Shaun Newman Podcast - #977 - David Knight Legg

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

David Knight Legg is a Canadian strategist, investor, and advisor with extensive experience in government, finance, and consulting. He currently serves as a partner at Serendipity Capital, leading fundraising and client engagement, while advising governments, energy firms, financial services companies, and organizations such as Valley Ventures and Invest Alberta. Previously, he was Principal Advisor in the Alberta Premier's Office under Jason Kenney and briefly served as the first CEO of Invest Alberta in 2020–2021 before transitioning to a part-time advisory role. Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver 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 ordersGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Prodnick. 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. Okay, before you do, don't hit the skip button, okay? Large news here today on the podcast. You're sitting down?

I hope you're sitting down. We just confirmed our next speaker. for the Cornerstone Forum 2026, March 28th, and it's no other than Premier Daniel Smith. She's going to be opening up the Cornerstone Forum this year in Calgary. So if you needed any other reason to get a ticket, Premier Daniel Smith is going to be there. She's going to be the first keynote speaker of the day.

Yeah, that is big news on this side, and happy to announce it here. So if you're waiting to get tickets, don't wait any longer, folks. Go get tickets. Smith going to be opening up the Cornerstone Forum, the premier in attendance. Once again, Calgary, Alberta, the details down on the show notes. You can text me or just go to Showpass.com backslash cornerstone forum, sorry, Cornerstone 26, not Cornerstone Forum.

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12 spots left now that I'm taking a look at it. We've confirmed Shane Getson's going to be there alongside Lee's Merle, Sheila Gunn-Reed, Marty up north, Evich, 2s, myself. I'm probably spacing on a few. Jamie Sinclair, Chuck Prott. If you're not a curler, that's okay. I'm not a curler either, folks.

We're just going to have a nice casual time in Kalmar, Alberta. All the details down on the show notes. You can also text me if you can't find it. And I hope to see you. March, January 17th in Kalmar, Alberta. Cornerstone Forum, as I've been rattling off at the start, and I'll rattle off again here, March 28th at the Westing Calgary Airport. You can fly right in, get a 24-7 shuttle to the hotel

everything is there. Now to go with the likes of Martin Armstrong, Tom Luongo, Alex Kraner, Vince Lanchi, Matt Erich, Chad Prather, Karen Katowski, Sam Cooper, Tom Bodrovics, twos, myself is Premier Daniel Smith. I don't know what else you need. We do have a couple of spots that we're working on. There is a couple more announcements, hopefully to come sooner than later. But the Cornerstone Forum, 2026 edition, March 28th in Calgary, is shaping up to be an event you don't want to miss. Tickets on sale, go grab one, and looking forward to everyone that's going to be in attendance there. Lots of familiar faces coming back.

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investor and advisor who currently serves as a partner at serendipity capital i'm talking about david knight leg so buckle up here we go Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by David Knight-Lag. First one of the year, David. You're the first guest to come back on the show as we start out 2026. And I mean, we're only a couple days in. And I'm like, 2026 is not going to be dullism. No. No, it's already been exciting in the best possible way. What, uh, you're a fan of Maduro being. grabbed then by U.S. intelligence or U.S. armed forces, or I don't know how to say it, they fly.

It was DEA, FBI, all the special operations units under Delta Force, which is the integrated special ops. It was Air Force Navy Coast Guard, Singles Intelligence, CIA, NSA, and it happened three hours after the Chinese delegation from Xi Jinping, met with Maduro in his palace, it is devastating for China, Russia, and Iran, what just took place. They've been using Venezuela as a launch point for just about anything they want to. And China is deeply concerned over access to that oil, which is they've been the principal client of that oil. And now they've lost the foothold. Cuba provided all of the security for Maduro. The Cubans were the ones. with support from the Russians

that they were doing all the dirty work for Maduro in terms of just terrorizing the populace of Venezuela since 2018, but especially since he lost the election in 2024 and seized power by force over Eduardo. And Machado has come out as a leader in waiting. So you already have a popular elected government in waiting, leader in waiting, representatives in waiting, that Maduro, with his narco terrorist thugs,

prevented from taking office over a year ago. So from the from the U.S. perspective, you know, you've got some people wringing their hands over whether or not there is a sovereignty issue here, but this is probably the cleanest-cut Monroe doctrine approach that could have been taken and people would be very hard pressed to find a mechanism legally for telling the Americans they did it wrong. I mean, they're going to try, but, you know, Venezuelan, a third of Venezuela has emptied out with people fleeing. They're the second largest refugee community in the world, only after Syria. And all of them, you know, Mamdani, this trust fund socialist in New York, who's the new mayor of New York,

you know, he was sending this long sort of apologetic and, you know, worrying for the people that everybody in every Venezuelan was partying in the street in New York last night. So you have a very popular overthrow of a very unpopular narco dictator by Trump. You've got the usual suspects lined up, bringing their hands and were some of the legalities of that. And there are important conversations to be had. You can't simply have the Americans deciding who can and can't be a sovereign head of state. Willie Neely, but this situation, I think, crossed a lot of the lives. lines that people would expect to have the boxes ticked on before they took the position

that they took on him. And President Trump made it clear he was going to go. The drama around how they did this and how they pulled this off is pretty extraordinary. When you say the drama on how they pulled this up is pretty extraordinary, could you, I don't know, flush out that thought. Look, if you kind of love this stuff, you like the idea of, you know, great power, the way the great powers chess board gets played, what you've seen over the years is more and more wars are fought through proxies rather than directly. The Gaza situation was fought by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, all of whom are funded and managed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps for Iran, which is a vassal state to both

China and Russia. And so, you know, the October 7th event was planned entirely in Tehran by the IRGC. Hamas executed an Iranian strategy into Israel. And there was a very specific Iranian purpose for doing that. They needed to derail the Abraham courts. They had to. They were losing power and they had a very narrow window in which to try and derail them. And they, and they seized that window and they thought that what they would do, they knew that the Israeli reaction would be violent and, you know, demonstrate complete sort of, you know, commitment to eliminating Hamas, top to bottom. And then Hamas is, of course, embedded in civilian infrastructure. So there's no chance that that war, if the Iranians could spark it, would not lead to a huge question

marker on Israel's status, and you saw this sort of play out in various ways. Well, that's Iran playing a proxy war. That's Iran at war, right? They fully fund Hamas. Qatar is in bed with Hamas as well. They fully fund Hezbollah. Do you know the number one terror proxy for Venezuela that hung out in Venezuela all the time? And Jason Kenney was actually talking about this on his Twitter feed, is Hezbollah.

They're all in bed together. Iran, China, Russia, and Cuba were using Venezuela as an access point into Latin America and into the United States. You know, China and Russia see Venezuela as extremely important because of its oil reserves. They're the largest oil reserves in the planet, over 300 billion barrels. Alberta's number three. You know, Saudi's number two, but, you know, under this socialist dictator there, capacity to actually produce that oil had fallen from a little three million barrels to under

a million barrels. But now with the U.S. taking a strategic viewpoint on Venezuela and its proximity to the United States, it poses, you know, a huge opportunity for the Americans in terms of energy security and takes a very important player off the board from China, Russia, and Iran. At the same time, you're seeing Iran under siege right now with popular unrest. And Trump has also said, if they keep shooting protesters, you know, they'll find a way to step in. Israel eliminated Iran's entire air to fund structure 48 hours. The drama that I was referring to earlier is they used 20 Air Force bases.

150 planes were in the air at the same time. They created an envelope of warfighters and took out all of the Chinese-made technology, which the Chinese had placed in Venezuela to avoid exactly this issue. That all got stripped out from, you know, above 30,000 feet. The helicopters that came in, came in about 100 meters above the water off warships. They brought the Delta Force teams inside, right in the part of Caracas. The CIA NSA guys shut down the grid in Caracas. So all this was done with night vision at exactly 1 a.m.

They landed at 101 a.m. And they were gone and back over the water at 3.26 a.m. So what the Americans demonstrated that's dramatic, particularly dramatic if you're China or Russia or Iran, is that they can go into a place that has exceptionally well-developed, Chinese-funded, Russian-mandated, defensive Cuban close protection unit for Maduro. And they just took it all out, had zero injuries, and have this guy sitting in a jail in New York today, awaiting Southern District of New York charges for narco terrorism. So that's pretty bad. And it's part of a proxy war that's, you know, the great powers are fighting these battles with other nations. And what the U.S. has shown is Venezuela is certainly going to be leaving the column of the China, Russia, great power, influence. and coming into the column of the U.S. Hemisphere, sphere of influence over the next five years.

