Shaun Newman Podcast - Mashup 195

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

This is a special edition of the Mashup where 2's debates Chris Berthelot on the topic of Alberta Independence. Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

All right. Welcome to the mashup. Welcome to the mashup. Welcome to the mashup. I'm going to stand and fall to fly. All of my impulsive plans, pop and locking salsa dances on demand. I follow leading off the map and stop the chatter, scream happily. Welcome to the mashup.

Welcome to the mashup. Welcome to the mashup. Welcome to the mashup. Welcome to the mashup. All right. Apparently with the new setup, I got to manually put myself in here. Two things, not rants, just fun things. that happened in my life. I sent Vesper, Hey Vesper, a care

package in the mail a little while ago. And on a post-it note, I wrote a tiny URL. No context. It was just there in the package. And then, so he's curious, he opens up a web browser, types it in.

Rick rolled him on paper. I Rick rolled Vesper on paper in your face. And then also this. Just a sec. Just a sec. I'm giving you just a sec.

I've seen Ben Trudeau at a bunch of live events. And I've never really spoke to him or anything like that. I think I nodded at him one time when we made eye contact. Because he's always surrounded by 100 people waiting to talk to him. And I'm like, he's got so many better things to do. And I'm sure he has no idea of what I am. Give me a sec. What part of that do you not understand?

Ben. Come on, Ben. I'm still waiting. on my copy. Just pointing that out. So anyway, not only when Ben was on with Sean on that panel I don't know, a month or two ago, they were talking

about some of my thoughts about other parts of this country. But then, Ben goes ahead and sends me a copy of his brand new book, like copyright 226, two-toes. For once, fucking Quebec

can be useful for something. Ben. this was super nice. It meant the world to me. Thank you very much. All right. Sean, would you like to join us. I would.

We have a fun show to get to. Shout out to Ben. All right. Okay. So today, Mashup 195, we're with a little different pace, folks. A little different pace,

okay? We got a guest in the background. We're going to have a debate today. So we might as bring in Chris here, I think, maybe. Chris, thanks for hopping on.

Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think Toos is over the moon. Somebody finally accepted a request to have a discussion, a debate on Alberta independence. So Chris Berthelot, I want to start here. Just give a minute of your background to the audience. First time you've ever been on the show, let them know who you are. Absolutely. Well, my name is Chris Berthelot. Legally changed from Jason Kenney.

Just too much baggage had to switch it. I've been born and raised in Alberta all my life, lived in Empton. I've worked as a journalist. I've worked as a salesman. I now work in marketing. That's my niche. That's what I specialize in. And I care about Alberta and I care about Canada.

And I feel like this is a really good opportunity for everyone to hear from the federal's perspective in a way that's respectful and treats the separatist or independent side with respect. And that's what I'm here to do today. Cool. Now, I'm going to ask real fast. Your actual name was Jason Canney? It wasn't. I was being. All right.

He never gets the jokes on this show. I can't pick up jokes either. Trust me. It's a nightmare. When I used to do customer service, people would make sarcastic remarks, and I'd be like, is this serious or not?

What do I do? Well, yes, you'll have to forgive it. Good morning, everyone. Can anyone see the comments this morning? Can anyone see that comment? And then also, if we do this, So forgive us for a sec, Chris. I guess some context to this is that this is our second week with this new streaming setup.

We kept on having recurring technical issues with our last one. And so we tried something else and we're just still seeing what all works great with it. Correct. So did anybody see it? Squirrels, squirrel nuts is good. Yep. So, yeah. Good.

Yeah, I just want to say, I, I really appreciate this. I've reached out to a lot of people that I disagree with over our time here doing the mashup. And the people that agree with you are always more than happy to come on and, you know, pleasantly shake hands. And we can tell each other how awesome we are. But it's really rare to have somebody who says, I think that you are totally wrong and I'm willing to sit down with you and tell you exactly why. and we need more of this, not even just in this province,

in this country, but in this world. And even though I think you're totally wrong, I really appreciate the fact that you're willing to come here and try and figure it out with us. I do appreciate the opportunity. And I feel the same way. I think at the end of the day,

and this is how I'm approaching this conversation. When I look at U-2s and Sean, I see Albertans who care about Alberta. I see people who, love this land, who love the people in it, who care about its future. And I feel like that's my concern as well. Just because again, this is the only place I've ever lived in. It's the only place I've ever known. And so that's why when I, when we've been, for me personally, uh, I've heard about the Alberta separatist and sorry, I don't know, I can say independence movement if you prefer.

I say separatist just because I think of it as a leaving of Canada, but I'm willing to use independence just for the sake of this discussion of respect for you. I mean, if I, It's good either way. You could even make an argument that since Alberta has been paying the mortgage on Canada for a while, that it's not even separation, it's eviction. Sure. I'm sure you believe that. That's fair enough.

I don't see you that way, but fair. Okay. Well, gentlemen, how about we start here, okay? Absolutely. Let's get into this. So for all the people tuning in, okay, we just got a nice simple outline for, a debate today. We're going to give each each of you two, three minutes at the start to give

your opening remarks. Once that's done, then it's just an open conversation to go back and forth. And at the end, we'll give you three minutes to just say, whatever you want to say for closing remarks. To the audience, if you have questions that you want to inject into it, I'll be paying attention and we can have a Q&A section closer to the end or if we're in the middle of it. I might even inject one or two in,

regardless. Chris, you're first, you're the guest of the show. You can lead off. And I'll start the timer. I don't think I'm too worried about you guys going 20 minutes. Let me just switch over to my prepared remarks and just make sure everything so work. No, no. Time's counting. Time counts. Okay. Can you ever still see me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ready whenever you are. Yep. Fire away. All right. Hello, everyone. My name is Chris Berthelot and I'm a proud of Burin who's proudly Canadian. To me, these are one in the same thing. My argument for Alberta staying in Canada is simple, and it boils down the three points that I will be building on during this debate. Alberta is stronger, more free, and more prosperous with Canada than without.

Separation will make us poorer, weaker, and less free, and Alberta independence leaders are wrong on the facts on both. We have benefited from a relationship to Canada in many ways. It's because of Canada that we have the oil sands today, as well as the Transmountain Expansion and other investments in our oil and gas industry worth millions, if not billions of dollars. Canada's trade deals help ship our exports across the globe, and almost one-fifth of our budget is covered by federal transfers that fund our hospitals, schools, and other services. One of our greatest advantages is the fact that we can import workers from across the country during boom times and send them back when we hit bust, helping us save costs while benefiting from an immediate worker pool. As part of Canada, we're more successful, more protected from risk, and we have constitutional rights that serve as leverage when dealing with auto love. Chris, apologies, apologies. I mean, this is going to be the way today goes, maybe.

Two's just got the blue screen of death, and so he got kicked off the stream, which means there's no point in you talk, and then him hopping in and not knowing what you said. We have to pause for a second, folks. Now, I don't know. I'm like, now I'm all twisted, because I'm like, I don't know, I'm just sitting here jotting down notes.

No worries. Chris, I'm, no, I'm going to go back. to until twos hops in, of course, there he is. All right, twos, are you back with us? Tews, are you alive? Send proof of life. Yes, no kidding. What is going on this morning, folks?

While we wait on twos, Chris, normally what I do with somebody new? We'll kick twos to the background for now because I can't see them. I was going to switch back to the screen? Yeah, normally what I do with somebody to the first time they're on the podcast is I, you know, you gave us just a quick brief. You know, you're in Alberta and proud.

Albertan seemed like you're pretty level-headed you know you look at me in Tuesday and you go I see some guys that that care for their province care for their country uh I was just curious I didn't like I kind of paid attention but I was like I was just kind of setting up for the debate but normally when I have somebody on I ask them a couple questions about themselves so you live in Eminton right now currently I do and you've been there all your life my entire life never lived anywhere else I've lived across the city I've worked across the city I've been to school across the city

went through all 12 years in Catholic Catholic school I went to university here I won't say which one just out of personal privacy I find that unfortunately we're kind of at a point where people will like to take personal information of other people and weaponize it I'm not saying that will happen because they're guests

I'm not trying to accuse anyone of anything I'm just saying for my own personal comfort I limit how much information I share. Yeah, well, I think that's a safe thing, Chris. I'm not worried about our audience, but the internet is a strange place. And at the same time, don't put out information. You're not comfortable sharing. Tews, are you finally with us?

I am back and incredibly sorry. I caught like the first six words. No, no, no. We're going to start over. Mashup 195 is just going to replay itself. So if you miss the first 10 minutes, folks, we're just going to start over on the debate. That's all right. Chris, I was just curious.

In Eminton, growing up there all your life, has it been this, like, has the city changed in your time? Like, how old are you, Chris? Not to, you know. I'm, I just turned 33 this month. Okay. And, yeah, it's changed dramatically. I remember back, I would say, around 10 years ago, I had just, you know, I graduated from high school just a few years after, you know, 2010. I, I noticed that.

Oh, sorry, now I'm hearing some feedback. I did notice that obviously, Empton's suffering. Our homeless population has increased dramatically. People are literally lined up in the streets suffering. I noticed that prices of anything have gone out the roof. I've also seen a lot of good things. For me, I'm a big public transit guy. So I love the fact that our city is finally investing in a public transit.

I ride the value line almost every day just because of how new and fun it is for me. I'm a weird guy. I like trans. That probably speaks to something up there, but I'm not going to say anything. I want to train convention, not like train convention, but when they have like that train fair or whatever.

Yeah. You know, where, yeah, that's pretty cool. Oh, absolutely. Trains? Yeah. You're not going to get any pushback on trains for me. Appreciate you giving us a bit more about yourself, Chris, while we waited on twos to get his poop in a group here.

Okay, let's start this over again. Three minutes starts, twos, try and stay in here, would you? and we'll get this thing on the straight and arrow. Would that work? Absolutely. You can hear me okay, right? I'm not sounding to echoey or anything. No, you sound great.

No, you're good. Yep. All right. Okay, we'll start with Chris again, folks, and here we go. Hello, everyone. My name is Chris Berthelot, and I'm a proud of Britain who's probably Canadian. To me, these are one and the same thing. My argument for Alberta staying in Canada is simple, and it boils down to three points that I will be building on during this debate.

Alberta is stronger, more free, and more prosperous within Canada than without. Separation makes us poorer, weaker, and less free, and Alberta and independence leaders are wrong on the facts on both. We have benefited from our relationship to Canada in many ways. It's because of Canada that we have the oil sands today, as well as the Trans Mountain expansion and other investments in our oil and gas industry worth millions, if not billions of dollars. Canada's trade deals help ship our exports across the globe and almost one-fifth of our budget. budget is covered by federal transfers that fund our hospitals, schools, and other services. One of our greatest advantages is the fact that we can import workers from across the country during boom times and send them back when we hit bust, helping us save costs while benefiting from

an immediate worker pool. As part of Canada, we're more successful, more protected from risk, and we have constitutional rights that serve as leverage when dealing with Ottawa. By separating, we consolidate economic risk from trade issues, global crises like pandemics, and oil price collapses. If we separate, we open ourselves up for attacks on our economy and our economy from all sides. Separatism robs us of our voicing confederation while at the same time subjecting us to rules and regulations that we would have no power to change.

Consider Brexit as an example. British businesses are still required to work with the European Union standards despite no longer being part of the EU. We also open ourselves up to assimilation from the Americans, who would actually treat us like the resource colony that separatists claim we are today. The libertism also chases away investment, as it did in Quebec in 1995, and as many economists and Albertan business leaders agree. Mitch Sylvester and Jeffrey Rath offer pie in the sky promises to Albertans, but they do not

offer the hard facts about the costs and consequences of separation. In my opinion, separatism is modern-day snake oil, a grand promise by an empty one that will cost Alberta both now and in the future. I believe that Albertans who are considering independence want what's best for Alberta, and many of you have sincere concerns about the future of your families, your communities, and the place we call home. However, I believe that Alberta separatism is not the solution to the problems that you're concerned with. Much of Alberta has been built by, with, and four Canadians, both living in Alberta and across the country. And I believe that our best way of keeping Alberta strong and free

is by remaining in Canada. Thank you. Tews. All right. Thanks, Chris. I got a slightly different take on it. So first off, Pierre Pollyev said many times that Canada's broken. But here's the thing. He was lying. Canada is and is and always has been running exactly as designed. Confederation was designed to

extract wealth from the West to buy votes in the east. And that's exactly how this is played out from the get-go. Fucking Quebec, the undisputed and undefeated heavyweight equalization champion. This year alone, they're getting $14 billion in

just equalization. In the 2025 election, Alberta was magnanimously granted one MP for every 115,000 people. Prince Edward Island has won for every 38,500. In Canada, a vote for a month of fishing and 11 months of EI is worth three votes for 51, 60 hour weeks in every sort of weather so that the airport in Vancouver can have jet fuel and fucking Quebec can have propane. We're also underrepresented in the Senate, but since the last time they did literally anything was November 6, 2010, I'm going to call it a wash because an underrepresented portion of zero is still zero. Side note, the federal government wastes a lot of hard-earned money on dumb shit. Regardless, the West has really only asked for one thing from the rest of Canada. Please stop being dicks. But that's never been the

case. From literally the start of Confederation, Alberta has been a resource colony. And again by design. Johnny McDonald talked about it. George Brown talked about it. All the way from Screw the West will take the rest mentality in the early 80s through the National Energy Program to the West Coast tanker ban that only applies to Canadian vessels while letting those of other countries navigate freely to arbitrarily vetoing NAB recommendations for pipelines and making those currently in application abandon a pointless endeavor. Alberta has constantly been treated like an unfortunate and undesirable wretch. of Canada has been stuck with. We've been sidelined, disrespected, and denigrated, all while

quietly paying the bills for the rest of the country. The liberals are the natural governing party of Canada. At best, we're only one election cycle away from a bunch of entitled jerks in central and eastern Canada voting for someone who will absolutely eviscerate Alberta for their own betterment. The conservatives aren't any better. The ones purporting to represent us in Ottawa hadn't even kicked the Alberta dust off their boots yet after the election before voting unanimously for Bill C202, entrenching protectionism for the dairy cartel in Ontario and fucking Quebec. We're in a perpetual state of being put under the thumb of bad rules made by stupid people who don't know, understand, or respect our way of life. Case in point, the gun ban.

