Newman Podcast - #927 - Tom Marazzo

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Tom Marazzo is a Canadian military veteran and author. He served 25 years in the Canadian Armed Forces, rising to the rank of Captain, with expertise in battle planning, negotiations, and public speaking. After retiring in 2015, he earned a Bachelor of Technology in Software Development and an MBA, later working as a community college instructor until 2020. Marazzo is known for his leadership in the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests and his book, The People's Emergency Act: Freedom Convoy 2022. We discuss emergency preparedness. Freedom of expression on campus study link:https://aristotlefoundation.org/study/freedom-of-expression-on-campus-a-survey-of-students-perceptions-of-free-speech-at-canadian-universities/Tickets for the Prairie Rising Forum:https://prairierisingforum.ca/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 UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] Money SummitWebsite: ExpatMoneySummit.com

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.

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. How's everybody doing today? Happy Wednesday. Shout out to all you lovely people who texted me after I've hurt my back and we're laughing at me getting old.

I knew that was in kind. not in, I don't know, Jest, maybe he's in both, I don't know, regardless. I appreciated that. It's been a couple of rough days on this side. Like, now I get it when I see the old guy walking around and he's like laboring. I'm like, huh, I wonder what's going on with him. I'm like, oh, no, I know exactly what's going on. I'm like, I don't want to, I'm going to do my best to never be that old guy.

Like, I'm going to try and keep the old body in a decent working order because I tell you what, the last couple days suck. Getting out of bed this morning sucked. So, yeah, that's been interesting. You know what doesn't suck? The price of gold right now. So if you're looking at getting any precious metals, you should head to silvergoldbowl.com.ca. They got their charts up there.

You can see what the price of gold is at. 5542 Canadian. That's where it's at. Silver, on the other hand, is at 6658. Okay? So, you know, and on, sorry, on silver, a year ago, it was, okay, let's pull this up, $43 to $66. That's, that's in a year. And gold a year ago was $3598, $3577, now $5521.

Those are Canadian prices. So silver gold bull for all your precious metals, down in the show notes, if you have questions on anything to do with buying, selling, storing, using your retirement, accounts to invest in precious metals. Go to silvergoldbill.ca. Go to silvergold bowl.com. You can see everything there. You can text Graham or email them down in the show notes. Yeah.

Yeah, I think if you haven't explored that option, you should talk to Graham and bug him about it. That would probably be worthwhile of your time. Bow Valley Credit Union. When it comes to buying and selling Bitcoin, it's never been easier. And yes, it's a bank doing it, which I think in Canada shocks even me.

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truly yours, securely stored, insured and never leveraged custody is provided for you with no risk of losing seed phrases, complicated technology or fear of hackers. Just go to Bow Valley Credit Union.com. Diamond 7 meets you know today on the podcast me and Tom get talking about food security and a whole bunch of different things

while Lloydminster if you're tired of the big chain stores you should discover Diamond 7 meets family run business you can trust they've been serving our community for 26 plus years and you know I've got a ton of time for their values at the store there you can find them on highway 17 and 67 street north you can call them at 306, 825, 97, 18. And when it comes to meat, different cuts, cooking temperatures, thickness, all that good stuff, you can call them up, they can answer it for you, you can stop in, they can answer it for you,

you can cut fresh to meet what you want today, or you can stop it and get something out of their freezer. Caleb Taves, Renegate Acres, of course, Caleb doing the great concrete work, stamp concrete work. He's donated his spot for community notes or community events coming up, and we have a whole bunch here.

October 14th, so just a little under a week away, coming through Lloyd Minster, the Health Charter Tour, the world's greatest health show that's Sean Buckley. He's going to be in Lloyd Minster at the Legacy Center 7 p.m. You can check everything out at nhppa.org backslash health charter tour for all their locations. October 18th, the Prairie Rising Forum is coming to Regina. I'm hosting it, or I'm the guy's shoulder-tapped to host of it.

Today's guest, Tom Marazzo is going to be there. Martin Armstrong is going to be there. There's going to be a whole bunch of guests there. Tickets are on sale until October 12th. So you only got a couple more days before you won't be able to get tickets at the front door. So make sure you get your ticket for Regina for the Prairie Rising Forum. October 25th, Terry Bryant and Rod Giltaka, going to be at Profit Rivers Customer Appreciation Day.

And then on October 26, we're going to be shooting guns with Rod Giltaka, Chuck Proudnick, Jamie Sinclair, at the Lloyd Minster and District Fish and Games. Association, Indoor Range. Profit River is supplying the ammo. So if you're interested in coming for that day, it's going to be 20 bucks a person. It's from 1 to 4 on a Sunday. Shoot me a text. I got to give them numbers.

So if you're interested in coming, shoot me a text. So I know that you're interested in being a part of that. The SMP Christmas party backed by popular demand, the dueling pianos returned December 20th. This will be the fourth year. I've done the Christmas party. If you're interested in getting a table, We got a few tables left. Shoot me a text.

Would love to add you to the list. The Mash Spiel, January 17th, 2026. Kalmar, curling rink, just east of Laduke. Just west of Laduke. I keep seeing the east. It's west of Laduke. So just west of the airport there. We got 16 spots available for people.

So that's just going to be a fun day of, you know, get in the community again. Getting the mash spiel, the mash spiel, getting the mashup community together, yeah, would be, I don't know, I think it's going to be just a fun day. Probably filled with some laughter is going to be my guest. A guess. Quick Dick McDick live, ooh, this one's out of place. It's November 22nd, so it's before the mash bill. A quick dick is live at Lashburn.

All the funds raised are going to a new playground for the elementary school there. and if you're interested in that, you can find the link, showpass.com backslash Lashburn. And once again, all the proceeds going to the Lashburn community for the elementary school, sorry, for a new playground. So that's cool, quick tick and be in the area. Cornerstone Forum returns March 28th at the Westing Calgary Airport. We've got guests confirming as we go along, speakers that is. And yeah, my back has, you know, slowed me on.

I was, we're going to have tickets out here shortly, but we're just buttoning up some things and me being laid up the last couple days is not helped things. It's been an interesting couple things. Don't hurt your back, folks. It sucks. What else? Substack. If you haven't subscribed to substack, we've got the week and reviews coming out Sunday,

where we, you know, the week in review gives you a breakdown of all the episodes from the week that's been. This past week's post, I talked about the 10th Man, which me and Tom get into a little bit today. If you are a paid member, you want to support the work I do here. You can go and read those thoughts. Yeah, there's just a lot going on this week. And appreciate you all being here. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble X,

make sure to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review. Make sure to share with a friend, all the good things. Now, let's get on to that tale of the tale. Today's guest is a Canadian military veteran, former educator, author, and known for his leadership role in the 2022 Freedom Convoy. I'm talking about Tom Marazo. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Tom Marazo. Sir, thanks for hopping on. Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I think we were talking about this quite a while, but you're a very busy guy.

Well, you know, that sounds like, yeah, I am. And I, I, I, I, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you're, you're, It's just, I don't know. On this end, you're trying to cover everything Canada throws at you. And as you know, Tom, that is a interesting task to take on because it's like every week there's something. And I think, you know, before we get too deep into any of the topics today, I think the big news of as we sit here and record this is Chris and Tamara, both getting handed 18 months sentences. Basically, what's the word I'm looking for? the conditional sentences. Yeah.

Here, I'm going to read it off so people. I assume everybody knows at this point, but house arrest is where they got 18 months house arrest. And I'll go back here and let's find it. Right at the start. Chris Barber sentenced to 18 months on mischief and three months for disobeying a court order served in community has to remain in the jurisdiction

of court in Saskatchewan unless receiving written permissions. shall remain under house arrest for first 12 months under exceptions such as medical, religious, or court reasons. And the remainder period is a curfew of 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. except for employment and other exceptions, 100 hours of community service. Tamara Leach sentenced to 18 months, 74 days time serves. I believe that we're so to 15 and a half months. And first 12 months under house arrest at all times, with similar exceptions to Chris

Barber. And remaining three and a half months under curfew between 10 p.m. and 5.m. with similar exceptions to Barber as well. So there you go. I think that's, I don't know. We both know these people very well. I think you probably know them better than I do. But certainly on this show, they've been on lots at the Cornerstone Forum back in May.

