Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. #157 - Danielle Smith

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Former Corus Radio talk show host hopped on to discuss freedoms, separation, communism & if there is something nefarious happening within government. Danielle was once the leader of the Wildrose Party & the official opposition. She has been on the Corus Radio Network for over 6 years & has written for the Calgary Herald. Let me know what you think Text Me! 587-217-8500

Hi, this is Braden Holby. Hey, this is Tanner, the Bulldozer Bozer. Hi, this is Brian Burke from Toronto, Ontario. This is Daryl Sutterin. Hello, everyone. I'm Carlyagro from SportsNet Central. This is Jay On Right. This is Quick Dick, quick, tick coming to you from Tough Moose, Saskatchew. Hey, everybody, my name is Theo Fleary.

This is Kelly Rudy. This is Corey Krause. This is Wade Redden. This is Jordan Tutu. My name is Jim Patterson. Hey, it's Ron McLean, Hockeynet in Canada, and Rogers' hometown hockey, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday. I hope everybody had a great weekend. Man, is it freaking nice out there or what? Like, holy dinah, it was a beauty, beauty Sunday. I know coming into the studio, normally I'm happy to get inside and ready to roll things along, but it was a hard one to, you know, I didn't want to come sit in a room with no windows. I wanted to be out, beer in hand, feet up on the deck, enjoying the sun. Man, that felt great. Today had the kids out to the park.

and I mean, you can just feel everybody's mood go up tenfold when the sun's shining like that, when the water's running and things are melting. It certainly feels like maybe winter is coming to a close. I don't want to jinx us. Knock on one, Sean. All right. Well, we got a great one today. Before we get there, let's get to today's episode sponsors.

Carly Clause and the team over at Windsor Plywood, builders of the podcast studio table. for everything wood these are the guys now custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom custom edge tables or doors I mean oh so many doors when you want quality stop in and see the group at Windsor plywood or just hop on your phone and do what I do creep them on Instagram or give them a call 780875 9663 um Jason and crew over a T-Barr-1 ranch supply. They offer steel windbreakers, steel fence posts, three and a half, four-and-half, seven-inch, steel paneling, and steel gates.

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All right. They will last so long you can put them in your will. Yeah, they're all steel. They ain't going anywhere. Jen Gilbert and team, for over 45 years since 1976, the dedicated realtors of Coldwell Banker, city-side realty have served Loyminser in the surrounding area. Jen wanted to ask me to shine some light on the Royal Canadian Legion here in town.

like a lot of us over the past year, they've fallen on some pretty tough times and are looking for a bit of help. Their building is for sale. They're doing roast beef suppers normally on Saturdays. They have T-shirts for sale. They got a 50-50 going on.

And basically, if you hop on their Facebook, you can kind of follow along and see the updates as it comes. But another local group that is, you know, trying to find their way in this pandemic world that we're in. And if you can support their beef suppers or buy a ticket or, heck, I took a look at the shirts. I think I'm going to have to rock one of the Legion shirts. So I'll be making sure I make a call here this week.

But it would be super, you know, awesome of all you to take a look into it and support some things going on here in town. I know you're already doing probably more than your fair share. but would appreciate if you gave the Legion a call for everything real estate look no further than Coldwell Bank or city-side realty 24 hours a day seven days a week 7808753343 and if you got a house you know what I'm about to say get a mortgage broker Joe Fisher now obviously her name says it all right now there is talks of interest rates doing some things and whether they're going up or down. I think it just really behooves all of you.

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maybe check her out on her website jfisher.ca. Clay Smiling and a team over at Profit River, they specialize in importing firearms from the United States of America. They pride themselves and making the process easy for all their customers. The team at Profit River does all the appropriate paperwork on both sides of the border in order to legally get the firearm into Canada and into your hands. Also, they take care of registering the firearm and transferring to your PAL or FAC before shipping them by mail courier bus to wherever you are. Just go to Prophetriver.com and check them out today.

They are the major retailer of firearms, optics, and accessories serving all of Canada. And how about the SMP billboard, actually, or the flat shun that it's getting named now. We got a cardboard cutout of my ugly mug sitting at factory sports that has been named. nicknamed Flatshan, so we're having a little bit of fun there. That's all from the team over at Read and Write, so shout out to D&Waddley and the folks over there doing the amazing work, making me look sharp. Gartner Management is also a Lloydminster-based company specializing in all types of rental properties to help meet your needs. Whether you're looking for a small office or a 6,000 square foot commercial space, give Wade Gartner a call 780808, 5025. And if you're

heading into any of these businesses, let them know you heard about them here, all right? Now let's get on to this T-Barr-1, tale of the tape. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, she graduated with degrees in economics and English. Former Director of the Alberta Property Rights Initiative and the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute, former director of Provincial Affairs for Alberta with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, was a member of the Legislative Assembly for Highwood. In 2012, she was the leader of the official opposition and the leader of the Wild Rose Party. She has extensive experience in media, radio host with chorus entertainment for over six years,

writer for the Calgary Herald, and served as a host on the Global Sunday. I'm talking about Danielle Smith. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Daniel Smith, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Daniel Smith. Hi.

Thanks for hopping on. My pleasure. You don't want to talk oilers with me right off the hop? Well, we can. Because I did grow up in an Oilers family, even though I'm from Calgary. And it was, why wouldn't you? Because it was the whole Messier and Wayne Gretzky era. I remember my brother crying when the big press conference happened and he was traded to the Kings.

And so, yeah, we grew up great Oilers fans. And so over the years, of course, because the Oilers haven't had a bit of a dry spell. I keep hearing, oh, it's a rebuilding year. It's a rebuilding year. Okay. but at some point the rebuilding should be done and they should start winning, right? And so that's not happened. And so I have broadened out my support.

So I support the flames, but let's face it, they haven't performed at the stellar level that they did. When did they win the Stanley Cup back in 89? Do I have that right? You do. You know what's funny? People see the missing teeth, the backwards hat, the hockey jerseys. They go, oh, man, we're going to talk hockey? Is that what I'm on here for?

I know, exactly. I just like to watch you squirm a little bit. I know. Well, you also said, though, that you're like 80% sports, 10% adventurous people. And 10% history. And it's actually changed. It's actually 60, 2020 now. And I just find I might have to get rid of that all together because that's how it started

out. It's a little over two years ago. I started this. And it started out that way. And my background, as the missing teeth probably elude, I was wondering about. that. Yeah, yeah. And so, but as time goes on, I find myself getting a little more interested in what's currently going on. And, and so my fascination with you, Danielle, is I got to be honest. I, I stumbled upon you. I got three older brothers. And they told me about your show,

I don't know, call it six months ago. And I finally tuned in one day. And you got to, talking about governments don't make communities. People make communities. And you had this like little three, four minute segment. And I was like, wow, I was like really well said, like really well put. And so then I started listening a bit more. And then that's when I got in touch. And I just kept listening. And I was so disappointed when I heard you were leaving. I was like, you got to be kidding me. I just found this. And now she's gone. Okay. Well, that sucks. But the least I could do is bring you on here. because I assume if I don't know who you are or didn't know much about you, and I have to give a little bit of background because people from my area are going to remember

the Wild Rose and everything about that. But I was gone. I was in 2009 when you got elected, I was in the States. And so by the time I came back, you were almost done with the Wild Rose. So I didn't remember the ruckus, but I got to be honest, that was a younger guy, and I don't know how much I paid attention to it. So, yeah, that's a little bit of the brief how I decided, I'm like, I got to get Daniel on. Like, I got to get on. And there's been so many people reach out to me about you coming on, which has been really cool. But for the people who don't know a whole lot about you, Danielle, maybe you could give a little bit of a background for my audience on, on who you are and kind of your history. And if I butt in and stop you to maybe explain a little bit

more apologies right now. Oh, for sure. I will. I'd be really interested in knowing what kind of feedback you got from your listeners. Oh, on Twitter, on Twitter, it was mixed. On Twitter, it was mixed. But for the most part, people really, in this area, for the most part, people were, they want to ask you some tough questions. They want to ask about things that we're all concerned about, but nobody has a good answer on it.

And you, with your background, I think it's going to be an interesting little chat here today. All right. Well, I'm surprised that you would even say Twitter was mixed. Twitter's almost uniformly assessed. and almost uniformly hating on me. So I think you were being kind to suggest that it was, because it's part of the reason why I left Twitter.

So my background is, I have a background in public policy. And so I got an English degree and decided to do what every person with an English degree does, moved to Vancouver to try to enter the movie business and worked as a waitress. And then realized the movie business was kind of boring because you sit around on a set all day. So I ended up realizing I needed to do something else, came back to school, went to, through an economics program. So the mix of economics and English allows me to write and it also allows me to think through and analyze issues. I got into public policy. My first job was at the Fraser Institute as an intern, got into political advocacy with the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute.

I'm a big property rights fan. I met a great group of ranchers through that who taught me about free market environmentalism and the incredible work our ranchers do in stewarding landscapes and protecting our biodiversity. So I've always been such a huge fan of our ranching community. And I hate it when the international community, the environmental community, dogpiles on them. So that's one of the big areas of advocacy I've done. Then I got elected to the Calgary Board of Education.

