Shaun Newman Podcast - Mashup 224

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

2s is missing this week, so instead we are joined by a series of guests: Jim Sinclair, Chuck Prodonick, Marty Up North, Keith Wilson, Kris Sims, Sylvain Charlebois, and David Knight Legg. We discuss 100 year deal with Ukraine, stories of 9/11, Alberta Independence, US/Canada trade talks and the upcoming investment summit. 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

Welcome to the Mashup. Tell me whether I'm wrong or right. Easter west up or down side to side. I sit to stand if all to fly. I've all of my impulsive plans. Popping 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. Welcome to the mashup. Welcome to the mashup. All right. Welcome to the mashup folks. Mashup 2-24. coming live to you from Newfoundland today. Didn't think I'd ever string that sentence together.

Regardless, we're sitting in Newfoundland today. So welcome aboard, mashup 224. We got an interesting lineup for you today here. Tews is missing. Obviously, you're like, wait, where's the rant? Two's couldn't attend today. But no fear. I think we're going to do okay.

In saying that, Jamie Sinclair, if you're watching this and you haven't found your way into the back yet after texting me after I sent you all the like, Thanks. I mean, I'm here to fight for you whenever twos gives you a hard time about mowing the lawn. But once again, I'm sitting here and I can't see you in the background. So I'm waiting on you. Today marks the 25th anniversary of 9-11, which is interesting. Probably I'm going to ask the guests throughout the day their thoughts on, you know, back then where they were, that type of thing. But an interesting spot where I sit in Newfoundland. I didn't know this story until we got closer and closer. but obviously back on September 11th, 2001, after the Twin Towers were hit.

Gander, which is like 45, 50 minutes from where I'm sitting right now. The city of Gander, Newfoundland took in 38 diverted transatlantic planes and nearly 7,000 stranded passengers. I guess the locals still call them the plane people. Don't know if that's true or not. And then just the numbers, Gander's population was 9,400, and then they had close to 7,000 people. all come in there. So today, very short like actually, I want to see in the next half an hour, there's a huge ceremony taking place or memorial, I guess is probably the proper word, with the U.S. ambassador, former prime minister, Kretchen, and I believe the mayor of Gander,

and supposedly thousands of people are heading to Gander. So, hey, there you go. A little bit of where is Sean at right now and a little bit of interesting history there is it's the 25th year since 9-11 occurred. Now, I've got today, broke up into roughly three segments. That's kind of the gist of what I was trying to do without twos. I'm supposed to have the military boys hopping on to talk the news of a hundred-year agreement with Ukraine and new divisions in the military. I don't know if I'm saying that right.

I can already see Chuck nodding his head. Yes, Chuck is returning for a second straight week. In the second half hour, we got Keith Wilson and Marty up north on. I figure I haven't been talking enough about the upcoming referendum. It's only 38 days away. why not get two of the guys back in Alberta on to talk about that. And then finally, in the last half hour, 40 minutes, we've got Chris Sims returning, David Nightleg and Sylvan Sharlobo,

the food professor on to talk, I don't know, this thing going on with Canada-US relations. That's been interesting conversations on this side as I go further east. And then this investment summit, which I've got to be, I'm curious to get their takes on it, because this investment summit with 167 projects, whether or not they can get the projects rolling or not, I have no idea. I like read the news articles.

I'm like, this is actually, like I can't be upset about this. This is something that I would hope Canon would do. Would be like, hey, we can build things in Canada. Here's some things we could do. There are some cool projects. There's probably a couple projects that none of us want. And I'm kind of curious to hear their thoughts on that. So we got a full lineup for you today.

But before we get too far, Chuck Pradnik back in studio and the cat. and the kitty. I was trucking. Good, Sean. How are you doing? You know what? I'm sitting in Owen Sound, no, Owen Sound. Newman, Newman Sound.

I shouldn't even forget that. Newman Sound, campground. Mm-hmm. You know, kids like that, Newman everywhere. So, yeah, we're in your opener there. Where were you when 9-11 happened when 25 years ago? Where were you? I was in grade 10 English class.

and they rolled out the TV, like a box TV. Yeah. And it is the only time I've had a teacher tell me to shut up. You need to shut up. And I was like, okay. And then we watched the second plane hit. And I remember her back then, Miss Patterson. Patterson, Patterson, Miss Patterson.

I think it's Patterson. Be like, the world has just changed. And she wasn't wrong. That isn't to go into who did it, all the things. that U.S. civilians died and we all knew something was coming after that. Where were you when 9-11 happened, Chuck?

I was in our battalion lines. I was in mortar platoon at the time. And our platoon was the only one, I think it was the only platoon in battalion because we had money. We ran a bit of a scam. And we had cable and a TV. And it was that morning,

we were preparing to go out on an exercise. So we were in the vehicles in our hangar bay getting ready. I remember somebody cranked up the TV and they replayed the loop of the first plane hitting like seconds earlier on whatever news channel we had on. And everybody, everybody, there's about 30 of us in this platoon room who thought, well, this has got to be an accident.

I think everybody's first reaction was it's got to be an accident. Some idiot, you know, made it, took a left one, they should have taken a right. Of course, nobody knew that first plane. And then the second plane hit not long after, obviously. And none of us had moved in that, I think, what, 20 odd minutes, half hour interval, however long it was.

And everybody in the room looked at each other and said, well, we're going to war now. We know we're going to war. Everybody knew it. And by the time the second plane had hit, we probably had 100 people from battalion had gathered because everybody knew we had a TV. And everybody in that room. And there was some higher ranking dudes in there at that point. we all knew.

Everybody knew we were going to war and that life would be different forever. I don't think that we, anyone could have predicted the change, I don't mean the war. I mean the follow-on effects of how our society is dealt with it.

If you look at the mayor in New York right now, if you look at the attitude, this victimization attitude of the people we fought against, our Trudeau government, sending out millions to people that we fought against, but offering our veterans made. We certainly couldn't have predicted the complete devolution

of our own country and the Western countries going the way it did. You know, it's a very sad thing. Guys like Jamie and I, we never lost a fight. Canadians never lost a fight over there, not once. It didn't matter the numbers, didn't matter the situation. Never lost to fight. Americans either. I never saw Americans or never heard of Americans losing a fight.

There were some bad days for sure, but always coming out on top. Just to have that all sold down the river for political reasons. You know, it's, and here we are now reaping the whirlwind, living in our own pile of poo, because, you know, our culture has decided that's the way it wants to handle things. you've been I assume you've been seeing the I assume this will be a reoccurring theme today too our own media talking about Islamophobia instead of terror yeah it's a horrible thing yeah it's a horrible thing it's like norm McDonald said if they ever set off a nuke you can only imagine the backlash of Islamophobia I mean are you kidding me like me stop blowing people up

there'd probably be a lot less Islamophobia it's just it is what it is at this point you know it's not guys like me and platinum ball caps going around doing shit although we're the biggest threat known to man if you listen to anybody in the the press or influence your world they don't want to tackle the hard thing you know they don't want to tackle the hard thing and we warned people when we came back we warned them we warned them but this also ties into the ukraine thing we warned people our guys who went over to train them in the mid-20s you know 2015 16 17 in that time frame. When they came back, more than a few of our boys said

they got a bit of a Nazi problem happening there. And not like a little ha-ha, you know, not that you can ha-ha the Nazi thing, but not like tongue-in-cheek, but full-on regalia, patches, ceremonies, you name it. And it wasn't one or two units, like the Azolv or the Tottenka, like these other tornado battalion and some other ones that are like high-profile. It was everywhere.

But it was in the news here for a long time. We thought, oh, okay, maybe we'll stop, you know, distance ourselves a little bit. But no, here we are, you know, a decade later and we're signing a hundred year. Well, to be fair, it doesn't really mean anything. It's an MOU and anybody in the business world knows an MOU doesn't mean shit. But it's still a gesture that we're linked to these people for 100 years, it looks like, pain through the nose. giving we've given them i think somewhere around 26 27 billion dollars not all that in straight

cash thank goodness or they just go buy DACA's with it over and somewhere on the mediterranean um that's in the state but like but um we've given a lot in hardware that we don't have that Canada doesn't physically have and now i read yesterday that we've given them somewhere like a starter budget of another 40 million on top of the like we're included with the $350 million package, I guess we're giving them, as a veterans fund. Well, wouldn't that be fucking nice to have your country look after veterans? We should just offer them made.

Have they tried that approach? You know, after they kidnap them off the street and they go to war, we should just give them made. To get to the $40.1 million in rehabilitations, before we get there, there's this, I got a, there's a strange thing happening. Jamie Sinclair, Jim Sinclair showed up. You actually made it.

After all the tech, after all the Texas morning. Yes, good morning, Jim. Okay. Hey, fuck off. I'm cutting grass today. I bet you you are. I bet you are. Okay.

Chuck asked me where I was on 9-11. Chuck told his story. Where was Jim on 9-11? Well, on the 10th, I was out on the golf course with a good army buddy of mine by the name of Daryl Crane. And we were having drinks on the, on. the on the patio after the game was over. And we were talking to a couple very influential business people in our community. And we were telling him it's not if it's when do they carry on this attack.

Because it actually started in 94. And Clinton didn't have the balls to go in and do the right thing then. And he just passed the buck like many presidents have done before when it comes to to Iran. and such. But anyways, they couldn't, they could not react to what happened on 9-11. And I woke up in the morning to many phone calls from my mother and obviously concerned about what was going on in New York and put on the TV. And it was, it was just heartbreaking to see what was happening. Now, fast forwarding to what Chuck was talking about. So Canada, Ukraine, forge, a hundred-year

pact built on drugs. zones and defense. But before we get into anything on the 100 years, the thing you were talking about, Chuck, is right at the bottom of the article, at least when I was reading it. I highlighted it. Canada will also contribute up to $40.1 million

toward rehabilitation programs for Ukrainian veterans and their families. I got two military veterans right here. Your thoughts on veterans of a different country getting money from us. Go ahead, Jamie. So here's the thing. If it's a lend lease program where Canada's getting this money back from Ukraine,

like similar to what they're paying the European Union back for any aid they get. Once Trump came into power, he put a stop to the free aid and he said, okay, I'm getting this money back. And if it's going to be through minerals or cash or whatever it's going to be, they're getting their money back. if Canada had the same agreement with Ukraine like we did during World War I, World War II, England, I'm okay of that. Because here's the thing, like Chuck and I know this firsthand.

There's going to be a lot of fucked up people that come out of this. And the soldiers are one thing, but my concern is the kids, right? Like, because the soldiers eventually will die of old age, but it's the children that are going to be moving forward that need to have that ability. to get past the horrific shit that's going on in that country. And quite honestly, on both sides of the fence, like Russian families are being affected just as much as Ukrainian. So, yeah, if we're getting the money back and they can,

but first of all, they got to take care of the veterans that are within side of Canada. And if they can do both, okay. But if they can't do both, they got to focus on what's going on in Canada, number one. Trump? Yeah, I agree. with a lot of what Jamie said. I mean, it's going to be horrible for the families, but we're not doing anything really concrete for the veterans here. And in fact, Veterans Affairs Canada has clinched things tighter here. Now, a lot of the reduction in budget is to do with,

like, the cannabis side of things. And honestly, that's all a scam anyway. I mean, that's just, it gives the government an out for them crushing the cannabis market that they propped up in the first place then tax the tax to death so this is kind of like you know here's some prescriptions which they've reduced i guess what they're covering and they've reduced a bunch of other stuff but they've also made it as hard as it was to get claims through vac before and i we've all seen people testifying auto we the stories are endless um including like our own like for me to get a claim through for my knees back hips whatever some of them it's been four years years of fighting.