It's not based on facts, science, or logic. It's being administered by a man who has no knowledge of firearms or even their Canadian classifications. The list either has or has had or still has obscure Japanese sniper rifles over a century old, plane mounted machine guns, a single shot 22 of which there is only one in existence called the Buttmaster because that's where it was designed to be stored, black rifle coffee, and scary looking airsoft guns. We're fundamentally incompatible and given how far away we are from the levers of power, it's completely understandable.

Most of the continental U.S., about a third of Mexico and parts of Russia are closer to us than Ottawa. Geographically speaking, it would make more sense for us to have this debate in Spanish than to keep sending equalization to fucking Quebec. Because we think and do things differently, we elect people to represent us that are different from the rest of Canada.

And in turn, get different rules. It's why Alberta has a natural resource sector and Quebec doesn't. The rest of Canada... You're well over... You're three minutes. What do you want me to do here? Okay.

The rest of Canada can boosts as much. much as they want what we do this. Your booze mean nothing. I've seen what makes you cheer. Spoiler alert. It was a Nazi in the House of Commons. Chris, you've heard, well, actually, both of you've heard each other's opening arguments. Chris, your first thoughts. And then, and then from there, gentlemen, all I'm here to do is to make sure you don't call each other, whatever, and talk over each other. So, Chris, you're opening thoughts. I thought it was really interesting. I didn't really hear a large amount of reasons why Alberta would do better away from Canada than it would on its own. I also don't really understand a few different points that two is made.

I don't want to filibuster and throw a million things that you have to address, so I don't want to do that to you. No, throw it. If I can ask my first question, can you explain me in your own words what equalization is? Equalization is an obfuscation of the source of revenue. where it goes through intermediaries to hide where it actually comes from, to give it to other parts of the country. And it just so happens that it goes from wealth-rich parts with low voter bases

to less productive parts with higher voter bases. Okay. So I don't think you're correct. I don't think that's what equalization is. As we're now by multiple economists and the government itself, the whole point of equalization is to make sure that. So first off, let's make something clear. Alberta pays $0 in equalization.

Alberta as a province pays zero. Okay. Albertans pay higher taxes because we make more money because of the fact that we've had a very good industry that wouldn't exist without Canada. So because of the fact that we make more money, because the fact that we are able to fund our own services, because we're successful, the taxes we pay, which is we don't get taxed any higher than any other country or sorry, any other province or any other Canadian, we pay the exact same tax rates, we just have to make more money. So when all the provinces, they all send their money, they all send it to the federal government, the federal government doles it out. We as Alberta, for example, we get $8 billion back from the federal government to cover our health care. We get $6 billion back for, I think it's education

and other things. I have in my document list various different things that the federal government gives us back in order to fund our province. If you actually look at the federal budget, we've actually been getting more money every year from the federal government to cover what we aren't right now paying because of the fact that we got a tax cut from the provincial government. If you look at equalization, the whole point of it is to make sure that other provinces who aren't as successful as us can still offer the same level of goods and services to of those Canadians so that we all benefit. And this is why I think you mentioned Quebec.

And obviously Quebec is a big deal, right? Like how much does Quebec piss you all? Yes. Yes. Do you know when Quebec stopped being a net contributor to Canada? That's interesting. Like, well, okay, what year did they stop being a net contributor to Canada? So there's been two separate referendums, first back in the 1970s and then back in 1995.

It was both of those times. It was actually the first referendum after that. Quebec, which was a net contributor and one of the most successful provinces in the Confederation stopped being a net contributor because of their separatism movement. Instead, Jason Wayne Investment, the biggest example being BMO, pushing them to Toronto, which has higher taxes than Quebec did. And as a result, Quebec has because of separatism, Quebec is now a net consumer. and that's separatism is really what's costing Alberta more money. Okay, all right. Now, now there's there's a lot to unpack.

If you give me a sec, first off, the fact that the fact that Quebec faced huge financial investment escapeism, I guess you could say, when they were looking at separating, is completely expected. It's logical. I mean, you think about it this way. All right. you've got a boat and it's dragging its anchor. And then if the anchor says, I want to cut the chain, no one's going to invest in the anchor. But if the boat decides it wants to cut the chain and stop dragging the anchor,

people are going to be like, hey, you know what, this boat's going to be faster. I want to get behind it. I want to support it, which is probably part of the reason why we had $20.5 billion worth of investments announced in the past couple weeks in Alberta, whereas to your point and you're absolutely correct, when Quebec said, I think we want to go in a different direction than all the investment dried up

because Quebec doesn't really stand on its own. It's got things like the dairy cartel supported by the Canadian government. Bombardier gets bailouts from the Canadian government and from the Canadian pension plan. So it's completely logical and expected that something like that would happen. Now, as far as equalization goes,

they have been, even if they were net contributors to Confederation, they have literally every year since 1957, when it got brought in, been recipients of equalization. And I think there's a huge disconnect here between what you're saying was absolutely correct in that it's the stated purpose of equalization. And if you were to look at all of the federal documents and all the speeches and everything like that, what they're saying tracks perfectly with what you said. The difference I would say is that on my end, I'm looking at the net result.

And so, sure, I don't pay out of my pocket directly to some guy named John Francois in Gatineau. But at the end of the day, if I was to take one of my loonies and scratch my name on it and then use that to pay taxes, it would bounce here. It would go there. It would bounce around like a cork bottle on a cartoon cartoon. And at the end of the day, it would be used to buy a fuck. croissant in Montreal. And so, so regardless of the stated intentions and regardless of the surface, surface aspects of it, at the end of the day, that dollar that used to be mine has now magically ended up

in Quebec. And so what, what, sorry, just just one sec here. And so when you have, when you have intermediary steps involved in financial transactions that are used to obscure the source of that money, there's actually a term for that. finance and it's called laundering. So how's it being obscured? Well, because to your point, you said that I don't pay directly into equalization and the Alberta government does not pay directly into equalization.

But we pay taxes and I get the fact that we pay more taxes because we make more money. But the thing about it is, is that if you were to magically take away the equalization aspect of it and all the trickle down effects and all the different. ways it played out. Alberta would be effectively paying lower individual taxes, even if they paid a higher net amount. And that dollar would not end up going from my pocket to Quebec. How do you figure?

I mean, that's, I mean, if it didn't play out like that, you wouldn't have to call it equalization because it equalizes. Chris, what, if everything was already equalized.

Chris, finish your thought. I apologize. I know I keep interrupting. It's not, no, no, at times you got to interrupt,

great news because um other if you don't twos will go so fair enough um so the reason okay so let's let's use alberta as an example of your mind um so alberta has a uh its own budget right and it has to disseminate that budget for various communities in alberto yeah now we would agree the the two places or three places that get the most support would be emminton calgary and red deer yeah right we would say that and and you can tell me if you agree or not maybe i i i i i would say that i would I've never lived in rural Alberta. I've dated a woman from rural Alberta. I've been up and down the province, but I've never, like, I've never been a member of a rural

rural rural community. So I can't speak for them. But I would bet that those communities feel underserved right now by Alberta's government and budget. Probably. And I would argue that the problem is, and it's the same thing federally as it happens provincially is that when you pay your property taxes municipally, half of it goes to the provincial government who then decides who they're going to give it to back down the line.

And it would just be a lot simpler to just keep that money in the community and not involve it going through extra steps. And it's the same thing federally. Why put extra steps involved unless there's something to be gained from it? In this particular case, it's votes in Ontario and its votes in Prince Edward Island. But you do agree that if we were to follow your idea that money stays in community, that would harm rural Alberta way more than would the rest of the larger cities. Like if, because we like Calgary and Empton alone make a fair amount of money.

And, and my concern is so, so my point I'm trying to make, to compare this to Alberta and that is that if let's say Alberta decide, we're going to put more money into rural Alberta. We're going to put our money. and make sure that all the other smaller communities that can't support themselves, as well as Calgary, Empton, other places,

and started dividing it that way. Would you start saying it's unfair? Would you start complaining that, would I, as now, Ementonian have a right to complain that my dollar that I spent in Empton is going to help some guy in Hardesty or helping some guy in Lucrete or helping some guy in Fort McMurray?

Do you think we would, like, would that be a fair complaint? Well, that's, I guess, that's not my stance at all. I think that the money should stay in communities. And maybe in a few instances, there might be a few isolated, isolated specific one-offs where the provincial government might be like, oh, hey, you know what, it would be good if we did this particular thing here or this particular thing here.

But it would be the exception, not the rule. Because the thing about it is, is you look at Edmonton, you look at Calgary, look at Calgary in their water system. how many millions have been wasted on on not fixing problems that should have been addressed sooner getting municipalities to live more within their means would have been a good lesson for calgary to learn and i'm sure it would be a great lesson for for someplace like stettler or or lecombe or whatever to to deal with where they just say hey you know what like we just don't have the money to waste on stupid stuff and maybe we we have a few less of

the extraneous things and we get back to having good water come in, bad water go out and shovel the snow. Not to, because I recognize that by my example, I may have steer our conversation away from our debate topic. Just like not you, I'm just saying, on me. If I can just kind of guide back to kind of my point, we agree that the point of electing in Alberta government,

whether it's a provincial government or a federal government, is that it's meant to take care of and responsibly serve. all Alberts. I would disagree with that a little bit on the semantic side. I don't need a government to take care of me. I think the sentiment in Western Canada is largely that the government

is there to basically maintain the borders, offer a judicial system and a police force, and then after that to just back off unless there's instances where people are interfering with each other.

It's not to take care of us. I think that largely, and this is part of the reason why elections federally are so crazy is because you've got one side of the country that wants to vote for whoever's going to give them the most free stuff. And on the other side of the country, you've got people who want to vote for whichever politician is going to fuck the most off. I don't know if I agree with that. I mean, again, I take your point, but my argument would be that the whole point of electing a government is that we do need a system that's able to take care of all the things that we cannot take care of individually. We don't pave our own roads.

We don't build our own hospitals. We don't pay our own doctors. We don't do all those things individually. We do them as a collective because at the end of the day, it financially makes more sense. It's stronger. The more you balkanize things and individualize things, the harder and more expensive it comes for everyone else. That's why at the end of the day, we do agree that we want a, when I see a strong government, I do not mean a government that controls every little thing, a government that tells you you can do this and you can do that. Believe or not, even though this is a full admission, I volunteered for the liberal party last year during the election. And I did it out of spite just because I'm a progressive Albertian. Living like that in Alberta is kind of like Alberta living in Canada where you're like, ah, it never changes. It gets trust. And that's fair. That's totally fair. I'm not knocking you for that. In fact, if anything, it speaks more highly to the fact that you're here today.

But my point is that I disagree with the Liberal Party on many different things. I think their gun laws are stupid. I think their plastics laws are stupid. I think there's plenty of things that they do that's really dumb. As a journalist, when they went and they brought in the online news act, that crippled the Canadian journalism industry. That took us from many journalists from being able to get their news onto Facebook and meta and other places, even though it was meant to try and make sure that foreign

companies and foreign countries had to support. stopped taking money from us and not give it back to us. Because that's the logic behind their law was, oh, if we start taxing Google and Facebook for the fact that they can, they operate in Canada, we can use that and they benefit from us sharing Canadian news articles. We can pull that money and put it towards Canadian journalists.

Google, they pay about $100 million a year. I don't know if that's increased or decreased cents. Facebook and meta, the company, whatever, they said, screw you. We're going to just leave and block news entirely. To be fair, minor point of order there.

They didn't block the news entirely. The point was that they had to pay a tax every time they did it, and they chose not to do that. That would be the same as one of us saying, I'm going to quit smoking because every time I buy a pack of cigarettes, I've got to pay a tax. It's in all practical effects exactly the same thing. Sorry, please continue. No, no, that's fair. But to be fair, the reason why they wanted them to pay that was because of the fact that META was making money off of this bunch of posts being shared from journalists who weren't getting the credit.

Because people would go and they'd look at the news on Facebook. They'd see it. And then they wouldn't follow to the other website. Because most people, they're not going to go because most people don't really know much about news today. They're not going to follow the link to CBC or Emminton Journal or other things. They would use Facebook and then they'd leave. And that was costing a lot of Canadian news organizations a lot of money because they're producing, but they're not getting the revenue.

they're not getting the rewards of the fruit of their labor. But again, not trying to debate all those new things. Well, I tell you what, I have a question for you too. Okay. Tews said something along the lines, not put words in your mouth tos, that investment 20 billion just in the last couple weeks, looks like investment would come. Chris, you said industry wouldn't exist without Canada.

Yep. Let's talk about industry for a second. Sure. And I'm going to start with Chris because you said it. I wrote it down and just put a star beside it. I'd like to hear your thoughts on why you think industry wouldn't exist if Alberta went its own way. Okay. I'm going to, so I have the screen open, but I'm just switching to my notes just because again, I didn't memorize everything.

If I am looking too much on my notes, I do apologize. So back in 1970, do you know when the oil sands really started to pick up steam? Well, I mean, it's gradually been going over the years. You might be able to say when Leduc was discovered or also, I think, number two, at Red Earth. was also really monumental in terms of it. But as far as picking up steam, nice choice of words, by the way, it's been happening over decades.