Venezuela is an interesting one, right? You mentioned the largest oil reserves on the planet. And in utter chaos, David, forgive me, has it been 20 years? How many years has it been now that they've just been all over the place? Yeah, the Chifistas, I mean, since Chavez was elected and began to nationalize everything, it's 25 years. Total destruction, just the impoverishment of one of the naturally wealthiest places in the planet through socialism, you know, a deep, the politics of envy and socialism knows no bounds. And, you know, now that people have realized how terrible it can become, a third of the entire country is left. The two-thirds that have left voted in huge majorities, and this is widely, this is not some conjecture, this is widely considered to be the case across the international country.

community. So much so, the even countries that are naturally prone to want to provide corrective, like everybody needs to take a little bit like our government did sadly in their response to this. Everyone needs to take step back and acknowledge the international order. Mediation is the way forward, right? It's kind of this very passive, aggressive way of disagreeing with the U.S. approach to what they did and how they did it. And everybody can read that between the lines. But even in that circumstance. You still have leaders like, you know, Macron of France coming out saying this is a great day for Venezuela and all Venezuela. I mean, you just got enormous, this guy was so bad and what he had done to the country was so bad and what he was continuing to do

as the head of the Flores narco-terrorist gang was they basically just managed a narco-terrorist gang had managed to capture an entire country. And use it for their own purposes, and then get into bed with China and Russia in order to protect themselves and offer China and Russia proximate advantages strategically to the United States. And that's a game, you know, I don't know if you've seen this clip of him taunting Trump a couple of months ago and saying you're a coward, come and get me. I mean, he's actually standing in the place where he ended up being taken out by Delta Force teams.

So it's dramatic on a lot of levels. It's dramatic because of just the sheer extraordinary complexity of pulling off an interoperable, you know, takedown of somebody requiring 150 planes of different types and sizes and purposes at the same time, spending a, you know, two and a half hours max inside the country and removing the guy who's going to run it and having him sit in a jail cell in New York within a few hours. It's an extraordinary feat, but it's also stunning because it's completely reset the map in a way that's very hard for China and Russia to readjust to right now. They thought Venezuela was something that was going to be in play for years, and now it's cascading against them. Cuba is the next most interesting chip to fall, and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, has a special place in his heart for ending the Cuban regime.

So we'll see what happens with Cuba because Cuba without Venezuela is a very, very lonely place. I mean, I understand Cuba's significance in respect to proximity. What else do they pose a threat to the United States on? Well, you know, a lot of this is historical. I don't think they pose a threat so much as they just are, you know, they're incredibly poor, recklessly badly managed, country that has a very strong constituency of Cuban expats that are all Republicans, pretty much that are important part of the voter base in Florida and powerful within the Republican Party generally, but also U.S.-Cuban relationships are flashpoints and always have been. You know, the Cuban missile crisis was a flashpoint between Khrushchev and JFK back in the day because Cuba has such proximity to the United States that anybody running all.

operations out of Cuba, which includes the Russians and the Chinese that are very friendly with Cuba, have this point at which they can sort of access. China has been working very hard on creating, you know, a strategic presence in the Caribbean. We've been working very hard on that. A lot of people are aware of that, and Latin America. You know, Venezuela was keen to be part of the Chinese Belt and Road initiative. But one of the things the Trump team announced very early on, which is something I think as Canadians, we have to take much more seriously. And you see it in a couple different doctrines they've published, but the two most important ones are the restructuring of the World Trade Order by Stephen Moran, which is a paper he published

in November 2024, and is the basis for the tariff strategy under the Trump administration. He's now the chairman of the Council of National, the Council of Economic Advisors. and he is currently on loan to the Fed, but he's the most powerful voice, and he's the voice that sort of speaks for or mediates the positions of Lutnik and Bessent and others on the trade side. And then you have the national security strategy, the NSS, which just came out a few weeks ago, which outlines the relationship between trade, energy, and security globally. and how the United States will act globally to secure energy security and trade security. And the security element of that has a lot to do with managing in this hemisphere and also in Europe right now. So there's always, you know, there's sort of all priorities all the time, but there's moments where there are certain things that become specific priorities because there's an opportunity to make them that. And so the pivot to Asia was very much.

around figuring out how to constrain a much more rampant Chinese strategy, military strategy, in the South China Sea. And that's important because that has huge effects on the third largest economy in the world, Japan and their security, the Philippines, their security, you know, and of course Taiwan, which has been China's longstanding ambition to, to have Taiwan in their sphere, direct sphere of influence. And so, you know, I think that what's happened in Venezuela is also a bit of a calling card from the Trump administration saying they are not going to try and put boots on the ground. You know, they'll, it sounds like they're going to try and arrange some sort of administrative

structure for Venezuela where they can incorporate aspects of control over the Venezuelan economy and polity. But, you know, they are clearly willing. to put that security trade and energy security pieces together in a very specific way. And this is something I think as Canadians, we've got to be very conscious of. I think the situation in Venezuela is Canada's wildcard in 2026 because of the effect it will have on energy in Alberta. And if you think, you know, I gave the counterpoint in the debate about separatism and independence at a rebel news event in Red Deer a few months back.

I can tell you people are, you know, that independence feeling is simmering. But when you start to see the Americans allowed the Gulf Coast refineries to take Venezuelan crude instead of Alberta crude, or you know that that is potentially coming, that's going to put a huge strain on the Alberta economy and also on the relationship to a federal government that's prevented infrastructure that would have allowed us to access global markets in Asia, number one, and also Europe for the last 10 years. You know, Canada has been asleep at the wheel and on a complete vacation from history. And what's just happened in Venezuela is a huge wake-up call for the federal government in particular. You think they're hearing any wake-up call

out in the federal government? You know, I hate to be glib, Sean. Like, it's easy to, it's easy to I hope so. I mean, I'll just say that. I hope so. I think that the nation needs a conservative government so badly. You know, we need to cut this debt. We're killing the next generation of Canadians with this debt. This debt is totally unpayable right now. You know, they've just added the most new net debt with a decline in public services that's now reached new lows after bloating the public service for 10 years, you know, I don't know what to say. I mean, I just, I hope that there's a seriousness that starts to emerge in Canada. You saw this happen under Paul Martin and Jell Crutchin. You know, Paul Martin was the one that actually roped in because they were going to reach a crisis point where they're going to lose their bond rating. I think Canada is going to be very close to

that now. But, you know, Venezuela has got a few years to start to get its production nabbed up. But you can bet that the Americans will be seeing that as a huge opportunity. The finger math on what they need to get back to, you know, they're under a million now to get back over three million barrels is probably $100 million worth of investment. But, you know, you compare that to all the investment that's been lost in Canada in the last 10 years because we simply haven't had a federal level of conviction around building the infrastructure we need to get the oil and gas. It is in such extraordinary. demand around the world, but particularly in Asia right now, we're just not getting into there

at scale. Northern Gateway, if it was operating today, we'd be taking, off-taking, you know, between 12 and 15% of our total production every day. We failed to build it. We failed to build dozens of projects that would allow us to be global players as the third largest reserve of oil on the planet, one of the largest reserves of gas on the planet. So I think amongst the various things that are compelling about what happened. You know, 90% of this is such good news. The people of Venezuela for law and order for the end of a narco-terrorist regime, for the removal of a very powerful chess piece from the Russian and Chinese operators.

The issue now for Canada is, what are we going to do in the world? We can't keep writing these sad, diplomatic miss him saying we wish everybody would mediate and negotiate it, right? It doesn't, you know, the Americans aren't waiting around for mediation. after 25 years of dealing with Venezuela and thuggery or the control of China and Russia of Venezuela. And Canada can't afford to wait around anymore. We've got to start building global market access.

We cannot continue to be this dependent on U.S. markets that have now got emerging access to the largest oil reserve in the planet that has almost identical crude to ours and refining capacity built for that crude. You know, if I go back, I don't know how many years, David, but let's say five years. I actually can't remember when I first, the book club read a book on Venezuela and like the history of how does a, you know, the world's largest oil reserve go from that, you know, and as you sit here in Alberta, you can see the correlation to where it is, you know, where it's been for 25 years. and a lot of people are like

if we don't get our heads out of the sand we could end up here and now it'll be like well now the U.S. has gone in removed its leader and now is about to have access to that and this should send off warning signs

to Canadians I guess I'm maybe just a touch of a cynic when I go I don't know how many people even are paying attention I mean certainly in politics people are paying attention but how many people are actually paying attention to what is happening on this side of the world? Look, that's a great question. I guess, you know, this is why, you know, what motivates you to do a podcast, rather?