They've made that even more difficult. I think as of this last February, they've clinched. I've got friends who are still in that pipeline who are like, I might as well just give up. It's never going to happen. These are guys who can barely walk or they're crippled in whatever way. And, you know, it is what it is. We shouldn't be sending a dime over there, in my opinion.

It's not our war. You know, when there was a bit of a poll in 2008 in Ukraine as, to whether they would like to join NATO, the consensus among the population was heavily against it, partially in part because they were already fighting in Donbass, and they didn't want any part of NATO oversight or NATO saying, that's bad, don't do. So they just went on there for the next 14, 15 years to fight. That's not our problem. It just isn't. I get that we have a monstrous Ukraine lobby group confederation here in Canada. I get it. And I'm not trying to knock them.

But at the same time... Can I jump in there, Chuck? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I, like, it's terrible what's going on with VAC. So my experience is totally different than yours, Chuck. Like, um, uh, any time that I've, that I've, that I've, like, reached out to them, honestly, they've, they've, they've come back. And, and yes, it is super confusing.

I might, because my brain's fucked up, like, I can, Like, thank God I had somebody hooked the computer up for me so I could be on there right now because I can't do that shit. Like it's like technology and me, I always win and it's broken in the corner. So like, like, so, so I get that. And and, and, but I've been fortunate. I've, I've had the right, maybe I've just talked to the right people that, that have helped me through whatever I needed to get through. And they've made it easy for me. Like if I can't, if I can't drive in and see somebody, I can talk to them on the phone or or whatever.

whatever, whatever I've had to do to get, you know, all my medicals and everything done. And so I have a different story. But there's many out there that have a story like Chuck. And that's the heartbreaking part of it. And when they were bringing ISIS fighters over from Syria that were killing Americans and allied soldiers. And now they're getting, you know, all the... Reintegration program. Yeah, all that, like that really pisses me off.

The second thing is what, Chuck, what you're alluding to with NATO is everybody, our golden president that everybody loves, which is the one that started all this shit, was Obama. He dangled the NATO carrot in front of Ukraine and asked him to be part of NATO. And that's what sent Russia into this fucking, wow, frenzy, because there should be a demilitarized zone between Russia and Europe. And the nations inside of that should have the choice either be part of the European Union. And Russia was also invited to be part of the European Union when Putin took over. But he had to have fair elections and democracy. And he did not do that. So he made his bed and he's going to have to sleep in it.

Well, so it's these problems are actually created by the West. So we have to, now that it started, Chuck, there's no going back. Like we've got to be able to support them and get them through this. Who thought three segments was a good idea? Should just let the military boys talk for four hours and argue about all the things. Canada, Ukraine, forging a hundred-year pack built on drones and defense. Canada and Ukraine were bound together more tightly on Thursday with the signing of a long-term strategic and political partnership that lays the foundation for the construction of millions of drones to defend both countries.

The country signed a declaration to establish a hundred-year partnership that stretches across defense and security. and trade and investment as well as energy and critical minerals. The specific details have not come out, obviously, yet. A couple of quotes here. Canada will always stand in solidarity with Ukraine, Carney said. Canadians understand our bones the importance of your struggle. There is no qualification to our commitment because your cause, freedom, democracy, sovereignty is our cause.

Your thoughts on 100. A, like, have we learned nothing from the NHL? A 10-year deal is bad. A hundred years. understand it's an MOU check? Just the fact that they're throwing it out there like that is this big, it's a big FU to like the United States as well because of course, Kearney's going to latch on anybody that isn't the U.S.

Look, the Ukraine, in my opinion, isn't the right country to latch on to in any way shape or form. Since they were reformed in one of their newest iteration in 91, they were routinely every year basically at the bottom, or I guess you want to call it the top of the list for the most corrupt country in Europe. There's a reason they don't get asked to be in the EU because they're the most corrupt country in Europe.

And now we're sending them billions upon billions. The whole world is like the big UNICEF campaign for Ukraine. The war is a horrible thing. I'm not saying it's not. The war, war shouldn't have happened and probably wouldn't have happened if NATO and the West didn't do what it did. Obama.

But Obama. Yeah, Obama. And his CIA directors basically changing leadership in 2014 and Ukraine. Well, here we are. Here we are today. You know, Russia is not a good guy, but Russia is not the bad guy necessarily either. And Ukraine isn't the bad guy or the good guy either.

They're both just in a shitty war that should end at some point. I don't want to send them another fucking penny. And the worst part is, it's not just me that's sending them my pennies now. Your kids are sending it. Your kids that aren't, your grandkids that aren't born yet, are going to be sending it if we really hold true to this. 100 year bullshit.

It's ridiculous. Yeah. So here's the scary thing. So we're going from 2,000 drones and 2 million drones. There's no way of doing that without getting help from a foreign country,

which is not going to be the United States of America. I guarantee you fucking Carney's got some kind of deal with China to get these fucking Chinese drones. It'll be bombarding, buddy. And well, the technology is going to, We'll buy the systems that build the drones, bring them to Canada from China.

So all the tech is in that programming already to fucking, now we got, now we got foreign adversaries, the number one adversary in the world having their tech in our drones in Canada right next door to the United States, right? So fucking, what could go wrong? Nothing could go wrong with this. we go wrong. So I don't fucking trust Carney or the local government

in getting these systems across the line where they're not corrupted by any Chinese software that's spying or have the ability to take out sensitive targets in the United States and Canada. We should just send them Chinese balloons because apparently we couldn't shoot them down. Yeah, that's great for Ukraine.

So anyways, if it does happen and they can have like tech that's from Canada with the smartest people in the world. I really do believe Canadians are able to do this, but we got to do it on our own. And we've got to push China away. Like that's why we don't have a deal with Kuzmah's because we're dealing with fucking China.

And I was just at a meeting with the guy in the, in our SaaS party. And I was talking to him about Chinese steel in Canada. I go, did you know all the news? power poles that we've got that were put up in 2000 and I think it was 2020, 2017 for all the high tension power, the big power lines are coming across our province. They're all from China. Like they were bought in China. They were set up in Canada and that's that Chinese steel that they don't want getting into the states because it's fucking shit steel. And they don't want to start corrupting their supply.

So when they make good steel for for buildings or for bridges or for fucking tanks, it's not shit fucking steel. And they're purposely flooding Canada with it. So it does wreck our steel that comes out of this part of the world. Look, if we're going to build drones, and I'm sure Canada, I mean, we definitely can. We have some smart people. Unfortunately, they're going to give the contracts to Bombarge just to bail them out from the mess that's now going on with this trade. Our auto industry, it's going to be the Ontario auto industry that's going to be building this shit. Hey, and quite honestly, they're tooled up.

Like they've got the manpower there. That's fine. That's fine. But we should have the drones before we send anything anywhere else. That's not going to happen. We're going to send it all to Ukraine. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

And it's fucking bullshit. And I don't agree with it. The initial, it says Canada has awarded contracts. Unless you get paid back. Canada's awarded contracts worth up to 50 million. that will increase the number of drones currently deployed by the Canadian Armed Forces 10fold. Right now, they say we have 2,000 drones. So, I mean, you're talking 2 million, I think it was the number you threw.

Within two years. Within two years. They're going from 2,000 a day over there. The initial wave is intended to procure intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance drones as well as uncrewed ground vehicles and involves six firms in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. None in Alberta? Weird. when you're talking about where

that's where they're talking about talking of Alberta the first phase of army restructuring creates divisions focused on defending Canada and the one is going to be headquartered in Emmington, the maneuver division and am I right in this that Major General Wade Rutland

he used to be a or was it was a Patricia you guys not fans of the maneuver division anything like that Hey, Sean, you look like you played Dungeons and Dragons when you're a kid. Look, little geeky. But you know how you fucking got a piece of paper? Apparently you roll the dice and it tells you how strong your heart and shit like that.

This whole fucking thing is a shell game and it's just like Dungeons and Dragons. They're creating soldiers on paper that don't exist. And we couldn't fucking fight our way out of wet paper bag right now, let alone defend our country with an arm forces like uh we're we're so and we're we're we're so backwards on how we're how we're trying to mobilize when when we logistics wins war we'd have no logistics behind us let alone the mad power to do it so we we there's a lot of things that have to happen before we we have a mobile defense force that can that can stop the chinese hordes coming coming across the mountains like it's uh james is 100% right a division at least

on paper is supposed to be around, you know, 17 to 20,000 people, roughly. We don't, we only, now this is the Army. I'm talking Army, not Air Force Navy. The Army right now stands at around 20, maybe 21,000, 21,000-ish. As a total complement in the Army, that's a division. So they're just, they're throwing a name of a military, you know, organization out there to be, oh, we get in a division. This is a whole new thing.

This must mean we have the numbers to flesh out a division. We don't have the numbers to flesh it out. We don't have the equipment to flesh it out. We don't have the leadership to flesh it out. They get to say all this stuff. Make people feel like, well, we're really doing a thing. Like, this is another FU to the U.S. Like, look at our new division.

We would have to ask the U.S. to physically move us somewhere again if we went to war somewhere again. Because we can't do it ourselves. This is we have like Jamie said we don't have any logistical capability to move ourselves We just don't So just just just just just so you know Sean for every guy carrying a gun like the point of the spear For everyone's soldier so a division is probably 10,000 infantry soldiers Behind that is three logistics people somewhere in a system

So if you imagine a pyramid the soldiers are at the top of that the base of that pyramid is huge. And there's maybe 5,000 infantry in all of Canada. Yeah. All of Canada. And that's probably rank force and reserve. So where they're getting these people, it's paper like they're the cut and soldiers out of paper.

I'd just like to point out, Jamie, it seems like you know an awful lot about Dungeons and Dragons. We obviously know a little bit about Jamie, don't we? Yeah, well, no, like, listen, I saw it on your desk. Yeah, they're doing a podcast thing. So I'm like, what's he, some kind of witchcraft guys? I had to research it. You know, it's funny is Tews is in here, so you've got to step into the role. I get it.

I get it. Quickly. Then if you were sitting, if they came in and said, hey, Chuck, Jim, we're trying to rebuild the Canadian army. What would be your advice to them? Standards. If it was General Rick Hillier in charge of it, I know you fucking hate him, but I'd be, if it was Rick Hillier and Colonel Hope and all those old boys, Ed Stinowski, and and Cliff Walker, I'd be fucking all for it.

If there was Colonel Holbeyeby. They're going to have a blue-haired female part of the national defense and they're still fucking tampons. So Chuck's literally saying standards, you're describing what standards you need. You need the old boy of like, this is what the military was to come back to want young able-bodied men to go serve, essentially.

Yeah. Yeah. Get the tampons out of the time. the bathroom. In every where we fought, you need, that we've fought as a country for the last hundred plus years, and including the most recent one, it was, I'm not going to say exclusively, but primarily good old boys from the farm or rural areas with a mixing of some city boys in there and girls.

Yeah, I go to say girls, but nine, let's be honest, the 98% of it was farm boys. No women on the front lines. Well, there was a couple. I know, but I would say if we're starting over. If we're starting over, I don't know. I'd let it go if they could. So if Alberta were to go its own way, Jim, Chuck, you go. No women on the front lines.

Let's get back to protect her. If Alberta was to go their own way, they could have the best military system in the entire world. And it would be to like every person in the province can contribute. They don't need a uniform. They don't have to carry a rucksack. they would have to do so many hours of community service. The oil industry is that they've got logistics nailed down to a precise system. Like the whole province would have, you know, if it's 10 hours a year or 20 hours a year,

they would do like a logistics exercise. It would exercise the mobility to take care of natural disasters to defending the borders. and and and by doing that so many hours of community service you'd get the right to vote and and then people have a stake in like they have a skin in the game and it would be everybody would be all for it because it'd be a great community thing as well like you know being in part of the Lions Club or being part of a hockey coach would be part of your community service and you would you would build a culture that is that you'd be so proud to to say you you created this new way of life that gives hope to people throughout the world that

want to have like live with Christian values and they don't want to get taxed the fuck. And you mean like Canada was 20 years ago. They want to be a community member in the community. Chuck, any final thoughts before I let you both go? Look, I hope people don't take my stance on the Ukraine-Russia war as like, you know, I hate parochies or something. Like, I love parochies. look, it's a shitty war that needs to end.

