Shaun Newman Podcast - #931 - Blue Collar Roundtable #10

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Today on another edition of the Blue Collar Roundtable I'm joined by co-host 222 Minutes and guests Drew Mckay, Justin Stevens, Shaun Rue and Shanon Hines. Municipal elections are October 20th and all of these folks are running in their respective communities. 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] Prophet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] the code “SNP” on all orders

Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today is another Guardian blue-collar roundtable. Tuse has got a funny quip here, I'm sure, about it being a white-collar roundtable. It's put together by Tuse. I got to change it up Tuse. We had a little glitch in the start of this, sucker. So we're changing. Anyways, it's a Guardian-blue-color roundtable.

Guardian-white-collar round table. Tews is going to have something. What do you want to say, Tews? What do you want to say about being white? You totally ruin my joke. What's your joke? The point of the joke, folks, is that we've got to be a lot. got a whole bunch of blue collar problem solvers who are tired of what's going on in their communities

and they want to get involved. And now that they're becoming politicians, it's become a white color roundtable because they're fucking suits now. Thanks, too. Great joke. Thanks for coming out. You really missed on the enthusiasm of it. I don't know what upset you so much. It is a guardian blue color roundtable. We're back. It's been a while. And we've got a group of people running for local elections in their municipalities. And before we get to that, a little note on Guardian plumbing and heating, these guys have been keeping homes, farms, and businesses

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the same reliable system. It's an innovative way to keep your operation running efficiently and save on energy costs. And Whether it's expert service cutting edge power solutions or advice you can trust. Guardian plumbing and heating has your back. Just check out Guardian at Guardian plumbing.com. Now we got a bunch of problem solvers on the show today, too, is you're the one who put this all together.

And I know you're upset with me because you had a joke. And I just, folks, what? The first time it was great. The delivery was awesome. My timing was impeccable. And you're like, no, no, no, no. We're going to decide we have technical issues and start all over again. You know what?

I'm feeling a little spicy from the latest mashup and from every time you stick things in the show notes and don't tell me about them. So it's my way of getting back to you. Yeah, okay, yeah, here we go. All right, we got a whole bunch of things going on. Today we've got a bunch of guests in here. We're going to have them introduce themselves

what they do for work and where they're running. I don't know, and I suppose I could tack on why you're running. We'll try this again. Which straw broke each of your camel's backs on this? Correct. Drew McKay, you've been a blue-collar roundtable guest before. We'll start with you and we'll work our way around. Hello, my name is Drew McKay. I'm out in Clearwater County, the Rocky Mountain House area. I'm a oil field guy, electrical instrumentation. And I've decided to run for council because it seemed that this council just hasn't been listening to anybody in the county. and they've now decided that they're going to

they're going to be in direct conflict with farmers and ranchers by starting to purchase land within the county. So that I guess was the straw that broke the old camel. Justin. Hello. Justin Stevens, Stettler County. I'm actually running for re-election. So this will be my second term.

I felt a sense of, community service. If you're willing, if you get engaged and you're making complaints, you have to be willing to step up and do something about it. Far too many people throw stones from the distance, keyboard warrior types, but never actually contribute to the solution.

So that made me want to run. Shannon. My name is Shannon Hines and I am running. in Ward 1 of the foothill school division just southwest of calgary i was a teacher until 2021 and honestly i love teaching but the system pressured me to such degree that i am eager for an opportunity to try to change some things up i feel things have been just continually dumped on the front lines and there are more paperwork all the time there are more staffed dealing more with people work than students.

And I do think that there are ways that we can affect classroom conditions that aren't even being looked at. Finally, Sean Rue. I'm Sean Rue. Mixed paddling grain farmer on the MD of Wainwright running for counselor. And I wouldn't say I had any grievances or any, major political reasons for running as a counselor. My wife, Frito's uncle, was the Reef and RMD for 30 years,

and he's retired, retiring, and he suggested to me that I should run. And I just wanted to take a statement. And basically, I just want to contribute and try to guide, I'm glad the municipality in a good direction. Well, me and Tuse, okay, so where this conversation started on bringing all of you here was we were looking at not only the mashup community, but the podcast community, and how many people are, you know, with the elections coming up October 20th, how many people were putting their hats in a ring? And Tews thinks, well, no, I shouldn't put this in Tuesday.

the way I wrote it down is these are some of the last people you would expect to put their hats in the ring because they're busy running businesses. They're blue collar workers. They're making the things move that need to move. And instead, they're putting their, you know, their best foot forward trying to affect change in their their communities. Two, would you agree with that. That's, that's a fair recap of my thoughts on it. Yes. So when we get to, you know, this election coming up, what is, you know, like when you sit and look at Alberta, you know, and you're looking at your different communities, I don't know if there's one just thing that we can start on. But certainly, like, what is, how easy of a decision was it to decide to do this? Because, you know, I hear all your stories and I'm like, yeah, there's some commonalities here of like, you're probably all very busy people. And.