It's because you believe that things that people should be paying attention to, they won't, unless you have a conversation that compels people to say, hey, there's something going on outside my family, outside my immediate community, maybe even outside my country, that should be really important to me, that could have a second order effect on my life, on the life of my country, on life of my community family. Venezuela has an extremely important second order effect looming for Albertans. You know, when I left banking to come back and help my buddy Jason get elected as Premier and remove the, you know, the financial disaster.

of the NDP from the provincial government. You know, part of my motivation was that, you know, Jason had given me a dairy and said, you know, you can be 70 and rich and writing checks to conservative things or you can get out here and actually put your brain and your, you know, shoulder to the wheel and actually do something for the province, you know, whatever you want. But just get on it, you know, and I found that compelling,

but my brothers are both out of work, you know, my own family. Both had lost their jobs. And there was something about that that I think, you know, we waited four years of the NDP to watch them crater the Alberta economy in only four years. They borrowed more money in four years than all governments in Alberta combined, all previous governments combined, over $48 billion. They created complete chaos. They didn't deal with the ESG issue. We had to set up a chair of committee to deal with ESG. We had to fight back against the narrative that it killed us in global banks.

It was costing our businesses more money to borrow money because they had allowed a black eye of the oil sands to emerge in global lending markets and bond markets. And so, you know, I think what it takes for people to care is sometimes just to find out why they should care. And, you know, I talked to a buddy of mine, Martin, and I wrote an op-ed on Machado and Venezuela being the 20. 26 Wildcard for Canada, and I wrote it two days before this event happened. So I've rewrote it, and he's looking it over. He's going to submit it, made in the Financial Post or National Post, or somebody will print it. But, you know, I think will people care?

I think when people can connect the dots, they'll start to care. But the issue, I think, that Canada has to be aware of is when Angus Reed did their poll on support for Alberta independence in May, Support reached 36% of all voting age alberts. And within the community of members of the UCP, it was a majorist. And I don't believe that after Venezuela and the chance that you will see a supply shot into the United States of crude that's identical to our crude into Gulf Coast refining, if you don't believe that people will start to in boardrooms and all, Alberta say, enough's enough. We tried every way we could to build things. We kept getting shut down. We're the only country in the world that has one-way tanker vans that don't permit

our own people to ship things to countries that are desperate for it. You know, Japan said their prime minister to me with us who's told there was no business case. We can't make this stuff up. I mean, we're the most self-defeating virtue signaling politically correct, what country in the planet, partly because we can be. We're so spoiled by the fact that we're right next to the largest economy in the world. And that's why 80% of everything we make and do gets absorbed and consumed by that economy. But that's made people that are far away from the actual front line of the production of energy completely blind to the environmental energy and economic realities of what energy does in the planet. I mean, in Toronto, there are people that don't know that

If we shipped more gas to China, we would offset the entire carbon footprint of Canada three times over, right? They have no idea. It's global emissions, not Canadian domestic emissions that people care about. We could cut global emissions by 16% on the Chinese grid, and that would remove more than twice Canada's entire global emissions footprint. But we can't get things built because we've got somebody that subscribed to some bizarre undripped, UN thing, which is going to get overturned at some point by somebody rational, right? We've got people who forgot property rights. Well, it has to.

It has to or else you've just given away the country based on what a very politically correct Marxist idea of indigenous is. And I don't buy that idea that's indigenous, right? And neither do a lot of Indian chiefs, by the way, like Billy Boren or Stephen Buffalo. When I wrote the Indigenous Opportunities Corporation, it was exact opposite. under it, but saying nobody has a right to this stuff, but you do have the option of being able to invest in it. It will lend you money to invest in it so you can own a piece of this thing. And then as an owner, you can have ownership principles around having that equity and you

pay back the money. It's not a gift. It's not a giveaway. Right. And then we've got people participating in building infrastructure that everybody benefits from. And that creates community dynamics community loan. This undrip stuff is hostage taking in the name of a Marxist notion of indigenous that's got nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with property, it's or anything that makes civilization actually worked. So, you know, unless we start to turn around a lot of these self-defeating things that trust fund leftists have decided to put in place because they feel good about it in a moment, then we will become a self-defeating country. And if that starts to happen, then you'll see a much larger number of people saying, you know what,

If you give me a choice between Alberta being in a self-defeating nation, full of politically correct woke people that are signaling things to the U.N., then forget it. We'll go it alone. We'll become the moniker of North America. We'll cut taxes. We got more oil and gas than Qatar, right? We'll be the richest single democracy in the planet next day, right? What's stopping people from doing that?

There's a generosity of spirit. We've all come from the same place. we've all understood ourselves to have been Canadian in some way. And that's why there's reticence for people. And this is what I spoke about when we had this debate. I was speaking to a great guy, Keith Wilson, you should have on the show sometime. You know, Keyes is very articulate. He and I disagree on tactics.

What we don't disagree with is that Alberta should be much more independent. I think he's putting the car before the horse, and he thinks I'm putting the horse behind the car. So we're going to have an argument about how we get there. But I'll tell you this. Venezuela is yet another wake-up call to the federal government of Canada to say BC has no right to impinge on property rights. That doesn't exist anywhere.

I don't care what sub-left. Carl Marx could run for Premier of BC and win by offering everybody 100 grand or something. It doesn't matter. You can't change the federal structure. Our energy has to get to Asian markets. If that doesn't work anymore, if there's some reason why that doesn't work anymore, then more and more Albertans are going to say, well, then you're telling us we can't make it work.

so then we are just going to go straight north and we're going to go straight south and we're just going to become the Monaco of North America and do all our deals south and forget BC BC is already collapsing economically they're not going to last socialism fails well I mean we stare out of Venezuela

and we go holy man there's but all the things you just said about Canada right I mean where else in the world this fee simple title just a thing of the past and where are we just giving land and property owners don't own it anymore and you think business is going to go there

you think that like what is going to happen you try and get national projects built but now you look at all the red tape here in Canada that it's got to jump through and the time to get any pipeline built just add on years if not decades

and you go this should snap them out of it I'm like I think a lot of things should the snapped him out of it. And yet, here we still are. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I think, Sean, I wrote this in my op-ad, so we'll see if it gets published. But, you know, I think that there will be a vote on Alberta independence in the fall of 2026. I think that the... Well, I think there's no doubt on that, David. Like, I mean, the petition, the petition goes here in the next what? Is it, is it the next couple days? Let's just say in the next 10 days, it begins? I think they get enough signatures to make that happen in the next week or two.

Like, I don't think there's any chance that vote doesn't happen. I'll tell you this. The vote on Quebec separatism that roiled the country in the 80s and 90s, right, that really sort of tore the country up and caused established Charlottetown Accords and all these different things that were going to be voted on, right? That vote was premised on the idea of there being a culturally distinct nation within Canada. called Quebec. And there was, you know, from the 1500s onwards, there was a community of Quebec law that was distinct, originally very much on the basis of faith, Catholic religion,

Catholic faith, language, you know, the French language versus English language. And these were things that, you know, three generations of British diplomats and, you know, various different emissaries that were sent by the queen to deal with that issue. to avoid what they most feared. What they most feared was that when it happened under the American Rebellion, which they call independence down here, we got taught it was the rebellion, right?