It should have ended a long time ago. It should have never happened. But we are where we are. My stance of being the way I am about it is that I want us looked after first. I want Canadians from top to bottom in a much better position than we are before we ever give a dime to any country ever again.

That's along the short of it. I hope people take a minute today to remember what happened. 25 years ago. It seems like a long time, but for me it seems like it was yesterday. So, you know, I hope everybody gets a minute for that. I hope everybody has a safe weekend. Good to see you, Jamie.

And a shout to Jamie and Willie for putting on a great event about a month and a half ago. Thank you, it. It was awesome. It was really good to see you out there. Yeah, it was awesome. Seeing you too, brother. Love me, man. Gentlemen, thanks for hopping on this morning.

Thanks, John. All right. So that's segment number one done. The military boys are in. I feel like I'm going to have this problem, the entire show, where I bring two people on, and they're going to, they could probably go for 45 to four hours.

Regardless, that's the fun of being on this side of the thing. We got Marty up north, and we got Keith Wilson. Boys, gentlemen, thank you for hopping on. Marty, you're wearing a suit. Yeah, but I wouldn't go as far as shaving. But, I mean, you have a fan club. And so if I'm going to be sitting in, the room with Keith Wilson, I need to look sharp. That's what I learned. Before we get too far on that,

man, I wanted to jump on that last group. I wanted, like, first of all, Chuck and Jim, thanks for your service. And man, I wanted to jump in on that one. I would have loved to be part of that group, especially when he was talking about Alberta's military and our culture here of logistics and how proud we are. Like, I just think of a simple example. Like, every golf course in this country, in this province was built 20 years ago almost by volunteers. Like it's just, that's what we did. You know, we came together and built golf clubs, community halls, whatever. If there were fires, we came together and solved it.

Anyways. Keith, how does things? I agree, Marty. I would add in hockey rinks, right? You go to the small communities, all the things. It's been, today is a day, funny enough, I think it's day 69 today that we've been on the road. And the reason it's funny isn't for what you think. at 69 because that's how many days it took the bike across the country 20 years ago when we did that.

So one of the things going away from Alberta is I've got to see a lot of Keith Wilson on different mainstream media as I go further east. So that's been interesting to watch. On this channel, I'm sure people have been like, okay, Sean's not going to talk to any Alberta, anybody anymore. And I'm like, well, no, we've got 38 days. Twos couldn't be here today. I'm like, why not bring in a couple of guys to talk to the audience about what's going on in Alberta? But before we get to Alberta, we started it off with, it's been 25 years since 9-11. Me and Chuck and Jamie talked about where we were. Keith, Marty, where were you when 9-11 happened?

Well, I can tell you a crazy story about 9-11. So I shared this online the other day. I accepted a job with Saudi Aramco. I got a job offer with Saudi Aramco on September 1, 2001. And I accepted the job offer on September 2nd, 2001. And then I was scheduled, me and Karen, and we were, we had two kids at the time. And Karen was pregnant with her third. I was thinking of leaving the country.

And we had a flight scheduled for September 14th. We were flying to Houston for what they called an orientation before we went full-time to Saudi Arabia. And on the morning of September 11th, I'm having coffee. told my boss yet that I've resigned or that I plan on resigning and then I see the news that a plane crashed into the tower and you know blah blah the day unfolded but the next day on the 12th or 13th I called Saudi Aramcoe and said sorry I'm renegging on the offer I'm not going to Saudi Arabia and I'll always remember this the lady I was talking to on the phone who was an American she's like an American recruiter she said you're probably safer here she was already in

Saudi, then you would be back home. And I was like, wow, chill down my back, right? So, yeah, that's my crazy story about 9-11. And Keith, where were you when 9-11 happened? I was at home having a morning coffee and the neighbor had come over was helping walk our little, young little kids to school because she had a bunch of little kids and we took turns doing that. And I remember first not believing what she told me at the door to be true. And then, of course, I turned on the television as we did back then, and I realized the world had changed in a very profound way that a fundamental line had been crossed, that had never been crossed before, at least in our lifetimes, in terms of the moral line of randomly choosing innocent people to exercise your war.

I remember thinking the same thing, Keith. I knew that day and in the following days that the world had changed, like that it would never be the same. Well, okay, today, 38 days away, appreciate you both, Sharon. It just seems 25 years ago on this day, relevant. Well, it's important to remember this. Just before you go too far, like 25 years is always an important event, right? Like, if you look at statistically, this event occurred in 2001. Any event that occurred 25 years in the past, a bunch of, like 30% of the people that were alive at that time are dead. Okay. So the people that were 60, 70 years old in 2001, they're dead.

And then you have about, so you've got a good chunk of the population that's gone. And then about 30% of the people living today were not alive at that time. So an event that's happened 25 years ago goes from being, it starts to become history. It's like less and less people have lived it and it becomes part of just the collective history. And so it's just important to remember that. I mean, we're now talking about an event that's historical for many people. I mean, I have one kid who wasn't alive when 9-11 happened. And he's an adult.

I'm probably the youngest dead of us. Sorry, I was in high school when it happened. So there you go. Same here. Our youngest is 21. Yeah. Okay. Alberta, I have been away for some time.

I've been watching from afar. I've been getting everybody's thoughts as I go across the country. But you two are right in the middle of it. Keith, you know, since I left, the last time I had you on, you were talking about this transition plan. Well, it's since been released to not only Albertans, but Canadians, maybe even some American audience and further abroad, walk us through what's going on in Alberta right now with only 38 days until the referendum is set to happen.

Well, I'll just start with the transition plan and then go up to a higher level description of the battlefield because it's rapidly evolving in a major tectonic event just occurred in the last 12 hours. or 18 hours that I think could result in an NDP government in Alberta in October of 2027. And so the transition plan was something that I had thought of several months ago. I remember sharing it with Marty, my idea, and he thought it made sense before I formally launched it. And I'm not suggesting Marty's endorsing anything I did, but he did.

I did use him as a sounding board, and he said, yeah, that's a good idea. So anyway, I brought together, it turned out over 40 experts in subject matter areas from currency, international trade, policing, borders, immigration, you know, agriculture, you name it. And we prepared a comprehensive plan based on a couple dozen working papers. I consolidated it down into one plan, which describes Alberta can transition from a province to a country and all the steps that need to be taken to ensure continuity, to ensure that, The plane still fly, your bank account still works, and you still got your job. And it's been very well received, and to my surprise, it hasn't been torn apart.

So I thought that our critics would come at it pretty hard. And even they've been somewhat complimentary, which surprised me. So that's a tactical move we've made to help people understand the how of how independence would have hurt. Go ahead, Marty. Yeah, real quick. So I actually endorsed the plan itself, but I endorsed the reason for the plan. We've talked about this a lot of times, right? There's about 30% of the people that are committed to independence

and there's 30% of that we'll never buy into it. And then we're going, you know, we're targeting that middle 40. And me personally as a cancer and Keith as a speaker, like I always heard a lot of people who just wanted to know what we thought it might look like. I mean, some people can make a leap of faith to independence, but some people wanted to know what it could look like. And that's why Keith's document is so important because,

And it's not a silver bullet. You can't win everybody over with one thing, but there was definitely a large core group that wanted that document. And I think Keith was going to head into this. One of the things about the document is it puts the other side on the defensive in a hard way. Because now they have to try and find holes in the plan. And that's almost, there's no holes as far as I'm concerned. Yeah.

And if there was any big, they would have had, it's over a week now. They would have had them all over the place and the legacy media. would have had it all over the place. But to go up to a higher level, they keep telling us we're going to lose, the pro-independence side. But they keep their panic level increases an order of magnitude each week.

Well, if we're going to lose, why are they panicking? And I think what's happening is one of the tactical moves we made well over a month ago. I've lost track of time now because it's just seven days a week and usually lots of no sleep. But it might have been two months ago is we emphasized what the question is. You know, what are you voting on on October 19th? You're not voting for or against independence.

It's not even on the ballot. What you're voting for is whether or not you think your relationship with Ottawa is fine and you're totally cool with what's going on in Canada. And everything's great. Let's just stay the same. I took the opponent's campaign thing, stay, and I changed it to stay the same. And they stopped using the banner, right? So it's a question of staying the same or whether you feel Alberta can do better,

whether you feel Alberta needs a better deal, whether you feel Alberta is being treated badly, whether we're sending too much money with no say and how it's spent sent to Ottawa, whether the policies of Ottawa makes sense to us, and whether you have any say in that, the affordability crisis. So that's really what we believe the vote is, and that's how we're trying to frame it. So they've got the legacy media on their side. You mentioned you've seen me.

I can assure you for any 10-second clip that you've seen me, I've probably spent two or three hours with them. I have done so many interviews where they ask me a question, and I think I give a really sensible, understandable, short answer their head goes funny, like I've reprogrammed them, and it never gets aired, right? So, but it doesn't matter. I got BBC after this. I've just had two requests from CBC again right after.

I'll be back to back all morning on this stuff. And I'll just keep doing it because for every little bit that gets out. I guess if I may, Keith, before you get to the tectonic event, more would surprise me is I, you know, like further I go away from Alberta, the less I see of Keith and Marty other than if I hop on X, right? and I was I was sitting there watching CBC or CTV one of the two forgive me and you came on and they actually gave you probably 45 seconds which in my world is like four hours I'm like oh my god and I was like swatting everybody I'm like look at this they're actually letting him explain why Alberta is in a tough spot and I've ran into a ton of people who don't want to talk about it on the podcast we're like yeah yeah we get it we get it and that has been interesting. And part of that has to be that they're allowing 45 seconds through instead of zero. Because some of the arguments I've heard on the road are from zero like information getting out to the broader public. Well, and the bias is is blatant, right?

I mean, like they're giving air time to, they're giving air time to Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney. They're giving, you know, like everybody's getting airtime except our side. And I mean, the only group that's getting less air time than us right now is the Allison Inquire. Is the Allison Inquiry, which shout out to anyone tuning into this. I am not hurt if you're sitting watching the Allison Inquiry. That is really cool, really sad, really frustrating, a whole lot of words to sit and watch. But to Dean Allison in the group there, Sean Buckley, yeah, if anybody's over there, by all means, it is going live right now. Now, tectonic event, NTP government, well, that's a cliffhanger, Keith, walk us through it.

Well, this came up in my feed last night at about 1 a.m. I don't know when it hit the wire. I've got to research that. But, you know, traditionally, well, under our legislation, when there's a referendum, the government's not supposed to campaign. They're not allowed to be a third-party advertiser. Prime Minister Carney confirmed yesterday that he would. wouldn't be because under the federal government wouldn't be campaigning in this referendum because they're not allowed to under our laws.

Well, there was an amendment made last year to the legislation and a little bit of a loophole created. I thought strategically, you know, Danielle Smith, Premier Smith's in a difficult position because over half of her party base supports independence. So it's always been my view that the proper course of action for her and the government is to remain neutral and just say, look, inform yourself. She can say she has her own views and she knows how she will vote, but Albertan should inform themselves and make the best choice that they think based on the information, and that's how democracy works. Instead, you know, she's been campaigning with different levels of intensity for one side, and that's concerned me a lot, and I think that's not in her long-term political interests,

but I'm frankly shocked that yesterday they announced through the Canadian press, I didn't see any press release come out, there might have been one I missed, that they're going to be spending $4 million in the next 30 days campaigning against us, taxpayer dollars. We're restricted to $600,000. That's incredible. That's over six and a half times the amount we're allowed to spend. That's putting your finger on the scale.