Sure. But back in 1975, when Syncrued the consortium, when they were trying to build up the oil sands and get development and investment, the Atlantic Richfield Company pulled out pine. This is a quote from, I don't know if I can read this whole quote.

It's not a long one. It's from John English, who is a historian, full disclosure he wrote this in the national post full disclosure he also used to work as a liberal MP so there may be some bias there but that's just full disclosure but if it's okay i want to read a small quote just as part of the yeah by all means yeah by all means um when the atlantic richfield company pulled out of pioneering oil sands development in 1975 a move that threatened to end oil sands development it was the ontario conservative government a bill davis that took a 5% share in the

existing bailout alberta took 10% the federal government 15% the federal government 15000 Without that deal, the oil sands would have remained yet another great Canadian project that went unfulfilled. And so that was the, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing is if there's money to be made, there's always going to be people willing to invest in it. And they probably were offered the most favorable rates. And then that in turn was able to affect their IRA. And in the fledgling years of heavy oil, that would have turned marginal wells into large moneymakers.

But the technology has been, it's not just Canada that's been advancing this technology, the exact same oil sands that exist up around Fort Mac. The identical deposits are, for example, in California, right? Pioneered the oil sand technology. It wasn't California. It was Canada. And it was syncrude. And it was because of the fact that when this company, this major oil company, pulled out

and threatened the future of the project, because at the end of the day, we can say the technology's there, the people are willing to do it if there's money there. You're not going to invest on a risk. You're not, investment is always investing on a risk. Well, most that's literally the whole point of why you get paid, um, you get paid a premium for your investment is because it's a risk. You know why the, why the Richfield company pulled out, the Atlantic Richfield company? Why is that?

Why that? Why is it wanted 50%? Alberta's provincial government won 50% of revenues and the ritual company said, fuck that. I'm out. That's fair. And so, we can agree that risk, you know, investments about risk, but it's managed risk.

It's expected risk. And that's why a lot of other companies will pull out if you see the risk too great, or if they don't believe that the profits are going to be enough for them to justify it, which is what happened to this company. It was because of the fact that Ontario and the federal government alone took 20% of the bailout, compared to our Alberta's 10%, that we were able to keep sync crew going, which led us to 1996. Because in 1996, uh, Alberta and Ontario, sorry, the Ottawa, the federal government They went and they also, back in 1996, they had what was called, let me just pull it up here, so sorry.

Canada's Declaration of Opportunity, which predicted 19 new oil science projects by the year 2020, attracting $25 billion in investment, creating 44,000 jobs. And that was just what they were hoping or expecting to happen. Because of the fact that Alberta put in a new uniform royalty rate and because of tax changes adopted by Ottawa, oil sand production was projected to nearly triple to 1.2 million barrels. So if you look again back in 1996, another example of another time when the federal government, a liberal federal government, changed the rules for Alberta to Alberta's benefit. Okay. But so, so I like I take your point is that they they invested, they invested at one specific time. But counterpoint, the national energy program, they swooped in a decade later.

said all of this is ours now and it completely eviscerated, right? And the thing about it is, is that we're always just one election cycle away from, like, you know, we had Pierre Trudeau and then we had Justin Trudeau. How many more years before Xavier Trudeau decides to come in and, and decide to do some similarly stupid thing to the National Energy Program or vetoing the NAB recommendation on the Section 52 application. for the Northern Gateway Pipeline. I would point out that the National Energy Program

will have actually benefited us and wouldn't have harmed us. It was conservatives that made a whole big sting saying it would harm us. But if you look at a journalist who's a journalist named Max Fawcett who's actually worked with the oil industry for decades, he points out and I can pull up a graph, if you'll mind, I can send you or I can pull up myself. I just have to try and find it. You should be able to pull it up yourself, Chris.

Yeah, absolutely. Give me just 30 seconds to pull it up here. Sorry, I have it in my Discord. Thank you for your patience. If you like, if you want to jump in, I don't want to like hold up to this discussion. As soon as it comes up, I'll let you have the floor. But I just want to say in the meantime that basically rule number one of a government is that you need to protect property rights. It's why it's so hard to invest in countries like Peru or Iraq or or Nigeria where you have unstable governments who could at a whim decide that all of this belongs to us.

at any moment. Venezuela is a perfect example because when that stuff happens, investment gets on the next boat out. Okay. And so the national energy program, I'm really curious to see what you do with it and where you're going with this because rule number one of being a government is you do not steal the people's shit. Sure. And that was breaking rule number one. Our shit is protected by the Constitution. So I mean, if you're concerned about that, thank God. we live in Canada where our we have exclusive rights over our non-renewable natural resources because of our constitution that was literally partially due to Pierre Trudeau. So another example of another Trudeau ensuring protection for Canada or for Alberta.

But that's not again, not to throw a million things at you. Sorry, I'm just pulling it up here. Thank you so much for your patience. Again, I'm very sorry about the hassle here. If I seem a little bit, it's just I get, I get excitable. and when I get excitable, I tend to get louder or that's not. It's great. You're in good company if that's the case.

So don't sweat it. I think I almost have it. See, I had like a list of like sources and I was working all night trying to like get organized. And I think I just about found it. We know something on this side of working all night. Don't we choose of all the different documents getting put in? I was up to midnight working on this. Let's see here.

Okay, here we go. I found, oh, frick. While you're looking at that, maybe I'll just talk for a minute about some of the difference between, some of the differences between Alberta and the rest of Canada.

I touched on it before in the intro about how Alberta, see, the oil doesn't magically stop at the border. It's not as though Alberta is just the luckiest place in existence where it just so happened that the exact lines we decided to draw on the map also happen to be the boundaries of the formations that contain oil.

It's just that in other places in Canada, it's illegal or highly discouraged. So, for example, the first well in Canada was dug in Sarnia, Ontario. And you've got anecdotal stories of when people were landing in Nova Scotia, they could poke the ground with sticks and light the gas that came out on fire. And yet you've got a fracking ban in Nova Scotia that was just very recently lifted. you've got Quebec where exploration is largely, not even largely, it's straight up illegal, let alone extraction. And so you've got a situation where other parts of the country don't need to do this.

They don't need to work because Alberta makes the money and we get the equalization, which... Hold on. Who makes the most GDP in the country? Alberta or on-capita. No, no, I agree per capita. Per capita, Alberta makes more money because, again, we have higher wages because of the fact that we have this industry. but just in general. Also, also, okay, it's not just because of the industry. It's because of economic decisions, like, for example, the fact that we have the lowest minimum wage.

Sure, but we didn't always have that, which is kind of a shame, considering how many Alburns are struggling right now. But that's kind of beside the point. I did find the link I want, or the photo I want to send you here. Sorry, I'm looking at the wrong tab. I see choose what the share with studio restream. Is there something where I can send it that pops up to you? guys or do you have to use like the sheriff's screen i think share screen would be the one yeah just

that's that sheer screen on the bottom i can make that work that's not a big deal yep um let me just the problem is i don't want to have personal information like okay um maybe you could you i found it i got all right um so i'm going to go here let me just clear this up there it is uh by the way i love the hat thank you I don't love your hat. I think that renaming it, the Elks was absolutely silly. Especially, well, I mean, given the fact that that Eskimo doesn't even mean eaters of raw fish.

It means laser of snow shoes. And eating raw fish isn't even that offensive. I mean, try telling that to somebody in Japan. But I think the question is ultimately who are the people who should be, I mean, I don't want to get into that hold. I'm not going to get into that. I'm just going to, I'm just going to wheel that. Let's let's just go to the.

to the graph, shall we? Let's see it. Here's a graph. I don't know if it's sharing right now. Yeah, we can see it. You're up. All right. So right here.

So the key, this is from Andrew Leach, who has a full article discussing this. The key pair, this is back in 1980 when they're discussing the national energy program. The reference price, Madam, I don't want to read the whole thing. But if you look at this graph here with national energy program prices, the idea is that as the national energy program would continue, if you look here, the graph shows WTI price as it is today. And then what the expected price with reference price would have been, uh, if the program was able to continue.

If you look at it, we will have had a consistent rise, uh, per barrel of oil as increased that would went higher than we do today back in 2020. Now this was back in 22. 2012 or no, I just added the 2012. You're right. Sorry. The screen was small. So I didn't quite get that. So the national energy program would have actually stabilized prices and it would have,

uh, had a continued increase in prices that would probably be higher than we have today. Okay. All right. To be fair. All right. So first off, Andrew Leach is a guy who's very thoroughly entrenched in academia.

His ideas aren't always well. Can you leave that screen up, please? Oh, sorry. Yeah. Let me fix that. Yeah.

Sorry, and he's a guy who has received a fair bit of money from the federal government. He's got me blocked on Twitter, but that's a side note. So the green line on that graph, which I'm seeing for the first time here, is based on two assumptions. One is that you take the WTI, if you take WTI prices at Cushing and adjust them to Canadian dollars, you get the red line. And where is the, assuming that one, the program was maintained through today. And two, synthetic crude would otherwise sell at WTI and Canadian dollars, which it doesn't.

And then the green graph is, oh shoot, I can't tell where I saw that before. But it said that it was connected to inflation and the Consumer Price Index in Canada. Right. Okay. Which are two very large assumptions that do not hold up in real life. To be fair, we'll never know because the program didn't survive the 1980s.

Okay. I think it's fair to say, because you could look at that graph and say, did the price of oil? follow that line anywhere in the world. And the answer is no. And so to say if we'd have done this one specific thing in this one specific country, we would have had the steadiest, slowest, predictable oil price seems a little bit pie in the sky to say the very least. I just, I don't know.

Again, I guess my concern is I, again, and this is not to be rude. A large part of my basis comes back to who is more. trained and educated in this. We can say that, well, this, you know, Andrew Leach gets federal money. So do almost every other think tank and literally almost any other professional economists and other, like, authority on these issues. Everyone gets some federal money.

That doesn't necessarily. And they've also gone federal money from conservative governments. So it's not like, I just, I don't think it's fair to say, well, he must be biased. he's trying to skew the numbers in order to fulfill political number. I don't think that's right. Now, now, okay, all right. Then that's, that's a fair criticism of where I led into it with. May I stop sure?

But that doesn't affect the criticism I had of that specific graph. Sure, fair. And to be fair, the National Energy Program is not my full argument. It's just the fact that more than one person would argue that it would have benefited us if things were, depending on certain factors. we will never know. It's speculation. I'm not saying that this is my main argument. But they did break rule number one,

which is you don't steal the individual citizen shit. And that's rule number one of a country. What were they stealing? They literally nationalized. They nationalized. That's how Petro Canada came into being. Sure. Was that they went and they said,

this is ours now. This is the governments. And everybody whose stuff didn't get taken got out on the next boat. And so, yeah, you might have one tiny little aspect of the industry that if you managed it carefully enough, maybe in a hypothetical, perfect world would have followed that green line. But meanwhile, every other aspect of that entire industry has moved to other parts of the world.

It's the same thing we've seen with the hundreds of billions of dollars in projects that have been canceled because of the rigorous red tape and the extraneous bullshit that's been put on them since the N.E.B. Act was suspended. Oh, it says the host me and my screen share. Am I still live or? You're still here. Sorry, I just saw that. I was confused. No worries. Fair enough. I'm going to be 100% with you. I did not fully prepare on the national energy program because it was more of a footnote than an actual argument. That's okay. Fair enough. But I will kind of go back to my point that you're making this argument that Canada's laws,

and rules are the reason why we aren't producing as much. We have never produced more oil in our history than we are right now. We've had a consistent increase of oil production, save for one or two years over the last 10 years. If Justin Trudeau did such a shitty job of destroying our economy, man, he sucks at it because he was like a boom to it. Okay. Again, look at TMX.

No. Okay. Sure. Let's do it. Oh, my sweet summer child. Okay. All right. So first off, it's kind of like when people were getting vaccinated and then they got COVID afterwards and they said, thankfully, I got vaccinated.

If I had my symptoms, symptoms would have been so much worse, which is actually not a perfect correlation because this is actually something that you can definitively prove. Okay. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment that never happened in this country. And so you can point to the fact that employment is down in oil and gas, but oil and gas is made up of, administrative exploration, drilling, completions, operations. Okay. And so rather than saying that, oh, well, the fruit basket has less fruit in it, I'm looking at it and I'm saying there's no more oranges at all.

And while the overarching theme may be correct, it's going to be far more correct to drill down and say that there's no more oranges in it because all of the construction projects and everything got canceled. Like you look at, okay, this is anecdotal, so I'm not going to use it as anything. anything other than that. But Brian, which was Dover before that and his PetroChina now, not even going there. They had literally a tens of billions of dollar pipeline project that they were working on internally to go from north of Fort Mac down to Edmonton,

that they just took all that money and they moved it to Africa in 2015. What was that? This is 2013. All right. All right. Yeah. Yeah, well, 2016, I guess it would have been. Northern Gateway Pipeline got vetoed. You've got Energy East where all they had to do, almost all of the pipeline was there already. They just wanted to reverse directions and add a little bit on the end. And then Quebec said we're not doing it. Even though they don't have jurisdiction over that under Section 50 or Section 92 of the Constitution, they still said, we're not going to stand for this. And the liberals said, oh, okay, well, you know what? we don't really want to make waves, despite the fact that it's literally their wheelhouse that it should have been in. And TransCanada, which is now TC, eventually abandon the project. You've got the Carmen Creek oil sands, the Muscoa oil sands, frontier oil sands mine, grassy mountain, all were either rejected or abandoned.

The Northern Gateway Pipeline had gotten the N.E.B approval. and despite the fact that it spent the most out of any pipeline before or since on Indigenous consultation, that was the cop out, was that it didn't do enough. It spent billions, if I recall correctly, on Indigenous consultation over years. And no sane company is going to go and invest any money in a climate that is so heavily politicized. And that's why the Liberals had to buy the Transmountain Pipeline. and they paid a premium for it.