And I was a trustee, but I was part of the board of trustees in Calgary that got fired. So you're going to see a pattern here. I seem to be getting fired from almost every job I've ever had. I got fired after 10 months. As long as you're learning something along the way, I don't know. Isn't it the truth? Right.

Yeah, isn't it the truth? I still have all my teeth, though, but I feel like I've been, I've been hit me a few times. You got one up on me. Although it came pretty close on a couple of those times to get into blows. But then I got, I guess after I got fired from the school board, the Calgary Herald figured, you know, she's in her 20s and she got herself elected. So maybe she's, maybe she's got something on the ball. why doesn't she come over here and write for us? So I wrote, was an editorial writer and columnist

for The Herald for six years. At the same time, the Global, Canvas Global had bought into the newspapers. So they tapped me to host their National Current Affairs talk show called Global Sunday, which I did for four years, where I met the love of my life. And we got married in 2006, and we've been together ever since. I'll tell you a little bit more about David in a bit, because he's just my rock and he's, he's really such a great sounding board for me and has been over the years. But then I got into the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, so that was small business advocacy and traveled the province.

I mean, I had family up in Lloydminster. So I've been up to Lloydminster a few times with CFIB, but then also with my parents. I remember that actually one trip, you have to tell me if it's still there. I'm pretty sure it was Lloydminster. And we went up on the train because you used to be able to. to do that. But I think you've got a museum there where you've got a two-headed calf. We do. And it's been, the museum is closed down currently.

Oh, too bad. That's a side issue. But I've heard about the said train that used to take passengers from Manhattan, Lloyd-Mendster. Totally. So we had family there. So that's the reason why we went out. I'm glad the two-headed calf is still there. I'm going to have to go visit the museum when it's reopened so I can check that out. So then after CFIB, I got convinced to put my hand in or my hat into the ring for politics, uh, ran and won as leader of the wild rose. Uh, that also ended in calamity. Um, I, but I want, I want to hold you there for a second. I, that you just, you do with so many guests when they get on a podcast do. They just, they just rattle off 70 things. I'm like,

that's, that's a lot. So I want to draw you back in a little bit. No, I want to skip over that part of my history. No, no, we're not even going to worry about wild rose yet. What I want to talk to you about is I've heard you talk a lot about how you're young, maybe in your teen years, a teacher talking about communism, you coming home and talking about it, your dad being Ukrainian, or you having Ukrainian heritage, and talking about that. I was curious, like, from day one, were you interested in politics, or is this something that's kind of grown over time? I would say that that was probably the moment where I became interested in politics. It's strange, because I really didn't like social studies when I was in junior high and high school. And maybe it's because my professors were so

offside with the ideology that I grew up with around the family dinner table. And so I remember clear as day that social studies teacher was grade eight social studies. And I came home from school and he was teaching about communism and talking about how it was a good system and preferable to our system. And so my dad didn't think much about the millions of Ukrainians that Stalin started. And so he went and yelled at the teacher and realized that we had to talk about politics more around the dinner table. So I think a lot of my politics came from my parents. But I understand, like my family runs the range of political opinions. I've got five of us, Sibs.

My brother's more conservative than me. He's the oldest. And the youngest is a vegan animal rights environmental activist who does his best to reduce his carbon footprint. So we have the whole range in our family. family. So this is maybe part of the reason why the way I approach politics is like a dinner table discussion. Everybody comes from a different perspective. There'll be some things that you agree on, some things that you disagree on. But in the end, you still have to be able to have, you self to love each other. So you still have to be able to have a reasonable conversation without

turning angry. And so that's the approach that I took when I got into radio. But I think my family is a bit of a microcosm. the kind of conversations that I think we should be having in the public at large. But I don't think we're having them. I think what's happening. No, in the public at large, people are identifying. You're going to their own echo chamber to get the validation of their own opinions. And then anything that counters their opinion, they shy away from or discredit or use angry language or try to de-platform. And I don't think it's really a very healthy situation we're in right now. I would agree. I also have four.

siblings. So I got, there's five of us and we, and the, the brothers and I all have a roundtable. We'll certainly talk a little more hockey than what us too will, but the, you get us going. And I completely get five siblings going at it. That makes complete sense. And saying that, what having siblings and multiple siblings does is it teaches you that it's okay to disagree on things, right? Like it's not the end of the world to have a disagreement. It's being able to keep the communication going, which seems lacking in our political landscape more and more actually seems just in society. I was curious about your dad with the Ukrainian background. I'm a guy reading the Gulegg archipelago. I'm in a book club, I've been reading it. I've said it several times now

that it is probably one of the very few books where every page has so much meat on it that it's hard to like, you can't just like speed read it. And it's not a small book. It's daunting. When your dad tell, like, when you go back to when you're younger and your dad was talking about, you know, all the Ukrainian farmers and why communism is not a good choice and what Stalin did, like, is there some things you could share with us that just, I don't know, can kind of paint a picture, I guess? You know, there's so much that I have read since that it's hard. The memories kind of all melt together. All together. Right.

I do remember when we found pictures of my family back in the Galicia region. So my great grandfather had come over here just after World War I. And so he maintained contact with the people back home. And so I remember seeing these pictures of sort of very sad looking. You know all those pictures from the 1930s and 40s? You had to make sure that you kept the same look on your face, otherwise it would get all blurry. And so they were very sort of sad pictures of people who didn't look like they were having a very happy life. And I wondered as I looked at those, whether any of them survived it.

Because he would have continued the relationship. And the problem is my great grandfather was dead before I was an adult. So I wasn't able to have the conversation with them. So we don't know what happened to our family there. But to know that you've got a family member who was watching everything that was, going on and experiencing it and perhaps truly wishing that he had had some family with him. I think that that's part of what stuck with me is how many people lost family members through that.

And we did, when we were at the council at the legislature to, to Jeanswazdiske's credit, he started doing an annual commemoration of Holodomor and the amount of outpouring from the community and the stories that they would tell. Though that I think is what sticks with me as well, is that we've got to commemorate those events so that we don't forget. And this is the thing that I find so shocking is that we, I don't know how it is that young kids are still indoctrinated into this idea that somehow communism is the ideal system has just been implemented wrong. There was a little black book of communism that was written a number of years ago. And I remember reading a book review of it from one of my dear friends, Mark Milkey. And it goes through the tens of millions of people that have been killed under this regime, whether it was Soviet Union or whether it was China, whether it was Cambodia. The list goes on and on. And here's the thing. Communism can't be implemented correctly. This is communism when you implemented, is that it results in rationing. It results in the elites stealing from the poor. It results.

in food and energy shortages, which leads to mass deaths. It leads to politically motivated killings to maintain the system. These are the things that are intrinsic to how communism works. And so that's always been with me. So from the first time I was introduced to that conflict with my dad, and then seeing it reinforced every time you looked at a new regime that took place under communism, there really isn't much different from one to the next.

No one can point to a perfect communist system because they're all rotten. And yet still you have young kids thinking that Marxism is such an ideal system. And that's something I've been struggling with for a long time is how do we try to persuade young people that communism is just as rotten and evil in ideology as fascism? We seem to understand that what Hitler did, what Mussolini did, was abhorrent, was the worst crime that we've seen in the last time. years. Why don't we look at communism the same way? Why is it okay for young kids to be told and indoctrinated in communism? I think that's wrong. I think both ideologies are equally evil. Left-wing authoritarianism and right-wing authoritarianism are equally evil and equally opposed to the individual and equally opposed to freedom. And freedom should really be at the center of what we're all

striving for. So that's the framing of my ideology. When it comes to communism, I feel like a lot of people, especially in their younger years, it's kind of like utopia, right? Or at least that's the way it's kind of like presented. And so, you know, everybody being equal sounds really good. And actually, I've heard you say, I've been in arguments with my brothers over this, not you specifically, the language that is used from the conservative side compared to the liberal side, speaking Canada specifically here, is there's, if you're going to play the game of politics today, you need to adopt a more liberal language. They have like these key words that the opposite, like if you want to play the game today,

those are the words. And I wonder, and this is just, you know, listening to talk about communism and why communism compared to the Nazis, why the differences. To me, maybe one of the things could be is language surrounding it. And the way it was, the way it was, the way it was, the way it's. spoke about because when I think of the Nazis, you think of gas chambers, uh, population, like you can just see all the images come running through. And in our culture, we've been taught that from very, very young age. And we fought them. So like, you know,

like rah, raw, fight them. We helped in stopping it, etc., etc. Where you think of, and I'm just speaking from the little I've read on Stalin and, uh, in the gulag archipel and and how it's systematic. Like it is slow moving. It's not like one night they came and rounded up a million people, although you might know that there is a night like that. I'm just, he talks about it being the big game of solitaire.

And I've probably told my friends about that 50 times since I read it because I always said in politics and all that can't be, there can't be that slow moving of a, but there it is in pages, right? Yeah, that's right. It's such a good insight that you have there. I think you're on to something because it's almost like, well, fascism was deliberate in its victimization of the Jews. But communism, it was accidental that we starved all those people.