Tamara spoke. Chris was there. We just had them on the mashup folks on Friday on their way out to Ottawa. your, I don't know, initial reaction to 18 months? I'm pretty upset about it, to be honest. I would have to say that the entire criminal injustice system is on full display for being in such disrepute, sorry. I am continuously amazed by the level of self-reflection on behalf of politicians in this country.

I'm even more amazed in the dereliction of duty of the courts in this country. The police who do not fight hard enough internally, and some do, there are some great police officers across Canada that have for years tried to do their part in fight and make the change internally, but that is a Goliath that they can't possibly win against. And I think when we talk about trust, institutional trust, it's all but gone in Canada. Everything from, you know, religious institutional trust to academia, to legal, to medicine, to politics, institutional trust in this country has disappeared. And this is just one more nail in the coffin of a divide between institutions within Canada

and the very people themselves that fund all of these things for us. And so I'm quite disgusted. Again, the government seems to have the courts have met the expectation. I'll put it that way. The expectation is always very, very low, exceedingly low, but they seem to hit a new benchmark all the time. And so I'm quite disgusted by it, and I think every Canadian should be disgusted by it. And every Canadian today, whether you like Chris and Tamara or agree with the convoy should now realize, you have skin in the game. There is a precedent now that if you dare speak out against the government, you will be prosecuted politically.

to the tune of millions of dollars, months and months of your life, and then you will be convicted and sentenced to some form of punishment. Even though your government is the ones that set the conditions for it, the moment you speak out against the actions of the government, you will be held accountable for your dissent

and not just stepping in line with the dictates of the government. At every level. And I'm not talking, federally or provincially. I'm talking every single level of government in this country will punish you if you don't tow their line. And so I'm I'm shocked. I mean, there's a part of me. You can barely see the two pathetic metals I have on the shelf behind me. But at this point, I just kind of want to mail them all back to Ottawa and say these are meaningless to me. my service, I'm not a combat veteran, so to be clear about that, I'm not.

But any of my time served in uniform is apparent to me that it was a complete waste of my time. And I regret ever serving the country of Canada after this is what the result is. This is the legacy of Canada now. This is the, when people say thank you for your service, I hope they don't mean that I helped prop up and protect a government like this. or a court system like this or medical establishments like this or any of the institutions. This is a deep, deep betrayal. Most of all, it is a betrayal of this idea that we have a charter of rights and freedoms in this country. And you as the government can do whatever you want with impunity.

And us serfs, no, don't you dare speak up. Let's compound this by the fact that we're all being sued for $290 million. Let's compound that again by the fact that in November, Chris Barbers, the decision will be rendered on whether or not the government of Canada seizes his truck and destroys it. And then let's look at Bill C2, C8, C9, C63. We could talk about Bill C-100 that happened here in Ontario, April of 2022 after the convoy. Every time the government gets caught doing something to us, they create a bill. to just further tighten the noose around all of our necks. So, yeah, it's a pretty dark day in Canada, in my view.

Were you hoping, you know, like on this side, I was like, I hope they just go and they get, you know, nothing would have been nice. Time served. I'm like, okay, maybe time served, you know. Yeah. I actually at least thought for Tamara just time served. She got the exact same sentence as Chris. But she got credited for 75 days, which is strange to me because she spent 50 days in remand. And usually the formula is 2 to 1.

She got 1.5 to 1 for time that she served in remand. She should have never gone back the second. second time for posing in a photo with me at a dinner that was sponsored by our law firm. I mean, the bail conditions around us basically say that we cannot have any contact unless in the presence of our lawyers. The dinner we were at together was sponsored by our lawyers. She received, she was the recipient of the George Jonas Freedom Award. We were surrounded by criminal lawyers and our civil litigators against this vexatious class action. lawsuit and she still went back to remand for 25 days so the government can just break the law with

impunity we don't issue canada-wide warrants for rapists in this country but for for a bail breach they sent two ottawa detectives with the authority of the crown prosecutor in the attorney general of canada or of ontario um and i would even suggest probably the p m with that authority sent two homicide detectives to apprehend her at her home out west and fly her back to Ottawa in handcuffs and put her in remand for 25 days. And the first justice of the peace denied her bail. And the second judge who finally let her out ordered them to take the shackles off of her. But hey, you can go to Welland and rape a child in their home and be out on bail the next day.

You can murder a man in front of his wife and children and be out on bail. You can be wanted 30, 40, 50 times in this country, and the liberals will see to it that those violent repeat offenders will never go to jail. But dare speak out against them? Your public enemy number one. So there's no punishment for physical acts of violence against other Canadians in this country unless you're one of the, you know, a new Canadian coming into the, into the country, right? But if you're old stock Canadian and you speak out against the government, God help you.

Well, then let's enter in, you know, I assume it's all these things, you know, if you add them up, is probably one of the reasons you wrote your latest book, The People's Emergency Plan, a civilian guide to operational emergency planning and preparedness. I assume you're like sitting there and going, the heck are we going to do here, right? There's the option of like, you know, maybe I just get out of the country, but if we're going to stick around, we better start looking at the situation for what it is. Yeah. And I wrote that for a couple of reasons.

And, you know, people should know, I got a tremendous amount of advice and, you know, assistance, a lot of material, a lot of great conversations through emails and reviews with Lieutenant Lieutenant Colonel David Redmond, who was the former head of emergency management, Alberta. He's a very well-known retired military officer in Alberta. And so when I approached Colonel Redmond on this, this project that I wanted to do, the first thing he said is, I'm glad you're doing it because a lot of people request that he does a plan for them. And he doesn't have time or the capacity to do that right now to help.

people. So, you know, Colonel Redmond and I are trained to the same level, but he was a lieutenant colonel. I retired as a, as an almost major, but not quite. But we were trained to the same level, the same course as the same standard almost. He had a very different military career than I did. He had a lot of deployments and used those skills. But nevertheless, what I set out to do in this book was to take the militaries process, the way they plan for war, for civil unrest, for refugees, for various domestic emergencies across Canada, I took that process and I civilianized it into a book. And it is a workbook. And the intent of that is you come out the other end, you're going to understand what all of your actual threats are to you and your family or your

community and you're going to do very specific contingency plans based on those. And so there is a chapter in there where I talk about civil unrest. There's a chapter in there. I talk about the first chapter is actually about fear, the physiological effect of fear on the human body and why doing planning is so important before you get caught, flat-footed or, you know, by surprise. I do spend a chapter talking about violence. And, you know, you read the book, you read the chapter, and you have a serious inner dialogue

and a conversation with your family about how far you're willing to go. Because there is a violent component to long-term domestic emergencies. And so I put it in there as a form of self-reflection. Well, let's start with fear for a second. Sure. Because, you know, I've been trying to remove as much fear out of my life, you know, like, it's just a tough way. That stress of being fearful all the time is just tough on, on any person to sit in, you know,

for any amount of time. So to spend some time talking about that, I think is important, you know, like when you're, when you're talking about fear, walk me through your thoughts on it. Okay. Let's look at the heart rate. Okay, there's a cardiovascular heart rate that goes up. And any of your military viewers, they'll know all of this science. And a lot of this was pioneered in a book by also an American, former ranger,

Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, who wrote a book called On Combat. And he co-wrote that with another author, I think, came from the SWAT team world, Bruce Siddell. And so they looked at the science of combat and the physiological effect of fear on the human body. So when you talk about your heart rate going up through cardiovascular activity, that's a very different thing. That's a different increase in your heart rate. What I'm talking about is a fear-induced heart rate caused by hormones in the body that now I'm getting into the area of fight or flight. So all of your police, all your emergency services, your military doctors, people that are accustomed to dealing with life or death situations, now we're talking about that level of change to your heart rate.