And then even then, it was supposed to be a $5 billion project and it ended up being over $30 billion because of shitty project management because it's just like any other government project. They waste so much money along the way. And really, if you look at the cost overruns, going 80 some percent or 800 and some percent

over your original budget is actually pretty good for a government project. But it's still absolutely insane because it's not something that we asked for. It's not something that we wanted. It's something that a private company was willing to do already on its own. It would be like if we said, we need more rain. And then the government said, okay, we got you. And they just got a bunch of planes to fly up and dump buckets of water out. It's going to rain anyway. We don't need the government to jump in and spend a bunch of money that they don't have solving a problem that doesn't exist. And that's exactly what happened. I don't think that's an accurate representation of what actually happened. I would

point out that Kinder Morgan, as well as, I forget the other pipeline that was going towards west coast. He said it was, help me out here, not TC, but Northern Gateway. Northern Gateway, thank you. Northern Gateway and TMX were both affected by British, the provincial British government and by indigenous nations, all of which were fighting heavily to prevent both pipelines from going through. It wasn't any, but they don't have jurisdiction.

You say that, but they have jurisdiction over their own territory. they don't have Section 92 of the Constitution. It's really clear. It outlines exactly where the provinces have a say in what happens. And it says at the start of it that the legalese exact wording isn't here for me right now off top of my head. But it basically says if it's not on this list, the federal government handles it. Sure.

And that's true. But again, you're agreeing that Alberta has no ability to force a pipeline through BC. Yeah, that's correct. Sure. Okay. So you agree that if let's say Kinder Morgan, because remember, this pipeline ultimately benefits Alberta. I mean, it affects benefits everyone, but let's not go there. We would agree that these two pipelines would benefit Alberta the most. Not BC, not other places, although they do get some benefit. We would agree. So if we look at BC and the indigenous nations, they have every right to say, fuck you, Alberta, we're going to do whatever we want. You want the pipeline here? Suck our dick. We don't want it. It was because of the federal government. The Alberta government that makes it. The Alberta government that makes it. We have the Alberta government that makes. that call. And it's not the BC government who vetoes it. It's the federal government who ultimately gives the approval. And under the N.E.B. Act, it was based on the N.E.B. assessment after completion of the Section 52 application, which is for any pipeline over 40 kilometers or any pipeline that crosses a provincial or a federal boundary. But that's why we should be thinking

federal government because they did use their veto power. They bypassed indigenous nations. They bypass the provincial government. Justin Trudeau gave. a Hogan, a big mill finger to him and said, hey, we're doing this anyway. And it was because he used the federal authority in order to get TMX put through. And you're right. It was, the TMX is really expensive.

Spent billions of Canadian taxpayer dollars, not just Alberta. It was the entire province. So a guy in Atlanta, Canada, a guy in BC, a guy in Quebec, all their money went to building this pipeline for Alberta. Okay. And to be clear, to be clear, to be clear, The federal government didn't veto the recommendation. In that case, they went along with the recommendation.

The recommendation they vetoed was the Northern Gateway application, which was recommended for approval. Okay, that's the one that they vetoed. This was the one where they did not veto. And all of that money was a small amount spent on the pipeline and a big amount spent on shitty project management. I am not going to throw a parade. I'm not going to throw a parade for bad project management. Give me an example of bad project management. Okay.

It was supposed to be $5, $6 billion and it cost over $30. Give me a specific example of how they manage a product shudely. Okay. The SPI and the CPI were several hundred times over one. Sorry, I'm not familiar with those. Can you please kind of walk you? Basically, it meant it went way over schedule and way over budget. Why?

Well, because it was loose, lax project management. I can tell you anecdotally that they paid a bunch of guys to just sit around on Sundays and do nothing because they had contracts that said they were working seven days while other parts of the project were not working seven days. And so you had this contract that said that you had to pay these guys because they're working seven days a week. And meanwhile, they can't do anything because the guys over here are only working six days a week. And that's literal project management shoddiness because you've got to mismatch. in contracts which cause cost overruns. Fair enough.

So I'm going to point out and again, I just look this up. I'm going to be 100% transparent. And again, this is not me trying to be a jerk or anything. I just Googled why did TMX go over budget. According to their AI overview, which has sources, which I can pull up. I can explain it. What it says here is the TMX pipeline expansion initially projected at 7.4 billion, saw cost balloon into $34 billion by late 2024 due to a combination of severe geological challenges, natural disasters, high inflation, and logistical issues.

The project faced significant delays from 2021 because of BC floods, pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, and complex mountainous terrain. So it sounds like the cost of the project balloon, not because of nebulous, shitty, project management that you don't have any real actual arguments for. No offense. I mean, no, no, it's totally fair. I said it was anecdotal. That's fair. And again, anecdotal is fair, but I'm just saying I think that if we're more feelings about the project, if we're looking at the actual.

Here's a concrete example. One of the last things they looked at was going underneath that big river at the very end of it. And that caused a lot of project complexity because they weren't sure which the optimal way to go underneath that river was going to be. And they didn't figure it out until the very end. There's this thing in project management where it's called progressive elaboration, where you start working and you figure things out as you go. But then also you've got all these diagrams with timelines where they all come together.

It's called a Gant chart. And so you look and you say, okay, you know what, if it's going to take me this long to figure this out and this long to do it, and then the next step that's waiting for me is going to be over here, I need to start this earlier so that it's done in time so that everything flows in a nice, easy flow. rather than coming to a grinding halt at specific points. And that is a definitive point where the project did that because of substandard project management. See, my concern would be that you're not acknowledging the fact that, yes, they make this plan, but this plan can't, it tries to,

but it can't accommodate for, again, geological issues, supply chain issues, especially with the pandemic that we just dealt with, which is largely why this balloon, not entirely. I'm not going to make that argument. But largely, the project was more complex. And at the end of the day, whether or not we come to an agreement on why TMX ballooned, it's still worth it to all burdens because we agree that TMX alone is cut out our WTIWCS differential by like $8 or $9, which is. Here's the thing.

It would have happened already on its own if we'd have just not had a federal government being dicks the whole time. That's the thing is you had a company, you had a company who was willing to go in and spend their money and do it themselves. And we never had to worry about it. This, we would have never even had this conversation. This would have been something that happened in a parallel universe. Okay. And that's the thing is when you look at the parallel universes,

in one parallel universe, the liberal government weren't being Dix and and Enbridge was able to just go in, build the pipeline, do it safely, and maybe they would have ran into some of the same cost overruns. Maybe they would have run into different cost overruns, but it would have been their cost overruns, not ours as taxpayers. And it cooled investment because it signaled to the world that the only way that a project can get built in this country is if the government does it themselves. And that is anathema towards investment. I don't agree with all. And actually first, two questions.

One, do you say Enbridge is responsible for TMX? Sorry, they did the Northern Gateway Pipeline. That's great. It was, uh, the name of the company, the name of the company isn't, isn't the focus. The point is, is that it would have happened. Yep. Sorry, not to cut you off. I apologize.

No, go ahead. Go ahead. Um, so Kinder Morgan was the company that went and was behind the pipeline. And Kinder Morgan, they pulled out because the private industry wasn't willing to bear the costs. They saw that if I can finish, it wasn't because of the liberal government. It wasn't the liberal government's rules or regulations that made them change their mind. It was because of the fact that they knew that fighting BC and fighting indigenous communities would on top of all the other costs we're dealing with, which is dealing with

infrastructure, geological issues, any potential supply chain or other issues that could balloon the cost. They saw those things and said, this environment is not worth it to us or to our shareholders. we're backing out. So private industry was the one who said, we're not interested in this. They were going to be, but because of the fact that another province, which has its own rights to say,

we don't want this, we're going to step in the way. When I say, when I say rights, I mean within another company and within Alberta, not within Canada, is because of Canada, because we are in Canada,

that we were able to bypass BC's government, bypassed First Nations communities, and get that pipeline down to the lower coast of, or yeah, the lower coast of BC, which again has given us billions of dollars in profit. It's the reason why we were able to just cut that differential in half. I'm sure you're familiar with the WTI WCS differential.

Yes. Right. We've gone as high as $44 in price differential down to like eight. And it's changed dramatically. And it narrowed because of TMX, which benefits Alberta. And we wouldn't have that if it wasn't for the fact that the federal government stepped in and helped when the private industry said no things because of what was happening. with BC. The federal government was able to step over BC and say,

L.O.L. We're getting the pipeline through. Even though this caused Justin Trudeau a lot. It costs him political seats in BC because remember, Quebec, Ontario, BC, they're like the liberal kind of wings when we look. I mean, obviously, um, um, uh, Lankana, whatever, but that's not as much. I think, uh, Trudeau's government lost like eight seats back than 2021 election, uh, with, uh, B.C. Like, they, they pissed off a lot of people in BC. And they spent a lot of political. political capital. That's a post hoc ergo proctor hawk argument. But

I mean, here's the thing is you specifically said when you were talking about it that one of the big costs was the fact that they had to deal with BC and the First Nations despite the fact that constitutionally their input was appreciated but their veto

was non-existent. And it's the same thing with Energy East going veto to who though? Who at the end of the day is like Look at the MOU. Look at the MOU that Carney did with Danielle Smith. Sure. Like the ink was hardly even dry on it before Carney explicitly said that no pipeline would go forward without the express approval of BC and the First Nations.

They don't have the constitutional capacity for that. I don't think that's correct. Sorry, which part? The part where he said that it's going to have to happen with their approval or not. Because if you look at E. E.B. E. E.B. has explicitly stated that Carney and Daniel Smith are pushing this pipeline through and that he

doesn't have the ability to veto this because Sean can you pull up of can you try and find a video while we keep going yeah he literally said those exact words in an interview he said no no no he said he said he it wasn't that they need to be consulted it's that they if they're not signing off on it it's not going to happen he explicitly said that within the next several days after signing the MOU why would E. E. B say that he doesn't have that ability then if he if Carney said he does I'm not sure where Eby said that. He said that... I can pull up.

I can pull up for here. Fair enough. But look, the thing about it is, is that given the fact that he's giving people who shouldn't have a veto, a veto, and they've already unequivocally said that they're not going to be approving this, the MOU itself is dead. Again, this is, this is Alberta. Nobody puts baby in a corner, but everybody else in Canada loves putting Alberta in a corner. And that's it. And it just keeps going.

And so, you know, like you look at, yeah, our oil production is up a lot more, despite the fact that all of these hurdles have been thrown against because the technology continues to improve. Things keep getting better. All these efficiencies that they're finding in the industry allow, they lower the marginal rate for oil producing wells and formations so that a marginal formation with a certain level of technology and a certain level of cost becomes actually profitable as assuming the IRR, the company stays the same, the cost to drill that and complete it goes down.

And same thing with workovers. If a workover used to cost $70,000, now it only cost $30,000, it makes a lot more sense to open those wells up that had been previously shut in and get the oil out of them. Okay. I apologize. I'm just not quite following how that connects to what we were talking. Or is that, was that just like, I lost track. The overarching theme of the fact that oil has been getting better, which was kind of where we started off with this, I guess.

And we went away from it a little bit. But the point is that the fact that we keep increasing the amount of oil, despite the fact that there's fewer people in the industry is not indicative of it being worse. It's just it's actually been a lot better. And there's more work happening. It's just that there's no more construction. Sure. Right. Well, we agree that many oil companies.

companies, they're actively trying to automate the industry and they are the ones sloughing off jobs while posting record profits. Right? Yes. Yes. So we would agree that we talk about how. So we would also agree that Alberta's, or sorry, Alberta's oil industries are able to produce more, again, more than they've ever done in the history of Alberta's lifetime with less workers on purpose. harming alberdens and costing the jobs. The fewer workers are in the construction because all of these literal hundreds of billions

of dollars of projects, the capital that had been set aside for them has moved to other places. And while efficiencies and automation and things like that have improved the industry, what's it done, what it's done is it's lowered the threshold for borderline wells so that you can now get into more wells and you can do more with it. the improvements in technology have actually gone further in terms of expanding the industry rather than shrinking it. Sure, right. But that kind of leads back to the point of trust and Trudeau's government did not destroy

Alberta's industry. They didn't attack it. If anything, it built it up. I'm definitively telling you, like I definitively listed off hundreds of billions of dollars worth of projects that didn't happen. So yes, he did.

Yes, he did. No, no, I believe it. I believe you, but I'm saying, you can't name a single policy that caused them to do that. I could point, I could. The, pardon me, the West Coast tanker ban. The West Coast tanker ban, they said, we're not going to allow any tankers in this particular area off the coast,

which effectively shut down any pursuit of a pipeline that way. You look at the emissions cap. You look at the carbon tax where the producers were on the hook for all downstream CO2 emissions. And then you look at the big thing was the consultation. The consultation was already onerous and difficult for any Section 52 pipeline. And that's because of the conservatives. Because they purposely set it up so that you had to vote for them because if somebody else was in charge, it wouldn't go through. Which is the worst way to pass laws.

You want a good set of laws. It just doesn't matter about what they think. You want a good set of laws so that no matter who's in charge, it's stable and predictable and fair. Okay. And that's not what the conservatives did. They set it up so that there's just too much wiggle room. And then Trudeau got in and he said, look at all this wiggle room. We're going to make it impossible.

And that's what happened. And that's why Energy East got abandoned during the application process. They spent a billion dollars on literal paperwork, Chris, a billion dollars worth of paperwork. Before they just said, guys, we just, we can't do this. We can't do this. Like that's that's a lot of money to spend on filling out forms. I'm not sure where you got the number of billion dollars on forms. But again, I feel bad because I'm pulling up this Google AI.