It was accidental that they died in the prison. It's almost like it's seen to be just incidental as opposed to deliberate. And it is deliberate. I think that's what we have to understand is that when you're in a regime where everything is control, by the state, it means that they decide what occupation you're going to be in. They decide when you're allowed to move from that occupation. They decide how much you're going to produce at that occupation. They decide when you get into the line for when it's your turn to get bread or a dishwasher or an automobile. And if you resist that, then you're the problem because the entire system is

geared around making sure everybody is a cog in the wheel of the state. And so the way you deal with those who are disruptors is you disappear them and they get removed. And so I don't think it's any, I don't think really that it's, it's manifests any differently anytime it's been implemented. And this is the, this is the insidious part of what we're seeing right now. I think that the authoritarian regimes around the world are going to take on a bit of a different flavor now because of what we've seen with China. China's a pretty good indication of what the future could look like for us if we don't fight back and assert our freedoms. I should tell you, I'm not sure when this is airing. Monday on, what is it, International Women's Day, I was told.

So I don't know how the heck that happened, but there you go. Okay, so I'll try not to speak in a dated way because, but so people will now know it's been pre-recorded. But this evening, I'm speaking to Pastor James Coates. And he's the pastor who's imprisoned. I should stop you there for a second. My audience knows I pre-record everything, right? Oh, okay, good. So it's not a shock to people that we're talking a few days before it's released. I've already put it out on Twitter that I'm having you on and everything. So you don't need to worry about how you talk, how it sounds.

Oh, beautiful. Let me put it into context then. Yeah. So Thursday is the day that we're doing this. I'm talking to Pastor James Coates tonight. So he's a pastor who put restrictions into his church when the COVID-19 outbreak first happened in March and April. And then as we started learning how to live with this, he kind of left it to his parishioners. He said, you know what, wear a mask if you want, go online and live stream if you want, or come and enjoy the fellowship if you want.

And it drew the attention of a stitch, because that's always what happens in societies that turn authoritarian. And he got reported to the police, at which point they put out a call for his arrest. He turned himself in and he's still in prison three weeks later. And he may end up being in prison until May. And why? When you hear our Premier, who used to be a freedom-loving guy, say, well, everybody else can follow the rules. Ninety-nine percent of all other religious institutions can follow the rules. This one is just one ne'er do well. Is that a legitimate reason for him to be imprisoned? Because he says he's going to go back to speaking to his flock. That's his job. I mean, he answers to a higher calling. He's a God-faring man. He answers to what his church following in church faithful. will say. He's not going to say, okay, Premier, I guess I'll just not preach now for the next several years until this ends up finding its way through the court. But that's how they do it, right? So if you were to pull your audience on them, you'll probably find the majority would say,

darn Tutin, you should follow the rules the government puts in place and that minister should be in jail. But that's how happens, right? They turn us against each other because we've all had to live with restrictions in our lives. We're upset about them. And darn it, he shouldn't be allowed to avoid the restrictions. And so we'll make him the scapego. We'll make him the sacrificial lamb. And I think that's wrong.

I think that the premier should have looked at that as an indication that he's gone too far in his regulations, and he should have found a way to dial it back. But that's the real problem that we have, is that authoritarian leaders have the ability to make us think that they're taking care of us. in charge, they're doing it for the right reasons. When in fact, it's, well, that's the guy. If we let him go, then all those other pastors are not going to follow our rules, and then we'll

start losing control of the situation. So this is just a microcosm of how that idea manifests, that it's okay for the government to pick one person off at a time just to keep law and order. Whereas I think that that's the opposite of our thinking about how we approach government. Normally we approach government by saying we have an absolute right to be free and government has to find a way to enact its policy in a way that causes minimal impairment to our freedom. I cannot believe in the last year how that completely reversed that I don't hear anyone really talking about freedom. Freedom is now a fringe idea. We sort of accepted that government can tell us to do whatever they want and we're supposed to blindly follow along with it. And that's not a path that is very healthy to go down.

So first off, I've heard you talk an awful lot about speaking for the minority or for like you're in the minority. Well, I bet if I pulled my, I'll give you a little, we'll inject a little humor here. I put out a poll about my teeth. How many people you think said I should fix my tooth? I would say yes. Just taking a look. Yeah, I would be on the yes side.

And so I would think the majority. Is anywhere anywhere between 55 to 68% said, do not fix it. Get out, really? You, ma'am, are talking to the minority. I guarantee I put a poll out tomorrow. People are like, no, we need to get passes. We need to get moving. That guy needs to get out of jail.

You're talking, like, I think what I have struggled with is when Trudeau got elected the second, the last time. I remember watching on TV being like, really? Like, obviously I'm, I'm out to launch because I just, you know, I'm going to be honest. I keep saying this over and over again. I'm trying to, you know, I hopefully in five years, I'm a little more well-versed. I've talked to a few more people and I can look at it a little more from a bigger view. But my, my view is pretty narrow right now as I continue to grow and I hope to continue to grow. But that one really floored me. And I go, obviously I'm missing some things. I got to, I obviously need to start talking to more people because

here in little old Lloydminster, we're either rednecks or we're just out of date with what the rest of the world looks like. And then you, you do the population figures and you go, well, I mean, what is it? 65% of, of, uh, Alberta is in, Alberta is in, um, Emmington and Calgary, right? City, I mean, and Lloyd's a city, sure. But I mean, we're a farming oil community that is pretty, you know, people can talk about it, whatever they want. It's pretty tight, man. So when you say my audience, no, my audience gets upset at me bringing up things like white privilege and, you know, like the government being okay or something like that, that's what

they're getting. They're going to sit and listen to this. And I'm oversimplifying. There's going to be people who don't like it for sure. but I sat down on what would that have been about February 1st give or take a month ago and that's when the lady had the Facebook videos come out about her son being taken away from the Calgary airport and she was losing it and I was just going like what is going on like I get it's I listen to your Jason last Jason Kenney one and I understand you know the political side better than I do

I understand he can't say certain things but does it not behoove our leaders to take a stand at controversial times where people aren't going to like it. And now, somebody else is going to go. He did. He said the 1.01% of the population sitting in jail because they won't abide by the rules. It's like, we live in a free country where he hasn't really done anything wrong. He's telling people who use the common sense. Treat us like grownups. A limit certain things. Like, I just don't understand. I'm having a really hard time understanding. That's why I'm starting to veer towards having people on who have had better experience, not better, more experiences, I guess, in this world than I have.

So we can, we can try and find some answers and hopefully enlighten the audience that I have to be like, oh, this is what's going on and we need to do something about it immediately. Otherwise, we don't know where it leads. Yeah. And it's a great point because we don't know where this is going to lead. Maybe your experience in Lloyd Minster is a bit different because if I remember how, works. Your health region is actually Saskatchewan. And your school board, I think, is also Saskatchewan. And so I don't think you've lived under the same rules that we have in the rest of

the province. But it's been strange, right? So the Alberta Junior Hockey League, we'll bring it to a little bit of hockey here. The Bobcats, the team in town, the H. H.L. is firing back up. I think it's March 12th, if memory serves me correct. And they've been told they're not allowed to play because they're Saskatchewan. And I go, can an exception? Like, I don't know. I just live here.

Can an exception just be kind of like, I know you've got to draw a line and whatever, but they're like, they do all the precautions that the Alberta government, how is it that we're that divided that we won't allow that to happen? And yet, and yet what are the rules right now for you in being able to see friends and family?

Are they, do you have a cohort you're allowed to see or not? Restaurants. Restaurants, You can see them in restaurants. It's interesting, Daniel. I come from a small farming community where you know is, you know, it's insulated from the entire world, right? But you still start to feel the impacts.

The snitch line, the phone line is just like, what is that? I don't get it. That is a mechanism that's been used in every communist country that has ever, that has ever exist. I had someone listened to me one day. I have a few former European bloc nations, residents who fled or came here after communism fell. And one person sent me this note, which was so surprising to me, saying that my, under the old regime, if I had done something against government, my own mother would have reported me. that's how that's how it works and i i haven't seen very much different in this environment that we're in people most of the complaints that have come in have been disgruntal family members although i will i will say this neighbors it has been a small number of complaints that have come in i would think

i looked it up once i haven't seen it lately it's been thousands though it's been it's been it was over 10 000 when i last looked at it so it's been thousands and thousands and that's how it happens one by one. Does that, does that include the prank phone calls? I don't know how many franks there's been. And maybe they probably have been. I guarantee, I guarantee there has been.

But what makes a person do that? What makes a person call? Now you're bringing in. Authorities to say my brother had 10 people over to watch a hockey game. Or my sister has, is still continuing with. her sewing circle or whatever would be. Who would do something like that? That's the mentality that we have to guard against. Does it's nobody's business but your own? A libertarian viewpoint is this,

is that you have free agency. I mean, you can do whatever it is, you can exercise your freedom, as long as you're not impacting someone else. So what COVID has done is it's allowed government to say that every gathering is a risk. of spreading COVID. No, it isn't. You're only at risk of spreading COVID. If you have COVID and you go out and you're sick and you're sneezing and coughing on other people and sharing utensils, if you are both healthy and you meet, it's none of government's business whether you decide to meet. And that's the real problem is that we've now taken so much that should be in the private sphere. It's nobody business but our own. And we've made it something that our neighbors are calling the authorities about.