You know, we sometimes we'll talk about people going into the black. And in the on combat book, he shows a heart rate. And it gives the different brackets of when your heartbeat goes up to a certain rate. So, you know, the normal resting heartbeat, what we're, you and I are experiencing right now would be a condition white. This is where we're relaxed. We're fine. You know, the next level up being yellow, then we go to red, then we go to black. And, you know, your dog, as an example, is always in a yellow.

They're always in this constant state of vigilance, your dogs. And I would argue that military and police and certain people within society are always in a constant state of yellow as well. But what happens is let's take an emergency. And for your viewers, think of a time you've ever had to dial 911. It's actually been studied. It's very difficult for people in a real live emergency to even dial 911. Because as you go from a resting heart rate to about 115 beats per second of your heart and your body's full of, you know, different hormones, cortisol,

adrenaline, all of that stuff. In the first 10 seconds, you start to lose fine motor control. So when you're trying to dial 911, you've got about 10 seconds before you've obliterated your fine motor control. Now after that 10 seconds, your heart rate is elevated or it's maintaining somewhere. You're now losing gross motor control. Okay. So that means the blood is actually pooling out of your extremities going towards your

vital organs and to a certain extent, most of your brain. But in your brain, what shuts down is a lot of your cognitive function. And this is when we really get into fight, flight, or freeze. The vast majority of the public will freeze. They'll panic. They won't know what to do. You know, so this is what when you're faced with fear and you're having a diminished cognitive ability because you're terrified. Is that the time to come up with an emergency plan? No, it's not. It's too late.

And we know this in the military. We don't go into battle making it up as we go. And this is where the public kind of views emergencies. I'll just make it up as I go. I'll choke down the fear and I'll just respond. That's not how it works. We don't do that in the military. Special forces don't do it that way,

in order to do SWAT teams or high risk warrants or paramedics and fire. You train, you plan, and you have SOPs. And, you know, the saying is, you know, you don't rise to the occasion. You shrink to the level of your training and you're planning in your experience. And you rely on things like muscle memory. Now, that's really, really hard to do for a domestic emergency. if you're a civilian who's never served in the military or been a police officer or worked in any emergency field.

You're not accustomed to that level of fear-induced heart rate. So what happens is a lot of those professions, if you ever listen to an airline pilot, right, watch shows like May Day or whatever, there's an emergency, but listen how calm their voices are. It's because our baseline as regular civilians is very, very low. low. You know, 115 beats per minute for a fear-induced heart rate is almost catastrophic for people. But for an airline pilot, a fighter pilot, a tier one, tier two special operations person, a SWAT guy, that's basically just called Monday. You know, their baselines actually are very high. Like, they'll get their baselines into the, you know, 130, 140 range. I mean, these guys train

every day with live ammo, right? Fighter pilots, as soon as they take off, their life is in danger. So you're accustomed to that level of fear. You can move the baseline up. I can't do that with civilians, right? I used to teach Krav Maga. The best I could do would be to put people in very scary situations, but I could never get their heart rate up that way. I could get it up through cardiovascular, but I can't get it up through scaring students. It's just not a way to do it. But problem of ga is another self-defense combative that is based on gross motor skills. It's not, you know, you're not out there doing a kata in a street fight and thinking that you're going to be nice and clean and crisp like you see guys hitting a heavy bag or a speed bag. It's not like that in reality.

Fear sets in, hormones set in, and now it's all gross motor skills. But the biggest impact to that in a domestic emergency situation is the diminishment of your cognitive function. And this is where your medella starts to take over and your frontal lobe sort of disengages and it's now fight, flight, or freeze. How can I try to plan or a tornado or a flood or some sort of an emergency or civil unrest that erupts, erupts in my street when I'm there with my kids. So the idea is I talk about the fear because I need people to recognize it, that there's a difference between having a plan that you execute and a plan that you don't have, which you wish you did, and you're now facing a catastrophic psychological emergency.

Well, you're building. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say you're building confidence too. when you go through the steps of like building out just a simple plan if X were to happen right what am I going to do once you have the confidence of like oh well these are the things I've worked through it's almost somewhere in the back of your brain where I store probably useless information of the day that ever happens this is what I'm going to default to I think for so many people and I would have include myself at one point in that I never even thought of any emergency because

I was like, you know, maybe car crash or something like that. Something like, oh, that could happen. But, you know, anything else further on than that, I always just went, oh, the government will take care of it. I remember thinking that and being that guy that was like, I have nothing to fear. We live in one of the safest countries under the sun. The government's got my best interest at heart. It's, you know, like we're not going to have, you know, here in Alberta, we're never going

to have a power outage or anything like, you know, of that catastrophic nature. But then when you actually start. staring at Canada more and more, you're like, wait a second. We're kind of governed by idiots. And it only takes one fail and no one's coming to save you but you. So you better start looking at some of the things in your area, in your specific settings and going, oh, I may not have to worry about, you know, power outages like Texas maybe in that way that it would go there and all of a sudden the freezers and everything there disappears.

we have certain things here in Western Canada for eight months of the year where the heat isn't going to be your enemy. The cold certainly could become your enemy and you have to look at that differently. But I guess a first step for me is always probably understanding no one's coming to save you, right? And that is fear in itself, but then once you start going deeper into it, you can actually, okay, well, actually, what would I do there? And how would I start to maybe prepare for some of these little situations that could happen. And I think it's an important thing that you raise because people have to understand that even if a domestic emergency is inbound, for example, you've got a Red River flood or

you've got an ice storm. You know that there's a weatherfront moving in, that there is a significant event. The government needs time to also mobilize. They need time to plan. The people that volunteer in a lot of the emergency management, Alberta type of organizations or Ontario, they need to get their affairs in order to go and volunteer and be part of this thing. And everybody needs time to mobilize. And inside the mobilization is you do a planning cycle.

And that same exact process that you do in all of the provincial emergency management organizations is the same process that I write about in the book. It's the same thing. The reason is is because the military, EMO, and police all integrate into a unified structure. And so we have to be doing planning cycles every 12 hours to all speak the same common language, right? So the public has at least 72 hours where they have to be able to save themselves or respond or or take mitigating steps to protect themselves and give the government time to react. And hopefully you can get out of the path of whatever's coming your way or understand when is it the time that I need to get out of the way.

Because, you know, on the first minute you see the news announcement, you don't want to go and overwhelm the responders. You don't want to overwhelm right away. You don't want to show up to a shelter only to find out. that your area was perfectly safe, but all these other people outside waiting to get in no longer have a house. So you have to be able to identify

when is the appropriate time to take action or execute my plan. You have to understand what trigger points are and how to monitor the environment for the things that lead to a good decision. And that's all stuff that I go through in the book. How to develop, you know, how do you focus on the right plan? Like we live in Canada.

Should we be doing content? contingency plans for a volcano? No. If you're in Hawaii, yes. If you're in Hawaii, should you be doing a contingency plan for a snowstorm? I don't think so. You should be talking about typhoons, hurricanes, and all that kind of stuff, tropical events if you're in Hawaii or in certain parts of the United States. But, you know, an example, you look at Carolina last year, they never expected to get a weather event like they had up in the mountains, right? So crazy things do happen. But ultimately, what I try to do is confine people to at least the most dangerous and the most likely five events that could happen to them in the area that they live.

And then let's just focus on those and we're going to build five different contingency plans. And if you get the plan done, you build it, you print it off and you put all those plans into a binder. because that's what we do in the military. We call them con plans, contingency plans. And every year, when I worked at the headquarters in Toronto, every September, before we would do domestic operation exercise, we would pull out all of our contingency plans, and we would review them and update them and sign off that we read them.

And then they would go back on the shelf, and one of those domestic emergencies would be the theme of that year's training. And so we would do a full-on exercise with role players and everything. And we would practice to support the government of Canada or the government of Ontario if that particular emergency happened. If you're looking at Canada right now, Tom, and you're monitoring the tea leaves and you're seeing all the red flags and, you know, and so forth, what are some things that you're concerned about?