Then the French Canadians would join the Americans. And there was a moment where that was actually possible, right, in the 1700s. And Canada held together, and it held together on the basis of a variety of different, very strong personalities and people and situations of held it together. I think that there's two things

that are different about Alberta independence. One is that Alberta independence is very much about economic opportunity and personal prosperity. And that is, in one way, less of a hearts and minds quality than faith and language. But in another way,

it's a more universal, siren saw than faith and language. So if you look at the Quebec independence vote, what you'll notice is that it failed very close, but it failed principally because people that weren't Catholic and didn't speak, didn't speak French, voted against it, right? They thought Quebec is my place too. And this happened principally in the big city, principally in Montreal. But in Alberta, what I think you'll notice is a lot of the community.

that are new Alberts, our entrepreneurs, work hard, they look around and like, what's going on with this place? Why is my city falling apart when I pay all these taxes? Why don't, you know, why don't I have the right security? Why am I embarrassed by Canada and the international sphere these days? Why do we have this much debt? Why do we have unemployment? You know, what's happened with this immigration crisis? That is, in some ways, the fact that the Alberta independence movement is, economic about personal prosperity and about a unitary sense, what it means to Alberta, in some ways is a bigger tent than a normal nationalist independence movement can be because it includes everybody on a set of economic premises. Now, I still believe, and we can go into this

another time, or we can go into it with me and Keith, if you want, but I still believe that we got a lot of work to do as a province to get our house in order before we're ready for anything that looks like independence. That's my strong view. But I do think that with that vote coming in 2026 and the reality of what's happening around the world and what's happened in Venezuela, that is a very direct effect on Alberta. It is a very direct effect on the economic promise of Canada in Alberta. And it is an indictment against what's happened and the complete laxadaisical approach to actually build a global market infrastructure in Canada the last decade under the liberal party. And I think those tensions are going to come to the fore. And now they're going to

have very specific contours. Because for the first time, Alberta has a very direct competitive threat to our heavy crude in our number one market and the only market we've been able to access because the federal government's tied our hands behind her back and accessing others. That's a, that's a crisis in the making. And an economic crisis, unlike a language and identity crisis, is much more broad-based and will have, I think, potentially much more adherence. A lot of people just feel like it might be better. And there's a lot of examples. Monaco is a very interesting example.

They're in France, but they have lower taxes, great city-state. Hong Kong is an interesting example. Singapore is an interesting example. Dubai is an interesting example. You have places that are sparkling that have zero corporate gains tax, zero dividends tax, zero capital gains tax. how are those places some of the largest most productive cities in the planet, right? Well, I don't know if you have to ask how. I mean, it's self-explanatory when you talk about it, isn't it?

How is that possible? It's like, well, you're going to attract business. Are you not? Yeah. Look, I think Alberta can afford, you know, something I've talked about. I think Alberta can afford significantly to cut our taxes and attract capital. from all over North America to start with, but around the world. And we can backstop our, you know, Singapore has nothing to backstop its extraordinary experiment.

Nothing. They're a swamp off the coast to Malaysia. They just built their entire national infrastructure on the idea of basic free market capitalist principles. Hong Kong is a no water table, rocky island. The guy who took Hong Kong as spoils of war was demoted when he got back to London after taking it. Now, he saw it as a strategic asset because of its deep water port. But the only thing that it had was a deep water port.

It was a terrible place to live. So was Singapore. Singapore only had a port. What does Dubai have? An airport. They made it. They're flourishing. But what do they have?

They don't have any oil. They don't have any minerals. I mean, Dubai is the most extreme, right? Abu Dhabi has oil, but they lend money to their little brother in Dubai who creates this Hong Kong lookalike city in the desert, build it and they will come by offering people low taxes and no taxes in some cases, freedom to pursue their dream, to build a family, build a business, build a life, a big airport where you can travel all over the world, and the chance to come and stay some of the time there if you want to,

if you're a rich guy from London or Paris and you don't want to be taxed. So whatever it is, they're figuring out how to build it with very, very little to play with. Alberta's been dealt all the cars. Got more oil than every country in the world except for Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. We've got as much gas as just about any country in the world. We haven't even mapped all of it, but we're currently tied for fourth globally with Qatar, right? Qatar. We've got, that's our oil and our gas are both world reading, right?

We've got minerals. We haven't done the full geologic survey on. We've got forests as far as the eye can see. We got clean water, agriculture with a breadbasket to the planet. Right? And that's us. We could have, we, Edmonton and Calgary can be the equivalent of Dubai and Singapore in 10 years. We just put our mind to it.

That's all it takes. We can do this. We can build these things. We can be that country. We can be those people, right? There's no reason why not. I defied people that's telling me why not. I've lived in all three.

I've opened a business in Dubai. I lived in Hong Kong for 15 years. I ran a business out of Singapore, right? There's no reason in Alberta can't build that. We've got the people. We've got the talent. We've got the smarts. We've got the capabilities.

And here's the other thing we've got. We got a bunch of Americans, hundreds of millions of them, just waiting to buy everything that we make and ship and do. Did Hong Kong, Singapore, wherever else you want to go? Have socialism, DEI, All of the things? No, they rejected it because they couldn't afford it. Here's the thing, socialism and DEI, if you look at the history,

I'm reading an amazing book about the history of socialism in Russia right now and the way that, you know, Russian authors, there was a series of them at the time, Dostoevsky, most important amongst them, wrote these incredible Russian novels that ultimately carried the ideas of humanity and soul through the worst, darkest moments of Russian communism, right? And ultimately, it was Solzinnitz and then, you know, emerged as the great sort of literary dissenter of our time against Russia. But, you know, what was, what's extraordinary is every time socialism gets tried,

it always gets tried by trust funders. It's always trust funders. It's always middle upper class guys. Marx was a middle upper class guy, drinking sherry, having his stuff paid, for him by angles. They're all cherry drinking. You read George Orwell. He writes a note in front of his forward to the book Wigand Pier. And what he writes is that he was asked by the left book club to write a note about the working men of London. Wigandpier was this coal mining area that he went to and he lived with these guys and he worked in the mines with them actually to write this book.

And he was paid by the left book club. But he was so moved by the guys he met, the working guys he met, that he basically ended telling the left foot club to go stuff themselves because he said, these guys are never going to be socialists. They're never going to be Marxists. It's always the upper class sherry drinking classes

that want to be Marxist and socialists. And he talked, and Orwell talks a lot about why this case, and Orwell was no right wing, right? But he was extremely observant, dedicated in understanding exactly what human nature looked like. So when you're

about 1984 and animal farm, he was writing equally about the fascism of national socialism in 1984 and the fascism under communism and animal farm. He was observing both. And both national socialism under the corporatist dictates of a Hitler, still socialism still has to control the way everybody thinks, still has to deal in misinformation, tell you what group think looks like. That's all my two for. You know, same thing with animal farm.

That's communism, pure. That's pure socialism. You know, I think, I think it gets rejected by people that have to work close to the land or work with their end and do stuff every day because they know it's BS. Instinctively it tells them it's BS. Don't you just think there's a, we're coming to a head. The people who work the land, the entrepreneur, the business owner, the person who thinks critically, freely, whatever you want to tack on it.

and the sherry drinker from Ottawa, I just feel like there's a head coming in 2026. You've already pointed to they're going to have a referendum here in Alberta. And if Ottawa doesn't get its game together, which I don't know if they can. I don't know if that group of people out there, maybe they can. Maybe they can. Like this isn't, you know, like I sit here and I just continue to watch things and go,

okay, well, that's not going to work. And that's going to take a decade. And in the meantime, okay, they just took out the leader of Venezuela. and you talk about the second order effects of that. Well, that's going to be coming to our shores in the next five years, let's just say. Let's just cut the time and half. And you go, so if you're in Albertan and you're sitting there going, I don't want all these stupid things that they keep pushing, but you're the sherry drinker out east.

And once again, I got lots of people out east who listen to the podcast. I'm not talking about every person out there. But certainly the management class, the ruling class that is pushing stupidity in continues to push stupidity. I feel like we're coming to a head in 2026 one way or another because there is going to be a referendum. I agree with you. It's, to me, I just go, this is going to happen. It looks like it's going to be the fall of 2026. Yeah. And that is going to push this all to a head, is it not? Yeah, look, I think you touch on a couple things that, you know, one is, and I like the fact that you moderated, you know, I'm obviously, it was Orwell that called out the sherry drinkers,

by the way, I'm not, but you've got a great spirit, Sean, in the sense that you're saying, look, this is not about fighting our own brothers out east. It isn't. Everybody, everybody that loves freedom and wants lower taxes and wants to build a family and build a business and build a life and a community and contribute to their community, right? We're all in this together. This is one of the elements of the discussion, Keith and I had, which is how do you draw the lines around your particular community at a particular time.

And I believe you work hard where you can work, right? And sometimes you've got to work within your family. Sometimes you work within your local community. I had the opportunity and was blessed to be able to come back for a few years and help do some things for Alberta, which I grew up and I got so much from. My dad was an immigrant to Alberta. I grew up in a family where I got scholarships that allowed me to go to the local university at University of Lethbridge.