That's going to divide the party. And either a new party is going to form, and that's going to split the UCP vote, or the base is going to be so demoralized come October, they're not going to show up to vote. In either instance, I think the sad reality is she should enjoy the next 13 months in power because I think it's over.

Just so I'm clear, and then Marty, you can have your thoughts. $4 million announced by the Alberta government to spend on this referendum, like advertising everything towards the next 38 days? Oh, the Keith, Keith Freeze? No, no, he's still there. Yeah, I saw the, I mean, I'm still trying to process because I saw the announcement yesterday as well, Keith, but I didn't, it didn't register with me as, like alarm bells

didn't go off because, I mean, she's already got the website. She's been campaigning as far as I'm concerned, right? The Alberta next panel and things like that. I saw her at a town hall on Tuesday in person, and she's definitely campaigning. And I kind of, it didn't raise an alarm because I just put it in as her role as the government to be able to do that. So I'm curious as to why you sound a little more alarmed. Like I think a lot of us knew that she's campaigning and spending money. And so is not, and so is Nenshi.

Honestly, I didn't, didn't raise any alarm bells when I saw that. today for me. Think of, and you are not going to, for those, you're not going to be able to drive around a city with a digital billboard and stop at a red light and not see one of their ads. $4 million. $4 million. You're not going to be able to, if somebody drives and listens to AM radio or FM radio, you're not going to be able to drive to Safeway and not hear one of those ads.

if you watch normal terrestrial television or cable television, you are not going to be able to watch a show or the news and not see one of their TV commercials. Well, and it's not just... $4 million of tax-care money. It's $4 million, but even if they had six only, even if they had the same budget as us or the various TPAs, right, like let's say there's 12 active TPAs each 200,000 bucks.

Let's say it's too many. Anyways, even if they had the same budget, as us, they have one advantage. They can get the media ads. They can get the radio ads. We can't. That's to me is the biggest disadvantage. I mean, money is already a disadvantage, but that's the

part that worries me more is that the government has access to resources other than cash that we don't have access to. Yeah, I take your point. I take your point. I mean, but honestly, there's so much advertising right now. Weirdly, I'm at the point where I have to try and listen to the

advertising because it's getting confusing. I don't know I can't always instantly tell from the advertising if somebody is pro or against. It's getting, you know, that's one of the problems. We raised that concern a long time ago. There's nine questions. There's nine questions, ten questions, right? And there's groups that are focused on a particular question that are advertising. And so it's getting confusing for the masses out there.

You can hear me, right? Both of you? Yes? Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. I just want to ask it again. You started off with Carney and that he's going to stay. out of it and then there was an announcement of 4 million. The announcement came from the UCP,

correct? Came from the government of Alberta using. Government of Alberta. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted, I had that sitting in the back of my brain. I'm like, Carney's staying out of this, but the UCP, the government of Alberta. Carney is staying out of it from an advertising point of view. Yeah, that's what I mean. 100%. Yeah, 100%. But I mean, Carney yesterday did, again, they are getting nervous, right? Carney yesterday watered down Bill C-69. or two days ago, he watered down Bill C-69. That's something. From where I sit, Marty, like, that's been, for something that supposedly has no chance,

there's no chance, got nobody there. I'm like, do you watch it? You're like, man, they sort of like panicked if there's no chance. He's in town today. I mean, he's in town today. Like, he came to Banff with the whole caucus. You know, that's not a coincidence. That's not a coincidence.

You know, one of the things that's really striking to me as well is, in my view, I have a strong view on whether the pipeline deal of the West Coast was a good idea, and I don't think it is because it entrenched is net zero, and it costs more taxpayer money than the entire provincial budget, $70 billion. But that aside, the problem that Alberta has and has had ever since we kind of grew up and became financially self-sufficient and a net contributor in a growing economy

and then Ottawa started holding us back, i.e. the 50s, the 1950s, is that we have a democratic deficit because the population base is in Ontario and we have just one lawmaking body instead of two, one based on region, other based on population. We just have a population one. The Senate's a joke. It doesn't do anything.

So that we're always going to be treated as a colony. So when the population base of Quebec and Ontario decide they want Albertans to do something different or not do something, develop our oil sands, they can pass a law to stop it. If they want us to pay them more money, they can do that too. The only way to change that is through reorganizing the constitutional relationship. But there's so many things that are wrong in the relationship with Ottawa and how they treat Albertans. What's so puzzling to me is the Premier's behaving like its mission accomplished. And I keep having that image of the Iraq war when George Bush was on the aircraft carrier

and had the vision accomplished banner. Like, what else? Keith, she was like that was the crux of my comment. I went to the town hall on Tuesday. I mean, it was almost a personal chat with the premier because there's only 100 of us at the town hall. And she, yeah, like I, she insisted that she admitted that there was harm done under Trudeau, but she's like, you've got to give me credit. been changes with Carney.

Man, you should have heard the crowd. The whole crowd went, whoa, boo, right? Like, we don't read it like that, Danielle. Oh, wow. So she was disconnected from the crowd. She was disconnected. And then she fought back by saying, well, Confederation worked well when conservatives are in power,

such as Mulroney and Harper. I'm like that, and again, I had the opportunity to literally push back to her. I'm like, that's fantastic, Danielle. 12 years out of the last 159, it worked. I don't want a system that works dependent on an individual. She knows that. She knows that. And that was the part where I'm like, are you seriously?

We're having this conversation. You know that, but you're saying it. But I think she was saying it. She's gotten used to saying it to an audience that just applauds her. And then on Tuesday, the crowd there, I'll say this, right? The people in Cochran are not just a, it's not a little teeny wee, little small town. There's some pretty small, you know, there's some pretty good people there. and they pushed back and I think she was surprised.

In fact, I was so into it, I didn't have a chance to pay attention to her body language because normally I pay attention, I like to do that, right? When you're in meetings, you want to watch people's body language. And I'm sure she stepped back a few times. But yeah, no, it was a...

So this is the core problem is that, you know, at a minimum, what the independence movement is doing is creating leverage for her. And if I were her, I would be going to the prime minister and saying, you have to agree to the following things. Like, come on, you know, these are reasonable requests.

You know, the fact that we do not appoint our judges at the Superior Court level and higher. And we have no say in it. None. You know, I could keep going with the list. The equalization unfairness. The failure to produce the records, and Marty knows way more about this than me,

the details on Albertan's share of the Canada pension plan, right? Like she used to have a long list of reasonable requests to seek fairness and a respectful relationship for Alberta within Confederation. Well, she had a nine point ultimatum. She gave a nine point ultimatum. It's like that list disappeared. It was like was it written in invisibly disappearing ink.

So I'm so puzzled about what's going on. That list, Keith, remember? that list though was done she didn't know who the future prime minister was going to be she made an ultimatum to the future prime minister she did it during the election campaign i'm sure in the back of her mind it was going to be pierre so she made a list to pierre then carney got elected and she went she pushed the list a little bit longer but then she you know forgot about it and uh but but then once in a while she'll take like like the event of yesterday uh the watering down of bill c69 claimed that as a victory saying, well, that's it.

That was on my list. You know, it's like, no, no, no. Your list is repealed Bill C-69, not watered down and take away a component that didn't even imagine. To be really precisely clear as a regulatory lawyer, though change was an order and counsel to amend the list of reviewable projects. So the act remains the same. All the fundamental anti-development features of Bill C-69 that the Trudeau government

brought in that called. that caused, according to the Royal Bank of Canada, over a trillion dollars in investment to leave Canada, a trillion dollars, the Royal Bank of Canada, is still on the books. This is what blows my mind. And look at the projects you removed, by the way, right? And the courts are still on the books.

Yeah, and the projects that were removed are purely, are projects like heavy oil operations entirely within the province of Alberta. I mean, they're, like, they would have never fallen under C-69 to start. ways. But anyway, yeah, yeah. Gentlemen, with a few minutes left, one, just Keith, real brief, where can people find your document

if they haven't found it yet? So if you got listeners that want to go read it or share it with maybe some undecided that, like there's no plan in place, nobody's ever looked into that, etc., etc. Where would you send people? Go to the Alberta Transition Council website. It'll pop up right on the thing,

Alberta Transition Council. And you can read it online in a user-friendly way. you can download it. I'll warn you, it's a really tough read at times. It kind of reads like your terms of service on your Roger Cell Plan because it's really dry stuff at times. But that's the nature of the beast. We're going to bring it down, though, for people over the next coming weeks, right?

We'll make it into digestible bits for people. Yeah, and I just started a series last night called Fun Facts, where we're doing tweets just to take little nuggets out to help people understand. And people assume everything at the Calgary and Edmonton Airport is federal and is not. And we explain all that kind of stuff. So, but you know, the bottom line of the message from it is that we're not building a new country from scratch. All the institutions are here. I've met people that work at the airports.

The only question they've had for me is, I'm going to keep my job. And I'm like, of course, you've got family here. Your kids are in soccer and hockey. Your grandparents are your kids' grandparents here. Of course, you're going to keep your job. We need you to keep doing your job. And the brilliance of it is, you know, Marty, you've been involved. companies that acquire another company, right?

And the whole idea, and a lot of the guys that are a number of the key people involved in the transition plan, that's what they did in their career. And their job was to make sure when the transition occurred, the refinery kept running and it didn't blow up and that the customers didn't even notice the companies had changed. Sean, you've been involved in your career. Human nature is a crazy thing. Keith, I'll give you just a quick example. I was involved with a company that bought out another company.

And we got bought out, sorry, and half my employees kept saying like, what color coveralls do you think we'll end up wearing? I'm like, holy school. It's the new coveralls. Everybody was, yeah, new coveralls. Don't worry about the color of the coveralls, man. Like, just keep running that compressor and that pump jack and we'll figure out the coveralls later. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, we're at interesting times. I still have the TPA let Alberta decide. We're doing very well in fundraising. It's amazing. Most of our donations are $50, $200, $200. dollars. The other side, it's all thousands of dollars. It's obvious who has the grassroots support. People are looking to help counterbalance the playing field. They can certainly go to let Alberta decide to donate. And also, if they want to see the transition plan, the

Alberta Transition Council. And I got the BBC, so I better take it. Thanks for hopping on, Keith. Thanks for hopping on, Marty. Appreciate you both hopping on. By now. Okay, so there we're through the first hour and, you know, well, it's been interesting. Two's wherever you're at driving around, not hopping on. I'm having some fun without you. Somebody, okay, I got to show this comment. Marty Bowes said 100% Newman was a D&D guy that's Dungeons and Dragons. Is that going to be the theme of today?

I don't know. Okay. And happy to see everybody chiming in from all over the place. Zane, a great, mashing morning to all. Zane, of course, we're in Newfoundland and the Black Beauty, the Black Beast, the suburban, rolling along. So that's been a lot of fun. If you are just tuning in now, and I'm doing this just, what is it, just southeast of Gander,

Newfoundland, somewhere in that range. So it's been interesting to host from three and a half hours ahead of my local time frame. That extra half hour throws a little kink in it here, as I say, we're going to be at the top of the hour. Meanwhile, it is in top of the hour here. Now, we've got one in the back, and I know we got others that are going to be coming on. But first, the food professor, Dr. Sylvan, Charlebeau. Sir, thanks for hopping on. It's a news for the land.