And what are you planning for? I did my own personal threat matrix, obviously. That's a part of the book. I ran through the threat matrix and I assessed everything that's in the book. And my number one threat in my house, in my neighborhood, was civil unrest. And I believe that Canadians right now should be considering that. And I don't want to come off as this anti-government, blah, blah, blah. I'm just looking at the immigration situation that we have in this country, the resources we have in this country, the way they're being managed, and the way one group is living under a two-tier justice system, and the other is getting away with whatever they want with impunity.

I think at some point, no matter where you come from, this country is going to become unaffordable. Right? So there's a lot of discussion about Western independence. I'm in favor of it. I think it's the right move for Alberta, at the very least. I know there are examples as a, you know, prime examples, Czechoslovakia was one country that I can think of that did have a separation without violence that did actually happen.

And so I think there is hope there that if there is Western sovereignty or Western separation or independence at the very least that will done peacefully, it would be done democratically and through the rule of law, not through the rule of the mob in violence. But I think that there's just far too much turmoil on all different fronts in this country right now. And there's an enormous amount of dissatisfaction. And if you look at just for a second the divide between the left and the right, and I know some people say that's an illusion, but just look at the ideological divide in this country between, you know, the elbows up crowd and everybody else. You look at the way Antifa has been able to operate with absolute impunity across this country, anytime. they want any way that they want and the reluctance for the police to feel supported enough to

take action against those those violent criminals so there's just too many competing interests to sit here and say yeah i'm honestly uh really concerned about a snowstorm okay i can't really make that claim and so i i think that there are just too many different vectors coming at us all at once and um in my view civil unrest is probably my biggest concern for this country. I don't want it to happen. I don't want to see a societal breakdown. I depend on the hospitals for the health of one of my children. So I don't want to see us breaking and descending into that. I have to look at the do an intelligence preparation of the environment that we're in and break down all of the factors. And I have to kind of conclude that civil unrest in this country is the most likely,

the most dangerous, and it does have the ability to force me out of my home in under 72 hours. And if those three things score very high, that's where I need to be doing all my preparation, planning and execution. Yeah, you don't come off as like being hyperbolic. like you're pushing for anything. It's more just looking at the situation of Canada. Like, I mean, I sit on this side and we've been discussing this a lot, right? I just had a post on Substack talking about the 10th man.

And I always go back to pop culture so people have to forgive me. But, you know, there's a Brad Pitt movie, World War Z. And he ends up in Jerusalem talking to one of the Mossad agents. And he's saying, how the heck did you guys know, right? And then guy leads him through this idea of the 10th man where when everybody agrees on where we're heading one one one person always has to contradict it and try and search out, you know, like is this, you know, is that really where we're going or we go in somewhere else? And so, you know, this, the civil unrest thing, I'll throw it at you because maybe your brain can can change my mind. I look at the civil unrest thing and I'm like, it's no doubt there. Absolutely. 110% it is there. The question I have is, does it ever graduate to another level? And I've talked to lots of different military guys.

And I mean, if it ever does, you're going to want to be prepared for that. But I look at places like the UK specifically for multiple reasons. They have civil unrest in epic proportions right now, I might add. Their density and the size of their country, right? They are a heavily populated but small country. and I'm like when people are that close on top of each other, that's where like violence can actually kick off. And once it kicks off, from my understanding of mobs,

is like you want to be nowhere near it. In Canada, we have a completely different problem. I mean, a similar problem, but we're a giant country. We're spread out. Now, could it happen in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, take your pick of one of the major centers? Sure, but does it spread out to smaller centers or smaller places in the country, in the provinces, sorry.

Your thoughts on that? Well, I couldn't agree more with your observation about it. And you're absolutely correct. And this is why we do something called IPE. And in the book I call it IPE. In the military, we would call it IPB, which is intelligence preparation of the battlefield or the battle space. And so, you know, when we're looking at it,

we would look at all these factors exactly what you're talking about. And we start to get into developing courses of action that suit that environment. An IPE or IPB are done by your intelligence people, right? They're looking at it from the enemies or your opposition's perspective. So you've, you've correctly, in my view, identified that distinct geographic, in demographic challenge that the UK has in comparison to Canada. And so what I, I do not believe in lone wolves. There's a reason that wolves travel impacts because lone wolves get picked off.

Okay. So for the rural communities, I think the thing to do, and I've had people message me and say, you know what, my group, my group of people, we came together, we bought your book and we started planning based on your book as a group. And that is the best possible outcome, the best compliment I could have actually even gotten reading that message. Because I think that's the best approach. Lone wolves get picked off.

Packs travel together impacts the stronger the pack, the better the survivability of everybody. And so I think the rural communities need to look, rural community members know how to solve problems. They know how to solve technological issues. They know how to fix things. They know how to work. They're not thinkers like I need to invent the piston engine.

But when the piston engine breaks, they don't call anyone else. They just, you know, get dirty and they fix it. They solve those problems. And so this is the difference in the mentality between the city slickers and the people out in the rural areas. You guys in a rural area know how to solve problems. You do it every single day. You live under more inconvenient, difficult circumstances. But you have more self-reliance.

And this is a big key thing. And I think it goes to what you're talking about. When you're rural, you're more self-reliant. When you're in the city, you're more reliant. And so I think those who are going to be stuck in a civil unrest situation, the smart ones are going to see what's coming. Get the hell out of the cities. But don't go thinking that you're just going to show up on, you know, the farmer's land

where he's got his two daughters and think everything is going to be okay. You're not. You need to build those relationships, build those communities, find people who have land and resources and start doing it now. Start building co-ops. Everybody should start financially contributing to the success of that one location. and then start saying, okay, if we have to leave the city to come here, we're going to be okay, but let's start doing it now.

And here's my thought, okay, because there's sometimes a confusion between emergency preparedness and homesteading. They are not the same thing. They're not the same thing at all. You know, if I'm dealing with a snowstorm like we had in the mid 90s, I'm not having a conversation about homesteading, where I'm living off grid. The different scenario altogether.

My book is about that snowstorm that happened. My book is about the Red River floods, you know, fires, that kind of stuff. How to prepare for that. But there is a bit of an overlap. There's a difference in motivation there too. If I'm a homesteader, I can take the same methodology and apply it to what I'm doing on my homestead.

And time is not a big factor for me. It's not a condensed timeline and emergency where I'm so compressed, I'm worried about making decisions, and I have to relocate. That doesn't happen on the homesteading front so much as it's going to happen to people in the cities. And so I think the difficulty to predict, if we're dealing with a, let's say a flood, people are more community minded. They're about helping each other. If we're looking at a situation of civil unrest, like Portland, Chicago, something like that,

it's every man for themselves. You're in a no trust environment, no mutual support environment. Your job to be prepared for that is to understand what the indicators are out there in the environment already. And when A, B, and C lines up, I've made a decision. A trigger should be an indicator you look for, a predefined indicator you're looking for. When they all lined up, you pulled the trigger, you make a decision, and you relocate to the safe place. You need to do that ahead of time. And in some cases, like in the book, when I go through it, I get you to select three courses of action.

I get you to score them objectively. And then I get you to plan around the selected course of action. But I also get you to determine when should I execute that plan? What are the things that I need to be scanning in the environment for to execute that plan? And, you know, I've got three case studies plus a full case study that goes through the entire book. But one of the case studies is about a group of people that started, they've done their IP. and that's it. But they have a location and there was civil unrest and they all meet up at the location, men, women, children and they go through a full on deliberate planning cycle and then

come up with a plan. They protect themselves. They stabilize and they do a count of the resources and then they start thinking about the next step down the road. So there's various phases to this whole thing. And so I, that's a long, long-winded answer to your question, but it's a very complicated process. A lot of considerations there. So yeah, sorry. No, no, no. You don't have to apologize at all, Tom. I don't mind a long-winded answer whatsoever. I was going to say pulling the trigger. Like, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, You're scanning the horizon. You're seeing things starting the lineup.