This is a tough world to go into. It was an incredibly tough decision. So it's very demanding time-wise. I have my own oil field construction company. And there's several things that you have to get over in order to put your name in the hat. The first is, I lose out on tens of thousands of dollars every year just for having, sitting in counsel. Why is that?

There's a salary sacrifice. There's clearly a time sacrifice. And the best way I can explain this in a small rural setting is if you want to coast and do the bare minimum, it is the gravy train with biscuit wheels. If you want to do a good job and make changes, it is nearly another full-time job twice. Tuse, you were going to ask, why do you lose O'Don? Why does it lose you tens of thousands of dollars? Is it, are you getting?

Yeah, go ahead. So the way our remuneration works is we work on a per die per day. So if we go to a full day of council meetings, we are eligible for $275. And anyone that's worked in the oil field construction will tell you that the wages that you're missing out on are way north by a wide, wide margin. So to skip out on your quote-unquote real job is quite a hit to take. I assume, I assume Justin then you would probably agree with or at least gone down the thought process. On the other side, if I don't get involved and continue to see things fall apart, although I can go to the oil field and make a bit more money, probably a lot more money, oh, am I kidding. At the end of the day, the society around me and my community around me is falling apart and somebody needs to step in and do it.

100%. And for me, a lot of that kind of light bulb moment was when I had kids, because you get more and more involved in the community and all the nonprofit groups and sports groups. And you'll notice that you see the same circle of people that show up to volunteer at every group. and at a certain point, you kind of have that reckoning where if I'm not part of the solution, then I'm just another one of the problems. So you feel obligated to get involved and to try and make your community a better place for your children. I know I'm going to say this a couple more times, but feel free folks as we go along here to just hop in because a roundtable is always better. when people just talk in if they hear something they want to talk about.

I mean, Drew, I can't see you. But, you know, you're a guy who runs a business. You're about as flat out as any one human being I've met. Was this, you know, you hear Justin talk about the money loss. I assume you're like nodding your head in the background somewhere of like, yep, that's true. But this is important. Yeah, certainly, Sean.

The financial side of it is part of it, right? And I'm lucky enough to have great guys working for me. and I'm lucky enough that my wife is self-sufficient at the farm. She can take care of the cows, right? But it's the time, it's the thing they're going to miss, right, around home and the things I'm going to miss with the kids because they're, you know, they're in high school, so they're doing all sorts of amazing things and playing all sorts of sports.

And it's more of that sacrifice that concerned me that kept me out of this. You know, people have been bugging me to do this for, a while now. And I just, I didn't want to take that little bit of time that I have and spend it in a political theater when I can be spending it with the kids. But it's at the point now where somebody has to do it. So here we are. Well, what exactly is going on with, uh, with them buying land? Why are they doing it and what problems is that creating? Well, originally there was a purchase of land just outside of Rocky that the thought was they would build a new, building there and move the county offices, but it was going to be tens of millions of dollars.

So the people said, no, we're not having any of that. And then just recently a couple months ago, they bought another quarter of good farmland, which if you live in an agricultural municipality, the biggest fight is to preserve farmland. So the county purchased this quarter paying a record-setting amount. They paid $1.8 million for 140 acres. that's well beyond any land sale in Clearwater County before. And they did it, they did it in a manner where there was absolutely no transparency.

They utilized the clause that allowed them to provide no notification. It wasn't even discussed at a regular council meeting. So it was only the council members that knew that they were going to start in on this auction and bid on this quarter. Did they know, Was there a connection between council and the owner of the land? No, but I mean, it was on whatever it is, QL bid or one of those big auction sites. So it was well known that the land was coming up for auction.

But they were bidding under an alias. And then after it came out that it was the county that ended up winning the auction, their justification was that they believe that the town of Leslieville, this small hamlet that hasn't expanded in 40 years is going to need room for expansion. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we go. So, wait a second. The county was in an auction and used an alias so that nobody would know that it was them bidding on it.