The gateway pipeline was over for a billion dollars as well. And I, yep. So just from what I'm seeing here, it says that TransCanada now TC Energy canceled the 15.7 billion energy East pipeline project in October 7, 2017, primarily due to shifting economic conditions, including low oil prices and rising project costs alongside intense regulatory uncertainty, such as the National Energy Board's decision to include indirect greenhouse gas emissions in its review. That's the indirect greenhouse gas emissions was what I said, where they were now on the hook for all downstream emissions.

And the regulatory uncertainties, I get the fact that it's all listed and it's not prioritized. It's not saying this was 80% of the decision. But, I mean, I, I, again, Again, anecdotal. I can tell you because I know lots about business. I've got a master's degree in it. That the regulatory uncertainty was by far the biggest predictor of why this happened.

And I can tell you because there was a lot of people in the industry who, as soon as things started getting fucking in the regulatory process, said this is going to dry up investment. And then they ended up being absolutely correct. And so if I can hop, if I can hop in, gentlemen. Yeah. In a host comments session shortly before the MOU signing around November 25th, Carney described the emerging agreement as creating necessary conditions but not sufficient conditions for a pipeline. He explicitly stated, we believe in cooperation, sorry, cooperative federalism. We believe the government of British Columbia has to agree and added that local indigenous groups must also agree.

That was before the MOU signing. I've been searching in the background for comments after that. He did a scrum in the House of Commons a little while afterwards where he reiterated those exact points. I feel like maybe I'm the only guy thinking this. We're in the weeds on pipeline deals and everything else. I was thinking I'm bringing back. I actually want to ask a couple questions.

I would like to ask a question if that's all right. Of course. Chris, are you happy in Canada today? Mixed back. I think Canada could improve dramatically. And I think we're on a path to that. I think we're at a point where now we have the opportunity to like blow like past all of the bullshit and price issues and development issues. I think we're on a path where if we were to continue and work with this government, that's much more friendly to energy development.

That's much more friendly to cooperative federalism. That's trying its best to work with every province to its benefit. I think we can go through it. I don't think Justin Trudeau was as evil as people make him out to be. I do think he was extremely problematic. I think he had a lot of scandals he needed to deal with. I think that he was ultimately a lot of his ideology, even if I agreed with it, ultimately cost Alberta and Canada millions of dollars in revenue,

in economic development. A lot of that does fall on his government, frankly. And so, yeah, so there's a lot of things that are having, I do have problems with with Canada. But I would also point out that a lot of the issues are, frankly, homegrown. The fact is, Alberta's government fucking sucks. The UCP fucking sucks. They are a large part of the reason why Alberta is suffering as much as it is right now. And so that's where I think if we were to separate, sure, you might get away from some issues that you may have with the

federal government, but then you're just getting in bed with a very corrupt, very ignorant government that doesn't actually care about Albertaans. And I think that's one of the bigger risks of separation. So the way you view, just if I can paraphrase, the way you view the UCP is the way we view the liberals. Sure, but I mean. I mean, you just said, forgive me, that Justin Trudeau wasn't that bad.

Well, I don't know if I can handle that on this show. He was awful. No, I don't think he has a serious problem. No, Chris, he was awful. He literally told people they couldn't leave the country. He was awful. Hold on. When was that?

That was in the middle of COVID. Oh, well, so what? Well, I'm sorry. So why would, why would it be awful? No, hold, hold, hold, hold. Sorry, just one thing. Hold on. Okay.

Why would be bad for government to tell its citizens, hey, this massive disease that's killed up to six million people in the world? Why wouldn't we want that to be spreading around? So let's lock down businesses. Let's lock down schools. Let's lock down everybody. We got, we got racist to try and close off flights from China at the start. I mean, by your same logic, by your same logic, that's the exact stuff that we were called

racist for it. Well, no, but if you look at China, we all know that China was the source of the COVID, first of all, and second, a lot of the argument was that, well, China is the reason spreading. Pulling it back, my apologies, pulling it back to Justin Trudeau for a second. I just my outburst is, I'm not going to have Justin Trudeau talked about it in this light where he isn't what he is. I'm sorry. I'm the mediator. Sorry, I'm the meteor. I was just going to say, you mentioned he had a whole bunch of problems with ethics. Sure. That's a corrupt government. So you're going to point the UCP in that way, the way we look at the liberal government is the same way. Once you have one problem or one ethics complaint, which he had multiple,

you have to question the entire thing. So you're pointing to the UCP, twos, and certainly myself, are pointing to the liberal government. So your problem with a local government is the same as, I was just drawing the comparison. The way you look at the local is the same way that others are looking at the federal. Sure. No, and that's fair. And I'm not saying that people can't look at it that way. And to be honest to you, I can actually agree. I think there are significant problems with the liberal government. That's why, frankly, it's amazing that they somehow lost, or sorry, somehow won a fourth election to being the conservatives four times in a row. It's a miracle to frankly, for them, not saying in general, I'm just saying for them, it's a miracle. It shouldn't

have happened, but it did. It kind of shows the weakness of the conservative party and why they're not really a real party, but that's beside the point. You're not going to get pushed back from here on that. Okay, my second question to you, Chris, off what you said then, was the path. If we stick to the path that you think Canada and Alberta is on an uptrend. Could you just walk me through that thought? Sure. Now, a lot of this is being anecdotal. I don't have a lot of data back up why I think this.

My argument would simply be the fact that, again, our industry has never done better, just in general. It's getting better every day. We're making more oil than we ever have in our lifetime. And the fact it is when this MOU goes through And when we do have a pipeline to the West Coast Like we will just factually, it's going to happen If that's going to further benefit Alberta If we separate, we are putting ourselves at the mercy

Of a country that isn't going to now have any consequences Apologies, Chris, not to cut you off. All I wanted you to do is I just wanted you to give the audience Why sticking the path is good Because you're looking at it from the perspective and arguing the fact that if Alberta sticks the course in Canada, there's better days ahead. And what I want to do is I want twos why Alberta not sticking to the path better days or ahead. That's the way I was positioning it.

I don't need you to argue on why going the other way would be bad. Sure, that's fair. The reason why I think staying in Canada would be better is because of the fact that we would still have access to worker mobility, which we benefit from. It's something we will lose if we separate. we benefit from sharing collective risk. When oil prices drop, which they do, which Alberta suffers dramatically,

it's often because of Canada that we're able to get through it. We share that collective risk. A lot of the workers that we'd be having to pay for after they're unemployed, they end up leaving to back to the New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Ontario, wherever. And we end up bearing less of the cost with Canada than we would if we were independent. So my argument is that we now have a government that is actively not attacking, even, and I don't think the other government was either, but personally, now I think we have a government

that's popular, that is business-minded, that really is more progressive, conservative than is liberal, frankly, that is as much as it's saying, oh, we're going to, you know, respect indigenous rights. At the end of the day, they're making a lot of really good trade moves. There's a one business leader I have right here. Let me just pull it up here. Sorry. Eminton Global.

It's a company, this Vice President of Empton Global, sorry, Executive Price, Vice President of Emton Global, Mustafa Sahin, whose job is to attract investors to Eminton. He first downplayed the damage being done to investor confidence with separation,

but he points out that Canada is actually becoming a more attractive place for investors, pointing out free trade agreements that Canada has signed with the European Union and the trans-Pacific partnership, neither of which include the U.S. It also gives them to unique opportunities the city can build on, particularly with a strong manufacturing capacity. So we benefit from better trade.

We have a better brand that most countries actually like. Most countries like Canada a lot. We are one of the most popular countries in the world. If you look at statistical rankings, we're the only country that people like more than us, I think is like Switzerland or some like, Nordic, European country. We are like the most, one of the most popular countries in the world.

We attract investment. We attract people who want to work here, who want to build here. We, and again, we reap so many benefits by being in Canada as opposed to not being in Canada. I think as long as we stay the course and we get rid of the separatism talks that's going to kill our investment and kill jobs and destroy our economy, if we move away from that and stay the course and actually work as an equal partner with Canada, I think we're going to not only build more capacity, but we're going to be able to weather when oil starts tanking. Because I'm not sure if you're familiar with the International Energy Association or the IEA.

There's a bunch of them, but go on. Well, there's one. It's called the IEA. It's like there's a lot of oil organizations in the world. I can't think of the one you're telling me off the top of my head, but please. Sure. So it is one of the major ones. It predicts that oil will,

peak around after 2030 to 2035 and prices will drop where we are hitting a point where oil will not be the it will still produce a lot for us it will we will still make a lot money off of it but there's going to be a point where we're going to have to pivot we like as we all as all burdens we all agree we've been on the resource roller coaster we've had our booms we've hit our busts we haven't even though we're producing more than we've ever had before if you look at the price of oil today it's dropping where it's at 62 bucks around 61 And it's already affecting Alberta dramatically. I'm sure you guys are waiting for Daniel Smith to announce the next budget for 2026, 2027.

What does she say? She said it's a bad one. Sorry, not big cuts, but it's going to be bad. Right. And she's doing what Notley did before. Because when we had the same issue back in 2014, 2015, 2015, after Saudi Arabia started screen with the oil prices with their production, Nottley said, well, we're not going to do cuts.

We're not going to do higher taxes. We're going to stay the course. And she was criticized the hell for that. Daniel Smith is going to do it. And she's the one who's increased the... Okay. I want to put it down to twos. Are you happy in Canada?

No. Okay. If you're not happy in Canada and you're for Alberta going, I know there's a ton that Chris just said that you want to respond to. I would like to try and make it sensible to people when they're listening of like, okay, then point the direction you'd like to go. If you want to address Chris's thoughts, give her. All right.

I definitely would like to address Chris's thoughts and then move a little bit after that. So first off, Canada is on a very bad trajectory right now. Like you can look at, look, monthly changes in labor force, okay? the number of people who are no longer even looking for a job is skyrocketing. And meanwhile, Alberta is the only place that's gaining jobs. All right? You've got, did you hear about Stalantis? Stalantis had a 49% stake in an EV plant in, or an EV battery plant in Ontario,

that they'd spent about $1.3 billion Canadian and had gotten about $800 million in subsidies from the federal and provincial government and were promised literal billions more. And they just sold it for $100, $100 for a 49% stake in that EV battery factory. This is one ounce of silver. If I was going to buy a 49% stake in a factory in Ontario, and I use this, they would have to give me change. That's how bad this is.

Okay. The only people doing anything or making anything or building anything in this country are in Alberta and Saskatchewan. And Alberta needs to get, I get the fact that we're going to focus on Alberta. Alberta needs to get the hell off of this, right? Look, I get the fact that if the rest of the country wants to go off a cliff, that's fine. Look, it's it's not that I'm saying you're wrong. It's just saying that I want to do something different. Okay. And I think that you always need to side with the local people. So, for example, when Toronto back in the day said they wanted to ban handguns in Toronto, despite the fact that it was a federal thing, I said that's a stupid idea. It's not going to work. I support their ability to make that decision for themselves. And if Canada wants to do everything possible wrong, then they should go ahead. If they want to have RCMP that prioritizes proper gender. of mass shooters as opposed to accurately warning citizens about present dangers of active shooters? That's fine.

I don't want the RCMP anymore here. They should be gone. It's a federal entity that is more worried about being politically correct than actually helping and saving people. You talked about worker mobility. I would say that it's an assumption that if and when Alberta separates that there's not going to be any sort of worker mobility. between the two countries.

Now, having said that, I would say that it's also fairly reasonable to assume that the rest of Canada is going to do its absolute darnest to make things as difficult for Alberta when it separates and also as difficult for other places in Canada that also want to get the hell off the ship. Honestly, I wouldn't blame Ontario one bit if they had a petition going right now to separate from Ottawa. You talked about shared risk. The problem with the shared risk is that it's based on the. assumption that you've got competent, functional other members of the country to share that risk with. If the only thing you're sharing your risk with, I'm the only one working, I'm the only one building anything.

It doesn't help if I'm sharing the risk with a guy who's been sleeping on my couch for the past 10 years, okay? Because he doesn't have any risk. He's got nothing to lose. All he does is benefit from the fact that I pay the bills. All right. Trade deals, while there is something written down in international law that says, that when countries are split up,

the trade deals actually trickle down to the subsequent countries. It's not an automatic granted and given. So for example, if we separated tomorrow, we could renegotiate Kusma to take out the dairy cartel. And so it's not a case of all the trade deals are going to be gone. Okay? And as far as not legales, here's the thing. she ran up over $80 billion in deficits in four years.

If we were not sending $25 billion a year plus to the rest of Canada through all the various channels it goes through, that is so much money that even Rachel Notley could have ran a surplus. That's how much money we're giving away every year. We're giving away so much money that even the credit, crazy socialists that are the NDP who are not a serious party could still run a surplus.

It's mind-boggling. Chris? Obviously, a lot to tackle there. I would make the first point that obviously worker mobility would be affected. If you look at wherever we exist right now, do workers from Ontario, Quebec,

not Quebec, not Quebec. I worked in oil and gas. I worked in oil and gas for decades and I worked with two people ever from fucking Quebec. Sure, but that's an anecdote. That doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean that there aren't workers coming to Alberta from Quebec. But besides that, let's even say, let's discount Quebec entirely. Let's say Ontario, the Maritimes, B.C., whatever.

Do they need to have separate credentials or do they have Canadian credentials that are recognized across the country? They do. Do they need a visa? No. Do they have, does their health care, their pension, all the other, like, Social services, do those not just transfer over to Alberta when they come over? Yes, they do. If there was a separate country, we'd have to have separate credentials. We'd have to have a separate passport, visas.

You would be dramatically limiting the amount of worker mobility with oil workers, with health care workers, just across the province. Passports are easy. Passports are easy, my friend. Okay, Mexico, do you know where they get their passports from? Germany. The Netherlands gets their passports from France and Iceland gets their passports. from Poland.