After that, I got scholarships allowed me to study in the U.S. in England. After that, I was able to get, you know, when I come back, I feel like I owe so much back to my community. My community in Lethbridge gave me so much. And there was an old guy, I remember he went to my church. He, you know, he was such a strong liberal. And this guy would, and even back then I had sort of more conservative instincts, you know. But I think what we've got to understand about the dynamic, is that that obligation, the tone that you just use needs to cut both ways,

the federal government needs to start dealing with Alberta like it's part of Canada. They need to start dealing with the fear of Alberta independence in the same spirit they dealt with the concern over Quebec independence. The concern that I had that I encountered when I was working with Jason, I was as principal advisor, and I had a few interactions with different parts of the federal government. And one where we ended up suing them, which I was demanding that we do, which wasn't, that's not normal, by the way. Provinces don't normally sue the federal government to expect to win, but we won.

And we were suing them over their, their unbelievable idea that they were going to ban plastic production in Canada based on the idea that it was toxic and they were going to use CEPA legislation, which Consumer Environmental Protection Act, to do it because they couldn't have passed it through the government. It was just so fraudulent as an idea. It would never gotten past the government. So CEPA legislation exists to prevent things like arsenic for being in the water, right? You don't use it to say, we don't like plastic. Plastic is toxic, right? That's, you know, colloquial shorthand. That's not a term of art or science. And I was in the middle of landing a $16 billion Dow deal to rebuild an ethylene cracker that would allow

next generation advanced materials to be created in Alberta. And that one piece of legislation stood in the way of any chance Dow would put that money to work in Alberta. So we sued them and Dow actually joined us in the lawsuit and so did Saskatchewan. And we won. We won that lawsuit. But it delayed that investment by over a year and a half.

And then when we finally did any investment, do you know who cut the ribbon? The feds. Do you know what? because we get people that are completely against us Christian Freeland one of the worst she's the one that paid Omar Connor the 10.5 million dollars she was in the security committee that did that right unbelievable but she was desperate with the union folks like Gil McGowan and others to try and put their stamp on this thing once it became a reality

but you know what the response was from our team and I'm actually proud of this response even though I didn't like it let them do them let them put some money into the Dow deal and fund it. Let them have their day in the sun. Let them have their moment cutting the ribbon. The deal got done. We got the jobs landing. We're going to have the world's number one ethylene cracker built with Linday Corp's next generation hydrogen technology. We did it. We got it done. And actually, in the Canadian family, this is the way we got to get things done. But actually, it's got to cut both ways. The way that you sort of just wanted to moderate what you're saying about, I'm not blaming everybody out east, that spirit's got to come back the other

direction from the feds when it comes to Alberta. And for whatever reason, there's a deep, deep cultural insecurity in Ontario, and particularly in Montreal, about Alberta and particularly about the United States. They are so culturally insecure, right? They're constantly worried about, like anything Trump does is bad for them, right? Anything Alberta does involves oil and gas. You know, oil and gas is terrible. I'm like, little gas is terrible.

They ship it into Montreal from Saudi Arabia. They don't have a problem with that. Right. There's a bit of a, there's a bit of a preciousness in our sherry drinkers that's actually not very much of a two-way street. In order for Canada to hold together, it's going to require them to start thinking about Alberta. What if Alberta was going back, right? We were saying we're going to have a vote on separatism. I think they'd be sending emissaries here like they used to go back. We love you rallies or whatever, right? But unfortunately, the way Canadian history is played out, there's an antipathy. in the mentality of the East that really has a chip on their shoulder about Alberta's independent style, the fact that we are the youngest demographic, the best educated demographic, the fastest growing demographic, the highest net income, the highest workforce participation, the highest participation in all entrepreneurship, the highest income invested, the lowest taxes, the best debt situation, the only people get

us to run for our money, our cousins in Saskatchewan that under the SAS party have stepped it up and they're starting to make it harder for us to beat the runaway number one right now. But I'll tell you, if Saskatchewan and Alberta, Northwest Territories, you can go back to being Buffalo if they're not careful out east, and we would overnight become the wealthiest single democracy in the planet per capita. Overnut, that would happen. But there's a lot to play for by being part of Canada. And that's where Keith and I are having the debate. but Venezuela is a ticking time bomb to the feds out east to say you've got to take this seriously.

Alberta is not going to wait around for this. They're not going to wait around. Keith has been a guest of this show many times, so I will put that together. I got no problem. I'm sorry, brought that troublemaker on your show. Well, I tell you what, the number one episode, as we put out on New Year's Eve, was the federal election live stream. You were on part of that. Keith was on part of that, right?

So different, different, we brought on a lot of different minds and to have a discussion on Alberta when, when, you know, the petition is going to, the referendum question, everything's going to be getting, I think, why not? Like, to me, that makes more sense. The longer I let you talk, I'm like, you go, yeah, Albertans are just nod in their head. Like, it's just time. Now, I'm not, once again, you fast forward and you go to a referendum, we're going to see where that that goes.

But if you're sitting out east, all the people out there that think this conversation's interesting, if Alberta left, I already know what had happened. It would be an influx of all these people going, I'm going to Alberta, because that's where it's at. Every entrepreneur, if we look, if we cut, Sean, if we cut my pet project, would be to see us cut our corporate tax to 5%, our personal income tax to 5%, flat tax, $5,000 deductible, so everybody's participating. And I know this is not popular, but have the 5% consumption tax because this is what they do do in these city-states, by the way.

And that means that of the 9 million people that visit Alberta and spend all their money in hotels and restaurants and stuff, everybody's participating in the public fisc. But 5-5 and 5, I think you would just have people say, you know what? I've built a great business. I can run it. I'm going to be personally located out of, you know, Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, the Rockies, Jasper Band. I mean, you would see a million of Canada's hardest, charging, smartest, business building, entrepreneurial set from every race, every demographic.

You already said it. New Canadians, young Canadians. Build it and they will come, David. You bet. You bet. Look, Dubai. Hong, Singapore showed us the way. Do you know when we were working on our aviation strategy back in 2019, I worked on that

strategy to be exactly like Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore strategy? We just have to create our airports because we're landlocked in ways that these places also happen to be, you know, Hong Kong's waterlocked except for their port and a hostile next door neighbor in China. Same thing with Singapore, they built. their marketplace on a huge national airline, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, and Emirates. And they run those airlines so that people connect to the world

through those city-states and build businesses around those city-states. And they drop the taxes, so there's zero capital gains tax. And then they let companies just bring people in and people come in and the total tax rate, the total federal and provincial combined tax rate if you're in a place like Seaport or Hong Kong is between 16 and 18%. It's your total taxes.

Martin Armstrong was on here with Brett Olland is that sometime in December. And he said it was simple. He said 10%, 0% on individuals, 10% on business and a consumer tax, and you'd have the biggest influx of human beings, regardless of where you sit

with the numbers and where you put them. You're doing 555. I've made them on that because I think there's a moral obligation for people to contribute to the society they live in and the things they consume. And I think there's a conservative, there's a conservative strand right now that I've been debating with

the godfather of all things, economic, Jack Mintz. But I think that it's really important for everybody to pay in the society they're part of. I think every immigrant that comes in, receive benefits till they paid in. I think that everybody that is working pays some tax

at low a threshold as possible. So $5,000 or not. So kids working in summer jobs, don't worry about it. But everybody pays into the system because everybody's consuming that health care. Everybody's consuming that education. And what you get, if you give people free rider privileges without there being a broad-based tax structure,

then people free ride. But when everybody pays taxes, they get savvy fast. And by the way, everybody pays paying taxes, keeps taxes low. They keep taxes. When you have to pay it, you want to keep the tax low. When you're not paying it, you're happy to say, let's let that income tax on corporations go to 20%. They're fat cats, right? The second you make everybody pay and the corporations are the job creators,

when we cut the tax rate for corporates from 12 to 8, do you know what happened with anything? 18 months. We made more tax revenues from corporations at 8% than we had ever made at 12. It only took 18 months. Do you know what, guess how much money we were making back in 2019 from, well, 2018 is better because that's when the end of you sell full control. But we changed it in 2019. So we'll give me 2019, right?

About $3.5 billion, finger math. You know how much we made the last year we measured? Over seven. Cutting it from 12 to 8. Cut it to 5. Make it 10. David, I think I personally think the longer you talk, the more strong a case you make for Alberta separating.

Well, I'll tell you the case to making. I'm making the case for Alberta doing everything that's within its power today. Nothing I've said is impossible for us to do right now today. Nothing. Every single thing I worked on when I was with Jason, we did it without. the idea of being independent. Well, sorry, we were doing with the idea of us being very independent, but we did it without the idea of us being separated, right?