Yeah, it's as crazy as it sounds, Sean. Was it at least, you name like Turd Ferguson or something? What? unfortunately the the auction was outside of my area like it was about 15 miles away so I wasn't even paying attention to it so that's just from guys that were

bidding on it that told me about that part it it is amazing how much of a hot button item farmland preservation has become if you think one quarter is controversial wait till you have a solar developer applying for 16 quarters at a go

and taking that out of farmland. That's when it gets really controversial and people come out of the woodwork. Yeah, and we're lucky to have a lot of people that are strongly opposed to any and all green and renewable projects since none of them are green. or renewable or will ever produce enough energy to even justify themselves. So we're in good shape out here that way, even though the Alberta utilities tries to shove them down our throat on a regular basis. So there's something the public is not greatly aware of,

is that municipalities have extremely limited input into any green energy up, implications whatsoever. If the AUC approves it, it will go forward. The absolute best we can do is negotiate some conditions.

But we have zero control of whether that will be approved or not. Yeah, and there's a little bit more to them too, is that people don't realize that none of these none of this stuff is related under our energy.

So like we had a development of wind farm come up north where I live. And none of that stuff, like the landowners just assumed that, you know, these guys build in the windmills are going to put the roads along the near road, around the edge of the field and you're going to get paid compensation. And when they come across the land, well, none of them are even. And that's because it's kind of like a wild west. There's no regulation when it comes to these renewables. And people don't realize them.

So like anyone, I'm in this polity, they've actually started doing a lot of education seminars, trying to get, you know, some of the landers and look, that stuff doesn't just happen if you got an oil wound. Well, that was, I was talking with Shane Getson about this. a while back and that was the large impetus behind the moratorium that they put on on renewables that six-month moratorium was to actually get some stuff written down and he used the exact words you did Sean which was Wild West

yeah Shannon you were looking to hop in Just that there are a couple of solar projects in our area. There is a community group that is trying to fight those. So will community members have very much say into whether or not those go ahead? Ultimately, no, not at this point. It's all the AUC that has the final say on it right now. So that's why conversations like this are good, because as municipalities, we can utilize the RMA to,

push back against the AUC. And hopefully that's, that's going to be one of my priorities is to put, uh, put the control of these projects in the hands of the municipalities and not the province. Now, so the local, everybody listening though, we could just,

uh, explain a few acronyms though. Um, okay. Well, the RMA is the, oh, go ahead, Justin.

Uh, AUC is Alberta Utilities Commission. Um, They're the regulator in that department. RMA is the rural municipalities of Alberta. So 69 rural municipalities make up the membership. Is there any input by the local neighbors? Yes, but it's limited power.

Part of the changes that the UCP made is that the local neighbors have standing, if they so choose to go to the AUC hearing. And they did do another tweak that somewhat leveled the playing field and created a cottage industry. And that is that group of locals can get their legal fees paid for by the applicant. And it has created a cottage industry of lawyers that meet each other every week in front of the AUC, and they just rotate clients.

And the hatred is palpable between these guys after they argue about different projects day after day after day throughout Alberta. So there is some limited involvement that the locals have, but it's, there is a distinct power dynamic there that's in play. So if I'm understanding this correctly, if some solar wind developer comes in and says, like, do they have to own the land?

No. Okay, so the AUC can potentially just rule and say these slubs are coming in and they're putting six windmills out in your past. The landowner has to have signed up on it. Okay. It's a lease, just like any other lease. Yeah, the landowner is going to get a package.

I don't know what happened here. It happened in a few different places. One was in the MD-Wainery and actually the whole Pudderate colony. They started with, you know, signed this piece of paper. We're going to do wind testing. That's how it started. And then they would put up a wind tower monitor for five or ten years. and there was supposed to windmills going up in that area.

And actually, the neighbors did get one stop because of the way they were going to route the polar lines. That's the only reason to come stoned. Because of transmission limits, they couldn't, there was such a fight that they just came up and then built the wind farm north of me instead of a different hundred colony. But they basically used.

give up your rights. Once you sign a paper, it's it. They can come in and like you really have to pay attention to what you're signing. That's correct. So it is a private contract in agreement between these applicants and the landowner. But the anchoring point for a lot of our local landowners is they are used to oil and gas and the rules on how they operate. And that is markedly different than what green energy uses. And I can understand why people are willing to hear them out, because the terms that are being offered are very, very attractive money. Like, you're well north of $1,000 an acre every year for 25 years.

Like, your profitability-wise, I can understand why people would entertain the offers. Now, where I want to really push the education piece is with oil and gas, it's operated for so many decades and generations in our area. That's the anchoring point that people use, and it is so much different. So depending on how that contract is written, we have landowners in Alberta that are responsible for the reclamation. of the green energy.