This is interesting to me because like, you know, right now, you see the noose tightening, I think, on society when it comes to all the different laws. You said it right at the start. You had just this long list of different bills coming through, tightening the noose. But it's like that is a noose of obedience or, you know, compliance. That is different than all of a. sudden civil unrest breaks out, right? And I've been trying in my brain to kind of be like, yeah, in Canada, if I put, you know, what the government is doing and trying to control over

here, there are things that you can comply with, not comply with, you can draw your own lines as individuals of like, I'm not willing to do this, I'm willing to do that, whatever it is. That is the government doing something. If I pull it back over to an emergency situation happening. You know, I think of, you know, like a storm coming in while you're monitoring the weather and then you're also monitoring outside. You're, you got some different things. And it's like, ooh, you know, it's minus 40 out and there's already been a foot of snow and, you know, and I'm sure there's different things where you can start to see where that pattern is heading. When it comes to civil unrest, do you have? And I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but regardless,

I'll just throw this at you. You know, like this happens. And then immediately that happens. And a day later, this happens where you're like, oh, it is time. Because this has been a discussion on my end where I'm like, I don't know, like, there's been a lot of different red flags popping up. But the truth of the matter is, I step outside. I look around and I'm like, hmm, but it ain't happening here.

And society seems to be just flowing just kind of normal, if you would. Yeah, I totally agree with the observation, right? Like we live in sometimes, and in my case, a little bit of a self-induced echo chamber on social media. And I do that on purpose because I'm not going to get into arguments with, you know, the elbows up clock. I'm just not. I'm not going to waste my time and energy debating on stuff that's already been settled. And so I think you're very correct in the fact that. Inside of social media, we see all this carnage happen.

But in our own lives, as soon as we put our phone down, take the dog for a walk, it's like, that's not what I'm seeing. That's not what I, I live in Brampton, Ontario, okay? I have, last year, there was a big giant, almost riot at one of the temples that's within a kilometer of my house. I had no idea for five days, but that thing had even happened. And the funny thing is I take my dog there every single day for a walk in the field that's behind the temple. And I had no idea that they had a big giant fight amongst themselves right there in the parking lot, a few hundred people. And so you're right to say that there's a disconnect between what we see on social media and what we see in reality in our everyday life.

And I agree with that. It's just very difficult to, and you don't want to be so vigilant that you're constantly. constantly on the lookout for all of these things. I mean, that's stressful in itself. But if I were to just look at certain types of events, political decisions, like, okay, let's look at the world on the day that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. It was my honest to God belief that I thought the Americans that night were going to rip that country apart. That's what I really thought. And I had kind of messaged out to a friend of mine, another veteran.

And he said, no, it's not. I don't think it will. And he was right. It didn't. And it's the difference between you have people that are conservative-minded who are very disciplined. Okay. They deal in facts for the most part. They deal in responsibility, personal accountability.

And that's the way they view. That's the worldview. view. If you contrast that with the left, you know, George Floyd, a convicted felon, who's on fentanyl gets killed, and we see places like Portland and other cities go up and smoke in the United States. Okay. We don't see civil unrest being generated as a result of the nasty things that happened to people on the right side of the political aspect. we see it happen on the left side. And you can rinse, wash, and repeat that theme over and over and over in America, especially. Here in Canada, we haven't experienced that type of thing yet. I mean, we had FLQ in 1970.

Okay, I wasn't even alive then. But it doesn't happen in the same way that it happens here. Okay. So that is much more difficult to scan the environment and to think of what's going on. Now, I would argue that if some big wig in the left-leaning side of the spectrum were something significant like a Charlie Kirk assassination or the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, if that type of thing were to happen here in Canada, you could make a case for it. What I think, though, is that civil unrest is going to be one of those things in Canada that you're going to find it extremely difficult. detect prior to it happening. The only indicators you're going to get are social media. And that's it. And you may or may not get any of it reported by the legacy media. And if it is, it's because it'll be our fault, right? It'll be somebody on our side's fault.

But at the end of the day, I don't think in a civil unrest situation, you're going to know it until you're in it. And that's the scary part. That's why it's so difficult to defend against. Now, What I would say is, if it happens, your immediate action is to get out of that city as fast as you possibly can with all your family. You know, on this side, I have an interesting job because I get to talk to all of you fine folks. And then on Fridays, we covered the headlines of Canada. And so when I look at, you know, things that I'm starting to look at differently, one that became very evident. you know, after the Coots Boys was, you know, we started just focusing on how many people were getting out on bail

that had done really horrific things. That's it. We just started focusing on every week. And every week we'd find three pretty egregious things. We're like, I can't. This is just this week, folks. And we did that for probably well over a year, I would think. And so that really, huh,

there's some people walking around and have done some really bad things. A guy should just be on the lookout. You know, your house is, We're not like the United States where, you know, somebody walks through your door and have at her, as we've seen in Ontario recently or I guess a few weeks ago now. The next thing that's really become a red flag with the mashup and watching the headlines has become drivers. It has become apparent that if you're on the highways, was it ever the safest place to be? No, I mean, you're driving at 100, 120 kilometers an hour. Like, you have to have your head on a swivel.

But you add in, you add in cell phones, how many people are on there. And then you add in how many people don't know our traffic laws or doing just strange things. They're driving, not little rice rockets. They're driving big old rigs and doing silly things with them. And it is becoming more apparent by the day that driving in this country, which we all do, especially out in the West, man, we travel a lot. That has become an increasingly dangerous thing. And you have to be a little more vigilant when you're behind the wheel. Then tack on when it goes into the dark months.

Now you don't have daylight. Now you're going to have, you know, out here, you know, minus whatever, plus the snow, the wind, the visibility, everything. I'm like, that is on my radar is one of the things that I'm going to have to be very careful of in the coming years because that is precedingly getting worse. I go back to the civil unrest. I'm like, I get it. It's just like, I think you said it perfectly.

It's like, I don't even know how to measure it, right? Like, obviously you walk outside. You lick the finger, you check the wind. It's like, I don't know. Do I see anything different happening here? Unless you're literally in the spot it's kicking off. It's hard to even see anything. You know, like you can definitely see that Canada's culture is changing in front of your eyes.

I don't mean it that way. It's just that you don't, I don't run into people at the mall or walking down the street where they're having all fisticuffs. And there's people, you know, shooting off guns or I don't even know. Like take your extremes. I just don't see it. I agree. And you know what? I'm on the 401 every weekend. I'm on all the major 400 highways all in and around the GTA every weekend.

And I can tell you the things that I'm starting to see are like, I've never experienced this consistently. And I think the biggest challenge is, let's say a year ago, I was like, okay, I'm pretty upset that there are drivers on this highway. that have no clue about the rules of the road in in canada they have no idea and of course i drive by i have to look i have to see who who is behind the wheel doing that stupid thing i have to do it right and after a while you start to recognize patterns okay so we're not talking about racism as much as we're talking about statistical profiling and data analysis here okay a combat veteran a combat

veteran Tom always says to me recognize the patterns of life and then his and then his addition to that when I would get a little bit nervous I can't think the right word my my blood level was rising he goes recognize the patterns of life but rhythm normal just yes you have to act when you have to act but in between here and there just recognize what's going on so I don't think it's racist to recognize that our trucking industry isn't yeah a bunch of white people anymore and it's not it's not not at all and in fact the the number of times per trip that i'm on the 401 uh somebody will be blocking the left lane with you know 12 15 cars behind them and they're doing 100 and they don't care and you just drive by and they don't care um they don't

understand the culture in this country in terms of the way Canadians drive and what's disappointing though is I'm starting to see actually white people with the same behavior now on the highways here in Canada. So, you know, it's funny because I was complaining about the drivers in Ontario a couple months back. And Chris Barber said to me, if it's a Volvo, you'll know who's driving it. And every time I drive by and I see a Volvo transport truck, it is somebody who does not appear to have been born in Canada. Well, my father, I tell this story lots, but my father drove long haul truck for the longest time, right? We grew up going across Canada with him. And there's certain parts of northern Ontario where he's like, you can expect there to be a big accident.

You can expect, you know exactly who it is. You can expect. And you go, you can call that racist. But when it keeps happening, it's just like, no, I'm just telling you what it is. He was also the man who told me if you wanted to shut down this country, you piss off the truckers. And man, he was prophetic in those words because, I mean, obviously we got the freedom convoy. And what did that come from? Pissing off truckers.