And I do think there's a lot of nuance around what we mean by these words, by the way. I don't want to get into it. Sure, sure. But here's my challenge, Sean, my challenge to everybody that's listening is, what can you do right now as a province that is given the powers that the federal structure is given this province to do? Everything we've talked about, we can do right away. Right now, no excuse.

No excuse to wait for independence. If the RCNP has become DEI politically correct, overweight people that can't enforce the law or can't support rural people in basic policing, gone. Let's bring in Alberta of provincial police. That's within our power. Do it. Let's do it. Let's get all with it.

If we think that people are landing here and they're freeloading off society that they're not paying into, pass the law saying unless you've got your Alberta identity card, you don't get to consume health care simply because you land it and think that you can get away with it. It doesn't work that way. My dad doesn't have to wait in line for three months for a basic surgery while people are ripping off the emergency service, right? If we know that, pass the law. That's within our power. We can do that right now. So what's stopping them from doing all that? We can change the tax rates. What's stopping government for doing that? You were a part of, you were one of the key

principal advisors, correct? What's stopping them? stopping us from doing that then. Well, look, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, we, when I worked on our policy book, we had 387 promises that we promised we would do in that policy book. And by the time COVID was wrapping up, we had done 368. We did a lot through that time with COVID and sort of shut things down. We were in the legislature every day working these things. And we passed all those rules through.

We created a strong foundation for this phenomenal premier, Daniel Smith, who's fantastic in her team, to continue that process. Now, there are some things we didn't get to. I wrote a lot of our strategy on APP, but one of the reasons that we didn't get APP executed the way we wanted is that we need some things to come through from the feds and they've avoided doing their job on it because they know the answers. the answers are that more than 50% of CPPIB belongs to the province of Alberta, and they know this, and they're scared to death of it. And that's because of a conjunction of younger demographics, higher employment, workforce participation, and higher net contributions. And that those realities, when other places have worse demographics and pulling money out of CPPIB means the Alberta trunch of ownership of CPPIB has become the majority. and the feds are scared senseless of this. And so they have to,

they know the Morenoche-Po report, which now became LifeWorks or whatever it's called now, got them dead to rights on it. But they're not producing, you know, Krisha Freeland was supposed to produce this thing. She doesn't produce. She left, you know, she's like somebody in them trying to flee.

They know how deadly that is. But one of the things that we also decided to do as part of that EPP thing was ensure that we can look look our seniors in the eye and say, if your pension is being managed in Alberta, Alberta's got the capacity to manage it professionally and effectively with either homegrown assets like AIMCO or international assets, right? I mean, that money belongs to Alberts. And so that money has to be managed by the Alberta government in a way that is fair for all of Burtons. So we can decide we want to give someone

to KKR in New York, we want to give someone to Blackstone, we want to give someone to AIMCO, but one of the things we wanted to do is fix AIMCO, make sure AINCO had the trust of all albertans as the natural place where pension money would go. And we didn't have the confidence at the time that AECO could carry that trust. And we knew there were some dynamics in AECO that needed to fix. So some of these things aren't just because no one had the guts to do it. Some of them are because it takes time. Yeah, if you're going to, the second order effect of saying we want APP is if we go

fight that one to the end, they're going to turn on us and say, show us the relative performance with CPPIB relative to where you would have put it, right? Now, here's my take on APP for what it's worth if you're listeners care. It's like, what I really want is for everybody just to see the fact that Alberta is between 48 and 52 percent of all CPPIB assets. I just want the facts out. And I think it's more than that now, because every year it grows. So I just want people to be aware. And here's the other thing. If CPPIB does a better job of manage the income, leave it with CPPIB.

Well, let's just be crystal clear who it belongs to, the people of Alberta. It's not a slush fund to pay out a demographic declining east because they simply won't make any of the changes that Alberta makes all the time to create a more vibrant, dynamic economy that employs people. You can't continue to maintain a complete failed state on the premise that somebody somewhere is just going to send you money from Ottawa and tell Albertans, hey, you guys, we're not into your oil and gas, we're really into you guys, allowing us to free load off the check that you write in CPPIB and through transfer grants over year. So I've worked hard on the APP structure because that is the number one transfer of wealth from Alberta to the rest of Canada. And what I want to have happened, whether we choose to manage it through AECO or we choose to continue to manage it through the great people at CPPIV, who by the way are great people, the point is what we need to be clear about in this nation is how much of CPPIB belongs to the people of Alberta. And that's still fuzzy because everyone out east is desperate to keep it fuzzy because the second everybody understands just how much of CPPI belongs to people in Alberta, three things are going to happen. three things. Number one, they're going to lose their minds at just how much of CPPIB belongs to help them, right? Because they're caught. That transfer is now out in the open. It's obvious.

Second thing that's going to happen is CPPIB is going to get very smart, very fast, and they're going to open a huge head office of CPPIB in Calgary where it belongs, right? As the secondary head office of CPPIB. It doesn't belong just in Toronto. It belongs where all your clients are, right? So let's see a big office open up in Calgary. The third thing is going to happen is Alberta is now going to have enormous leverage politically, having conversations about how our federal structure is being managed, right? And that's a key part of how we operate independently within Canada. And so a lot of the arguments that we're having in the point you made about why not do all these things right now relate to the idea that for Alberta to be everything

that it can be for the people of Alberta. That's our mandate. Our mandate is we've got four and a half million people. We serve those people. And we're an open democracy. So people want to come in here and build a business and raise a family and chase their dreams. You are very welcome to come.

But you're going to come here under our rule set. And our rule set includes no DEI law enforcement of people that are unfit and arresting kids playing hockey during COVID instead of arresting drug dealers that we all know, the first and last names of in the neighborhoods, right? Number one, new rule, right? Number two rule, if you pay into the system, you stand to benefit from the system. And if there's a system we've been paying into for years that we've now, because we run a tight chip,

have created the majority of the assets of, let's be crystal clear that that exists and how we want that to be managed. That's CPIB, right? And APP doesn't have to be about saying we want to manage it right here, we can manage it or not, it's saying, we want everybody to know that we choose to allow those assets to be managed by the best manager. And if AIMCO is the best manager, they won't manage those assets, is LBans expect the very best. But if CPVAB is not the best manager, we could give those assets to KKR in New York. Those are our assets. They belong to our people. We're going to put those assets in the best places to be managed most securely for all burdens. And the more that

we get our act together, we do these things, whether we do them directly, as a province right now in federal structure, my preference, where Keith's view is we can get more of this done faster or more effectively in a more independent mode. I want to see us right now today pursue those things independently as much as we can in a way that stabilizes and secures our people. So we don't do it, you know, riding shotgun. We do it in a very purposeful plan, strategic way. On the APP, just on that one specifically, Alberta's already released, forgive me if I'm wrong on any of this, David, but they've already released their own report on how much of it is ours. And then you talk about how, um, I don't know,

Ottawa, I, uh, federal government keeps it fuzzy, right? And you go, well, how long can they keep it fuzzy for? Because at this point, it's like they know the number. We know they know the number. They know we know. And yet it's still drags on and on and on. Because when you go all the orders of effect as soon as they acknowledge it, it starts to benefit Alberta, and they don't want that. It's like, well, isn't this just another checkmark on the side of arguments for, let's say, Keith Wilson, of like, yeah, we're going to stay in this fuzzy world. We're done with the fuzzy.

Well, no, I think, look, I think what Keith and I agree on is that we fight. We work our hearts out, and we're required. We have the fights that need to be had to secure the future. for Albertans, their prosperity, chance to raise a family and build a business here. That is completely aligned. And I think, my guess, is Keith would probably agree with me a lot on the steps that we need to be taken for us to manage the pension assets that are currently being managed with CPPIB quite effectively to manage those better, to assure pensioners who would manage those better. But the point of an Alberta pension plan is not to remove pension assets from CPPIB. And I think that has to be really clear to people.

The point of an Alberta pension plan is to say, these assets all belong to Alberta, this is how much they are. This is how we tell you how much they are. They're being managed over here by CPPID for us. But we're clear on the fact that they're managing them. But we're also clear on the fact that we could take some of those and decide we're going to put them with another manager, a better manager, a diversified manager. so I think there's there's nuance to that but the point is I don't think Albertans lack courage in doing what's good for Alberta for the most part you know I think that what we've got to do is make sure that we and this is this is where Keith and I have this

difference of opinion in our strategy right now my strategy is given the powers we currently have three things let's make the changes we can make right now to make us the most free market dynamic economy and all of North America. And don't compare ourselves to Canada, compare us to Texas. Texas is the number one state to compare Alberta to, right? Why don't we have our taxes as low as theirs? What are we waiting for? Right?