And I don't know if we get away from that. The kind of erosion that that brings to a community to know that you can't trust your neighbors, that's, I think, going to have a huge destructive effect over the next number of years. Because I don't know if any of these restrictions are going to be eliminated once we're through the next few months. Because the authorities are already posturing in positioning to keep them in place, saying, oh, well, you know, there might be a variant. And if we have variants, they might, the vaccine might not work. And you had Dina Hinshaw said the other day, well, we might not be able, we don't know if we're going to have festivals. It depends how many people get vaccinated.

So now we have to meet some kind of societal goal for a certain number of vaccination before we're allowed to have festivals again and stop wearing our masks. Are we able to stop wearing our masks next year? Once respiratory season begins again? Or is this going to be able to, to be a permanent feature of our society. They've seen what they can get away with, and they can get away with a heck of a lot. I mean, part of the reason why we don't even know what our rights are is because they close the courts down. Do you think it's that nefarious? Yeah, I think it is. I mean, all you have to do is just look at the language of some of the political issues, and look at the media coverage, too. I'll agree with you on the media coverage. The reason I ask if it's that nefarious is I look at you

and I go, I'm going to quote a little, or give you a little interstellar reference, is I feel like a lot of the conversation right now in behind the scenes around my area is around the Wild Rose, right? The Wild Rose Independence. And you're a lady who's seen over the event horizon, so to speak, you've been a part of a new party in Alberta.

You were a very popular party in Alberta. You were the official opposition. And yet, you didn't stick with it and eventually went back to the conservative party. That has a question. Why in the world would you do that? I sort of attached to it. Part of it was that I loved Jim Prentice. He had been, I'd known him for 25 years. He was the very first campaign I worked on, Rick Orman's leadership campaign. Jim Prentice was the campaign manager. He was my MP. I met with him many times in the various roles that I had. I thought the world of him. And he was a, and because I'm more progressive on social issues, one of the things I had great admiration for him in 2004 was that he broke ranks with the

conservative position and voted to affirm gay marriage. And I've been a big supporter of the, I'm an ally of the LGBTQ plus community. And I thought that that also gave me an impression of who the man was. So I felt like he was staunchly conservative on the fiscal issues, which I care about, but also progressive on the social issues, which I also care about. And so when he came back, The fight was out of me. How was I going to fight against him? He was no stalemak. He was no Alison Redford. He and I were very similar types of politicians. And I was also beginning to see that the province has changed quite a bit. When I started off in politics, what did we have? The NDP polling at less than 5%, the liberals polling somewhere around the same. It looked to me like you could have

two conservative parties and they divvy up somewhere between 80 and 90% of the vote. One of them would win. But something changed really dramatically after Stelmack and after Allison Redford. And it became a point where you couldn't have two conservative parties. Otherwise, the NDP would zip up the middle. And I know people interpret what happened in 2015 differently than I do. I look at it as that's exactly what Jim and I were trying to avoid is two right-wing parties splitting the vote and the NDP slipping up the middle. There are others who say, well, if you'd stayed as the leader, then that wouldn't have happened. And I have to say it's just not the case. Jim was a very strong candidate. There was no way I was winning over that solid core of 25 to 30 percent that was always sticking

with him through thick and thin and I could never win over. It would have been the same outcome. I tried to avoid the outcome of the ND's winning. It did it badly. It didn't work out well for me on a personal level. But I think after the NDP experience, I think our province has hopefully come to that same conclusion. That's why I'm quite worried for Jason Kenney's government, because if the Wild Rose even gets 10% of the vote, that's enough to win a couple of seats probably in rural Alberta and to be the spoiler in Edmonton and Calgary. And then we end up with the NDP again. So I'm not a huge fan of splitting the conservative vote. I'm so angry at the approach the UCP has taken on so many issues, but I still think trying to find a way to change the direction of the government

with pressure and advocacy and feedback, maybe electing a changing over some of the MLAs at the riding level. Maybe that's the solution. But I acknowledge that he's in real trouble because of the wildrose and because of some of the actions that he's taken. But to the point of do I see it being nefarious, here's what I would say is that you blame the media, but I blame the politicians because I was in the media.

And media will report on what politicians say. And so if the constant message from the politicians and the medical officers is be afraid, be very, very, very afraid, even when the numbers are going in the right direction, oh, we've got something else for you to be afraid of. And they keep on moving the goalpost, we've got no choice but to report on what the official line is. What where I'm frustrated is that every time a freedom-loving approach comes forward, whether it's Sweden or Florida or South Dakota or now Texas and Mississippi, what happens? An absolute dog pile. on those jurisdictions, like they're somehow responsible for antisocial behavior that is going to kill people. And nobody is looking at the reasons why they're making the decisions that they are. The reasons they're making the decisions that they are, which will become clear 10 years from now, is that we are going to have many times more deaths as a result of the lockdowns, from the loss of jobs, the family breakdown, the suicides and depression, mental illness, drug addiction, untreated cancers, undiagnosed diseases, heart attacks.

When we finally do the full tally of what our government has done to us, that's when people are going to say, what the heck did we allow them to do if we're allowed to talk about it, right? If that balanced discussion is allowed to happen. Otherwise, it's going to set in, oh, yeah, lockdowns work. So the next time a variant comes along or a new disease comes along, we allow the government to do the same thing to us. That's what I'm worried about is.

feel like there's enough pushback of the freedom movement. I feel like this is going to be the new way that government deals with a new threat. And that's horrible for our liberty. So that was a lot. Now I got to pick one here and I'm going to go with this. Why then when I listen to your show, I would say it is the one pushing back, so to speak. It's bringing in a lot. And I know you were probably constrained to some guests you wanted to have on. But overall, I thought you did a very good job, at least in the time I listened, of having what I thought was a balanced approach. I know some people, actually, from some of the stuff you read, a lot of people didn't like that. But why leave then? Because then if you leave, there's a voice gone again.

And now, where are we getting it from? How are we trying to balance it? Did you read my letter of discipline? I posted it in my newsletter. I was disciplined for my COVID coverage. And I was told that if I didn't fall into line with the chorus brand, that I would be terminated. And so I had to make a decision in November and I made a decision to leave. And because I had a three month exit in my contract, that allowed me, because I'd already given my notice, I pushed it. I pushed the envelope. I knew that the things that I was putting on and some of the things that I was saying, if I was planning on staying, then it would have been, I probably would have been disciplined for it. But even still, I had about three dozen guests and topics that I wasn't allowed to put on.

And to me, it was a crisis of conscience, if you want the truth of me. It's part of the reason why I'm now doing these podcasts with, I'm doing these podcasts with Western Standard is because the deep platform docs that I wasn't allowed to have on and the topics I wasn't able to give full treatment to, I'm now doing that. And it feels to me, like that's just the most honest thing that I can do is to tell people the things that I wish I could have told them. I did as much as I could, but there is a mainstream narrative that is enforced by Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sunderbuchar of Google and YouTube that if they determine that something conflicts with Dr. Anthony Fauci's view of the world, they will deem it misinformation and then they will

de-platform it. And as soon as it's taken off, as soon as a video is pulled or Facebook, Facebook's pages censored or Twitter suspends an account, you can't cover it in the mainstream media because the notion is, oh, gee, it must be really crazy if even those guys won't allow it to be on their platform. And so the public's only getting a portion of the story. And I think the media has failed in that regard. The media's job, as the fourth estate, is not to be a champion of the government's message. The media's job is to challenge the government's message and to make sure that we're giving a full range perspective to the public. And I would say the media has absolutely failed in that regard in the last year. So what are you doing next? Hmm, well, right now I'm doing podcasts.

There's a whole really interesting world that is going on in the alternative sphere that I'm really enjoying because that's what I noticed in the last year is that all the real authentic conversations were happening here. They weren't happening in mainstream media. And so I'll continue to do shows like this and to have other platforms to get the message out. But I think the mainstream media is in grave trouble because I don't think that they are the trustworthy news source that they used to be in the past. And so I don't think that they'll get that back. So that's one thing I'm doing.

I'd like to do advocacy as well because I believe that Alberta, we're just set, really. We're set to just slingshot and do so well if we could just get a few things going in the right direction. We need to get the premier back to embracing freedom again, and hopefully that will happen as we get through vaccination. But when you talk about the way in which we can balance energy development and some of the environmental issues, one of the things I've been working on, and I've given a few speeches in this regard, is that we've got to start looking at the issue of CO2 differently. Because part of what I've seen in the energy sector is there's a bit of, I don't know, reluctant or vicious compliance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've got to pay lip service to greenhouse gases.