If that's how the contract was agreed to and structured. Whereas with oil and gas, they are responsible. There is a backstop with limitations that is grossly underfunded on the orphan well. There is an annual lease that you get. The oil company is responsible for weed control, site access, all those sorts of things. and this is what people are used to. So they're caught off guard and many of them have signed questionable deals thinking that the new applicants are the same as the old.

So if I understand correctly, the money is going to be hard to turn down is what you're pointing to, Justin. And then a major difference because you go, while everybody looks to how oil and gas runs, runs in this area and how oil companies have to deal with the landowner and reclamation and just parts of the deal. And they assume that the green energy deals coming in are very similar. But if they read the fine print, that's not the case. Now, after the moratorium, has that changed? Like, have they addressed some of these pitfalls?

Some of them, yes. So they do require a security. the security comes in late in the project in my opinion. So it's a decade down the road before they have to start putting up the security. And it gets progressively larger as the project ages. But some of these projects have changed hands four or five times before they've ever produced power. So requiring some mystery sixth company that may or may not be utilizing this 10 years from now to provide a security doesn't give us a whole bunch of solace. Well, 10 years is an eternity for a green energy project.

I mean, you'd be hard pressed to find one that's made it that long. So they're walking away from these projects based on the loss of profitability. And essentially the landowner is just left with the disaster that you can picture. And it's not only that, like it, I know this has come up on the show before, Sean, but it's the other, the other thing that they're doing with this land. Like a lot of these early leases were for the entire quarter section or half section or however many acres they lease from you. And then they're actually using that as title to borrow against. So if you say you wanted to buy a quarter, you go to the bank, the bank says, well, no, this quarter is already, it already has a lien against it from this conglomerate in the UK. But they don't own it.

But I know they don't own it, but with a lot of these early leases, that's what they were doing. They're pulling your equity along with leaving you with this complete disaster. The crackpot is, he's very well educated and versed on this. We've talked, okay, so all of you are getting involved in your upcoming elections. Green energy obviously has, seems like it's a common thread. Drew, you mentioned the fact that your area buying land in an auction under an alias, which is questionable at best. I mean, at worst, it's, I don't even know what,

to tack on to that. So there's things going on in your different areas that are obviously getting you all involved. Chanam, why are you, you're running for school board? What is it in your area that you see happening that you're like, I just got to do this. I got to find a way to get involved. Well, honestly, I think education in general has been politicized for years. And we need to kind of get back to some basics. I think the public sector tends to add complexity and we need to simplify some things because there are levels above the front line. They're making it harder for teachers to do their jobs because their tasks are being added all the time and the level of behaviors that we're seeing in schools now. We've got two or three things.

these severe behaviors, you do not have very much time to dedicate to other kids who need help. And there seem to be no other sports, but there's extra paperwork. So we pretend we're doing all these things. But in reality, there's less help for students and for teachers. Do you have any thoughts, you know, as we sit here, you know, we've got a teacher strike going on. And me and twos were just talking about on the mashup. We're like, wonder we can get a teacher on that. can even, and I know you're not an active teacher anymore, but like, do you have any insight on this?

Like, because it is like, it's just silence. I don't know. Like, you're watching it play out. You know, you got how many thousands of kids not in school and after school sports and on and on it goes. You have any thoughts on the current strike? Well, first of all, I think that if you are a teacher, we were always told that if we spoke out against any policy of our school's vision, that was grounds for instant dismissal. So teachers have to be really careful what they say publicly.

And the only person, the only entity that's kind of allowed to speak for teachers is the Alberta Teachers Association. So right now you've got a fight between the province and the ATA, and I think that teachers do have some issues that they're fighting and that the job is getting more difficult all the time. I don't know that the solution is in a politicized fight between the province and the ATA. And I mean, from my own experience, I was teaching when the NDP was in. Teachers got 0% raises and if there was more money that went into education, it didn't make it to the front lines. So I think that more to be done between the school board and the actual teachers.

If we looked at what can we take away? Because I feel the school board is always looking to add things. And it detracts from the actual core work, if that makes sense. Yep. To me anyway. Well, I'm curious. I got a group of men off to my right. on here. You all got kids. Um, you're seeing what's happening. You hear a teacher, you know, like, I don't know, maybe I'm the only one sitting here going like, what, what do you, what do you do with

this, right? Because it, it's like, no, as Shannon says, no teacher can say a word, because they can face disciplinary action for doing so. So you have this fight going on. And I don't know, we all sit here, you know, what's, what's, what's, what's, what's, what's going to happen? Like, do they just want more money? Is that what it's about? Is it about the capping of class sizes? Can they even do that? How would that affect things? I don't know. Maybe I'm speaking to myself, but does anybody have any thoughts on that? I think that problem is not dedicated to that one professional association. I think it's more widespread than that. On my first term on council, we got more and more involved in, say, healthcare, for example, and there's a whole series of professional

associations there. And we've gotten a ton of feedback that, doctors, are scared of the college of physicians, nurses, teachers. And some of these professional associations seem to have taken the power to their head a bit. And there is some bullying and intimidation going on. I'm certain of it. Yeah, I would agree with that. And also, I think it doesn't matter where you are in the public service. I think most