What are the best tax modules in the world and how do they work to allow? How do you build the most sparkling modern dynamic cities in the planet in places like Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore, which are city-states, and they run themselves entirely on between 16 and 18% tax and no capital gains, no taxes on dividends, and a flat tax structure that allows them to... Can Alberta do that? Is that possible for us? If not, why not? What's the answer to that question? I think there's so much

we can do as a province to exercise the power, the authority we already have. The debate that I had is sort of the third point that, you know, and this is the rub of the debate I had with Keith is one of the reasons that I came back to work so hard with Jason through that brutal period of COVID the year before. We got all these things done. But one of the reasons that I came back was because the NDP had taken over the province. It's the challenge is this. What's changed from 20, 2015 to 2025, where you can guarantee me that we wouldn't create an independent province that doesn't still have the same forces underlying it that emerged in 2015 to allow the insanity

of a hard left garment to be voted into power in Alberta. Why were the NDP voted into power? Well, I think because the right divided itself and started pursuing things. This is the debate I had with Keith. And I think that what I want to see us do is secure an independent Alberta that is so independent within the Canadian structure that we offer federalism a truly distinct province, you know, and culture of dynamism and entrepreneurship and economic freedom and prosperity that within that structure, we continue to have the economic free zone that you have that, you know, Monaco has with France or, you know, some of these places have in Europe. and we benefit from being within the structure because we'll remain in the structure with most of our trade going laterally itself anyway.

And we just continue to do what we can with the powers we've already got and achieve those things. And then if we hit a point where we just say this point and no further, then there's an argument to be made when you can tell me that these are the things you can accomplish the independence you cannot accomplish today.

And that's the debate that I'm having with, or have had it had with the truth. I would argue the people of Alberta I've never stopped, obviously never stopped speak in their mind. And I would say the NDP coming back 2015 was a statement to the conservatives, full stop. And I would say Jason Kenney being removed by those same people was a statement once again to the conservatives. Get your act together. All the things you're talking about, all the great things that happened in the background of all the mandates you were checking off the board.

the major one that people were upset with. And you, you know, you mentioned it early on about how did you start or something along the lines you alluded to, how did the podcast come to be? Well, Jason Kenney was a big chunk of that, whether he knows it or not. Well, because I had two premiers calling it to the pandemic of the unvaccinated one that didn't make any sense at that time. It just didn't, none of that made any sense. And the more it didn't make sense, well, then we got to explore some conversations and try and figure out what the heck is actually going on. and the people of Alberta spoke again. They said, we don't want this anymore.

And then Daniel Smith gets elected. What did she do? She rallied the people of Alberta. I mean, I'm sure there's more to it in the political scene and the underbelly of it. But you watched her go around the province and talk to the people of Alberta. And they put her in. And then they said, okay, this is what we want. And then I was, you know, it was at the UCPA-GM.

They're making a loud case. We're upset with the relationship with Ottawa. Fix this. And she's trying. I would argue she's trying. I think she's doing an amazing job. Look, I think. But if you have a partner on the other side, David, that doesn't want to fix it, then what are your options?

That's right. You got the APP. They've made their case of this is what we think is there. They know, we know, everybody knows, but they're remaining in fuzz. It's like, at what point are the Alberta people just like, no, we're done with this? Right. Keith Wilson just speaks for a group of them, as do a whole bunch of people. and they're and they're just going

this doesn't make any sense anymore and do a lot of people still want to remain in Canada? Yeah, I think they do but when you continue to have the same relationship and nothing change at some point it breaks we will remain in Canada I mean we we know change in our geography

you know we will remain into to our friends of Saskatchew and our cousins in D.C. and our friends in Montana you know like we're and Northwest Territories. One of my PEP projects, when I was with Jason, there are two, we would talk about wildcard opportunities.

You know, one of them is I think Northwest Territories in Alberta should integrate and become a single province. I think that's a number of here. It's only like 50,000 people up there. They've got tons of great mineral resources. And eventually, you know, we're seeing the Arctic, you know, we could have a great Arctic sub-based up. there with

August and the Americans. As a province, answer this for me. Can we, and I don't know the word, is it annex?

Or is it, can they have a vote to join Alberta? Is that something between a province and a territory?

It is, because this idea has been floated on here before. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. So we think

an Alberta independence country is so far out in, not in Loneytown, but like impossible. But we think annexing the

Northwest Territories is possible. Explain to me how that's possible. Well, look, I think there's commercial and economic reasons related to scale and structure. Northwest Territories is just totally subscale. It doesn't make any sense. You have to spend way more there than you possibly get.

As part of Alberta, it would make a lot of sense. I also think, you know, I just think... But it making sense... Sorry, but it making sense. Fair enough. but as a province, is it like you just go down there, talk to the mayor, say, hey, you guys have a vote, you get 50% to leave North, to say they want to join Alberta and tomorrow where Alberta is just expanded immensely, or is it way more difficult than that? No, I think you probably start with public consent for sure. You don't want to say we're moving in without their being, but I think that it's just one of those. categories of things that I just think make eminent sense. Over time, if you look at

Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Northwest Territories, there's those lines on the map that'll make a lot of sense in being one one province and having economies of scale as a single province, make a lot of sense. And, you know, it used to be that way, I understand where we sort of divide it up. I'm sure there'd be people that would argue against it. But I think economies of scale, economic, realism, a bunch of things make that make sense. Number one. I also think that the other thing that I have as a pet project that I really like the idea of is I think if we go full sovereign wealth, right?

If we go full sovereign wealth, we should buy a CP rail. Because CP rail has a pre-constitutional right-of-way that crosses the country coast to coast. You could lift that rail bed and put pipeline under your... that they would take oil, gas, telecom, water. I mean, you can just, it's based out of, there's just so many good reasons why the current attempt to deal with undrip, to deal with B.C., to deal with these issues, you know, and these guys have the right, a lot of people don't know this, they have the right to build absolutely anywhere.

They require no permissions at all. CNN. This, CP. Oh, sorry, CP, Canadian Pacific. Yeah, yeah, none. CNN, I don't think we should buy that. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, but I think there's an opportunity.

Here's the punchline. There's opportunities for us to think creatively as a community and as a people that want to grow and expand and build and, and contribute to the world. We've got so much to give the world. And we keep running into these hurdles that are being, you know, thrown up by people that don't get it or they do get it and they're just resentful. And in either case, it doesn't matter if they're resentful or they don't get it.

I'm not worried about their emotional furniture, right? The point is we have to keep moving. We have to keep building. We've got to keep doing stuff. And I want to make sure as we do that, we do that in the most tactical way possible. So Keith and I are having a disagreement about tactics, but not about the overall spirit of an independent place where people can do more with the money that they make. They can have better incentives to make more and build more and do more to hire more people.

And we've got this extraordinary place that Singapore, Hong Kong, or Dubai would kill to have one natural assets. And yet they've built these stunning, sparkling modernist places with so little to go on, but dedicated to free market. principles that have worked. And you know what? You see poor guys in Hong Kong work their butt off, right? People really go for it. There's not a huge welfare state safety net structure that makes it easy to be lazy. But the place itself is, you know, incredible. It's an incredible place to live. And so I think Alberta's got a lot to learn from just looking around the world at what works. Look what's happening with Denmark right now. Denmark is imposing rules on immigration.

Everyone thinks Denmark's kind of a socialist, slightly left country, and they are. But they have much tougher rules on immigration down in Canada. As Canada,

should take a page on that book. Denmark has much tougher rules on this trans craziness. Alberta has just passed rules that are less fierce than

Denmark or Sweden or the UK on the trans situation. Lunatics tell children they're born in the wrong body. It's horrific.

Right? And that is no longer being permitted in places that, you know, if you ask people on the left, name a country that you think we should imitate. What about Sweden? I'm like, I love that in imitating Sweden on this transition, right? Set these kids free.

Give them the therapy they need. Not this horrific idea that you can gently mutilate them, right? It's horrible. In Denmark, tried it first, and now they're over it, and they won't permit it at all, except under deep experimental requirements, right? The UK has gotten rid of all of it. It's all, they shut down the Tabasot Clinic completely, right? Sweden, same thing.

Alberta can learn from Sweden, Denmark, and the UK on a social policy, like how we treat our kids and girls and boys' sports and other things, right? We can learn from that and point to it and say, hey, we didn't have all the right ideas. These guys went through it before we did a decade before we did. It's turned out to be a horrific experiment, Frankenstein and these kids, terrible. We're going to cut that because they learned first. Now they made it illegal. Denmark and Sweden are pretty sane.