Yeah, you sound really quiet right now, Sylvann. Oh, one second, maybe let me see here. Now I have. Oh, there you are. Yeah. That is better. We just saw each other. And, you know, the comments that came in for me, Sylvand, was calling all of you Quebecers elite douchebags,

or at least that's what the comments that I got. I'm like, I didn't think I called them an elite douchebag. I said that's what Albertans think. Anyways, I went back to this. Anyway, it's all good, but it was actually really nice to see you in person in Montreal, for sure. I thought we should have putine together. You know what?

We went and had a putteen. Where was that? What's the island? It was it was Nuns Island, but I think it was, I think you went in the old port, didn't you? Yes,

we did, but we went to, I don't know, it's like a 70 kilometer long island. And we went to some famous place that had putine. And the putteen was very good. Kids didn't know if they wanted to try,

they're like cheese and gravy. Even my wife had some by the end. So it was pretty good. Another guest just showing up. Chris, you decide? Hi. Well, hello.

Okay. So. Hey, Chris. Hey, good to see so much. I've been seen it a while. Likewise. We're only waiting on one other, but while we're doing that, before we get into U.S., Canada, all the things there, 9-11. 9-11 is today.

We've been sharing where we were on that day. Chris, if ladies first, do you want to share where you were 9-11, 25 years ago? Yeah. She wasn't born. Yeah, as if I wish, you're too kind, the checks in the mail, Sylvan. I was working on Parliament Hill at the time. I was a legislative assistant to a member of parliament. I think I was around 23, 24.

You forget how old you are once you hit past 40. And it was my job to part of my job in the morning to watch the news. So keep in mind, this is before we had like all this crazy YouTube feeds of, you know, live streaming and all this stuff. So there was basically regular TV and message boards. like typed text message boards. So I'm sitting there and I've got the TV on at the time. It was CBC News Network because that's what we had. And it's like, do-do-do-do.

I'm writing up my report on agriculture. And it's like, this just in, we're getting word that there's an electrical fire at the top of one of the towers in the World Trade Center. And it goes to the live locked off shot that so many New York networks would have had. And I'm like, oh, that's weird. I hope everybody's okay. That looks kind of nasty. Lots of smoke for an electrical fire.

And I keep writing. And then we hear update. It sounds like a small Cessna has accidentally hit the tower. Oh, my God. How could have this happened? This must have been an air traffic control mistake because there's so many small planes that fly over the Hudson, right? And land on pontoons and land in the harbor.

And then they said, oh, we're getting word that it was a much bigger jet. And by now I've turned fully to the TV like I'm just staring. because you can see this gash, that terrible smoking gash right at the top of that tower. And I'm thinking to myself, I can see like the outline of where the wings hit. Oh my God. I wonder if there were people on that. How could have this happen? And you're going through this still accidental scenario in your mind?

Bang. Bang. You see that second jet hit that second tower and everything changed. It felt like the building had been flipped upside down. Mark Kelly, he doesn't mind that I name him because he experienced it. He was the host on CBC at the time, screamed, oh my God, you could hear the producers and the cameraman. I'm getting my hairs crawling right now, just thinking about it. You could hear them panicking in the back saying it's deliberate, it's an attack, it's an attack.

and then I was just kind of transfixed, not knowing really what to do. And then a few minutes later, it was, I'm paraphrasing now, because it's 25 years ago, but I'm pretty sure I heard the anchor say, okay, we're getting another feed from Washington, D.C., oh my goodness, everybody brace yourself. And then they pulled up the shot of the Pentagon. And I grabbed my bag. I'm like, I'm out of here. We're like, go. We have to leave. They later, I found out later, evacuated Parliament Hill. I was already gone.

Like, I got home. And then, of course, we heard the horrible unfolding of what happened in Pennsylvania. And then I was sitting at home and I watched those two buildings collapse. So, yeah, it was, it changes you. It changes you. I remember going for a walk that night in downtown Ottawa and it's usually busy. People are out walking their dogs and laughing outside. It was pin drop silence. And then the next day I went up to the hill

and the U.S. Embassy is right next to Parliament Hill. For people who haven't been to Ottawa, it's right on the, if you're looking at Parliament Hill, it's on the right hand side, right on its flank. And it's this big impressive building. And it's actually constructed to look like a submarine actually. A bunker, yeah. Yeah, and people were surrounding it with flowers and American flags.

And we didn't know the death count yet. I remember that distinctly because we didn't know how many people had gotten people out, in some cases sacrificing their own lives to get people out. I remember then it was estimates as high as 20,000. 3,000 is too many. But I remember that first morning, being afraid that it was 20,000. So anyway, thank you.

Sorry if that was too long an explanation, but it was life-team. Chris, come on. You've been on the show long enough now to ever apologize for stealing the mic and explaining it. Thank you for sharing. Sylvann, I,

you probably have your own memories, obviously. Absolutely. I don't think people, especially the young folks, I'm teaching students this fall, most of them weren't born when it happened. And I don't think people either appreciate or remember how numb we were for days, really, after it happened.

And I remember that day. So I actually wasn't, I was starting my academic career at the time and I was preparing for class and I had no, the internet was off, TV was off, everything actually was done before I even heard of anything. So, and my mom called and said, did you, have you been watching the news? What are you talking about? Because I was alone at home. And, and then I'd turn on the TV and both hours were, were down.

And then my first thought was, and my mom told me, you're, you're a trained military officer, Sylvain, because I actually, most people don't know this, but I went to RMC. And you, you, this is, this is bad. I mean, we're looking at potentially a world war here. Yeah. And so I was done talking to my mom. I called my, my girlfriend now wife and basically said, we need to get married and we need to have children as soon as possible. A year later, we were married and we had our first child.

So that's what I remember. I mean, it was really. scary. And at the time, I think we all thought that this was going to be really, really bad for a long time. And to this day, I think 25 years later, politics, world politics are still somewhat affected by what happened 25 years ago, really. You know, Trump is not an accident. No. You know, there's been many elections impacted by 9-11 without really measuring it or seeing it, but it's there's there. It changed everything.

It just changed everything, Sean. Did you already share where you were, Sean? I hate sharing it to you, Chris, because I was in grade 10 in English class. That's okay. And they rolled the TV in because once again, you're talking about getting all your stuff from phones. Obviously, that wasn't a thing. And it's only one time I ever remember a teacher telling me to shut up and you listened. Then we watched in class the second plane hit.

So I was in grade 10 English class. And then we got, I think, sent home for the rest of the day if memory serves me, correct? So I'm the obviously the young guy on this on today's show where I was a grade 10 when it happened. So your teacher, though, brought in a live TV quick enough for you to see the second plane? Honestly, I couldn't even tell you how on earth that happened other than, yeah, she rolled it in. I'll be honest with you as a trained military officer. or the biggest shock for me. I know that a lot of people have focused on the Twin Towers.

And we've been at Ground Zero as a family a couple of times. But the Pentagon was really the shocker for me. I've been to the Pentagon when I was at RMC and I went to West Point as well. I never thought that the Pentagon was attackable, ever. Yeah. With anything. Yeah. That was a shocker for me.

I just watched every now and then it's too hard to watch but every now and then I will watch a bit of a documentary on it to show my kids and I'll let you jump in here in a second David but I did watch a bit of one last night and it was interesting Sylvain

that you mentioned that but the way they explained it they showed an overhead shot from like a helicopter or a plane of DC and they're like okay if you're God forbid but you're aiming at a target White House is really really small capital building didn't have that many people

in it, which building is super big, you can see it from space because of the shape, and it's full, full of American government workers, and it's a military symbol. It's impressive. Boom, Pentagon.

So they explained it that way, and what really shocked me, just chilled me, and I didn't know this. So forgive me if everybody else knew this. They thought a second plane was coming to the Pentagon, because there were two planes for the towers. And then there's panic went through saying there's a second plane inbound.

What are we going to do? They interviewed, I didn't know her, this woman fighter pilot on this documentary. And she's like, yep, I was just got my wings. I was like a couple months on the job. I went up into the sky. We were scrambled with like no notice. We had to get up there immediately with my instructor. So her older male instructor who had been teaching her all this time, they're up there side by side,

like wing men. And they hadn't had time, I'm going to keep it together. They hadn't had time to arm the jets. But their mission, if they saw a passenger plane coming in, to ram it. I couldn't believe that. I had never learned that part of the story. And as we all now know, that fourth plane was Pennsylvania. Who knows what the target was?

but she talked about scrambling up there with her wingman instructor and knowing this was it if they saw a plane come in. It's just, it's so horrible. But I will give a nod to people who are doing a really classy job of the memorial. Each time I watch the memorials, it's very moving, hearing all their names being read out. Sorry to ground zero is so well done. I mean, it's just so moving. Any time of a year you go there. It's just it gets you.

We're going to be taking the kids there. We're just talking about it this morning out on a hike. That's great. Explaining the day to them and, you know, my wife being American, right? Like, just walking them through all the things. And yeah, my wife's uncle was at the Pentagon when it happened. So it would be interesting to hear his thoughts when we get closer to him. But regardless, all that, David, you snuck in.

What we were doing was we were talking about where we were. we were the day of 9-11, 25 years ago, we'll give you your story as well. Well, I have an unusual story because it was, it was, I was actually in my second year at McKinsey and I was at a training center in France. And they had told us that they were gonna be testing us with a live scenario that would be a market disruption scenario.

right after lunch. And lunchtime in France, sort of six hours ahead of, you know, what was happening in New York. And so we walked into this room. We sat down and the instructor came to the front of the room. There were about 30 of us. And he just said, you know, a plane has hit. One of the World Trade Center towers were going to be canceling this. And so we sat like collectively, we just thought.

this is a sophisticated way to try and set up a market disruption scenario that we would have to go in and do some analysis on. So it didn't really hit anybody that that was real. It was sort of surreal for the first of a while. And then, you know, very quickly we realized this changed everything. And we ended up, they like you, they kind of gave us the data to talk about it. We had there were eight people in our group that were from New York, people that had friends that were working in the place and it was just classic. You know, I was 30 at the time.

And, you know, I was one degree of separation from two or three people. Oh, and we lost. David. Oh, my. That was compelling. I hope he jumps back in. Oh, and he's back. And he's back.

And he's back. David. Sorry, I think a call came through. Yeah. The sudden cycle. There we go. We got you, David. Okay, good.

So, so we had, we had, you know, a half dozen. people that had people they knew. And, you know, one thing I'll mention actually, because one of the most important sort of professional firms was the firm that Howard Lutnik was the CEO of at the time, huge bond firm. And he lost, I believe, 350 staff, his brother and a bunch of others, the current the current Commerce Secretary. And, you know, he was taking his son to kindergarten at the time. is one of the things, by the way, just as an aside why it's horrible for the CBC to be using a style guide trying to downgrade 9-11 on the 25th anniversary of the event from terrorism to plain hijacking, right? And just two days ago, they wanted to celebrate Mao's 50th

anniversary. And just now they're trying to, you know, they're in New York trying to make it about anti-Muslim sentiment. I mean, the CBC is so lost. It's hard to just wrap my head around. And we're in the middle of a trade negotiation where the most important, single most important cabinet member in the negotiation, Howard Lutnik, you know, lost his, lost family members, most of his closest friends, almost all of his colleagues in that, in the second tower, the top five floors of the second tower. And we've got a state-owned media denigrating what happened or trying to downgrade it. It's just stunning. I say that as an aside, but I think one of the things that I experienced,

sitting there in France, not being from New York, was just how closely networks the whole world is. You know, there were dozens of people that knew people that were either in the towers or were working in those towers. I was in the towers myself two weeks before for some meetings. And, you know, it's just, and in New York, it was a huge centerpiece. I will say one or two things that came up very quickly in the conversations. that we had there at the time was what kind of intelligence failures led to this happening. And there were three things that were remarkable to me. One was that President Clinton had three different shots at Osama bin Laden.