Albertans want to see more teachers on the front line and more doctors and more nurses and more x-ray attacks. But somehow more money get sucked up to other levels all the time. Typical bureaucracy. The

bureaucracy will grow until it can sustain the weight of the bureaucracy. But on another topic, there are another angle from this topic is there has been a serious societal shift on how we raise our kids and what the expectations of that school is. And schools all too often become the dumping ground for what was historically a community

or family responsibility. And I think we need to look internally at what we're doing as community. communities because if we expect the school system to educate our kids, great. That's the expectation always has been. But we also want them to feed our kids. We want them to provide language skills. We want to provide counseling. We're going to teach them a second language.

And then we want you to provide after school activities until we get down work. And if our expectation is that schools are the catch-all for kids, this system will always fail. And this is a societal issue, not saying who's responsible other than more parents need to be engaged and involved and responsible for their kids. If you can't be responsible for your kids, what is it in life that we can expect you to be responsible for? That's a great point. Yeah, I absolutely. Another issue that we see is like the, you know, the ATA and the province for having this big political flight.

I don't know. My opinion is it kind of stems from immigration. I mean, we've had so much immigration coming in. And I don't, we don't see it out here. Like it's all, we're small rural schools. Some of school populations declining actually in our whole, all of our areas. But like, they're talking. about classroom sizes and

not having the like in the cities the classrooms are huge the schools are massively overpopulated a lot of these kids don't speak English and so I like I think that's a major capitalist in the fight

and nobody's really talking about it and it I don't know it seems like as Jack Bodnick would put it you're a noticer Yes, exactly. And I guess just to add to that to compound the problems, I mean, obviously the ATA is not representing the majority of teachers. That's pretty clear that they have a political motivation to make Daniel Smith look as poor in the public eye as possible.

So you've got that on top of immigration. And then I don't know when this happened, but as a society, we decided that we had to. to put kids with learning disabilities and special needs in the same class as everyone else. So what that does is that takes, whatever percentage, depending on the amount in the class, out of the teacher's time, just assisting kids where in the past, there was rooms and specialized teachers available to work with these kids. So they got a better education. and the kids in the classroom in the conventional classroom also got a better education.

Now, everyone seems afraid to admit that that system worked better, and everyone's afraid to, it's a bit of a political grenade to say that, you know, kids with disabilities aren't going to benefit, or aren't benefiting from being in the general classroom. Why that's so scary to say, I don't know, but it needs to be said. Well, would you like to be the teacher who pulls a parent to side? and says, look, your kid is retarded. We have a special bus for him, right?

Well, it's an awkward conversation. I had no idea that you had spoken to my parents before, too. Well, I think teachers are quite frustrated with inclusion. When it was first brought in, teachers were told, oh, don't worry, those students will be supported, and then they've just taken the support away. so it's not working as being practiced. Shannon, how many years did you teach?

20. 20. From year one to year 20, when you look back on it, how much did it change from day one to, you know, I don't know what day that is, but 20 years later? Well, like what I consider to be a bad behavior at the beginning of my career and what I consider to be a bad behavior at the end of my career, dramatically different.

How so? Like, what was a bad behavior 20 years ago to now? Well, I had a, I taught a child who had a behavior cold and spent some of them to stay outside of the classroom in a resource room. And he was a walk in the park. By the end of my career, there was a, there were, you know, were seeing children who part of their individual program plan included, and I mean, I taught early elementary, like,

so it included evacuating the rest of the class if they had a meltdown. Oh, wow. Yeah, and since I have left the school at which I was at there, the police were called apparently over an incident involving a grade two child. So, just to make it simple, more money doesn't fix this problem, correct? Yeah. More money doesn't fix any problem.

Well, they've upped the amount of funding, but yet we've got less EAs and teachers haven't gotten raises. So where is the funding? Look at your school divisions. Look at the raises that your superintendents and your COOs and your CEOs and your CEOs have received in every school division, it's disturbing. Like these people are making insane amounts of money. Yeah, well, and I do think that they have changed the way they deal with these things.