Like it's not even that big of a deal. What you're talking about? It's just that in Canada, it's just that in Canada we make such a big deal about passports and who's going to do with these passports and who's going to make these passports? They're simple. It's just a book. No, no, but not just a book. It's a legally recognized document.

It's something that has to be recognized by multiple countries, right? So the fact is, uh, if my wife, she's an American citizen who moved to Canada. She, I know, amazing, right? She went and she had to deal with her passport issues. She, workers who come from the south up to north, they have to deal with credentials issues. Because remember, just even though America and Canada are remarkably similar in many ways and share language and share other things, our credentialing system is different. And workers who are from the south, they have to work harder and they have to get

recertified and everything just to work up north. Same with people. It's industry specific. It's industry specific. And if we're talking about the oil field, it's largely not the case at all. It's can you do this job? you say that but I'm sure that there's credentials that they have to have in order to do it properly. You don't just hire any dumb asshole who's able to hold a wrench.

I've worked with a lot of dumb assholes who are only able to hold a wrench. If I can try to address some other of your points, I think that you could easily make the same case that Alberta as itself has made some really shitty decisions that have affected Albertaans. If you look at our energy diversity. We were leading the country in renewable resource development, particularly with windmills, with wind farms. And when Daniel Smith, to protect the oil industry, she made a bunch of new laws specifically to hamstring these companies and stop production. So they wouldn't overtake oil industry.

When she went and she put a moratorium so no one could build anything, we lost billions of dollars in investment, billions of dollars or hundreds of jobs, if not thousands of jobs, that now went to the rest of the country that we could have had, that would have helped us get off the resource revenue. But instead, we have a provincial government that doesn't care about building industry that has attacked various other aspects of our jobs, that even attacks our rights. This is a government that has used the notwithstanding clause to attack the rights of striking teachers. We don't have to get into that point, but the point I'm making is that if you want to talk about, oh, the liberal government, the Canadian government, they make bad decisions. They're causing investment to go away. They're doing this. They make bad decisions.

Right. That doesn't change when you're in your own country. All it changes is which idiots at the wheel. And frankly, I would say that the UCP idiots are the worst ones because they're the ones who ignore Albertans who are saying we need more hospitals. They're the ones who close the Eminton Hospital despite the fact that now our hospitals are so bad. people are literally dying in hallways and in emergency rooms before they even get any Truman whatsoever. A baby died of measles because of the fact that Alberta has not done its due diligence to make vaccine information a big deal. So now we have measles, a disease that we didn't deal with for the last 30, 40 fucking years.

It had been eradicated. It had been eradicated. How does it get back here? How did it get back here? Because because of the fact that Daniel Smith trying to appease her father. our right face, which may or may not include you, not trying to be rude. She went and she made a whole thing about vaccines and not doing any messaging or barely any messaging or talking about it at all. And as a result, it has caused many diseases from COVID to RSV to measles to harm

alberians, to kill alberts to affect our jobs. People are sick. They're suffering. We have, I think, if you actually look, there's some news stories that show, apparently Alberta's government actually hid. details about people with measles, babies with measles in order to not get flack from the press. It was a new story that just came out.

I can look it up. They actually hit the information just to save their own ass. You know, the Alberta government also had data from COVID. Yeah, okay, all right. Fair up. Hang on. You're a moderator, Sean.

I'll mute myself. I just want to touch while you're slightly right and about the moratorium. Here's the thing is that the problem with the moratorium, if you talk to, I get the fact that you dated a girl who was rural at some point.

It's kind of the, I have a black friend thing, but that's me being playful. So the problem with the renewables was that everybody who, all the farmland that this stuff was being built on, everybody was going under the assumption on the one side that it,

it had the same laws for reclamation and decommissioning that the oil field does. And it didn't. And so they didn't realize until that wind turbine gets taken down. And they're left with a giant cement slab in the middle of their field that they're legally on the hook to deal with for the rest of their lives. And there was a lot of instances like that. And so the moratorium was a pause on any new construction until the laws could get sorted out requiring what they were legally required to do in terms of decommissioning.

And so what happened, though, was not that those jobs went somewhere else. It's that they just never happened because they don't exist without subsidies. That's the thing about the wind and green energy. I get the fact that it's ultimately it's the future. At some point, there's not going to be any more oil and something is going to have to be invented at some point. But it doesn't exist yet. and the renewables in their current form are inadequate in terms of even generating enough

energy to be net positive over their entire lifetimes. Okay. The thing about it is that you were talking about before, and this was really important. You said, you know what? The issue isn't because it's either the idiots in Ottawa or the idiots in Alberta. And you're exactly right. And I'm completely on the same page with you on that because I don't want some idiots in Ottawa being elected by a bunch of idiots wherever to do a bunch of idiot things here.

As far as I'm concerned, pretty much every politician is an idiot. I would like to actually have a say in which idiots make which laws, which are stupid, which screw me over. Okay. And in our current form in confederation, the polls or the elections decided before anybody even stops voting in Manitoba, let alone Alberta. Okay? We have no say.

We are just along for the ride. It's the same reason why the 51st state would be a bad idea. We would just be along for the ride and whatever they tell us, we have to go along with. This is the only opportunity that Albertans are probably ever going to have for any sort of self-determination where we can court our own chart. We can chart our own course. We can go in the directions that we want. And yeah, there's going to be a lot of wrong directions.

Okay, it's not going to be some magic utopia when you snap your fingers. But the point is, is that we could actually have a say for the first time in the history of this province. And that I think is really important and special. I disagree with you. I think we already do have a say. I think it's just that, frankly, Alburns always pick the worst option and then they get upset when that worst option doesn't do well with the rest of the country. Albertans consistently pick conservative MPs who literally just as early as December 2024

were poised to win the entire fucking country. They would have had the capacity to go and do whatever they wanted and we know that it would be. We've already established that I'm totally, I'm totally in agreement with you on the conservatives who don't represent, who don't represent Alberta and don't do an effective job in Ottawa. But that's not my problem.

I'm totally agreeing with you on that already. My point is that this problem just never changes. It just gets smaller. So let's say we switch to independent Alberta. Well, now who's the big bad federal government? Alberta. Who are the smaller? Because remember, if we're a separate country,

we're not going to be just one big flat country. We're going to have little states inside. We're going to have boundaries. Right. Not just municipalities. You're going to have. Why would we subdivide into provinces at that point? Because you have to be able to have representation.

We're going to have to change. You'd have writings. You'd have writings, but why would we have. Again, writings are as if we're still part of a Westminster parliamentary system, which your own independence leaders don't want anyway. They want switch to a republic, which again, would still ultimately have to have some sort of boundaries and some sort of areas that represent specific communities with specific interests. We already do this when we were talking about Calgary, North Alberta, South Alberta,

Eminton or central Alberta, we would just naturally devolved to a state where we would have smaller provinces that would then turn the Alberta federal government into the boogeyman that Alberta's province does to the federal government. We would say in Eminton or the Emmington area that's now its own riding or area

that sends its own elected MPs or version of whatever to the federal government. Then we're going to say, well, the Alberta federal government doesn't actually, you know, represent the rights and the concerns of the Emington area. So now we want to separate because we want to have our own nation where we can establish our own thing. I'm all for that. No, no, that's bad because they all.

No, no, that's great. No, it's not. Because now you're saying you don't want Alberta to be its own nation. Now you want to have a bunch of smaller nations that they're going to keep breaking down and breaking down and building up more risk, building up less economic strength. What I'm saying, to be clear, to be clear, what I'm saying, to be clear what I'm saying is, is that if you at a smaller level want to be the people who decide that you don't like the direction you're being taken in a system where you have no say in it, I fully support your ability to want to chart your own course and go in your own direction. And I think that that is incredibly important, regardless of how big or small that landmass is. But did you see the point? You're basically saying you would be okay with an Emmington independence movement from Alberta,

where Calgary independence movement from Alberta, which would further damage Alberta's economy, Eminton's economy, Calgary's economy. Because again, let's actually go back out a bit. Let's look at Alberta, for example. If we become a separate nation, we suddenly have hostile enemies on all sides instead of the partnership we have with three sides and the dog shit dumpster fire we have, that's called America. I would argue that we currently have hostile forces on all sides. But here's the point when it comes to you feeling not represented

and feeling as though you need to chart your own direction. The thing about any relationship, whether it's your marriage or a friendship or a business agreement or whatever, is that it's imperative that all parties need to feel, maybe not from day to day. there might be the odd day where you're just like, oh, you know, I feel like it's sometimes too, where I'm just like, this woman is driving me crazy. But I know that at the end of the day, I am much better off with her than without her.

And it's important for both of us to maintain that relationship so that we feel like it's a mutual positive, regardless of the individual bumps in the road. And the rest of Canada has forgotten that. They kept biting the hen that fed them. How? They don't, like, I literally listed off hundreds of billions of dollars of projects that got squashed by the federal government. I would say that that's a great place to start. You didn't get an example.

I'm sorry, but when you say you gave these examples, you don't say on this day, the federal government said, we are canceling this. You have one example of TC. And even then, TC points out that the regulatory things were part of the issue, but it was low price of oil and other issues that affected that. Let's go back to all over the place. But the point is, is that in a relationship, you need a mutually beneficial agreement, okay? I go to work. I go to work because they see my presence there as being worth more than the money they're paying me.

And I see the money they're paying me worth more than the free time that I would otherwise have. And that relationship is going to continue until the dynamic changes. Okay. And as long as we both want to continue being in that dynamic. we're both going to work towards making it mutually beneficial. Okay? We have not been in a mutually beneficial situation with Canada for a long time. And if a separated Alberta were to let Edmonton get into a situation where they feel as it's,

as though it's not mutually beneficial to them, then yes, they absolutely should chart their own course and they should go their own direction. But the onus is on the rest of Alberta to make sure that you're maintaining the relationship. And that's the thing that the rest of Canada has forgotten. I disagree. It's okay. I would point out that the reason why I disagree with this is because of the fact that it is because of Alberta or sorry, Canadians who spent $680 individually per person across the country, we were able to get a pipeline that's helping us primarily. It's because of the fact that we have different provinces that, yes, again, when you keep making this argument that,

where these other countries or these other provinces, they're taking all the money from us and they're not, they're not working, they're not doing anything, even though their GDP overall is higher than us. They make more money. Ontario makes way more money than we do, period. They have way more of us.

A bigger ant colony is going to have, is it going to move more leaves? Sure, but you agree, though, that if Ontario and Quebec and other NBC, they make a fair, amount of money is not and we agree that obviously Canada or Alberta plays important part in Canada. Alberta is essential Canada. If Alberta were to leave, it would hurt Canada, but not as much as it hurt us. If we leave, we are going to expect a 5% hit to our economy with the rest of the country, BC would be like, and this is from Trevor Toom, he points this out.

Each other province would get like maybe a 0.01 hit to their economy. It would hurt them. Yeah, not as much it would hurt us. It would hurt us way more if we separate. Like that, that's kind of like The point is, this is how... So that was him talking about the interprovincial trade. And it was based on the assumption that if Alberta separated from Canada, interprovincial trade would drop immediately, or pardon me, what would now be international trade, I guess would be more correct to say, would immediately drop to zero.

I don't see that as being a reasonable or plausible thing. I mean, look at the fact that you would have a situation where Alberta would have an international railway line going through it. Nothing would leave BC without going through Alberta. You've got to have some sort of a back and forth there. And to base it on the fact that we would just put up a giant

wall and we wouldn't even talk to each other for the rest of eternity is a little bit overly simplistic, incredibly naive, and I would say it would border on being intentionally dishonest. I agree that we would not stop talking with Canada. We would not

stop negotiating with Canada. But the difference is we would be paying more to do that. We'd be paying a lot more to do that. So with Brexit, sorry, this is from the Trevor 2 Marble where he, on McDonald-Lorea.ca, where he talks about how a separate Alberta would be poorer Alberta than not. Recent research suggests that Brexit may have increased non-tariff barriers for the UK by 3 to 8%. This cut trade volume significantly and shrank its long-run productivity by roughly 4%. And that UK's overall economy also shrank by perhaps 2 to 3%. That was when they went, because remember, Britain didn't have, they had trade relationships with the EU. And they still do.

But now, instead of having a free flowing economy, now they have to deal with their trade shrink. And it got more expensive. Did it account for the fact that because they weren't in the EU anymore, they were no longer paying $8 billion or $8 billion euros a month? Was that accounted for in there? Was it a net decrease? Or was it? Who were you getting that number from? John Oliver, he did a, I don't, I can't show you the clip,

but John Oliver was breaking down exactly why Brexit was going to be a bad idea. And he kind of let that slip in the middle of it, that the UK was paying $8 billion a, 8 billion euros a month into the EU. So, I mean, you can, you can afford a lot of shrinkage in your economy when you're no longer paying the bureaucracy and the overhead of completely extranational people, making shitty decisions on what you can and can't make in your country and what dimensions it should be. I can't speak to that because I don't know if what you're saying is correct. I have to look at more of that to see whether that's true or not, not saying you're lying,

not saying you're wrong, saying I don't know. So I'm not going to argue whether you're right or wrong. That's okay. What I'm going to point out is that. Just assume that the number isn't zero. Sure, sure. I would point out that to Tunes estimates with Alberta, we would have a 5% increase in the cost of importing or exporting from Alberta, which would happen

if we have borders with tariffs and trade negotiations that we don't have to deal with right now. Because remember, if we do deal with, we absolutely have interprovincial trade barriers. Sure, but not the way where Alberta and with BC and Saskatchewan are directly tariffing us. They're not directly doing that. The barriers, a lot of times,

are also directly caused by Alberta's own government. Look at how Alberta is treating BC's why. No, I'm talking about Canada. in general. I mean, look at the Supreme Court case in New Brunswick about transporting alcohol across provincial lines. Like, there's all kinds of stuff. Like, have you ever noticed why when you buy

a case of beer, they always want to give you the receipt? And if you get pulled over, you need to be able to produce that receipt. It's not to show that you're sober or that you bought it recently. It's to demonstrate the fact that that case of beer sitting on the floor next to you has not crossed interprovincial

lines in the time between when you got it and when you're being pulled over. I don't know what you're talking about with that. I was a heavy drinker for the last like five to seven years. Okay. Well, you might have missed it then. And I bought cases and cases and cases of beer and bottles of alcohol. I never took the receipt. And I went to multiple liquor stores because I didn't like people recognizing me. So I, I, did you travel outside of Alberta? I have, yes. I literally went and brought beer from BC to Alberta. Don't admit that on the internet. Sorry.