And that's covered in an incredible book. If anyone hasn't read it, there's an amazing account of everything that led up to bin Laden. And since bin Laden called Ghost Wars won the Pulitzer Prize. It's incredible. It's not a partisan book. It's one of those huge books that you think you'll never read. And when you start reading it, you can't put it down because it's all true. And there were moments where the president chose not to take out Osama bin Laden,

even though they had special forces teams. They had an Osama bin Laden working group inside the Pentagon that was actively tracking this guy because they knew how dangerous he was and how committed he was to causing an atrocity. Second thing that was really interesting about the intelligence failures leading up to the event was and people forget this, but do you remember the World Trade Center bombing? 93. Yep. Right.

In 1993, there was a truck bomb that was driven into the underground parking lot and set off. Same, same Islamist crew, all the same. And so one of the things that's interesting when you talk to people that do intelligence stuff, and we had a couple people that sort of had a background in that we were talking with, is they always ask, like, why is this the target? You know, of all the gin bars in Morocco. Like, of all the places. You're talking about the World Trade Center?

Yeah, why the World Trade Center? And it was because in the weird mindset of the Islamist sort of death cult, they see America as Christian because their own worldview is deeply theocratic, right? They don't draw any distinctions between the power politics and the power. of faith or religious identity. In fact, they think the two have to be self-reinforcing. So in their world, because they see the world through that lens, they see every other structure in the world through that lens. And so they see Israel and Jewishness as being one thing. They call America the great Satan. They call Israel the little Satan, right, to just keep it clear.

This is not a crowd that's known for nuance, right? And within America, the twin towers, represented the extraordinary economic power of America in a really symbolic way that they felt, if there's any way that we could attack the heart of America, it would be to attack those twin towers because those represent the ascendancy of the American dream, capitalism, and global capital. And there's a very specific sort of mindset around that. So one of the reasons the twin towers were always this target. And, you know, they had a ground zero. actually intelligence operations team actually at the base of the towers, et cetera, was because they knew that this had been targeted and they knew there was a lot of noise around it at the time.

And the attempt to kind of pursue it and destroy it had been, you know, studied a lot. The final intelligence, tragic intelligence thing was the Israelis who had been dealing with these apocalyptic Islamic caliphate-oriented death cults for a while had said, years, how can you guys allow your cockpits to be taken? Like, how can you allow your cockpits just be open? Like, every major plane is a missile, right? And there should be a protocol that locks those doors the second there's a crisis and doesn't allow the pilots in or out. So the pilots have no options. So nobody can take a hostage, right? And they change the apertures. And the Israelis have been making this argument for airline safety for about a decade.

And really it just been ignored. People just felt like, you know, that was a step too far. And, you know, the pilots want to be able to flirt with the air staff and, you know, get their coffee and hang around the galley a little bit or whatever. So, you know, when you kind of look at what happened going up to 9-11 and what led to that, one of the burning questions now that I think beyond just the memorial to the people that died, the first responders that gave their lives trying to save those people. and then all the people that have died overseas fighting Islamic terror face to face on the front lines to keep it away from happening here.

All those lives have been given up, what's changed on the intelligence side so that we know that we can respond better? And I think for Canada, we've just got to wake up and realize that you cannot invite people from failed Islamist focused groups or states. We have IRGC members in this country right now, FAMAS members, known, this is known. We've had over 850 known terrorist watch list members interdicted on the northern border. We now, like the 24, 25 northern border interdictions are now 80% of all terror interdictions in the entire United States have come on the northern border from people resident in Canada. We've in the last decade allowed ourselves as a nation to become a place where known terrorists and terror networks, unknown terrorists in terror networks, have happily set up shop.

And if you look back at not just what happened 9-11, but you say what happened the 20 years before 9-11 that made 9-11 possible? And you say, wow, here's three different things that we should have understood and been able to link together. There should have been a valence between understanding what these guys. were trying to do with the way they were hijacking planes for years in the Middle East, what they might try and do here. And you see when you look at the guys that did the crime, you know, they were all these fake migrants who came in on student visas, right? You look at the

way they did the crime and you realize there was a total lack of normal safety protocol, normalized safety protocols. You look at what they targeted and there was a failure to sort of harden that target in very specific ways that would have dealt with some. something like this. And so I think one of the burning questions we remember what happened 25 years ago is looking at what's happening right now and the thing within our control is the Canadian context and saying what would what would we need to change to make sure that Canada is the safest place it could be for our kids. And one thing that has to change immediately is that we need to start naming, shaming, deporting everyone that's come from a terror background and lied to get into

this country. And if we don't start doing it soon, then then what has been this sort of burgeoning trend in deep anti-Semitic activities shooting at the... Did you see they let out the guy that shot at the consulate got out on bail? I mean, this is lunacy in our courts, our bail system, and our immigration and asylum fraud that is creating a context in which people that have no business being here and have identical philosophies to the guys that flew planes and the trade centers are still operating. And I think that's one of the things that I think it's incumbent on us to start to fix. Well, if I bring, we lost Chris Sims for a bit. She's just having a little bit of trouble with their

audio and video and I assume she'll hop back in here. One of the things I wanted to bring you all in on. Sorry, Sean, I can't hear you. Can't hear me? Silvan, can you hear me? Sylvan, is good. Chris Sims is back. Well, welcome to a live show, folks. Chris, can you hear me? Yes, sorry about that. My audio was dropping out there. David, can you hear me? David. David See, 25 years ago We all had to use transistor radios That's right

We should go back to smoke signals I don't know David, can you hear us? I don't think he can. I'm back, I can hear you now. You can hear us up. Okay, well... Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Okay, so I'm sitting here, I've been traveling across Canada and one of the things that's been coming up is I've ran into Americans who say we're the greatest in the world that hate Trump and vice versa on all different forms and fronts

and I'm like okay who can I bring on this show who can talk to people about Canada-U.S. relations I just read this morning, Carney says he's always ready to negotiate with the U.S. in a professional way. He says we're more than just being next to the United States. We're an energy superpower.

We're putting that into place. We've got one of the largest undeveloped resources of critical minerals and metals and all these wonderful things. When you're looking at the U.S. and the Canada, I don't know what word to insert. I'll let you all insert one. Your thoughts on what's going on right now

between Canada and the United States. I can jump in really quick because I've got people breathing down my neck on my phone. So from a taxpayer's perspective, tariffs are just trade taxes. It's all they are. They're import taxes. So if we have tariffs on U.S. stuff, that means Canadians have to pay more for stuff.

Last I checked, people can't afford to pay more for stuff. So trade taxes are dumb. We shouldn't have them. Second, taking off my taxpayers' federation hat, real quick here, I've been in the arena for like 30 years. One of the oldest tricks in the book, if you don't want to actually do your job and get a deal, is to distract people with emotionalism.

So quickly, the prime minister of this country is paid roughly, these are rough numbers, around $400,000 per year. Okay, cabinet ministers paid around $300,000 per year. Bureaucrats, again, $300,000 per year. If you're getting into the top echelons of like crown corporations and deputy ministers, the permanent government that you never see and never vote for, I'm talking about them clocking in at around half a million bucks a year. Now think of the embassies that we have in Washington, D.C. and in New York,

and all of the people that work at those places. Their job is to have a good relationship with our biggest trading partner, the United States. How big? $3 billion a day, a day two-way trade between the two countries. Their job is to get along with that country and sign a new deal. But here we are. What are we, Sean, a year and a half in, year and a half in, we don't have a deal. So I just wanted to say, if you want to hold people accountable, it is their job. You're paying so much in taxes and you're paying their wages. for them to fail at their jobs.

So the next time you see somebody dumping booze out on the street or, I don't know, renaming a lake or whatever saying, I don't like memes, I don't care. People should tune all of that nonsense out and zero in on the fact that we are paying these people to fail at their jobs. And lastly, before somebody says, oh, he's unreasonable, blah, blah, sure, you may not like his style. Okay, you may not be your Trump of tea. Gordian's lip. He may not be your cup of tea. Two things. One, he literally wrote a book. He literally wrote a book on how to deal with him. It's called The Art of the Deal. Chapter 1, he says, be unreasonable, act like a buffoon, make crazy demands, flip over the table, like renaming lakes and stuff, making jokes about 51st seat. Guys, we're literally still stuck on chapter one of the

playbook that he wrote for everybody to follow. And two, last I checked, I have not verified this, but Dr. Ian Lee, he's a professor at the Sprott School of Business and Carlton, super smart economist. He's so great. He's so great. He just heard him say that they, 19 other countries have inked trade deals with the Oval Office. But here we are. 22. Okay. This is it. Like, you're not mad enough folks and we can get as mad as we want to the person who happens to be in the Oval Office we can do jack about that nothing we can't control what he's doing we can control what our idiots are doing I think it was Sylvan I'm going to give you the credit even if it wasn't you then you talked about majority of Canadians are for counter tariffs unless it impacts them and then the poll came out saying exactly that wasn't my op-ed this week yeah yeah majority of Canadians back counter terrorists but support plummetes What I hate about Donos surveys is that they always ask whether or not Canadians are willing to make a sacrifice economically, but they're not specific in terms of are they willing to make a sacrifice personally? Yeah. Are they willing to lose their jobs?

Are they willing to pay more taxes? Are they willing to see their pension plan being impacted? This week was the first time I saw a survey asking these exact questions. On the one side, three quarters of Canadians support Carney's strategy, if you want to call it that way, I do not see a strategy. I do not understand it. But on the other hand, you're seeing the same amount of Canadians saying, you know what, I don't want, I'm not willing to pay. I'm not willing to make a sacrifice. Just deal with it.

And Chris's point about the art of the deal. I mean, you're super generous, Chris, saying that we're stuck stuck on chapter one. I actually think that most Canadians just looked at the cover and that's it. Yeah. It's literally right there, folks. Like, I don't care if you weren't a fan of the apprentice. Like, none of that matters, okay? What matters is, and I'm going to try to get through this without crying,

are those families, I'm thinking about them in southern Ontario, that are terrified that their auto jobs are going to be gone? Are those families that are in oil and gas or natural resources? Are those families who are in manufacturing who are sitting there, staring this down, wondering if they're going to lose their house? if they're going to be reliant on food banks. Like that's who matters here. And this is why I implore everybody.

I don't care if you vote red or orange or blue or whatever. Demand that our side does their job, pulls their socks up and gets a deal with our biggest trading partner. This can't be that hard. I mean, I get lots of calls from CEOs in the agri-food sector. That's my world, the agri-food sector. and a lot of people are voiceless, to your point, Chris. I mean, we see leaders of associations talk about possible impacts,

but they're not going to be the ones being impacted, and they're being a very objective about their analysis. And to be honest with you, they're always very politically careful. I mean, your association, you tell it like it is. Most associations, most associations can't do that. And so they're out there saying, well, we're concerned, but we're supportive of the government. But the voiceless out there are actually going to be the ones paying the price. And that's really something that Keynes need to know.

David, you'd, sorry, Chris, you can have a thought. Really quick. Going back, Pierre Pahliav wrote a great op-ed. It must be two years ago now. It was in the National Post. I'm paraphrasing him. But it's when he called out lobbyists. And it's when he basically called out these associations.

you're mentioning, Sylvain. I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said, why are you trying to suck up to the government to get some grip and grin picture with the cabinet minister? Oh, thank you so much. Are people really care about me having like a chicken sandwich with a cabinet minister? I can tell you distinctly, it's so funny, Sylvain.