So, for instance, in my former school division, which is not the one I'm running in, but they now have, instead of an early, an early literacy teacher in schools where kids were given some, you know, small group help, they now have early literacy coaches. so they I put this kind of second hand in fairness but so now you will teach a lesson and this coach will come and watch you and then you'll have a meeting about it and then they'll teach the same lesson

and you'll talk about it like I would argue we need all hands on death and a far better use of that time and energy is to have both those teachers wherever possible working with kids I do see some parallels between the school system and the municipality system because there is a severe disconnect

with the level or scale of problems that some of our large urban neighbors have versus the rules and it is a markedly different problem so we're fortunate in our school division where we we haven't seen the classroom spikes that we've seen in the large cities we have a lot of these other benefits and in some ways we've had rural schools closed down, which are pretty detrimental to the villages and hamlets when it happens. But one of the resolutions that we put forward was that the province has to quit centralizing power for all the government jobs in Edmonton and Red Deer and Calgary. And if you want to turn the tide on urbanization and they're spending billions, now trying to build school capacity, how about we take the AUC and we create a regional hub in a rural

community or the AER or Alberta environment. Not everyone needs to be employed in downtown Edmonton because we have capacity in our schools right now. We have the infrastructure and what do we get in In return, the urbans are very, very upset because of grants in lieu of taxes. Well, you know what? If you moved 100 jobs and 100 families out to my community, you can keep the tax money for the business because I will happily accept those people, those jobs, and the economic spinoffs that come with it, I don't need taxes from that one individual building.

We're good. it is such a net benefit to our community that gets funneled to the large urbans and and anytime you get to these broad organizations like aTA the problems that happen in calgary and edmonton are not the same scale of problems that happen in rural alberta and it's hard for one group to represent both and i think that's lost in this conversation and I would agree with that to a fairly large extent however in terms of behaviors like I've taught in a town and it was we still saw increasing increasing behaviors coming in and some of that societal and I don't know that

the school board can fix it but we need to look at some different ways of dealing with it and as a person on the front lines I felt like the higher-ups were not interested in anyone's perspective And that doesn't help us have any problems. Question. For, now Shannon's a little different than Drew, Justin, and Sean. But running for municipal elections to be a representative of your community, we've talked about some of the green and how that's coming into respective communities.

We've talked about education and some of the problems there. immigration has come up. How much of this can you affect? And this is probably to start with a question for Justin, because you've been doing it. Like how much of this can you lead your community on? Because Justin, you talked beautifully about, you know, parents need to take control of their families and their lives

for an order for things to change. By running for, you know, to be a representative of your community, how much can you impact by being in that position? I'm not naive. There is no silver bullet, and it is an entire series of small, little changes. And you cannot turn a key, but if you can slowly but surely help one or two people at a time,

that is a noticeable change to their life. I mean, when you talk about these grander scale issues, this is where we have to pool together, and this is the strength in RMA, because as an organization, we do have some sway with the government. And so many of our issues, we're more attuned to it because we're the closest level of government,

but we don't necessarily have the power to change the laws or regulations that are causing some of these issues. So that's where we do rely on RMA, and to their credit, they are very successful. Okay, you would mention RMA. Go ahead. I just said lobbying through RMA. Like, that's what you're doing as municipality.

There is a sense that there's a parallel between the federal and the provincial system that we as rules feel sometimes where we're sort of taken for granted at times. People just assume rural Alberta is going to vote blue no matter what. So why are we going to dedicate resources and time and money? There's votes to be gained or lost in the urban centers. So at certain times, we do feel disenfranchised. And there's a lot of parallels to Alberta and the federal government in that way. Because there's no, There's no votes to be gained in Alberta for the liberal, so why bother? Tews, you were going to mention something. Yeah.

Yeah, Justin, we were talking the other day about the policy with grants for water systems. Yeah. Do you want to add or bust that down for us? So once you dive into grant funding, it has very nice. narrow definition and parameters to what is eligible and what isn't. One of those definitions that we continually fight is what is a transmission line versus a distribution line? Because one's eligible and one isn't.

And you would think that the size or volume or number of people serve, that would be involved in the definition. And it's not. It's not at all. where this water line or water system would terminate may determine your eligibility. So if it ends at a urban center, a town, a city, a hamlet, it's eligible for 90-10 Water for Life grant funding. From the provincial government. From the provincial government.

So there's a waterline going out to a hamlet that has six houses. in it. It's close to 20 kilometers worth a line. It's covered. There's an area in my ward specifically where I have a subdivision of 150 lots. We need four miles of line. It's not eligible because it's a subdivision. If it was a village, we're good. If it was a hamlet, we're good. If it was a town, we're good. And there's such a severe disconnect. where these rules are so tightly defined that it takes all logic out of it. There is no, there's no room to consider where the best value is.