Don't admit that on the internet. No, it's fine. It's all legal. It doesn't. No, it is. That's the point. But the thing is, you're saying it, but I don't have any proof of that. Again, people buy things from other provinces and bring it back all the time.

Food, fruit, other stuff. I've never heard of people saying, well, you have to keep your receipts in case if the border police between Alberta and BC. Here in Lloyd Minster, which is a border city, right? Half Sask, half Alberta. Sure. There's tons of stories where you can't sell certain products. on the opposite side of the border, right? If you have to build locations on both sides in order to sell it.

But how much of that has to do with the fact that they have different tax and other like pre-built interprovincial trade disputes? Sure, fair enough. I don't know enough about that to argue with that, but I'll point out that again, I have family in BC. I buy things from BC all the time. I have never been pulled over by anyone in Alberta saying, hey, make sure all this you bought was from Alberta.

I've bought stuff from Whitehorse. I've flown on a plane to Whitehorse. I bought marijuana and white horse flew it back across from a territory into Alberta didn't have a receipt, didn't have to tell anyone it was cool because we don't have to worry about that but when you have your own independent country

you have new rules, you have new tariff issues, you have to be able to source and say hey, I bought this here I bought this there. My family went, we bought liquor from the U.S. a couple of years ago. I'd say 2017-2018, we bought a bunch of liquor from the U.S. We were going to bring up to Canada and Canada said, well, you have to

say for like two days in the U.S. before you're allowed to bring it back. And so we said, screw it. We returned it because we didn't want to wait that long. So those kind of things would happen that we don't have to deal with right now. In RV Como, 2018, the Court of Canada unanimously ruled that New Brunswick could constitutionally restrict residents from bringing in large quantities of cheaper alcohol from Quebec. The 2018 decision upheld provincial state-run liquor monopolies ruling that Section 121 of the Constitution Act does not prohibit laws designed for, among other things, public health or managing alcohol sales. Sure. So you agree that the province has the right to set its own rules and laws that restrict things that affect other

provinces. I'm saying that the Supreme Court has decided that. I'm not saying I agree with it. Well, no. The Supreme Court has simply said what we all know, which is that provinces do have the right to make rules and laws that they do not have the right to restrict interprovincial trade. Is that what the law said or did you not just say that in the Supreme Court decision that New Brunswick was allowed to set rules so people,

couldn't buy cheaper liquor from Quebec. I'm saying that the Supreme Court decision was correct. Provinces cannot impose direct tariffs on goods crossing interprovincial borders as this is prohibited by the Constitution Act of 1867. However, they often restrict trade through indirect non-tariff barriers such as differing regulations, licensing, alcohol policies, and professional certification requirements. So basically, it's skirting the, it's following the letter of the law, but not the intention of the law. The point is, is that we're supposed to be able to be able to trade interprovincially,

but there are barriers set up to restrict that. Now, you could look at just Quebec with all of the language laws and how many implicit barriers that imposes, right? How much more would that be if we were actual separate countries? So look, the point is, I guess where I'm going with this, And kind of the point I've been making is that Alberta is getting the short end of this stick in Confederation. We're not being treated equally. We're not being treated fairly. And in fact, I would argue that we have been denigrated despite our over-contribution to Confederation. And that it's kind of at the point where we just don't care anymore and we're tired of everybody being dicks.

do you know how much it costs each person in Alberta per year to pay for like the cost of equalization and their taxes like how much it costs each person on average you said we don't pay equalization no no no no so first off Alberta as a province does not pay an equalization bill the Alberta government doesn't have a line in their budget that says well this is the 20 billion dollars we have to give to you know Quebec through Ottawa because you know fuck us we have to do this no but I said I said if I wrote my initials on a looney and used it to pay my taxes it would end up in fucking Quebec and you said you didn't agree with that. But no, no, but it's the same way where if I pay my provincial taxes,

my tax money, if I write money on a dollar on a looting and I pay it to Alberta, they could spend that in Fort McMurray and let's create. You use that to build. Yeah, I'm with you. So, so, I mean, it doesn't really,

the argument doesn't make sense. You're complaining that the program is doing what's supposed to do, which is it, we don't pay. That's exactly what I'm saying, is it's doing what it's supposed to do, and I don't like the way it's set up. But you don't like what, but so you're saying that you wouldn't want the same thing to happen in Alberta. You wouldn't want us to be. No, I told you at the start that I think that the money should stay locally and that there might be a few isolated incidences that you'd have to make individual cases for.

How does money stay locally? Because your property taxes, half of it wouldn't go to the provincial government. All of your property taxes would stay municipal. Sure, okay, but then you're still dealing with the fact that people spend money in other places. People take the money that, yeah, they're spending their taxes in municipally, but they still put money in other places. People who come from Fort McMurray to Eminton to vacation, see family, do whatever, they're putting money in here. That still goes to the municipal government. They go pays for GST or local taxes.

I mean, you can't stop the flow of money and say, oh, we're going to keep it local. And we really shouldn't because of the fact. is we are stronger together. As Alberta, because of the fact that we all pay property tax and goes to one provincial government, they're able to use that money to help the people who need the most. So let's say right now in the lesser-slave area, they need a hospital, they need a helicopter pad. And let's say Alberta, or Edmont, sorry, Eminton and Calgary and Red Deer, they're all making

a bunch of money. They're coming into itself. What you're saying is, fuck you, lesser-slave, like, you should learn how to make more money or you're doomed. You should deal with it yourself. Whereas as a community, as a province, as a country, we agree that no, we want to make sure that if we're doing good, people in northern Alberta are doing good.

We're working together because we're all one community. We are one people. You're entirely capable of cutting them a check if you want to help them out with their hospital construction. That's the thing. I guess one of the big differences between urban and rural, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, is that when we see a need,

when somebody needs some help with something, when a community organization is trying to do something. We help them out. We volunteer. We donate. And that kind of gets lost when you get into bigger city centers where they say, well, the only way this is going to happen is if we take a bunch of money from people and give a bit of it to our friends and then spend the rest of it on whatever it needs to get done. Well, so, okay, I'm kind of not getting what you're saying.

I think I am. What I'm saying, what I'm saying is. is that it's totally legal and incredibly easy for if you see there a need for a hospital and a hotel or a helicopter landing pad in Lester Slave Lake, you could literally just pick up the phone and call somebody and say, where can I send a check? So you want to basically change it from a centralized system that tries to balance out money to make sure everything is fair, that actually is cheaper for people on average, because more people are paying less because everyone pays the same tax rates.

The only difference is if you're making more money, you pay more, but you're still paying the same tax rate as everyone else. Instead, you're saying, well, we should crowd fund everything. If you need a new hospital crowd fund it, hope out of burdens will do it out of the kindness of their hearts. People don't do that or people do. People literally do that all the time. Brother, brother, brother, you need to get to a smaller town.

You need to get to it. Go visit a place where the only thing above two stories is an elevator and you'll meet a completely different group of people. okay fair enough i still don't think it makes any fiscal sense i think what you're doing is it would cost people more money to do that it would then centrally planning it yeah there's there's kind of this big country in the top of asia that that tried that for a while and it didn't really go very well my friend well you're you're you're completely central planning no no no no you're using you said central planning sorry you said central planning i agree with it because i was using it as a colloquial term they're not

remotely the same thing. Having a government that takes property tax and other taxes, a small amount of the money you earn and then uses it to disperse around the population is different than a country that literally goes and says, you must buy this, you must spend this, you must do this. We're going to control every way you live, act and breathe. That's not what Alberta does. It's not what Canada does. It's not remotely comparable. And I'm not going to make that completely what we do. We do that with everything. We do that with health care. We do that with so many different things. No, we consolidate. We organize.

We agree that as a group, we pay less. There's one unit in the middle that does the management of it, the planning, if you will. And they're in the center. And they're in the center. The elected representatives, the people that we send, they're the ones to do that. Not in China. In China, their elections are all bullshit. You can't vote for different parties.

You can't organize and out. You can't have a Jason Kennedy get ousted out in China. It doesn't happen. In Alberta, in Canada, it does. In Alberta and Canada, you're able to send your representatives to Ottawa, to Eminton, and have them fight for your concerns of your individual riding in area, which it sounds like you would still agree with having in a post-separate Alberta, in an independent Alberta.

So, like, you would still need an independent, a central group to plan things, like spending money on the military but it's not central planning no no no but okay so I can look up right now the definition of central planning I'm not going to use that term I'm making the point that when we say central planning in China's context we're talking about a country

that literally tells companies what they have to do what they have to spend a bunch of other stuff they're very specific on controlling everything whereas in Alberta and Canada it doesn't have that there's rules and regulations but countries are free to invest, not invest. They're able to hire, not hire.

They're able to spend money, move, do a bunch of things that they want to do on their own. We wouldn't, going back, I think my concern is we've been going a lot about what's wrong with Canada, what, you know, issues with Alberta. But we should really talk about why separatism just isn't a good idea. We should point out that separatism would massively grow the public service sector in Alberta. You want a smaller government, good luck. If you separate from Canada, you have to literally replace everything that we have right now with Canada, that we don't have to directly pay for. We pay for taxes, sure, but at the end of the day, we're not, we would be, that's a burden shared by 40 million Canadians compared to five million Canadians, probably less, because we've found out that according to, I think it was Angus Reed, at least half of Alberians would be willing to leave the province. So you'd lose half your workforce.

And so you'd be consulting all the risks and all the money that you'd have to spend to replace everything. A central bank, currency, military, borders, diplomats, trade-ord. We wouldn't have to pay for Navy anymore. Sure, because you wouldn't be able to have a Navy because you'd be landlocked everywhere. So you wouldn't be able to have- I'm saying we're finding savings already, my friend. But you're not really saving anything. Yeah, we are.

We don't need submarines. You'd be spending 30 to 50 billion extra dollars just to replace everything that we're already dealing with with, We don't have to replace the battleships. Sure, but you're looking at one thing. Ships, no one cares about ships. We're talking about, and I don't even know how much of the budget that affects us. We're talking about the main things, a central bank, an army, a diplomatic corps. You would have to hire more people to work in all these different offices.

You would massively grow the federal Alberta government. It wouldn't be this tiny government that just stays out of its way. You would have a massively larger government costing way more money that Alburns would have to pay way more than they do right now. now because they'd be the only ones to shoulder the burden. It wouldn't be spread out across 40 million people. It'd be spread around like two million people, three million people at best. So you'd be spending like compare this. So in equalization, each alberton every year spends about 650 bucks like other

taxes that they spend. 650 bucks a year. It is the equalization cost per alberton. Just if we were to switch everything according to Trevor Toome, we'd be looking at right here. Let's see. For an economy expected to reach 500 billion next year, the 4% that we would lose from our economy shrinking

would cost every Alberta in almost $4,000 a year. And that's on the lower end. On the higher end, it would be more. So what you're saying, separatism would cost Albanians more money. It would massively grow the government. It would massively affect us. And remember the fact that, do you know which are the three largest pipelines in Alberta?

Which are the three largest pipelines in Alberta? Can I show a link? Yeah. Also, I apologize. I apologize. That's okay. That's okay. No, I actually kidding.

Sean has to tell me pretty much every week to just chill down a little bit and stop yelling. So you're in good company. Get as excited as much as much. Again, I hope I haven't come off as rude or anything. I do apologize. No, no. Not at all. I just need to see Oil and Sands Magazine.

Here we go. Okay, I'm going to share. And also, I know we've been doing this for, two hours you can tell me when to stop whenever you want i will get out of the way i do apologize um and i have actually enjoyed this conversation very much um so sharing this here so uh the largest should be live now yeah so uh the largest three pipelines all cut through canada you have uh the mainline pipeline from embridge which and this is back in 2022 here so if you go back to the map here um the biggest pipeline cuts through two separate province

that we'd have to deal with tariffs and trade on if we were a separate country. TMX, which is massively important to reducing our WTIWCS differential. That would also be a pipeline that would be subject to more tariffs and higher costs if we were a separate country. And then you also have it's an assumption. It's not an assumption. It's a fact. Why would Canada not tariff an independent country that's trying to move product through its own land? Because we've got, because we have a choke point on the rail line.

lines. See, here's the thing is we would be entirely within our power to just set up a toll booth where the rail line crosses the border up in the mountains, right? And so you're in a situation where it's a Mexican standoff, right? We don't have to deal with that. We don't separate. If we do, then we do have to deal with that concept. We would have to deal with the fact that our three largest pipelines that shift the mass

majority of our barrels of oil would be subject to cost. If we want to mess with the rail line, all they have to say is, well, good luck trying to sell your oil. And remember, Jeffrey Rath and Mitchell Vesser are promising that we can get rid of income tax and all these other taxes. To be clear, that was a contingency. That's in the last part of the paper that they wrote. And it's a contingency potential situation.

It's not a contingency. Literally, Jeffrey Rath has explicitly said that if we were to separate from Canada, and I can pull up the tweet that he cites this. He says, an independent can't here. Actually, I have it on my Discord here. I can also get out of the screen sharing if you like.