With CTF? I remember even being told here in Alberta, oh, we'll let you meet with the minister. I said, I don't have time to go meet with some minister. do what we told me to do. Like literally, I don't care. Like, this is the point, and I'm saying this across party lines, people need to be more grassroots,

and they need to demand more of their politicians. We're the ones paying the bills, and I'm just praying that those families and those working people aren't getting the brunt of this. I'm just bracing myself for it. Sorry, Sean. Well, no, no, you don't have to apologize once again. Just that what I wanted to ask David,

and actually all of you, is, you know, I watched Pierre on one of the news networks down in the States, but I've also watched like the circus that is the Canadian, like whatever we're sending down there to talk to Americans about Canada and what's going on. And just like the team we've assembled, I don't know how you ever get a deal done with Donald Trump with that team there. I'm just throwing that out to you three brilliant people. I don't get it, but maybe I'm missing something.

Nope. We should go on a road trip. everybody dress up nice I'm barely kidding pack your nicest outfit get your homework done have a binder in front of you and work this out like I'll credit words do

Premier Daniel Smith I'm here in Alberta she did the right thing when Trump was first elected and was first talking about tariffs she flew right down there she went to Mara Lago she met with him directly she appealed to them on behalf of Albertans

all Albertans including those who didn't vote for her because she didn't want them to lose houses and she got a much reduced tariff on Alberta's oil and gas. Got a deal. Then she went a step further. She went and talked to his people. She went and talked to the people that Trump likes. She did an entire thing on a forum, on stage with Daily Wire saying, yeah, you know,

here we are. We're open for business. Let's not have trade tariffs. Let's not have a trade war. We have to make sure that people keep their jobs. Like, we are allies here. Let's have a deal. She did absolutely the right thing.

And the Eastern media, which is largely government funded, went, oh my God, can you believe that Daniel Smith is like talking to Ben Shapiro? It is so juvenile, you guys, so juvenile. Yeah, she went, she went beyond that, actually. I was at the inauguration, and there were a couple events where she was present. And she did a fantastic, and I have some friends that are in the administration. And she did a phenomenal job for Canada of making it very clear to everybody she spoke with. She had a very disciplined message that the United States, one of the things she was trying to defeat was there was an internal buzz that the U.S. had that Canada had a trade surplus with the U.S. And she was very careful to say, actually, if you take energy out of the picture, U.S. has a trade surplus with Canada.

And when you put energy in the picture, energy is extraordinary because it's part of your national security. It's also a cross-border continental piece where we send it down. You were fine it. You send finished product back up. So she did a great job of making sure that the entire cabinet had a very clear set of talking points around the Canadian trade picture and why Canada and the relation to the United States is a friend first. It's always been an awkward. And she also tied energy to security, which is something that this administration has done explicitly.

and something that our current strategy is not doing effectively. In fact, they're doing the opposite. Out of what I think is fragility and weakness created by 10 years of liberal rule, they're looking at what should be an opportunity, like a structural deal to expand NORAD and make sure that we finally, after two decades of not pulling our weight, do pull our weight, complete the F-35 contract, add to it. You can add Gripens on top if you want patrol planes. But nobody that's saying we should

get Gripins instead of the F-35. They're all saying that just out of anger in America under Donald Trump. And they're not saying with any understanding that they would put their child in a Gripin up against a Gen 5, Chinese or Russian jet. It's a flying coffin. And everybody knows. So our Air Force has said this is what we want. And yet the current strategy has been to be the only country in the world that follows China in talking retribution with none of the advantages China has in manufacturing, shipping, scale of economy, et cetera, that allows them to play that role. And so I see a series of mistakes being made across the board by not engaging with the Americans and understanding the way that they think and what they're trying to accomplish. And you see this, to go back to the point of how well Pierre

is doing on a relative basis, after watching Dominic LeBlanc, Melanie Joe Lee, in a particular, Christian Friedland, who I think is just a PR disaster for the country every time she talks on American TV, one because they just don't

like her at all. She's the one that paid the terrorists that murdered Sergeant Speer of the special forces. She's one that insured he got a $10.5 million payout.

She's also the one that froze everyone's bank accounts which horrifies the Americans is a civil rights issue and they debated that extensively as part of the number one thing. They call it proto-fascism down there. So she's emblematic of everything that's wrong in the American thing. She was,

she was there fumbling the first trade deal, which fortunately we had a great ambassador at the time David McDonotten that rescued it. But, you know, you've got people like her peer comes along and just does a fantastic job. And he's doing a very similar thing. He's repeating a lot of the same messages that Daniel Smith has given. And thankfully, you know, that's conveying to the Americans, that there's a country that they're negotiating with, not just a political party that's ideologically opposed to Donald Trump. When Christian Freeland was on, I think it was a CNN show two days ago, she spent the entire time saying you have a fundamentally,

you've got flawed democracy, you've got a democracy problem because you elected Donald Trump twice. And can you imagine American being on a Canadian show being like, you have a fundamental democracy problem because first you elected Justin Trudeau, and now you've elected Mark Carney. that you're the weakest democracy in the world. I mean, that is a starting point.

They might think that, right? But that is a starting point is not how you engage a country in a rational conversation around future trade deals. So I think in terms of the communication strategy, we need a lot more Pierre. And it would be super effective for Mark Carney

to say, in the next round, I'm going to go there with three of the largest economy premieres plus the leader of the opposition, Pierre Paulyev. We're going to have a Team Canada approach that's truly a Team Canada approach. And we're going to step back. They're going to have to get back to the table soon

because this country can't take the cosplay retributive tariff, toughness that we're trying to pull off right now. It's going to structurally weaken and potentially permanently destroy entire industries. David, I need to ask you, if you're Pierre-Paul-Yev and you get an invitation from a prime minister to negotiate in the U.S., would you go? Yeah, I would.

And I'll tell you why. I think... Do you think it would say yes? So let me answer that this way, because I think this is super important. I think that any time you're in politics, you have to wear three hats. I think the first hat you have to wear is your own personal conviction and passions. And so it would have to fit that. Second hat you have to wear is leader of a political party,

which has a policy agenda and a set of policy priorities that are totally at odds in many ways with what the liberals want. So he's got to lead the conservative. I would like to see him be even more forceful about some core policy differences with the liberals. I think the trans issue for one, which is contentious, but I think you should come up very strongly. I think there's a bunch of things that most Canadians think that the liberal party doesn't think that conservatives typically think and he can be stronger. But that's the second hat he has to wear leader of the conservative party, which means he has to have the fight. And I think he does a good job of that. The third, the third, the The third hat he has to wear is the all the country hat.

One day when he's elected prime minister, hopefully, you know, we will have him need to serve the whole country, including liberals and NDP peers, including people from provinces that didn't vote for him or a conservative. And he's got to wear that hat. And I think that he'll do a good job of doing it. I think what you saw the last two days is he's done a terrific job of doing it. So under, you know, I think it's got to pass those three sort of screen. So, Mauna, I think your question is well taken, but I think that I don't think he becomes a lapdog of the prime minister if he does something on behalf of the country from a place of

conviction. I think what he showed in the last two days is that he's one of the most articulate, sensible voices. I think the response that he gave on Squawk Box when Joe Kernan said, you know, you clearly disagree with Carney, you lost the election even though you're had by 26 points because Trump intervened with the 51st state and governor stuff. how do you feel about that? You have these deep differences with this guy. And he said, I'm not going to talk about the prime minister in a negative way in a foreign country. Clean, clear, sharp. And then he went on to do the best job way better than Dominic Leblanc, way better than the incoherence of Melanie Jolie or the fiscal illiteracy of Friedland to explain why. And this is, the people who watch Squawk Box aren't Republicans. It's everybody in business are listening to really rational, reasons why it makes sense for us, A, to get back to a table, B, why these grievances cut both

ways, and C, kind of cut through the noise in a way that was coherent. And it works because he is the leader of the opposition and not Mark Carney. And because he's aligned with more of a Republican mindset, the Republicans are in charge. Most of the states, the House, the Senate, and the White House. So I think, long answer, but I think if you buy any of those premises, that, yeah, there's a condition under which and a premise under which he could do a very effective job that would be great for him, great for the party, great for the country. And it would require some sort of humility of the ability to work with Mark Carney. I think it's very unlikely that Mark Carney would do this. But what he showed me is he's light years ahead of the current team in terms of

articulating the Canadian story to a skeptical, informed bipartisan U.S. audience. there's one politician that actually has impressed me for a few years now being a cosma believer i'm i'm a believer in cosma it's president claudia shanban from mexico she she is a quasi-communist right and she's been insulted so many times by president Trump. The Gulf of Mexico, the wall. I mean, I can go on and on and on. And she's just been so stoic and objective.

And they're on their verge of making a deal. Their framework's done. They're just ready to ink the deal. And so that's the one thing that concerns me the most. So we can talk about the midterms. We can talk about, you know, waiting and playing the long game, whatever that is. my concern right now is that we actually we're on the verge of seeing a bilateral deal

in North America excluding Canada. If that happens, what's next for us? Well, ours will be a bilateral deal that happens whenever the Americans feel like it. We can't do that. Can I just chime in here, Sean? I worked on the hill like I was mentioning off the top. I worked on the hill way back in the early 2000s.

I was there when 9-11 happened. And I will say that that was a liberal government. It was a majority liberal government led by former Prime Minister Jean Crechen. And yeah, of course, people have partisan hats and they do things like that. But the level of skill that was within some of that cabinet, not all, was much more impressive than it is now. John Manley was the deputy prime minister. He currently works last I checked in trade and manufacturing and stuff if he isn't retired. Dan McTagg, who we all know and love, Canadians for Affordable Energy,

he was a very prominent member of parliament there. One of those kind of silent backroom worker guys, similar to the conservative Scott Reed, there are two of them. They work in the background and they get so much accomplished. And even at the time finance minister Paul Martin, he saw the debt clock, which we roll around on a truck nowadays, but at the time, It was at the Vancouver Board of Trade. It was baked into the side of the building.

And he said it kept him up at night. He actually pointed at it and he said, that damn clock. Like, I can't shake this. And he balanced the budget. These are liberals, okay? They weren't playing dumb games of, you hurt my feelings and let's do distraction all over the place in order to score really cheap political points

while sacrificing jobs and costs and economy and you name it, relationship. that'll be wounded for years. That wasn't going on. And what I'm seeing now is a lack of accountability within the government, regardless of, I don't care that it's the liberals. The fact is they are the liberals

and they're failing at their job. The lack of accountability in reaching for cheap political points and I'll call Doug Ford out on this too, the Ontario Premier. He needs to smarten up. It's similar to eating a bowl of sugary cereal every single morning for six months and then wondering,

while all of a sudden you feel terrible. Okay. It gives us bad policy. It gives us bad politics. And so this is why, again, I just need to do it. Chris, Chris, sorry, but they don't have to be accountable. I know, because they're just getting points. I know.

The prime minister actually released a 15-minute video on Monday, telling all of us that we'll feel the pain, doesn't answer to any media that day, goes away to Europe, doesn't recall Parliament, while he's considering this relationship as a war. Crazy. Yeah. So quickly. There's no accountability. We need recall legislation, period, at the federal level.

We have it here in Alberta. We can fire any MLA, any city councilor, any mayor, any school board trustee, my friends. We have the ability to fire these people between elections. And before you tell me that it didn't work to recall Calgary Minister Jody Gondek. It didn't work to recall Jody Gondack, but carry on. It works the next time though, Sean. So when she went into that next general election as a candidate, she was the first mayoral candidate in more than 40 years to fail to get reelected.

I can't help but think that it was the organizational ground game that was happening during that recall campaign that ultimately took her out of power. And one last thing, just a programming note, I'm pretty sure, David, that in 2017, that's when Cotter got his payout, Bill Morneau was finance minister at the time. So just wanted to readjust that. Yeah, no, the payout was actually a safety committee that had three people on it. Okay. And the decision was made. Oh, and she was on it.