It's, you either check the boxes A through F or you don't. End a story. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I, I've talked about it before with the vape industry, how, you know, I'll explain people how the laws and regulations are and they'll say, well, that doesn't make any sense or that's completely illogical. And I said, yes, you're absolutely correct. But your problem is, is that you're going in with the presumption that things government does should be logical or make sense.

And if you abandon that before you start looking into these things, then all the pieces line up. Now, at the same time, when you look at things like that, do you talk to, do you talk to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and say, doesn't this seem stupid? There is a ton of relationship building in this process. So it gets convoluted. You need to talk to multiple MLAs and ministers. There is so much crossover. So, for example, if you want water or sewer grant funding,

you have to talk to the Minister of Transportation, which seems a little counterintuitive in a lot of ways. As soon as it's a joint project, well, now we have to loop in the Minister of Municipal Affairs. But you should also keep your own MLA in the loop too because they're supposed to be the advocate for you. So when you're lobbying and trying to push for changes, it's not one person.

you have to get an entire team on board. You have to make sure that they're communicating between each other so they all agree and understand the issue for you to even have a shot. Okay. So property taxes, you got your mill rate figuring out how much each individual home pays and then half of that money goes to the provincial government, right? Or something roughly like half the money? Why not?

Okay, just I'll throw out the first. question and then correct me. Why not just let the local community keep that property tax money? And then now you've kind of solved the problem and gotten away from you having to lobby to get your own damn money back. And it's proportional to the population. So that Hamlet with six houses has a proportionate amount of funding. And that subdivision with 150 houses has its proportionate amount of funding. So at a high level you're right about property taxes.

So there's a whole series of requisitions that we, they're flow through. We collect them on behalf of the province. The big ones are schools, senior housing, that sort of thing. And it just flows right through. There is a fight brewing over this.

And the city of Calgary sort of sent a shot across the bow when they sent a $10 million bill to the province for collecting their taxes. So this will get more airtime as it comes up. I do not like collecting other people's taxes. It's a dishonest way of doing it. If they allowed us to strictly collect our taxes for our needs, then we could look at eliminating a bunch of these grants.

We shouldn't have to fund other levels of government through our taxes. And it's dishonest in the sense that our ratepayers, they get upset when the school tax went up 12%. And they take it out on the municipality, because that's where the, bill came from. But if the province was transparent about this, they would just own it and take it out of provincial taxes. But they're quite content for us to be the bad guys on this situation. Well, that's why it never will change because right now they don't have to deal with that problem. It's a lot of angry people pointing their fingers just like you said at their counselor instead of at the province.

let's assume here for a quick second you all get elected right you all get elected here in a week's time and uh you know you get in if you could accomplish i don't know one thing like i don't know if you can accomplish ten things but let's assume you could go in and have an effect on one thing what would be the one thing you want to have an effect on drew maybe i'll go around the horn on this That's tough to narrow it down to one thing. Can it be two? Sure, sure. I guess I would like to instill a level of communication and trust

between the general public and municipal governance because it seems that as municipal governments has sort of pushed people away, people are stepping back even further. Like there's less involvement from the general public. And I would like to see the days of old. town halls come back and people actually get in and get more of a direct democracy feel back in a municipal politics. Now, secondly, I guess I'd like to carry that same sort of theory through to the RMA and bring

people together and strengthen our ability to govern ourselves rurally as a group and strengthen the powers that we have within the provincial government, just as, Smith is trying to do with in Canada. Shannon? I would like to look at the financial resources that are currently in place and see where some more money can be found for the front lines and actual staff working with students. I mean, we can rail against provincial funding until the cows come home,

but at the end of the day, we've only got the money in front of us and we need to make sure that we're stewarding back extremely well. and also to do some listening to see what's working and what's not, because I feel like in the public sector, what tends to happen is that there are initiatives, but nobody looks back to see if they've been very successful or not. There's something on the website saying how great it was, but that's not necessarily the actual impact on the ground. So if I hear you correctly, you want to go in and cut some bureaucracy.

I feel like twos should be just smiling ear to ear right now. Oh, twos is just getting twisted all over here, thinking all kinds of stuff to talk about. Shannon's going in and slashing some of the upper tops budget. Is it? You are all gone. We're pushing that money down. John, your thoughts on something that you'd like to try and have some influence on? I think that's probably a big thing for me is regulation.