And as a result, there's only been half-assed efforts to do anything on that front. There's carbon capture technology and nobody wants to do it unless the government's willing to fund it. And then you only have a project here or a project there. What we have to do is we've got to look at carbon dioxide in a totally different way. We have to look at it the way the energy industry did every single time they had some kind of byproduct. They said, this is waste. This is sludge. Can we make something useful out of this? Well, carbon dioxide is a waste. Can we make something useful out of it? You can. You can do a pure stream of carbon dioxide that allow you to do enhanced oil recovery. It captures the carbon dioxide underground. You've got Murray Edwards working with Bill Gates on pulling carbon dioxide

out of the air so it could be turned into a biofuel, bio-diesel fuel. You've got carbon capture technology where you can turn it into carbon nanofiber. Nanofiber can be used to create building materials. Someone just recently told me you can use carbon dioxide to create vodka. I mean, can you imagine having Husky brand vodka so that when kids are out in the bar saying, oh, look, I'm doing something good for the environment. I've captured carbon dioxide in this vodka. And now I can feel good about filling up my car and also good about having a couple of drinks with my friends. those are the things that the industry needs to look at. They are experts at turning waste products into value. And so I would, that's kind of where I want to spend my time is talking about all of the amazing and innovative things that are happening on that front. Because I think Alberta is the place that is going to figure this out. Well, you have said, and I quote, you can fight back and win. And I forget what speech this was that you'd give him, but you said you can fight back and win. What you can't do is sit back and say they need us. And I feel like a whole hell of a lot of us right now just sitting back on,

this will blow over, right? This will blow over and in a year's time, it'll, but I mean, I was just saying to a buddy, like, I mean, you can look at Regina with the, um,

them about to get rid of oil being a, oil industries being able to have signage and billboards and sponsor things in city limits and then, you know, getting overturned. You can look at that and go like, wow, somebody's been drinking the weird Koolite.

or you can start to see where the world's heading. And we either got to figure a way to get ahead of it, or you're going to be getting drug along. And we can either find, like you say, creative ways that probably would benefit Alberta and all the people within it, or this is going to be a rough little sludge or a sled here for a bit. And it's funny, I'm starting to hear more and more of that sentiment, what you're just talking about, with people around. that I know, people that have had honest guests have started to, it's almost like we've all

kind of got there at the same point. Like, it's probably high time. We start to figure a way of changing a little bit of the narrative on this, how we're helping this instead of how we're the biggest combatant ever. And it's a fight to the death. Yeah, completely. Because we have such a great message to sell. If you look at Quebec as a, for instance, part of the reason why they're able to produce aluminum, which is a pretty intensive, energy-intensive product. And they don't get pilloried for their environmental footprint, is a lot of their energy comes from hydro. And so we don't have the same energy mix here. We get 90% of our electricity comes from either coal or natural gas. And as we're phasingol, we're going to natural gas. And the environmentalists sell us on this

idea that it could be all wind and solar, that we need to just bring more wind and solar into the mix. We both know in this province, that is. bad shit crazy. It is. And I like to quote a Twitter account, Reliable A-B, every time we're in the middle of one of these polar vortexes, because almost without fail, we have, when it's minus 30, we've got less than 5% of our capacity for solar being used at all. And it's generating a tiny, less than 1% of our overall energy wind as well. We're lucky if we can ever get 10% capacity out of wind. And look at what happened in Texas. In Texas, the natural gas failed, and the wind wasn't there to back it up because it works the other way. If you put more wind and solar in your system, you need

natural gas to back up the intermittent power. So I think that there's that whole narrative that all we need to do, as Elizabeth May was telling us, is learn how to install solar panels and wind turbines and we'd be fine. That's been blown up. And so what are we going to do to replace it? So in Quebec, they have hydropower. What could we have here? Well, we could partner. with BC and bring in site C hydropower for our resource development in Fort McBurray. We could work in the partnership with the other provinces and do the small-scale modular nuclear units and put them at the heavy, most intense electricity usage for mining. We could use geothermal. Geothermal is also a year-round resource using some of the existing wells that were drilled in the Leducfine.

There's a company that's looking at how they might do that. So there is a huge amount of opportunity for us to green our development, but still do it in a way that's consistent with who we are. Look at Bichiman. We have two companies, Bitcrued and Canapes, that are working on ways to transport it in its solid form. So it doesn't have diluent. What happens when you can transport it in its solid form? Well, then you can put it on container ships out of Port of Prince Ruper. You can throw it on the rail line, put it on containerships, and you can export it to China or India or anywhere around the world and it isn't subject to the tanker ban because the tanker ban is only for a liquid bitumen product. In addition, in doing so, when it arrives at its endpoint, they don't want to

burn most of it anyway. Half of it they want to use for asphalt. And so that also reduces a greenhouse gas footprint. Look at our potential on natural gas and LNG, exporting that so that it displaces coal in China and India in coal-fired electricity. That reduces greenhouse gases. If you look at the potential for hydrogen, hive off the carbon, and we've talked about the ways in which you can use carbon dioxide, and then you have another clean energy source that you can use for transportation fuels. So to me, the sky's the limit, really, when we start talking about the incredible innovation we have here and the natural resources that we have, and it's not selling out our history and our great resources that we have. It's just using them in a different way. So I think that there, I think

the industry has really failed in embracing the challenge because I know they can. And I don't know if it's the problem with the industry associations. I don't know if it's that they don't fully believe that they can do it or they don't fully believe they need to do it. But we need to do it because we will otherwise continue to be to be landlocked and will continue to be a target of the environmentalist. So I want to work on changing that message. Let me add one more to it. And I because I know that you've got a large ranching community up there. Our ranchers and farmers need to get to this as well. One of the things I found during the campaign was that Justin Trudeau was using two planes. We all heard that. And one of the ways he justified using two planes is that he was buying

carbon offsets. So I called the company that he bought the carbon offsets from. And look what they were doing. They were collecting methane from a landfill and they were flaring it. And because the flaring of the gas had less of a greenhouse gas impact than methane going directly into the atmosphere, that created a credit for them that they were able to sell to Justin Trudeau. Give me a break. Like our ranchers and farmers are capturing carbon in the soil every single day. And there you should be the ones who are able to get some kind of credit for that. So that's the other side.

And they could and they should. But you know what? Every time I tell this to a rancher or a farmer, well, we would do that anyway because it's just the right thing to do. Yes. But the world is ever changing and getting stranger by the day and you shouldn't have to do have these things, but that's where we're at. Completely. Well, why is it that farmers are able to say, I can have this piece of paper

so that I'm allowed to grow chickens and eggs and dairy? They understand that that piece of paper gives them an entitlement and that piece of paper has value, that quota in the quota system. So I think farmers have already come around to the idea that there are certain instruments that will have inherent value that will be built into their operations. having the ability to say, I have a carbon certificate because I'm providing a service to the planet of sequestering carbon dioxide, you better pay me for it. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking that kind of approach. That's the kind of world we're moving into. And the alternative is to have the environmentalists come and tell us that we need to take, that we need to stop eating

beef and we need to take all of our beef cattle off the land because that's the next battle that we have to fight. We fight back, saying, no way. Our ranches are providing massive biodiversity. They're providing grasslands or sequestering carbon dioxide. Go pound sand. They're providing a service to the world. Now pay us. That's how I think we should approach it. Well, it's, it's refreshing because I know a lot of people don't want to stick their head out.

You know, just assume that in two months, summer is going to be here, spring or whatever, we're at. Who knows, maybe late winter. But that it will just kind of go away and we'll get to just kind of go back on our merry way. And I don't know, it's like I say, for a good majority of my life, I didn't really. pay attention much and I was kind of gallivanting around the planet and doing doing different things. And now I just, it's staring at you everywhere. Everywhere I go, it just, and every conversation, it seems to pull back into the social issues that are going on and the, what the government's

doing and everything else. And, you know, by no means did I want to start a podcast and talk politics. I got to be honest. It was on the least of my brain. At the same time when people said, everything we talk about everything but politics. I'm like, well, I don't get that either. Like, I mean, that's the fabric of our society, right? Like, I mean, if that's not in good repair, we all feel the consequences of that. And right now, you know, COVID, is it a pandemic? Sure.

But are there some strange things going on that I can't put my finger on? Yeah, I think everybody's starting to feel that. And everybody's starting to maybe awaken from this slumber of like, this just doesn't feel right. And when do we, you talk about the goalposts are constantly moving. Well, that's kind of been the last three and a half months, hasn't it? Yeah, it sure has. And I guess for me, I wonder if this will break the spell. I'm trying to break this spell. I'm trying to find some way of showing just how ludicrous things have gotten and how ludicrous it's been from the beginning to follow China's model for dealing with this as opposed to Sweden's model for dealing with it. Sweden's the only

nation that took the traditional approach to a pandemic, which was you have to look at the full range of impact on health, on your economy, and balance that off with protecting the most vulnerable. They're the only ones who pulled out and dusted off the old pandemic plan and followed it. Everyone else followed what China did. So what is the latest story about what China is doing? If you are a diplomat or a traveler to China, they are now saying that the most accurate way to get a COVID sample is to give you an anal swab. And if you read about the anal swab, they bend you over and they make sure that they do five loops, five loops so that they can make sure that they extract enough of the virus in order to get a more accurate test than probing that

thing up your nose. Don't you think they're screwing with this? Like at some point, you have to say they're just seeing bend over. Bend over. They're literally saying, bend over because we have followed in lockstep every single thing that they have done during this pandemic. And now they're just saying, let's see how far we can go. At some point, you say hard, no, I'm not doing that. This is getting ridiculous. And you start looking at the jurisdictions that have looked at the full range of medical evidence as they have in Florida. I mean, Florida, I give Ron DeSantis great credit. He locked down just like everybody else last May and May, last April May. And I am not going to begrudge any politician who made that decision that time.