Yeah, two and a half years ago, I was on Highway 17 driving from Ontario, just got past Thunder Bay, a couple hours passed. Transport truck collided with a minivan to fatalities, shut the highway down for 10 hours. And then I found out that truckers don't take that road in the winter. Right? So you're right. like there are parts that the truckers know not to go on because of the risks, but the everyday citizen doesn't know that. But it's challenging in this country to detect certain things.

But when we really start to look at different types of an emergency, okay, and this is something that a lot of people don't understand. You know, in engineering, we design sewers or a 50-year storm and a 100-year storm. Like, what is the most amount of rain that one storm has gotten in 50 years or 100 years? And the reason we track that is it's a benchmark. It's relative to what you're going to experience in your life. So in your area, one of the things in the book I say is go find out, do some research in your area. What is the 50-year rainstorm?

what is the 50-year snowstorm for precipitation in your area? So that when you're watching the news and they're saying, hey, there's a big snowfall coming, you can put it into perspective. You can say, okay, if a 50-year storm says I'm getting three feet of rain or the river's going to come up three feet, that puts that into perspective. But if they're constantly terrifying you and saying, we're going to get the storm of the century, it's going to go up six inches. it's you're kind of like yeah i i don't think that's it i think that you know what that is a that is a

that is that's a thought right going and learning your your area's history so that because i mean we all know i mean it's record heat i don't know if you knew that we've we've been having record heat but then you look at the you know and you're like record heat that says 30 what are we talking about that that isn't record heat you know or record cold on the other end and and i can out west here we've had our stretches of some cold weather and uh you know record or not like the the how they do it on the mainstream is insane to me because they they try and make everything the most record thing setting and we're burning or we're freezing or they don't know if we're going up or down but by by learning your history of of your area you could actually put it in perspective

quite well of like um no actually this is just another storm i and the thing that comes to mind is Florida and the hurricanes. I've been, you know, over my time, Tom, I've got to interview a lot of different guys who live in Florida.

And then, you know, of course, a hurricane's coming through and I'm going to text them, hey, you know, it looks like it's going to be pretty bad

or whatever I send, you know, hopefully nothing happens to you. And they'll send back laughing lots of time. Oh, that isn't even going to hit us. Like that's, that's like,

you know, no, that's not a big deal. And anyways, I, you know, if Alberta, on the other hand,

had, we got a giant winter storm. I wonder Florida people will be texting going, hey, I hope you hold in. And we're going, man, this is just another, this is another Monday, you know,

like this is, this is rhythm normally. We're probably driving to a hockey game in this. And so we see this constantly with the news and in the climate hysteria, you know, COVID hysteria was all case counts, case counts,

case counts, right? There's never an analysis. There's never a perspective offered. It's just doom and gloom, right? Oh my God. The sky is falling.

The sky is falling. like, well, why do you say that? That a bird fly by and crap on your head? Like, what is the perspective here? And how is this relative to other major events? And so in the book, when I'm talking about doing your IPE in your environment, this is what I'm saying. Find out what those real, that real true data is.

You know, and I ask people in the book when they're going through the IPE is to not worry about any form of an accident. or an event or an emergency of any kind. I just say do an analysis of your environment. And that does include figure out your 50 and 100 year snowstorms and your 50, 100 year floods and other different things. And I say, go look at the bridge in your area and assess the impact on you and your family if that bridge were to collapse.

What is the impact to you? It's one thing to see all this infrastructure in place when times are good. But what does it mean to you in relative terms when times are bad and you lose that resource? You lose that high speed approach, that main supply route. This is what I'm talking about in the IPE. What does it mean to me that, okay, I lost that bridge. Well, so what? Well, I have another bridge over here.

Well, so what? I've lost that one too. Okay, what other avenues of approach do I have in and out of that area? Can emergency vehicles get to me if I lose both those bridges? This is where I'm saying look at the environment based on when you've lost the things that you're taking for granted. But you have to identify what they are first, then assess them for if I lose them, then you're going to get into your, what I call a threat matrix and assess all those issues on the threat matrix. And then we go to course of action. We develop three different courses of action, which in a domestic emergency is.

Stay, go, or prepare to go. That's all you've got. And so when we do that and we score those with objective criteria, we score that and we select, this is my course of action in this particular emergency. Now the next step is we go and we do a war game. And this is no different than fighting with your spouse. It's like, you know what? If you do this to me, well, then fine, I'm going to do that.

This is what it is. A war game is literally, you know, an argument to determine what the counter, you know, this is the action. This is the counteraction. And this is my countermeasure. I'm going to go home tonight and be like, listen, hon, we're going to have a war game tonight. And she's going to go, what? I'm just going to pick something that annoys her and be like, we're talking about this to see how that. Yeah.

And, you know, no, and it's true. And I mean, this is, and I encourage people to do it with their family, to do the war gaming with the family, because it does two things. it picks apart your your theoretical plan okay it does that you think that oh that was a great idea well then you get somebody in your family who comes up with the devil's advocate like their job is to be the devil's advocate to be the 10th man to be the 10th man yeah and that's their job is to poke holes in your thing and say I'm going to throw in every wrench that I can throw you during the various phases of your plan okay so if I have to bug out here I have three phases to that, which is I have to prepare all of my stuff.

I have to travel from where I am to there. And then I have to sustain myself for a given amount of time. So when I do my war game, if my war game is to bug out and to relocate to a safe location, I have to take each of those three different phases, break them down into timelines, and then start picking them apart because then I have to start updating my plan. Okay. So you've got the makings of a great course of action, but it's not until you test it through the devil's advocate or the 10th man or wargaming that you can really, really get into the nitty

gritty details. And if you do that as a family, well, not all emergencies are going to see you and your family co-located at the exact same time. What if civil unrest does break out in your wife or husband or your children are traveling somewhere else for work or school or something? And now you lose communications. Well, you've developed the plan together. That event happened and you should know what the plan is because you help develop it and now execute the plan. And, you know, depending on what the contingency plan is, everybody knows that, hey, if the internet goes down and the power goes down for X number of hours, our immediate action is all to meet up at this one location and do a head count, right? This is what we're talking about. Now, I know all of this could

be overwhelming and a little bit terrifying to some people. You don't have to do it in a binge session. You can take two, three, four weeks to go through and do this. Now, the beauty is you only have to do IPE one time because it applies to every other plan after that. And I would say just focus on those five big threats to you. How likely is it? How dangerous? How dangerous? is if it happens and can it force me out of my home within 72 hours. If yes, yes and yes, focus on that plan. Where can people, I assume it's Amazon. No, I know it's Amazon, but if you want to get a copy of your book, the people's emergency plan, Amazon is the best place to go, correct? It is. It is. And I know a lot of people are upset about me supporting a gazillioner, but

But listen, it's the fastest and the cheapest I can get it into your hands. Everything else is cost prohibitive and very slow. So that's why I go that route. And, you know, we'll be at the Prairie Rising Forum. I'm going to hopefully be able to fly with a couple of cases of books and sell them there. If anyone out there in Ontario wants to set me up on a book signing, I'd be more than happy to come and do it that way as well. but I don't have the capacity to buy thousands and thousands of dollars worth of books. Well, you got to sail here.

When we running each other in Regina, Tom, I'm buying one. I just had a guy on Matt Smith. Now, folks, forgive me. Was that two weeks ago? Not that it matters. And he wrote a book called The Preparation. Now, it is not emergency preparedness. It's talking about preparing young men for the world.

And it was a fascinating book. I got it sitting on the shelf. And I'm like, your book probably needs to go right beside. it, in my mind, because I think it is a good, you know, I've told the story lots. It kind of shocks me, though, like, this is where we got to in Canada, but this is where we did get to in Canada. In the middle of COVID, there's a group of us met out in, uh, undisclosed location in pasture land and just discussed the fact they were closing down the border.