I really dislike being told what is can and can do on my land. And I know that that's, it's like a double-edged sword. Like we were talking about green energy, if you want to put some kind of regulation in place, but at the same time, as a landowner, I don't want somebody telling me what I can do on my own land. So I think for me, something I'd really like to try to do is reduce regulation as much as possible

while still allowing things to run smoothly. Justin, your second term, if you get elected again, what's something that you've had your eyes on this now for several years? What do you think eyes wide open if you are elected again, what you might want to have some influence on? Eyes wide open, I would say whatever the game plan you have entering is likely to change drastically. There will be curve balls and hot button items that arise.

that you never saw coming. And that will become the all-encompassing priority at that point. To give you an example of that, we have a village, who is its own municipality, on the inside of our county boundaries. And municipal affairs is doing a viability study on them. They're choosing to wait until after the election to not sway votes or put a finger on the scale.

This will be a huge, huge undertaking because these very, very small municipalities, the reason they stay viable and functioning, and I use that term loosely for so long, is they endlessly kick the can down the road on all infrastructure upgrades and investments. until it is deteriorated to the point where it's held together by shoelaces and bubblegum. Then when they dissolve, it is tens of millions of dollars for the municipality to take over.

And we are going through that right now, and we don't know how it's going to end. So we're currently installing a reservoir and pumping station in a municipality. that will partially serve us because we're putting a truck fill there too. But primarily it's to replace the old standpipe that has been repaired so many times. The contractor won't even warranty it anymore to ensure that a municipality, not made up by our taxpayers, has safe drinking water. And we still feel like it's the right thing to do because, A, there are neighbors. It's one global community.

But we know in a year's time, we might be on the hook for all of it anyway. So we might as well utilize what grant money we can get to offset our cost because a year from now, we might be doing the sewer, the streets, and the sidewalks too. Tews, is there anything else you want to get to? I hate to, you know, speed away a conversation. You know, like, I feel like we've covered a huge gamut, gamut today, like of green, immigration, schools, you know, like all the different things. Is there anything folks we're missing before we let you out of here? I think we skipped healthcare.

Sure, Drew. Maybe you want to talk about it, Drew. No, that wasn't me. That was Sean. Oh, was it, Sean? I said healthcare. Because we just don't sell the other big thing into the conversation while we're out of. I don't really didn't have anything to talk about, but we haven't covered it.

Well, I think a big thing for all of you is October 20th, correct? Correct. And so to make sure that if you're sitting in Alberta, you're listening to this, that you mark that date on your calendar, you make sure you show up, you vote. And I don't know about twos, I can speak for myself, but my hat's off to all. all of you for putting your hat in the ring. You know, it takes, we've been talking about this for how many years now? People, good people getting involved.

Common sense folks trying to get in and help their communities and you're all doing it. So, I mean, the best of luck to you, but October 20th is a big day for Alberta. Circle that on your calendar. Make sure you get out and vote. Any other final thoughts before we let you out of here? I just kind of wanted to touch on something Shannon was saying before about actually looking at the effectiveness of things as they've been implemented. And it kind of ties into, I can't remember who I was listening to a podcast the other day.

And they were talking about how in the States, everybody loves football and watching the game tape is such a big deal. And now with everything, you know, the internet's forever. We've got the ability to go and look back and say, okay, well, this is what they said it was going to be when they started rolling. it out. Here's how much they said it was going to cost. Here's how much it did cost and here's how much of a difference it made. And I don't know. I feel like that would be easier on a local level than things like the carbon tax where they could just say, oh, we'll just think about how much worse things would have been if we hadn't had the carbon tax. But at the same time, I think in in every level of politics,

there really ought to be a lot more focus on reviewing the game tape and making coaching decisions accordingly. Yeah, I think we could spend more time and effort into assessing how things really went and less time on the public relations to manage people's perceptions of how things were. Yeah. Well put. Folks, appreciate you hopping on and doing this. It's been a pleasure.

I mean, it's always interesting to get this many people on a conversation and then deal with internet connections and everything else. The next one we should probably do in studio. That'd be a ton of fun to have you all together. But I appreciate it. Thanks, Tews for putting this together. Thanks, everybody for hopping on. And best of luck on October 20th.

Yeah, we'll be hoping and pulling for all you folks to get elected. It's always great to see people, I don't know, get in that. that ring that is, you know, we've had all the different reasons on why probably people don't want to get involved. Because there is a lot of problems and they are going to suck up a ton of your time and energy. Either way, my hat's off to you for stepping up in your communities and trying to get involved. Thanks, John. To everyone out there, get out and vote. We're putting ourselves out there.

So whether it's for us or not, get out and have your say. But definitely vote for these guys. Thanks for doing this, guys. Yeah, thanks, guys. Oh, thanks, goodness.