because we didn't know what was going on. But as we figured out who this disease impacts, who's most at risk, we could have developed an approach of focus protection. And that's what they did in Florida. You protect your people in the nursing homes. You make sure that those who are living in the community with preexisting conditions, you arm them with information so that they know how to protect themselves. You adopt therapeutics so that if somebody does get COVID,

you're not just sitting around waiting to see if you have to go into the hospital. you have something that you can use, whether it's vitamin D or Ivermectin or any of the other types of medications so that you don't end up having the viral load get to a point where you can't, where it's a point of no return. Like there are ways of approaching this. And that's, I think, what troubles me the most is that we don't see any of that in Canada. I'm watching Scott Moe because he might be the first guy to go. If Scott Moe is the first guy to say, you know what, 100% we're reducing restrictions,

then others will follow. It takes one. We need one premier to come to their senses the way five or six state governors have in the United States. But if I thought it was going to be Jason Kenney, I thought he was the one who was going to be the most freedom-loving premier, the one who really was going to balance lives and livelihoods. And here I am, and it's still illegal for me to have my parents over for coffee or to go and have hot dogs and wine, as I did the other night illegally, a couple of people in my social cohort. that's crazy that that that is still illegal in Alberta and and so I'm I'm of the view that they put a goal post out there before they said that when we were below 50 cases per 100,000 in a community that was when all the restrictions were off and we were open not all of them and we still

some some spacing and social distancing but I'm still allowed to see my family as I'm living my life now and that's when we go when we go back to where you started is it's about community, that's the only place we're going to make a difference. I think we're going to continue to see our national governments and our provincial governments try to hang on to some of these restrictions, but they can't police all of us. We're a 4.4 million population. And the further are that you are out from Calgary and Edmonton, I suspect the municipal level of government is going to be more and more lenient. And ultimately, they're not going to be enforcing any of these rules. So I think life can return to normal on a community level, but I'm not so certain that it can

on a provincial or federal level, because I don't know what kind of conversations took place between Justin Trudeau and Jason Kenney. But there's no other explanation for why he did a complete 180. He was balancing lives and livelihoods, and then all of a sudden two weeks later, it was the same strategy as everyone else. Did Justin Trudeau say, well, if you don't do what we want you to we're going to declare a national emergency and take over the control of the decision making from you. Did he say we're getting, the only way to get vaccines is through us. And if you don't do what we say, we're going to prevent you from having your fair share of vaccines. Did he say we're going to put in a travel ban to Alberta because you're a near-do-well? I don't know.

So then, if that's the case, if that's the case then, then I don't know if we can get back to Norman, Alberta. If we're at a point where the federal government has that much control over our decisions here, then we've really got to, we've got to be aware and we've got to push back. So then here's, here's something that's been going, you know, it started off as Wexed. It's been called many a thing, but Alberta separating. Now, I was having the discussion the other day that once again, choice of words really matter and separation. I'm a Canadian, right? Like, to me, that, that word bothers me and I'm like I'm a guy who's looking around going you know I'm probably closer to separation than then then you know a huge percentage of the population and that doesn't mean I'm close it just

means I'm over there but the word still bugs me what's what's Daniel's take on could could you have you know there's been many a name on it whether you're Alberta Saskatchewan Manitoba and part of BC all of BC or you know I had a friend suggest the Western block where you're a nation within a nation. Is there any way that you could do something like that where majority or a good chunk of the Westerners would be like, geez, that sounds like rational. And I actually don't mind that, but we're still Canadian.

But we got our property and we got a little more umph when it comes to how the country's ran, so to speak. I love what you're saying. I don't know what the right term for it is. I think I've talked to Quebecers who call that sovereignty. Association. So it's not separation, but it is, you get all the benefit of remaining part of a United Canada, but you take control over more and more areas of jurisdiction and you become less and less reliant on the federal government to do things for you. So if you look at Europe as a

example, the European Union is an example of sovereignty association that everybody collects their own taxes and then they send a portion to the European Union so that the European Union can take care of collective interest. Why does Ottawa collect all of our taxes? Why are we sitting here waiting for Ottawa to cut us a check for our share when they keep the lion's share of what they take out of our province? Why don't we collect our own taxes? Why don't we collect our own pension funds for Alberta pension plan? I'm very worried that the Canada pension plan, we pay disproportionately into it. And I spoke with Diane Francis about it. We don't even have an Albertan represented on the investment board to help make decisions about where the money should be invested. So why are we

disproportionately paying into a plan and then have no say about where it's invested, which is important because around the world there's this disinvestment movement to try to defund anything associated with fossil fuels. That's paying people to work against your own interest. That makes no sense. Why don't we have our own employment insurance program? Same thing. I mean, how many guys do you know that would work all the time? And then we ended up with this five-year calamity, and they had limited amount that they were able to tap into for EI, despite having paid for it all the way through. Meanwhile, in Atlantic Canada, all you do is work 10 weeks and you get 42 every single year that you're able to collect. Like, why would we continue to fund a system like

that. So our own provincial police force, the RCMP, is horribly tarnished with civil lawsuits from not only civilians, but then group of male officers, a group of female officers. They're doing a terrible job in policing in the rural areas. And so people have to have to take matters into their own hands. Why would we continue to have that relationship? Why don't have our own provincial police force? So there's a whole range of things that we can do that would allow us to just take care of our own stuff. And once you have that autonomy, then you have a grown-up relationship with the rest of the country. Right now, we're far too dependent. We're like, we're like the rebellious teenager and they keep on slapping us down. We're not even the rebellious teenager. We're the whiny

teenager that you just don't, right, you don't even have to slap down. They're just, they're just over there whining again. And I, listen, I've been, and I'm sure you have too. I've been across all Canada. I, there's great people all across. I just, I just look at it and I go, one of the things that is being talked about continually is that maybe we're just becoming now a nation that's getting so big that what we want is getting separate, right? Like, I mean, probably what people want in Lloyd is a little different than what people want in Emmington. And Emmington to Calgary is different.

Well, now imagine Calgary to Toronto. I mean, that's a pretty big jump. So if you were pie in the sky and we called it sovereignty, what would you, what hurdles do you see that are going to be, I don't know, sitting there if that was ever to be approached? You can already see it when I was still on the air. The Canada pension plan was advertising on my show. So they know that we're seriously talking about opting out of the CPP

and have a full court press to try to stop us from doing it. The RCMP created a group and asked to be on my show to convince people that we shouldn't opt out of the RCMP. So I think there'd be a lot of resistance to that. And until we decide where it is we want to go, I think that Ottawa will always have the upper hand because they collect all the money and then they dribble a portion of it back. And I don't know that I don't know that Albertans are fully aware of just how much money every single year comes out of this province, regardless of how poorly we're doing, and regardless

of how well Quebec is doing, it's still about $20 billion a year. Because we have far more more people working, we generate far more wealth, and because the tax system is so disproportionate, the feds would take way too much. So we have to kind of draw a line in the sand, and I don't know that we will. It strikes me that the only path forward is to put these things to a vote, is to decide with the municipal elections. Now, I don't know. Are you guys having a municipal elections this year? Are you also on Saskatchewan's timetable? Now you're asking me a question. I have no idea. Okay. So we've got a municipal elections in the rest of Alberta. Like, you already have sovereignty association. Maybe that's what we need to look at is this hybrid model that

Lloyd Minster has. Maybe what we need to develop is a way of having a regional government that includes Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC. And the four of us meet regional. to sort things out, but then we still, in addition to that, send MPs to Ottawa. I don't know. Like, the made me does need to be some more collaboration between our four Western provinces. And if you go and just draw the line straight down North America, maybe all the way down to Texas, maybe that needs to be the new alignment of how our trade ties work. And then we can still have a relationship with Canada and Ottawa, but it will no longer be our

most important relationship. Our most important relationship should be with our peers who we will have more direct trading relationships with. And the country never really made sense east-west. It still doesn't because if you look at the fact that we don't even have an East-West pipeline, for instance, that gives you an indication of how difficult it is to try to get anything done across the entire country. Maybe we should start just make a decision that we're going to work together on regional interest and create, because we do have these Western, this New West partnership, we do have mechanisms to do it. Maybe you formalize it.

And then you broaden it out and just spend more time developing collaborations with people who want to collaborate with you. I feel like we keep on banging our head against the wall asking Quebec and Ontario to love us. And they don't. So let's find someone who does and work in partnership with them. I think we just have to find a different way of doing things. It doesn't necessarily mean you need to split the country up. But it does mean that you just change your basic orientation.

And it may be time for us to do that because we're not going to get anywhere at the federal level. When you look at how the parties break down and you look at 65% of people say that they're going to vote for one of the progressive parties, the liberals, the Greens, the block, the NDP, how are we ever going to get a conservative party in at the federal level? Again, I don't think we can. I think it's impossible. And so if that's the case, then we've got to find another way to move our issues forward.

And it may be by focusing regionally and maybe by focusing at the provincial level. And it certainly is by focusing at the local level because there's so much that can be done at the local level. I think we spend way too much time in obsession with who our prime minister is. Actually, spend way too much time obsessing about who the president of the United States is. I would say we spend way, yeah, way too much time watching the U.S. I know they impact us, but a ton of time. Let's go back to that, though, because I keep wanting to circle back to where we started. And this is why I'm so jazzed up about local decision making and local community and local politics is because when you think of how polarized Donald, polarizing Donald Trump was, there are people who stopped being friends on Facebook because they were on one side or the other.