And we're like, whoa, that is pretty wild, you know, and what are we going to do if, you know, and we played out a bunch of different scenarios. And I just, I had a map and I, I'd drawn it out. And just by drawing out my plan, yeah, it made me just like, okay, well, if it happens, that's where I'm going to go. And, and I'm going to grab the wife and kids, and that's, that's what's happening. And so, to me, your book is another example of like, take the fear out of life. You know, there's, you gain nothing by having that rest on your shoulders. And, you know, whether you think civil unrest is coming or just you know a hundred year snowstorm that could knock out power for a few days you can use it for both you can you can plan for like man what if civil unrest did happen

what would we go there but you can spend just as much time planning out you know we live for eight months roughly seven months maybe in the dark in the cold and there's lots of different things that can happen during that time and to plan those out just build confidence and confidence in my opinion takes away all the fear because it's just like well if it happens this is what we're going to do and if you enlist your family into that you're building confidence for all of you which it would be a wonderful thing i think for the house yeah and i spend a lot of time in the book and every time i post about the book itself or i do focus a lot on confidence i mean what would you what would you rather have like i'm terrified my family's terrified i have no time to prepare i have no

idea what I have as a resource. And you're telling me when I'm actually getting something like auditory exclusion, vasoconstriction, tunnel vision, when I'm experiencing all these things, I'm, and I joke about this, you know, an old Star Trek analogy, like I'm surrounded by the Romulans or the Klingons, I have no phasers, no shields, and I'm going to come up with the Picard maneuver. I don't think so, right? That's not how war works. That's not how a emergencies work. You, you are get, you get reduced to the lowest level of your capability and you have to hope that you have this muscle memory and these standard operating procedures that are so good and so solid that you just let muscle memory do its thing. And, and so it's about having confidence.

I mean, we all get life insurance. We get car insurance. We get house insurance. We, we do this so that we're confident that if we lose these things that we're going to be okay okay or our family's going to be okay i view this as an insurance policy against things that are almost impossible to uh you know solve with an insurance policy like you know that's going to pay you if a tornado takes out your your trailer park so this is where i'm looking at it now i just want to really quickly talk about this idea of fear because I think it's really, really important. I like the saying, you know, do not comply, but I'm an even bigger fan of do not rely. And I think that that's fundamentally important. So a couple of years ago, I ran in the

provincial election here in Ontario and Druthers were there and they, in the interview, the guy says to me, the question was, you know, what does freedom mean to you? actually stopped me in my tracks. I didn't have an answer. I was kind of stumped there for a minute. And then it finally hit me that freedom to me in my view is the absence of fear. The less fear that I have in my life, the more free and enriched my life is. If I'm not afraid of food insecurity, shelter insecurity, water insecurity, self-defense,

if I'm not afraid of those things because I've solved those problems in my life, I'm more free. And so this is where we start to talk about homesteading. And it's not for everybody. I mean, even if you were to watch some of the videos lately, Canadian Prepper has done, he talks about homesteading. He's like, it's a hell of a lot more work than I thought it was ever going to be. It's not for everybody. But he's an individual trying to do it and solve a big, giant problem as one person. This is why I think community is very, very important.

Do not rely. And then when you get things like Bill C28, or C2, 8, 9, 63, CBDCs, digital ID, all of these things. When you're not reliant on the system for your survival, you have very few reasons to have fear, but you're not compliant. You're not reliant. So I think these are important principles to take away. And I'm going to put in a caveat with us.

all of this stuff. Until all of these bills completely take over this country, now is the time more than ever in our entire history to get more involved politically, more active, more loud, more known. Not a time to retreat back into our homes because Chris and Tamara got house arrest. This is now the time to go full offensive and get engaged with every level of government at the political, in the political spectrum. And I say this all the time, that although Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford and Jason Kenney and Scott Moe, all of these people set the conditions for what happened to us during COVID,

every local government, every local police department, every local school board, every local pastor, every local banker, every local, local, local institution in our society were the ones that executed the plans against us. It was done to us by them. It wasn't done to us by Justin Trudeau. He set the conditions, but it was executed locally. So get involved now and put an end to this stuff at the local level.

And that's the only way people are going to do it. And I'll put a caveat on top of another caveat. There's no such thing is a political messiah. So stop treating these people like they're going to solve, your problem. Daniel Smith is not going to solve your problem. A Mark Carney, Pierre Polly of, Maxine Bernier, Derek Sloan, none of these people are going to solve your problem. You have to be involved. You know, politics is dirty. It's hard. It's really, really, um, heartbreaking. Get a helmet, get in there and fight for yourself. Do that.

because local action has a national consequence. Sitting back thinking someone else is going to do the heavy lifting for you is how we got into this bloody mess to begin with. I agree. I just agree. To me, the answer doesn't rely is nowhere in the political realm. The answer is, you know, there's a good book. And then there's different people like Jordan Peterson who wrote, just clean up your room. room and you'd be surprised with doing those little things can do on your own life.

And the rely thing, remove yourself for reliance on the government or government, uh, um, institutions is, yeah, like to me, that makes a ton of sense because, um, you don't realize, even if you just stare at that top, you, you start looking at, oh man, I didn't realize how much I rely on them right now. And so if they start telling me they're going to start taking things away, well, what do we see in COVID? They started, you'll lose your job. Well, do you need your job or don't you? Right? And, you know, and other things. Do I need the Emmington Oilers? Do I need to actually go to a game or don't I? Right. Yeah. Because that's what the pinch points were during COVID. And if I extrapolate that out into the future of CBDCs and all the different

things, I'm like, yeah, there's going to be some interesting times ahead of first. And, the only way to navigate them is to start preparing now. And that comes in lots of different forms. You know, we were talking yesterday, once again, I guess this conversation with Ken really stuck with me because I was like, what's the one thing we can guarantee in the next year? And I was like, well, our money is going to be worth less. I don't know how much less, but it is going to be worth less. So knowing that, what should you be doing?

Right. And there's lots of different things you can do. But that is the one guarantee. I can't, I can't guarantee that, you know, a whole lot of other things are going to happen because I actually don't know what, what the government's going to do. I don't know what foreign governments are going to do. I can't predict the weather as much as some places seem to try. I can just react to the current situation. And the current situation in the next year is my money is going to be worth less.

Full stop. Absolutely. I think it's 35% less than the last 10 years now. alone. And, you know, I'm actually drafting, I've got the outline done. I'm looking at a fourth book. And so, you know, before I got fired from teaching at Georgian College in Barry, Ontario, or not participating in the experimental injection, I taught AI ethics. And I taught machine learning. Those were two subjects.

And I built those courses. And, you know, I am looking at sort of the future. And my analysis is that AI is unstoppable. The genie's already out of the bottle. It is not going to be stopped. I think that's impossible at this point. And it is going to have a serious, serious impact. on employment. I work right now as a product manager for a software company. We're building

the platform called Toto, like the Wizard of Oz, Toto. And I'm going to speak a little bit about it and what its use is and why I've been working so hard with this team for a year now to build TOTO. And we're seeing it already within our company, how AI is changing the the way we're doing business. And so this isn't inevitable. And people are going to start, they're going to have to start seriously looking at what are AI resistant types of employment versus, um, you know, things that are going to knock you right flat on your back.

You know, if you're in the medical imaging field right now, your days are numbered. If you're a software developer right now, your days are numbered. If you're a legal assistant or a paralegal. or you're involved in a lot of white collar type of professions, your days are numbered in terms of employment in that field. And so I think people need to be prepared for that. And unfortunately, like it or not, this is going to have a huge motivation for governments

to start looking at CBDCs. They're going to start looking at digital currencies. There are going to have to be different scenarios where we, we're going to, like, there's no other form of technology that has, there's a paradigm shift and let's say mechanization that replaced muscle, you know, where you weren't out there with a horse or an ox in the field and now you're driving a tractor. Sure, that was a paradigm shift, but it's nothing in comparison to what AI is going to do to the employment market across the world. This is, this is, uh,

inception. This is a paradigm shift inside a paradigm shift. And so this is going to be so disruptive to us. And it's going to be that way for a significant number of years. And I think it's inevitable. And I'm not even talking about Terminator yet. I'm not even going down that rabbit hole because I do think there's a way out of that. I absolutely do. But I will say the disruption to our way of life is going to be experienced in our lifetime, you and I. It's already happening. So that's another factor that we have to consider with all of this stuff now. And I do strongly recommend that people try to go and get land, get a significant amount of acreage and start thinking in terms of vulnerability.