We're going to go the way they went. The big argument I had during COVID, because there were a lot of differences of opinion around the table, was that we should follow Sweden in the way the Sweden managed COVID. And they came out of the lowest excess death rates in Europe, and they didn't have any masks. They didn't shut down their schools. They didn't do any of this crazy stuff.

They didn't follow the China model. They followed the Sweden model, which was the empirical model, the data-driven model, right? The Great Barrington Declaration now, my buddy Marty Macquarie is now in government here in D.C. Jay Baticharya as a total hero, you know, co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, that's what we should have followed. Why couldn't Alberta follow that as a province? It was a very complicated time and there was a lot of disagreement around the table on what was happening and how to call it. I think, you know, I've got to be very fair-minded about how I think about this.

But I think that there was a little more trust in the bureaucracy than was warranted. There was the sense that we needed to listen to what we're being told. And we shouldn't have listened to what we're being told. We shouldn't listen to what the science was saying. The mortality rate in Alberta, when I dug into it, was 83% before, or sorry, It was 81 years of age pre-COVID. And COVID, the mortality rate was 83. That's really weird, right?

Why would the mortality rate suddenly go up under COVID? What we discovered was in 95% of all cases, COVID had nothing to do with the principal reason why somebody passed away. Nothing. Nothing. It was the thing that kissed the elderly on the cheek at the one-yard line of their life horizon. It was present at the time people died of a cardiac arrest. It was present at the time people passed away from cancer. It was present when people died from a bad case of pneumonia, right?

And the determination by the bureaucracy to try and call everything COVID by naming anything that was actually not the principal cause of mortality. So 98% of all COVID deaths had at least one comorbidity. 95% had at least two comorbidities. And the 2% that we didn't have, we'd had no information on. We couldn't get information on. So are you pointing

to, forgive me, a point, a fight between government and the bureaucracy underlaying it? Like, is that the issue? All the time. It happens all the time.

We had to, we had to, look, we've had to to fight with the Department of Transport who hated the idea of an airport to downtown Calgary to Banff Railroad. They hated it. Part of the reason they hated it. I'm speaking out of turn here is because they didn't understand it. They had no idea how to do something like that.

You had to bring in people who knew what they were doing, but they really didn't like it. And so they wanted it not to happen, right? You found that with AHS bureaucrats. They were desperate to look identical to whatever was happening federally, desperate. right? So you would say, or there were moments where I would say, can I get the co-marbate? You'd be like, that'll take a week and a half. We'd ask for data. We can't give you that data. I'm like, it's metadata. It's not personal. Well, it's got privacy rules around it. Right. So, yeah, it's always a fight. It's always a fight. And these are not bad people.

It's really important to mention like you did at the top of the conversation. Not bad people, but people are threatened when they get in a situation, especially when as fluid and dynamic as COVID. And their feeling is, look, you're some banker clown that came out of Asia that's got a friend, you know, like you think you're going to tell me how to do my job in medicine, you know, get out of here. But when we got the numbers, we found out right away hospitals were empty, they weren't full, there's no reason to have people having to pass on critical surgeries, right? we found out the Great Barrington Declaration was correct we found out

Sweden did it right we did it wrong right we found these things out we found about the hard way but there's a fog when you're doing decision making and speaking for my good friend Jason K

he and I have disagreed on a lot of different things you know as principal advisor that means I get to say what I think and I can say it to him directly and he gets to listen to it or not listen to it

but the point is this he had a heart for people he had a heart for the people Well, Bernie, he did his best, given what he knew. There was a lot of fog in the air. And there was a lot of different crossover views. And I had some and other people had others. And this is a guy trying to make his best decision.

He did. Tried to make his best decision. And to your point, people looked at that. And they looked at the alternatives. They decided, I didn't like the way this played out. I mean, to make my voice hurt. And they did. That's the amazing thing about democracy.

Now we got a new premier. And first thing I did after the new premier was elected was get some friends together that you know we're able to be donors and say there's a new quarterback there's a new jersey new jersey says smith we're 100% behind her every one of us we're in the stands cheer you're on we're hoping for you know we know she's dealing with a lot she's got a lot coming her way there's a lot of people rooting against her there's a lot of crosswinds even even in our base there's people who don't like every aspect of how she's running the government it's not enough for some people. But she's, you know, she's juggling a lot of different competing interests and views

and perspectives. She's got an advisor probably like me who's, you know, going to give her a viewpoint where 80% of the time she thinks that's brilliant, 20% of the 10% of the time she thinks that's insane, never, never talk all that about buying CP and running a pipe runner or taking over the Northwest Territories. But, you know, 10% of times they might be like, that's really smart, but I disagree with it. We're going to go another way. And when that happens, I'll tell you what your job is. You job just put your gloves back on, kick up your stick,

jump back over the ice and go to the corners and drive. That's your job. That's what you do. And that's why. Do you think Jason Kenney would come on here? I hope so. I mean, I love him. He's a quick study.

He's a good guy. I mean, I think you should bring him on live and you should offer the inside, you know get a really good bottle of some Irish whiskey on offer as part of the thing but I would I look Jason has extraordinary integrity but he's also a fighter and he and I like I said you know we have lots to we agree with 9% of everything I would agree with them on you know I think he's dead right about most things or other things we don't agree on or didn't agree it on he thinks I'm I'll just full disclosure he thinks I'm a little too Trumpian you know, I told him when there's a choice between Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump

or Cabela Harris, Donald Trump, there's only one choice. And so that isn't a choice. I'll be 100% Trumpian. You know, but he's, he loves the simitas of politics. He loves the generosity of politics. He wants to believe the best of people. I'm more of a skeptic of bureaucracy. He's less of a skeptic.

He has gone a long way in politics because, He works harder than almost anybody I know. I'm going to speak to the audience listening. I don't think on the 2026 bingo card of the SMP, Jason Kenney was on it. But wouldn't that be a start to January if we could line that up? I'm just throwing that out to the universe. Okay.

I'll tell him you and I talked and I'll tell him that it'd be fun to see him get on there. And, you know, I'll buy the whiskey if it works out. Fair enough. John, here's something you should think about. You should get down to D.C. sometime and do a podcast with some interesting characters down here that used to run the CIA, have been in D.A.

I think you'd enjoy it a lot. And I think there's a lot that Alberta and, you know, the freedom-loving criminals that listen to your show would love to hear from some of their southern cousins about how they see Alberta. There's a lot of them, you know, couldn't pick up.

off on a mount to start with, right? But when they know how big our resources base are, a lot of them do know about KXL, which is, by the way, one of the things this premier made is facts on the ground in both elections, you know, but not this premier, Premier Kennedy did. We worked hard on that. You know, there's a lot of love for Alberta here, and it'd be fun to have you down here doing some interviews. Well, I tell you what, we can make that happen too.

David, I tell you what, we'll make that happen in 2026. The SMP and Washington, D.C. It's got a nice ring to it. That does. It does. And I'll provide the bourbon if you get down here, and I'll provide the whiskey if Jason ends up accepting your renegade offer to give him a fair. Freedom-loving criminals of Alberta.

Yes. The freedom-loving criminals. That's right. David, appreciate you hopping on and doing this. I'm sure we'll chat afterwards, but appreciate your insights. only on Venezuela, but your thoughts on Alberta, because the longer you talk, I'm just like, if you want Alberta independence,

you're just listening and going, not in your head, uh-huh, uh-huh. And maybe there will be some different people's voices come in. I know the Jason Kenny for a lot of us is a pill that was hard during COVID specifically, but I would appreciate an opportunity to sit and chat with them and to allow the audience to hear that. Very federalists, too. You know, he will make an argument for Alberta in a united Canada,

a very similar to the argument the Premier would make. And that's an argument, I think, you know, you sharpen your arguments by having the conversation with each other. Yeah, I'm not opposed to hearing. He's been smarter than me. So, you know, Keith and I, when we had that debate, I said, you know, the number one thing that is the tell for any debate is when someone's dumb enough to debate Keith Wilson,

you know they've got to losing your argument. Well, we'll make it, well, I tell you what, In the coming weeks, folks, we'll see if we can't get Keith and David on because I'm always for having different guys on with opposing views to see where that discussion goes. I think that'd be interesting and enjoyable for the audience to listen to. David, appreciate you hopping on today and all the best in 2026. And you shot.