They're family members whose relationship broke down on the base of whether they liked or did. like Donald Trump, that's bananas. Why would we even care? He doesn't, we can't even vote for him, for heaven's sake. So we've got to get back to removing the polarization in our own families and our own communities. And the best way of doing that is to focus on projects where partisanship doesn't matter. So in my community, I'm involved in Rotary Club. And it's fantastic. There's probably more retired teachers in my Rotary Club than anything else. And they would give me what for on a lot of the topics that I took on on the radio station. But then you're going out and you're organizing parades together and you're raising money for the handy bus so that seniors can get into town

for their medical appointments. And it doesn't matter whether you're left wing or right wing. Or I'm also involved in something called Wild Rose Community Connections and we teach parenting skills to at-risk families. And we also shifted to food security during COVID so that a lot of our shut-in seniors would be able to get groceries delivered. It doesn't matter that I'm conservative. on the board are more left-wing and social workers because we all care about how we're going to take care of our seniors in our community. And to me, those are really the ways in which you find so much gratification because you can be involved in do something and actually see the result of what you're doing. But when you start with some common ground with a person, you can get into

a conversation about the things where you don't have common ground. And then you find out a little bit more about how they see the world and they find out a little bit more about how you see the world. And then you end up reducing the amount of polarization. And it will only happen if we start doing that at the local level. So if I were to summarize that, what you're saying then is stop fixating on politicians and start fixing what's in your general vicinity? You got it. Which is local politics, citywide, country, or community-wide. Completely.

Does that help eradicate what's going on at the provincial and federal level? Or are you saying that by a community deciding with strong leadership and in community support, you could essentially buck some of the trends that they're trying to force down because you have the strength of the group, so to speak, to go, no, we're just not going to do that. Yes. And it's both. I mean, because in the long run, if you build your common values from, the ground up and you elect people to your local council, then those local people will go on to provincial level of politics, keeping the values that they learned of service to the community and listening to all sides and making sure that they're doing what's best for the individuals

in the community. They'll take that to the provincial level and then they'll take that to the federal level. We've tried to short circuit the process. I don't know why it is that I identify as conservative libertarian, but it seems to me that most people in my orbit, think that the best level of office is being an MP, whereas I think the best level of office is being a local council member or a local school board member. Because if you look at what they've done on the other side,

the left loves local politics because that's where they get to train, that's the training ground for all of their people. And then when they elevate to the provincial or federal level, they're far more effective at being able to build the advocacy and the networks in the community, to push an idea or an agenda forward. They've been working on this for 30 years.

And we haven't. I don't think that on the conservative side of things, I don't think we've built those networks and those partnerships. We used to have it built in with the church because a lot of conservatism came from social conservatism. But now that church going has dropped off

and there's a lot of people who are conservative libertarian who aren't religious like me. So I'm not going to find my connections at church. So we've got to build them in a different way. And if we don't start doing that, then we're going to just continue to see this sort of woke progressivism, cancel culture, hypersensitivity on a whole range of issues.

It's only just going to get worse and worse. You have to create something to counter that. That is a far more positive vision and a far more positive message. And you're not going to get that out on Twitter. Like in Twitter, you say something on there and somebody's looking to try to get you fired or deplatformed or your reputation put in ruins. But when you've got a basic relationship, you see people eye to eye, and you're working on projects in the community, that's going to create a level of civility.

But it's going to take a long time. It's going to take probably another 30 years. So I'm not really anticipating that this return to freedom and free speech and freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom from government. I don't think it's happening in six months. Sorry to tell you. I think we've got decades ahead of us where we've got to now make the argument because they know what they can do to us and they know how easy it is to use fear to get us all snitching on

each other and get us into perfect alignment. So then the way to combat that is to become, well, educated one on it, to understand, but then to become well spoken so that you can essentially talk in against it, but in a logical way. Yep. You have to believe it, right? I mean, there's a sincerity aspect that I was talking to a young woman today who came from Atlantic Canada, and she didn't like Alberta for her first two years here. She thought that we were pretty brash and pretty unaccepting. And she was not, she thought our oil sands were ruining the planet, just like most young people who don't grow up here.

But she ended up, it's sort of an interesting path for her. She ended up being a waitress, and a lot of her customers were people from the energy sector. and then one of them hired her to be a receptionist. And now she's making documentary films about how great the energy industry is and what it does for communities. So it's sort of amazing, right? Who's that? That's Heidi, Heidi McKillop. No kidding.

Yeah. That is a cool story. It's an amazing story. And she's wonderful. And so now she's on a mission to try to find a way of messaging to a younger generation, how it is that they, how reliant they are on energy, what the balanced approach is, what the benefits are of the energy sector. So she's become a bit of a champion in trying to communicate that message to millennials and Zeds. And so if she couldn't have done that six years ago, but having educated herself and developed

a commitment that it was the new way of looking at things was the right one, she's become a real champion for it. I find a lot of people really just want to tune out. And they're sort of medicating, right? Like they're medicating, it's not you. No, but it was, I tell you what, I went from going and graduating with a degree in history and, and was accepted for my master's and had this like plan. And then, and then as you can tell from the teeth, the love of hockey just, it just took me away, right?

Like, I mean, is there anything more Canadian than that? I think most people could get that. And then there was, I don't know. I'm being rough on myself. I know I am, but there was... You are because history papers are hard. I took a history class and my gosh, you have to do a lot of research and a lot of citations.

Yes, history's a hard course. But there was probably five years, maybe even more than that, where seven years where I just kind of clued out for a while. I was just like, ah, you know, politics is whatever. And what's going on around us is whatever. But I mean, you flash back a year. and the coronavirus, I'm not making light of it because, I mean, it is killing people.

And there are things going on that are not good. But that fear for about two months, you could have cut it with a knife. It was so like just in the air and everywhere. And you talk about what would make anyone rat. I remember watching in the first like week, two weeks, whatever it was when we all got sad to home, like college kids going into a party. And I'm like, those idiots. Like, what are they thinking?

And then I kind of walked around. I kind of caught myself thinking like, like they, I will hope they get caught or whatever, right? And then I'm like, actually, if I was their age, I'd probably be doing the same thing. Like, I mean, they're college kids. Like, what am I worried about? Right. Like, but, but it's, it's hard. We're not, we're not fighting the Germans, so to speak, or the Nazis.

I shouldn't say the Germans, but the Nazis. It's like, and everybody's alluded to it. It's this invisible enemy. And so how do you know what to do? And so everybody kind of walks around and it's just like this very strange. time and you talk about 30 years to get us back or time and how people have hard time seeing the next month. I must tell you, even if we do, because the thing that China has done, China is still communist. It's still a communist country and still led by the Communist Party and they don't have democracy.

But what's happened with China is China ostensibly has shown the world how communism can work, right? Because that's what we're all waiting for, is show me a model of communism that works. And look at the wealth that's created there. Look at how huge the cities are. Look at how much opportunity there is, how much production there is. They're going to be the largest economy in the world. They're going to surpass the United States. Their people can travel.

Like they have a lot built in that gives the veneer of freedom. Unless you're a Uyghur. And if you're a Uyghur and you have wrong thing, then you get taken into a concentration. count and you get systematically raped and your children get divided from you. And like this is genocide. There's no way around it. But because we think that we can do business with them, we're turning a blind eye to it, they are sending emissaries out for Chinese nationals who also have wrong think, kidnapping them,

taking them back to China. It's the same old story. But we are forgiving it. because all of our elites and all of our big corporations have great trade deals with China. They figured out how to make capitalism work within a communist system. And that's what I'm worried about, is that all of these ways in which China has created these relationships with our democratically elected countries. And then as soon as they chart the path for how you deal with an issue, we follow it in lockstep.

So what else are we going to follow? about how China does things. This new move towards stakeholder capitalism. It's a pretty big deal, but it's based on this same kind of Chinese model that the aspirations of what the state wants, as long as you use corporations to help you achieve it, then everybody, you still have some veneer of wealth creation,

some veneer of freedom, some veneer of free enterprise. It doesn't matter if they track your every movement and create a social score for you? I mean, look at the next step that's happening in China, because that's what we've got to watch, because that is what the new form of authoritarianism looks like. So in China, because they have facial recognition and cameras on every corner,

they create a file on an individual. And if you engage in wrong behavior, they can prevent you from accessing your bank account. They can prevent you from booking travel. So that's what the... That is straight out of 19. 84. But it's happening there. And so what has happened? So what are Twitter and Facebook and Google doing to us? You have wrong thing. Well, we're going to lock you out of your Facebook account.