Because, you know, the more distance you can put between scarcity is the more distance I put between psychological fear. When I solve my food scarcity and shelter and all these other things, when I solve those problems and I'm not dependent for those things with other people, I don't care if AI takes my job. Right. And so this is what I'm trying to get people, get prepared to start preparing for yourself. And if you can't afford to do it, that's okay. There's other people out there that will participate in this with you. No one says you've got to go buy 100 acres and build 100 houses or 100 little bunkeys. Buy the land and solve the resource problems and go from there and continue to build it out.

Because I don't think your time horizon is much more beyond five to 10 years. After the five year mark from now, it's going to exponentially get faster. So, you know, there's a lot to unpack there. And I do this trick all the time with people. And I can never measure the impact of it. But if I were to take this little business card that I have here and write a dollar on it, just write a $1 bill on it. And I want to give you a demonstration of what the way our economy is actually built.

Because the average person is aware of printing money and, you know, fractured monetary system. But they don't truly get it. Okay. So let's just pretend I take this little business card and I write a dollar on it. And I say, Sean, this is the only dollar in the entire planet. This is the only money that exists. That's it. My one dollar.

And you say to me, all right, Tom, I want to borrow that dollar. And I say, okay, Sean, you can have the dollar, but I'm going to charge you 10% interest on that dollar. To settle my loan, how much money do you owe me in total? A dollar 10. Right. Do you see the problem? You're making me do math. I had to think about it.

No, I know, I know, but do you see the problem? There's no dollars. What did I say? There's no 10 cents. Right, there's only one dollar. Yeah. So there's no 10 cents to actually pay you back. There's no 10 cents.

Okay. And you know what the Canadian taxpayer paid this year is paying this year in interest that doesn't even exist, which is an illusion. $54 billion. It's the third largest. line item in the federal budget to debt under healthcare and national defense is paying back the interest on the loans that the government took federally. And let's not even talk about provincially, okay, your own household debt. And by the way, you never had a decision, you did not get to participate in the decision to take out those loans. And that's why you're getting

tax to debt is to pay back loans that other people took out. And so when we talk about the fact that $54 billion a year goes towards fiction, paying back fiction, don't pay your taxes and see what happens to your real property, right? Yes. So this is the economy that we've built for ourselves. And you've seen the liberal government over the last 10 years spend, spend and spend and take on more debt to stuff nobody in this country even needs. You know, I used to joke and say Justin Trudeau was spending money like he was, uh,

Yeah, that's my dog, Lucy. I was spending, he was spending money like a guy who had six months to live. He was buying Ferrari's gone on vacation, emptying out and maxing out his credit cards. Because he knew he's never going to have to pay it back because I think they saw what was coming. Well, this is why if I go, if I can guarantee one thing in the next year, your money will be worth less. That's why, you know, I always talk about the start of the show. You know, we got a precious metal sponsor. That's a nice one.

You got Bow Valley Credit Union here. Yes. It has opened up ways to get Bitcoin through a bank, right? Like those are just, I'm not saying they're the only ways by any stretch of the imagination. It's just if you can guarantee one thing, our money is less, worth less in a year's time. Why would you continue doing things you're doing? That's a thing you've got to look at. And that's a different form of prep.

I mean, you know, this prepping thing is interesting to me because when I look about, when I think about it, you just have to like your AI example that's another you know you're sitting there and you're looking at your life it's like well in my life folks I look at what I do and I go what are the threats to it I don't know the fact they got a bill coming out that basically I think me and Tom can agree this conversation will not be allowed to happen and I don't know I don't know how quickly it happens if it goes through I don't know if they just come in tomorrow and kick down the door and out the you know how I go that's probably my favorite talking, but it's like, it is very real. And this has been a very real threat now for about, I want to say two years. I forget when we first started talking about a year and a half ago. And it's just becoming more and more like it is on the horizon. Does this version go through? I don't know. But some version at some point is going to come through that is going to make some of what we do here very difficult. And I have to deal with that. And I have to, you know, strategize how on earth am I going to deal with that? In your occupation, as Tom was pointing out,

if you're a legal assistant or something else, you have different problems that you have to look at realistically. And that's a form of prep. That's literally taking, you know, I think of prep like digging a bunker in, and waiting for World War III. But in life, the prep is, you know, I'm not saying that scenario can't play out. Certainly it can.

But like you go day by day, it's like, what's coming? The cost of living is going through the roof. and people are going to be struggling. You go AI, nobody can argue that. The jump in AI has been insane to watch. And what does another five years bring? Less or more? The answer is simple.

That's more. And then how is that going to play out in society? That's probably not a terrible thing to sit back and stew on for a bit while you're in your current job and go, am I, you know, okay? Or is there a chance I could lose this because of tech? technology. Simple as that. Yeah. And I think there are going to be a certain segment of society that rejects all things AI. You know, for example, you know, your podcast, you could go on, what is it called Kling?

Right now and reproduce the Sean Newman podcast through the use of AI. You could do that now if you really want it. I mean, it would take a while and you get maybe one episode where you're like that. kind of suck but five years from now could you but there's a there's going to be a certain amount of people that say you know what I I don't I don't want to watch it because it's not real I want to watch the real Sean I want to get real things like I want to buy real software my son he makes video games he's a software developer he's a software developer he likes to make games similar to like Sonic and that 2D stuff I

that's not me but there is a group of people out there that are going to like that retroactive and they're going to want to know that it was made by humans. You know, like there are certain things out there that people are going to still want to do. Like people get upset at me because I sell on Amazon. People want to buy it in person or at a bookstore or something. I get that. There'll be a certain amount of people that do that. It's a small amount. It's a small amount of people that are going to do it. And so this is why I try to distinguish the difference between prepping and homesteading because they're not the same. But again, the homesteading is attractive to me because the barriers to entry into that

are not that bad if you start pooling your resources now. And you will always be able to provide for your own, you know, food, water and shelter. And I think overall, I just think you'll be happier. I think you'll be happier knowing that you've removed a lot of risk or insecurity in your life. But if you have a green thumb, that's great. You're going to be a hot commodity. But if you don't, get out there and find somebody who can. Like this is where I say, you've got to diversify your skill set.

And a lot of people always talk about, oh, I got to buy gold or I got to buy this. And I always say, yeah, buy gold, like diversify everything. But don't forget to buy seeds. You know, seeds will be a medium of exchange. And you can show up to my property with a donkey cart full of gold in a complete on ShtF, but you're not getting my seeds because that's what's feeding my family. Right. So you've got to diversify a little bit.

And I think people have to start having a real hard look at the future and decide where do I fit into this future? Where do I want to be? And does the rural homesteading thing have an appeal? to me or do I have to solve that problem in an urban setting like, you know, the 50th story of a beehive on Lakeshore Road down in Toronto? You know, figure out where you want to be. Or do you want to just, hey, give me my digital ID, give me my CBC, give me all this stuff. I'll be happy in the city living in my beehive. A lot of people are going to be like that. Good, because that's a lot less competition for the lifestyle that I want to have.

have choices. We certainly do. Tom, appreciate you coming on. We're going to see each other in Regina October 18th. So hopefully October 12th, people have a few more days that can buy tickets. It's down on the show notes if you want to go to the link to grab tickets. But Tom's going to be there. I'm going to be there. A whole bunch of others are going to be there. It's going to be an interesting day in Regina. And look forward to seeing you in person, Tom. I look forward to buying a copy of your book. So make sure you have a company, a copy earmark for me because I want it signed and we'll put it in the bookshelf. We're going to use it too, folks. But certainly it's going to go in the bookshelf here.

But either way, we'll see you here in a couple days. Appreciate you hopping on and doing this. Yeah. Thanks, Sean, for having me. Thank you.