Stop sharing. Just going back to this tweet here. One second. Here, let's do this. Sorry about this. More filters. Switch from link to image.

While you guys are talking or while you're finding it, let's go for another eight minutes at 215. We'll call it a finalized chat here. So maybe just bring up your, bring up your last thing and then maybe from there, we'll go into closing. Final thoughts. Yep.

That's more than fair. Absolutely. And again, I do appreciate you guys. And again, I apologize if I've gone loud. I really didn't want to get like to. No apology necessary.

Let me just switch over to the share thing again. Okay. So here's a screenshot of the tweet from our buddy here. He says, what does Alberta independence look like? Zero income tax, zero GST, zero carbon tax, pipelines without auto is permission, highest GDP capital in the world,

no more being treated like a resource colony. So he's, and I don't know how familiar you are with the breakdown of Alberta's budget. I can tell you definitively off top of my head that not all of that is correct. For example, the highest GDP per capita, you'd be looking at competing with places like Luxembourg or Monaco. Or shoot,

what was that country that I was giving you hell for not mentioned in last week? the Liechtenstein, right? Just off the top of Singapore, for example, right? Sure. Yeah. So without even getting into the fact check, I'm with you that what he said is not entirely factually correct. It may not even be any factually correct. It also falls within the what the Alberta Prosperity Project has said they're going to do.

Their whole idea is that they would, the whole idea is that the oil revenue is supposed to replace all the taxes we pay for. That's their argument. That's been Mitch's argument. That's been Jeffrey's argument. And so he's saying that we're going to somehow replace the vast majority of Alberta's budget with oil, despite the fact that the price is dropping dramatically, despite the fact that we're producing more already than we ever have. And despite the fact that oil will eventually be no longer sustainable.

It arguably not even necessarily is for our economy because we haven't diversified. So this kind of goes back to my point that we're being led. by guys who are making all these promises that they can't keep, you've even acknowledged that, they're saying things that, you know, all these really, like,

sweet things that sound great, that don't address the actual facts of the matter. And that's my concern. My concern is a independent Alberta, just from every economist, I don't think you've named a single economist who disagrees with me, almost every economist, business leaders,

the Alberta Chamber of Commerce, the Empton Chamber of Commerce, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, business people, and economists across the province are all agreeing that Alberta would be. Dow doesn't agree. Dow doesn't agree. They just said that they're going to invest $10 billion, right?

So I mean, I get the fact that people are saying that the economy is going to shrink. But if you look at it logically, if you go back to the idea of cutting the chain on the anchor, logically, it would dictate that it would go the exact opposite. And we have two, granted anecdotal, but very recent examples of, it doing exactly that, adding up to a not an insubstantial amount. $20.5 billion is nothing to sniff at. Sure. But it didn't happen.

It didn't happen when the regulatory stuff was an absolute whirlwind. It happened when we were looking down the barrel of separating because here's the thing is when you look at risk, risk is defined as a potential change either positive or negative, right? You can have positive risk or negative risk. And right now, we are at the absolute bedrock. the only potential risks are positive. The only potential risks are that things are going to get better. I disagree.

I think it would actually get worse. And my point, you mentioned Dow, and I'm sure you're also good. I watched your show a few episodes, just kind of get an idea of this. Yeah. The Dow argument is bad because Dow was announced in 2023 where the separatism movement was not really alive anyway. It was there, but it was more in the background. So Dow was investing in Alberta, Canada, not in a separate Alberta. And yes, you could also mention the oils data center, which again is still investing in Alberta Canada with Canadian dollars, not with Alberta separate.

And we're talking about right now. Notice where we are right now. So look at the progress of separation from Alberta compared to Quebec. Quebec had a separatist party that was out loud separatist that said they were going to do a referendum when they got elected that didn't have to get a petition to organize. They were just like, we're doing this. So that's why we were able to see the flight a lot of fact. It's slower in Alberta because of the fact that right now, most people don't think it's separate, Alberta's going to separate anyway.

The support isn't there. It's every single poll from Angus Reed to Ipsos to Leger have all said is around 30%. But only two I've seen that weren't were Kolooski strategies, which I don't even know how legit that organization is. And then I think Lillj did one poll back in like 2025 where there was, even though some people were saying that Alberta has had 47% of support, even Laje's own highlights say that no, Alberta support is or independent support is 29%. So actually that poll said 41% to be clear.

The on their own highlights it says 29%. But that's okay. I've heard both. I'm not going to make the argument because Lillje has also come out with recent polling. That still comes out around 30%. So like the, the, the, the, the, independent movement isn't really growing. It hasn't, it's picking up, it's loud and it's picking up steam.

And obviously you see crowds of people signing a petition. But we're talking about two different. Appled and an orange. A petition to consider a separation that no one knows if it's going to pass. It probably will. We don't know, though. It could fuck up. I mean, no offense.

Guys who promised all these things, they may get things wrong. Who knows? I'm not going to make that argument. I'm just saying. This will be my last comments before my closing statement. Unless you want to ask me a question. Then you have to deal with the fact that with Alberta, we have a separation petition that we don't know if it's going to pass. If it does pass, that's.

that's when suddenly we're in referendum territory. Daniel Smith will have the plan of referendum, probably too, because she has to deal with the Forever Canadian group. And we all know she doesn't have the spine to actually just say, yes, we're Canadian. We all of us, we're going to vote in the legislature because that's one of the things that the Forever Canadian petition was arguing for was that you could either go to a referendum

to all Alberta or the legislature. That's not at all what the filing documents said. That was retroactive. Sure. And even if it's retroactive, doesn't change the fact that now the Alberta legislature still has the ability to either keep it in house or go straight to a referendum. They have the choice. And they're not going to do it in house because they know that they would piss off their votes and they would lose power and the NDP would win.

So they're not going to do that. Because they have an issue. Gentlemen, just to wrap this up. Let's pull this in. This is my last sentence. One I'm trying to say is that when the referendum gets stronger. When we're actually at the point of a referendum, that's when you're going to see capital flight. That's when you're going to see investment flight. You already have ACCO, Nancy Southern from ACCO saying she's losing investors in Asia. You already have multiple other business leaders who say that this is risky investment, chasing investment. Dow and Olds are investments in Canada. And those can easily be pulled out just like TC, just like Energy

East, just like Trans Mountain. A company can promise wherever they want, but they're allowed to book it the moment they think there's risk. And nothing is more risky to it. in an economy than uncertainty caused by a place that wants to somehow have a new economy, a new currency, a new central bank, new borders, new regulations, a whole gamut. So, yeah, just one, give me one counterpoint just to one tiny bit. Of course, Atco is having trouble getting Asian investors. I assume they're talking specifically about China. If I recall correctly, it was about China.

So here's the thing is China. is going to have a very vested interest in not encouraging separation of. It's not China, though. It's South Korea and Japan. It's the places that we want to sell our oil to. And they're the ones who are saying, no, separatism is scaring us. We don't want to get involved in this. It's costing us investment right now, billions of dollars for investment.

And it's doing that on multiple industries. There's multiple business people who've said that they now have to, like, slow down and not hire many people and not getting investments because they don't know how this is going to land. Gentlemen, closing arguments. Chris, we're going to start with you. We'll give two's the final thought. Absolutely. Appreciate you hopping on and going back and forth.

Of course. And again, I do appreciate all of your time. I have a very short closing statement. Hello. I do not believe most of the Albertans who support separation. Sorry, I do not blame most of the Albertians who support separation. I believe these people do so out of the love of their families, their communities in Alberta. I don't think these people are stupid.

I don't think these people are mean. I don't think these people hate. other other upburns to these good people i hope that i've made my case or at least given you something to consider we should stay in canada because it's fiscally responsible it's good for our economy and frankly it's our home canada built us as much as we've built canada i only ask this please take the time to look at the facts for yourself when people like mitch sylvester and geoffrey rath offer grand promises consider whether they sound too good to be true plenty of serious people from economists to business leaders believe that to be the case separatism is promised to fix all of your

while actually making them worse than ever before. Prosperity won't come from separating from Canada, but by strengthening our rightful place in Confederation as an equal partner. If we want prosperity, we must vote to stay in Canada. Thank you very much for your time and for having me on your show. Thanks, sir. The West is builders, hunters, makers, doers. Oil doesn't magically stop where we just so happen to put the borders,

but the work ethic needed to turn it into mortgage payments does. We don't vote for who will give us the most. We vote for who will fuck the most off. and take the least. We believe in integrity and gratitude. If someone does something for us, we recognize and appreciate it rather than gaslighting them and calling them a dick for not doing more. We own our mistakes. If we wrong someone, we make it right. We don't say that they're assholes for calling us out. We respect each other. That means we don't use a kid's life to further our sexual fetuses or athletic shortcomings. We don't steal each other's barbecues to smoke a rock on the steps

of our neighbor's business. And if someone does those things, we put a stop to it. The Canada we looked at nostalgia, nostalgically is gone if it was ever here in the first place. This isn't the place our forefathers fought for. Canada's greatest generation didn't storm Juno Beach for extortion rackets in BC, tow truck gangs in Ontario, child rapists getting bail, S&C Lavalant or Brookfield Management with their headquarters above a bike shop in the Caribbean. The economic argument for Western independence is a strong one,

but it's downstream of the stark fact that we believe in opposite things than the rest of this failed country. We believe that people are more able to decide what's right for themselves than others. That's why we support the rest of Canada's desire to go off every cliff possible, but we also don't want them to take us with us. Take us with them. It's a far stronger argument than having a different language that only persist because of the alternatives that are suppressed by power-hungry overlords with soft hands and tight pants. Separation won't be a walk in the park, And once the process is over, it won't be a utopia. But everything in this province was built by people who pushed on while the rest of Canada said that they shouldn't bother.

This will be no different. Separation is the only path forward where everyone gets what they want, where everyone is happy. Canada reduces its greenhouse gas emissions. They no longer have a rag-tag bunch of backwoods assholes with antiquated views on why government is not the solution and what a handshake means. Canada doesn't have to openly debate whether they should tolerate the presence of a fringe minority with unacceptable views because now they're somewhere else.

And the West gets the only thing it's ever really wanted to be left alone. Gentlemen, I appreciate you both coming on and doing this. And I think Tews and I would agree, Chris, appreciate you doing what most wouldn't. Immensely, immensely appreciate it. And I deeply appreciate you having me on. And again, I hope that I didn't come off

as offensive or mischaracterize your positions or say anything that would be unfair to you or to Sean or to the movement in general. I don't my arguments aren't trying to shit on other Albertans because at the end of the day, I care about Albertans. I am Albertan. This is my home. And to be honest with you, part of why I'm concerned about separatism is that it scares me. It scares me that I would lose my home, that I would no longer be part of a country that I would care about. I'd lose my passport. I'd lose a lot of things I don't want to lose. So that's why it matters to me. And more importantly, I appreciate you having me on giving me a voice, giving me a chance to defend my case and to discuss fairly and honestly. Because at the end of the day, I think that you are an honest guy.

I've listened to your shows. I really did appreciate there's one thing that two said, I want to say this is episode 192. You pointed out that he heard a quote from Trudeau and his wife corrected him and he had looked and he couldn't find the quote. And he was like, yep, it wasn't true. And so I recognize that you are an honest person. You are saying what you genuinely believe. You are not, I think you're wrong on things. But that doesn't mean I think you're stupid or that you're intentionally malicious.

I think at the end of the day, you are a sincere person with an honest concern for this province. And that's what I would want to build on is I think if we can work as Albertans together, we could do better for this province or for this land. Thank you very much for that, Chris. sincerely absolutely this really did mean a lot to me like we talked about a little bit before before we came online here

but it's it's really hard to find people who are willing to go outside of their tent and as somebody who doesn't even feel like I have a tent I find it to be exceptionally frustrating and and so hats off to you I really hope

I hope people learn from this. I hope people enjoyed it. And I can't tell you again how much I appreciate you coming on. I think we both agree that we want to see more of this. We want to see more upburns who support independence, more alberians who don't to talk to each other, to talk loudly to each other, and to have that open discussion so we can decide as a group.

Because I think that's a lot of the issues that were all in echo chambers. I didn't really know a lot about your show before we decided to engage. I don't listen to. I try to listen to alternative viewpoints, but oftentimes because of my own personal beliefs and biases, I don't do it as often as I should. So I do appreciate this opportunity. Does you have any questions or concerns for me or any issues that we, not to jump more into discussion?

I know we probably ended like ran out of time. I know it's like way long, but. It's not running out of time. It's been good. I don't think there's questions. I think you and two's both stated the same way. I respect you. I just disagree with you a lot.

And that's what we've had for two hours and funny enough, twos, two hours and 22 minutes and 22 seconds. We just passed away. Oh, we should have just cut it right there. We should have cut it right there. No, Chris, thank you so much for hopping on. Tews, as always, thanks for being here. And folks, you know, the mashup, we're here every Friday, 10 a.m. Mountain Standard time. This has been a special edition, a debate on Alberta Independence.

Normally we're breaking down the weekdays' headlines. So we'll be back next week, 10 a.m. standard time. Two is any final thoughts before? Yeah, yeah, just one. I know that we didn't get to get to any of the usual fun stuff, but I want everybody to know that there was a guy riding a unicycle in a crosswork while juggling flaming sticks, and the cops stopped him from doing it.

And I'm sorry that we didn't get a chance to get to that this week. Chris, thanks again. Tews. We'll catch everybody next week. Thank you. Have a great night. Tell me whether I'm wrong or right. Easter West, up or downside.

I sit to stand and fall to fly of all of my impulsive plans pop and locking salsa dances on demand I follow leading off the map stop the chatter scream happily welcome to the mashup Welcome to the mashup welcome to the matchup Welcome to the matchup Welcome to the mashup