We're going to de-platform you from Twitter. We're going to take your YouTube videos down so you can't monetize. So there are not saying we're as bad as China. What bothers me is we don't seem to think that it's important to fight to be different than them. The way we use it. to. We're sort of watching what they're doing, and then our governments are kind of adopting some of it as well. So that's what I'm watching, and that's what I'm concerned about. And that's why I think it's going to be 30 years before we turn it around, because we haven't seen this play out yet. The big tech companies aren't done with us yet. There is an option. I mean, the nice part is that there are ways of fighting back. And technology is where the, is where the biggest problems

are going to be any regime that wanted totalitarian control was always challenged by the fact that they couldn't track every single citizen. But now they can't with the big technology and with all of the wonderful devices that we have that we are happy to use because it gives us great comfort and is very convenient. But it also allows for, especially when they've got a relationship with government, it allows them to be very punitive about it. But then you've got, because we're still free. You've got groups like Gab and Parley and locals and other alternative platforms that are starting up and creating their own servers. There's a talk of creating an independent internet that will be putting privacy at the heart of it. So we still have the ability

to make the decision to opt into those kinds of technologies. But gosh, it's just easier, isn't it, to be on Google and have a Gmail account? It's just easier to be on YouTube. It's just easier to be on YouTube and Facebook. And so I think that's the way our freedom is going to get a road. It's just really more by neglect is that we just, we tend not to be, we don't look at the threat as being serious. And so those who have nefarious ends in mind, they're going to take advantage. So we've got to watch what China's doing because they have massive influence on the rest

of the planet right now. Well, you've just, I enjoy having people on who are going to challenge me to do some more reading and get better, right? because I'd love to sit and talk about a lot of different things, but until I know a little bit more, I want to make sure that I'm well-versed and some of the issues you're talking about. Some of the words you're using, though, sound, well, directly out of 1984, which is a different topic and a long rabbit hole for anyone wanting to read a book that'll, it's pretty unnerving to read is 1984, George Orwell. You know, there's a new one. I found a John 12 Hawks. John 12 Hawks is the author. And he wrote a new series based on a group of individuals trying to escape this web and be off the grid.

And I read it probably a decade ago. And that's why it's sort of quite fresh in my mind, just watching the concerns that he laid out on where he was seeing technology going and then watching it unfold in real times. Yeah. So look that author up if you want a work of fiction. I think it's three or four books. Okay. Gone 12 Hawks. Well, here's what we'll do.

I got the Crude Master Final 5. Shout out to Heath and Tracing McDonald's. So final little segment here before I let you go and get on your merry way. I've kept you probably long enough. But I really do appreciate you sitting down, Danielle. First question I always ask, especially when somebody's on for the first time, is if you could have anyone, you know, if you could have had anyone on your show, it's no longer there right now. But you never got them on. who would have been the person you would have loved to have picked their brain?

Jonathan Hate. So he's the author of The Righteous Mind. And he's completely changed my understanding of morality and my view of morality being multidimensional. I started off thinking the only thing that matters is freedom and I've broadened it out to understand that there are far more dimensions to it. He's brilliant. And the interesting thing about him is he's a lefty professor. He's a registered Democrat. but he has great respect for conservatives and it comes through in his writing and he's exactly

the type of person i think we need to see more of in the academic world that's a that's a new definitely it looks like i'm doing some reading what is your favorite book ian rand at lus shrugged yeah i i knew that was a loaded question because i i listened to your your farewell and i know that must have been well it was emotional for you um but it was it was quite eloquent honestly, like I really enjoyed it, the quote from the book and everything else. I thought it was a pretty nice. For those who haven't read it, her premise is that government interference in our lives and creeping socialism becomes so onerous that the entrepreneurs of the world start going on strike one by one. And then there's a great dramatic speech at the end on radio by John Galt,

saying if you want us to come back and you want us to do what we do, be wealth creators, you've got to get the heck out of the way. And I feel that's where we're at right now. So I ended my career in radio. It would have been weird for me not at a national platform. I promise my platform, of course I was going to read some John Galt's speech. That's the reason why. I'm going to give the last three away to the listeners I have. John Winter wanted to know, what's the biggest issue Albertans will face in the next five years? Biggest issue is finding a way to get our energy sector enthusiastic about finding new ways to address the carbon dioxide issue and repositioning our energy source as the greenest and best in the world. And I think we can do it.

Ken Rutherford wants to know provincial police force, yes or no? Yes, definitely. And Trevor Pratt wants to know, do politicians stand a chance with today's cancel country, uh, cancel. culture. Nope. Who would want to be a politician right now? I mean, some of the most, some of the most wonderful politicians who are doing such great work for us, talk to them offline, and they live in fear every day that they're going to say something that'll be ruinous to their reputations and it'll destroy their careers. And that's how it is in public life right now. And politicians, there's constant traps being set for them. And if you misspeak on some of these

contentious issues, it can be game over. So I think that, again, the only safe place is probably local office right now. If you have aspirations for public life, running local so you're not involved in the partisanship because you get to run as an independent, but you also get to do real and meaningful things for your community. And you sort of learn the rope so that you can learn where the lines are before you've got the spotlight on you. Otherwise, provincial and federal politics, it's precarious. And I think what we're sadly going to see is less and less honesty and less sincerity. We're going to see our politicians become more like robots as they are trying to navigate around all of these these minefields. Well, I do appreciate you hopping on. This has been

I'm sure I've, we've either depressed a lot of people or got a lot of people fired up, maybe a little bit of both. But regardless, I have enjoyed having you on. I, I put you in pretty high, company when I listened to you because when I started the podcast, it was a Joe Rogan podcast. It got me on and people have their thoughts about him. There's a lot of people that hate Joe Rogan, but just his ability to bring on smart people, listen to what they say, challenge some things, but continue to have that go on and have the conversation be heard and not edit it out and like just let you hear it. It was fascinating to me. And you're the first person in Alberta. And I want to make sure I'm not overstating this. But I want to

to say you're the first radio show in Alberta that I've listened to where I went. Wow. Like, this seems really balanced. And I know you get a lot of hate mail. And some of it, I just, I don't, I don't understand. Like, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Now, in fairness, to a lot of people who, uh, have issues with you, probably it stems from way back in, in different things. But I also like to think, like, people are allowed to grow. Like, it's okay to, you know, everybody falls down. What you do after you fall down that counts, right? Pick yourself back up, dust off and carry on. And everything I've heard you talk about so far, I just go like, man, I'm interested to see where you go with this and what you're doing. Like I'm going to have a close tab

on you, kind of like the government probably wondering what Daniel Smith's doing. Well, I like your style. This style of program, I think is really the future. I don't think radio can do this kind of style because in radio you're constantly having people come in and out of their cars. You're trying to put things in five and ten minutes segments, but people want to see long conversations and real and meaningful conversations. So congratulations to you for creating this forum. You didn't tell me I could smoke pot and swear. So that's what Joe Rogan does, right? Well, you can smoke pot and swear if you want, Daniel. I do swear. I'm a bit of a sailor, but I don't smoke pot. I'm a bit of a teetotaler that way. I like my wine. I tried pot once.

Just, you know, I figured it's illegal. It's hard to get. It's legal. It's legal. But when I tried it back in the day, it felt a little shady. I tell you what, that's going to be the headline on this episode. Daniel Smith, rule breaker. A little bit.

I am now. I try not to, but government's really testing me with some of these rules. When you had dumb rules, I don't know, maybe there's a little civil disobedience that's needed. Isn't that weird? I mean, just on that weird final note, how strange is it? That's how quickly things can change, isn't it? Yeah. Five years ago, no one would have ever thought we'd have a legal cannabis market. And now no one could even imagine us not having a legal cannabis market. So things can change really quickly. We can get societal consensus to move forward on things. So on a positive note, maybe we'll get freedom back in five years rather than 50 years.

Well, here's hoping to a little optimism and positivity at the end of the end of it. us. Well, thanks again. Yeah, thanks, Sean. Hey, folks. Thanks for joining us today. If you just stumbled on the show, please click subscribe. Then, scroll to the bottom and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps.

Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcast fix. Until next time. Hey, Keeners. Hope you enjoyed the,

today's episode um Danielle is definitely, uh, an interesting, interesting chat and, uh, I'm pretty sad not to have her on 630 chat anymore.

But, uh, thankfully got her on here and, and sat down, had a good conversation. I hope you enjoyed it. I got to give a shout out today to actually, I don't even know who it is.

I got a text, uh, as you know, you can text me on, uh, at 587 217, 8500,000 if you, uh, want to hear things. If you enjoy the show, etc. While this is what I got, I hit the trifecta of listening in February. You, Vance, and QDM,

three of my faves. I grew up in Southern New Brunswick in the 60s before Trudeau. New Brunswick was 10 years behind, so was more like the 50s. Life was school, farming, hunting, horses, woods, fields, guns, and old trucks and cars. No Barbie dolls for me. We were all dirt poor and had more freedom than any generation before since. Don't lie, don't steal, do your work, come home before dark, and say your prayers. A lot like the stuff Georginev talked about. By the way, belly band-aid can have a whole other meaning for a pregnant woman. Smiley face.

Cheers from eastern Ontario where when there is a north wind, we smell the soy and the BS from Ottawa. I thought that was a pretty cool, a cool shout-out or a cool text that I thought I'd share with you guys. I hope you have a great week. We're going to catch up to you on Wednesday. It's still up in the air. if you can believe it, who Wednesday is. I've got a couple that are coming down the pipe. Certainly looking forward to Hump Day,

but before we get there, enjoy the rest of your Monday, your Tuesday, and if you're the champ, you're probably dragging a little ass today. We'll catch you up with you later with a chuckle and maybe a bullshit, all right? Talk to you guys later, and we'll see you Wednesday.