She was on the three person safety committee. There was a very close and contentious. All of this is sort of hidden and some of it is second order. But I actually wrote an op-ed exactly on this with all of the sourcing. Okay. And when that was released, it was called our soft on terror deputy prime minister. And what had happened, just his background on that was I had just been overseas and I came back. And the first thing I saw was security guys arresting that Rebel News dude with the hat.

It was kind of asking her questions about why we haven't named the IRGC a terror group. And I was intrigued. Because that was something I had said to a lot of people. And I knew the Americans were like wondering what was going on. And she not only walked away and ignored the question. but this is the same person that had invoked terror laws, FinTrack terror laws illegally against the Freedom Convoy and used the terror financing that she'd refused to use for the RGC

and numerous other terrorist groups operating within Montreal and Toronto, where the FBI were tracking them, had then deployed it expressly to use against truckers and other Canadian citizens illegally for their dissent on COVID against rules which were then dropped, right? So to me it was extraordinary. So I dug into, well, wait a second, how is she connected to Cotter? And what I found out was actually she's the only one still in government that was the one that had misbreed, I believe misbriefed. And after the article broke, after I wrote the op-ed, the National Post went through, they triple-checked every one of my sources, right?

Triple-checked. Then they published it. And then after that, Trudeau pulled her off the floor of the House of Commons. and I know from a friend that was engaged at the time that he went into the floor for two and a half weeks, prepared to have to answer the Omar Cotter question. And the reason for that is if you dig down, there was no judicial requirement to do what they did. Wow. None.

She is 100% accountable for that. So people have told me five or six different things being like you're being really mean to her. I think she was just a no way that this was an absolute extrajudicial decision made for the, I believe made for the purposes of trying to punch the Americans in the nose on Guantanamo because people forget this, but at the time that was something that made Canada feel kind of morally superior. We didn't have a Guantanamo, right? We hadn't tortured people overseas, et cetera.

Second thing was they wanted to make a big deal over the fact that even the worst case scenario deserved to have their Canadian citizenship protected, even if it was against an allied nation, even if it was in spite of these behaviors. And when you double click on that, you find out his whole family should never been in Canada. It was a total lie. He shouldn't have been in Canada. And he had the, he and his family had actively tried to hunt and kill Canadian soldiers. You know, God, I mean, the whole situation is just extraordinarily bad. She is 100% responsible for it. And then responsible for turning around and using laws against Canadian citizens. So, yeah, I'll take it under

advisement. But no, she was right in the thick of it. I've kept you all here way too long, because I can see Chris Sims checking things. I can see everybody's looking at things. And I have five minutes of your time. And then I'll let you out of here. Because I'm just curious. I have this excellent group of people here. And next week is supposed to be this, I don't know, investment summit. And we got five minutes just to just anybody know what I'm talking about?

With the 160 projects? You're going to be there. Okay. So brilliant people. When I look at this, if you take liberal government, you take Kearnie out of it. And I just look at it. I look at it and I go, this actually sounds like a pretty good idea. So this is the way to read.

Next week, summit aims to attract one trillion. and an international investment to Canada floating. And then it lists a bunch of the possible projects, a floating LNG terminal on BC's coast, high speed rail between Amnithyn, Calgary, pipeline from Alberta, the Pacific Ocean. And then there's just like there's a whole bunch of other things there. But then it does go on to say like are any of them feasible?

Is First Nations going to get in the way of it? Can they possibly get through all the red tape? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Your three, you're both going to, I think, Sylvan, you said you're going to be there too. Like from the food side of things, Are you like, this is great or I don't know, what do you three think of this? I thought it was a great idea.

I mean, we need capital investments in Canada. And so that's one way to do it. Over 160 different projects. I mean, I think when you go through the list, there's just nothing that is ag focus. That's my disappointment there. But there's a lot of projects focusing on energy, infrastructure. like the Churchill, Port of Churchill to me is incredibly important for ag, developing the North and other markets. I think so there's some merit there. Whether or not they'll be delivering is another question.

But I'm going to be looking for some positive signals coming from the investment community because right now we need more support. We did some work with MNP. We're releasing our third report with MNP. I think in October comparing Canada with other G20 countries. And when it comes to capital investments, private sector capital investments were dead last. The government is doing the heavy lifting, but that comes with taxes. So we need the private sector to do some of that work. If I may, just on Churchill, my conversations in Manitoba. It took me 10 days.

And I was like Port of Churchill. like this makes, and way too much sense. And then I talked to Ken Drysdale, who has done projects way up north, all the things, permafrost, because all these problems kept coming up in the conversations. And he said, Porter Churchill isn't the place to go.

It's Port Nelson because it's just better for the vessels they have today. So when I see Port of Churchill, I go, I'm for the idea of all these things being put forth. And then I hear Churchill and I go, a moron from Lloydminster, Alberta, with a microphone, going across the country, spent 10 days in a province,

and realized pretty darn quickly that Porta Churchill probably isn't the spot. It's probably Port Nelson. I could be wrong on that. That's when I read through it. I'm like, I saw the Churchill thing. And I'm like, it's good that they're looking there. Hopefully they find what I found. They could give me a call.

I'd take my binder and I'd walk over and I'd introduce them a whole bunch of people. I mean, the bottom line, infrastructure is a huge problem. Sure. Yes. I agree. I agree. David. When I was in Saskatchewan,

we worked on the Gateway and Corridor initiative. connecting Winnipeg to Prince George and Vancouver. And that was an incredible initiative. We need more. The East was blessed with the St. Lawrence Seaway. We need to recreate that for the north and the west. David, your thoughts? Look, it's three thoughts.

One, it's incredible and it's great. And that's what Canada should do a lot of. We've got a great story to tell. Second thought is the government has got to really start to work to get out of the way. this sort of dear leader, you know, prime minister walking around needing to give his special benediction on 90% of what's in the major projects office shouldn't require an additional bureaucracy to try and beat the current bureaucracy. They should cut the red tape of both and just allow private companies to do things. If I hear another liberal commentator talk about how important it was that they built TMX, after destroying the private sector capacity to build it without taxpayer dollars, then spend twice as long and three times more money to build the identical thing that an independent company would have built without relying on the taxpayer at all.

And they want to do a victory lap on that and pretend that that's some sign that they're backing the energy infrastructure industry. It's just embarrassing. But there's this temptation to keep putting government at the center of everything in the Canadian economy. And it's terrible. They keep making mistakes. Third point I'd make is when you have the, I've invited a few people and I know some of the people that are going to be there from the internet. national capital market side for my time setting up and running in Best Alberta, which did exactly this stuff on a full-time basis overseas. And we copied that whole model from the Irish and the Israelis who had, you know, subscale economies but needed to attract really smart, really deep, capital-intensive.

Large pools of capital that could go into these markets and we're doing the right thing with this. The people that we're inviting can figure out whether Churchill Falls makes sense. or not on the back of a napkin in about 38 seconds. So when you invite really smart global capital that are doing projects in 30 countries and they're comparing things, one of the best things that's going to come out of this is the prime minister and every minister is going to hear that Canada has rules and taxes that make us impossible to invest capital in and get it past an investment committee in New York or London or Paris or Zurich or Milan or Tokyo.

message. Because the more that you put stuff in front of people that know what they're doing, the more they're going to tell you instantly, we could make high-speed rail happen. In fact, if we're Al-Stem or we're out of Germany or we're undi out of Korea, we can tell you how much it'll cost per kilometer. But if you tell us that we need to spend six years negotiating with five or six First Nations groups to make it plausible, we're just going to walk away from the table and say you to figure yourselves out and let us know when you're licensed to do it. and then we can contribute and then we'll put capital in. So one of the great things for me is this is a great way

it is a forcing mechanism for people that live in the Ottawa bubble to encounter people that don't even know what Ottawa is and where to find it on the map and have them in 10 minutes say, we don't know, I don't know who you are or what you're putting out here, but it doesn't work anywhere else.

We've invested in 30 countries. I won't even take this to our investment committee yet, right? And this is what happened in Alberta by the way. We got the Dow deal done after eight or nine trips to Texas. And every trip was them saying, this makes no sense. Why do you do that? This tax rate's insane.

Why is it so high? And the more than a pre, and I took Jason, the more than a premier hears directly from the CEO of one of the world's largest, most sophisticated companies, that he would love to put $13 billion into your economy. But this makes no sense. The easier it is to fast, and we did,

fast track legislation that said, we just have to keep up with the five states, these guys are looking at. We're not trying to be better than that. We'll be better than them on some things, but on baseline things, we need to grow up. So one of the best things that could come out of this week

is a nice cold shower to everybody that's been doing this state market failure capitalism for the last 10 years, just realizing, do you really want to invite Mubadala from Abu Dhabi to come kick the tires on your big infrastructure projects? Because I tell you this, I've been spending time in Abu Dhabi,

those guys aren't a warm bath. they will kick your ass and the tires if they see something that doesn't work and they'll just walk away and not write a check if it does work they can write checks for several billion dollars and not even blink and so i love this fact that canada is saying okay it's not just the prime minister flying somewhere and you know marketing it's you bring these guys in you let them meet the proponents and you let them kick the tires then we'll see how how well is can i do i guarantee you there's a reason we're 38th out of 38 oecd countries and productivity and business investment And it's because the people that are currently in government have decided they could get away by depending entirely on the United States for our economy for two decades.

They could get away with these feel good luxury beliefs around the environment that did nothing for the planet, but made liberal party members in Montreal and Toronto feel good about themselves. And when that confronts real global capital, it evaporates fast. And so I'm excited for this. I think it's great for the country. Chris Sims, I gave you the first word. I'll give you the final word. How's that? Thank you.

Great points all around, gentlemen. And good point, David, that this will, it's kind of flushing them out of the bushes, right? Like if you're hunting with the dog and the dog goes in the reeds and it chases the ducks out, that's what's going to happen here. So great point. That's a really good Alberta analogy. I have a Labrador retriever and, you know, firearm. And some innocent ducks nearby that need to be. Yeah, it's part of her nature.

It's all right. It's too many ducks. Whatever. Don't come out. me. I like ducks. Quiet. All right. I'm just picturing the comments. A few things. You're totally right. I'm really glad this is going to flush them out of the bushes. But the question then is, do we actually get rid of our she-lobs web of red tape? Or do we just say, they're being mean to us, elbows up, and then stop talking about it? And meanwhile... And keep being 38th out of 38 in the OECD?

I mean, how long do we want to be the losers on the captain? I mean, if we're in an HL team, people would be desperately trying to sell us to somewhere else. Yes. We got to end this decade long economic. For some reason, Gary Bettman kept trying to keep Phoenix in Phoenix, you know. It's just, we'll give them a bit more time and a bit more money. We'll make them play out of a Division I hockey rink. It would be great.

Then we end up in Utah. In Utah. I went to Utah. Our economy cannot survive. We cannot have natural resource industries. We cannot have capital investment. We cannot have jobs. People can't afford houses based on, I don't know,

Michael Myers videos that he does with the Prime Minister occasionally. Or Brian Adams flying back in here from England to do some concerts. Like, no. No, everyone that lives overseas. The Prime Minister's wife has to fly in. So so indicative, right? And so from a taxpayers' perspective, if I take a look at what's happening at that summit, three things.

one, it sounds good. It sounds like you're getting smart people in the room. And if both David and Sylvain know smart people who are going, that actually gives me a little bit of hope. That's good. Second, why is some of this stuff costing so much? I just finished speaking with Tristan Hopper. And he says that they give you the example,

the port of Churchill thing, they were estimating $40 billion with a B to improve a port. And Tristan said that the tunnel, the underwater tunnel, that goes from the UK to France under the ocean that it in today's dollars for inflation

cost the equivalent of around I think he said 15 billion 40 billion to improve one port in northern Canada versus 15 billion for an entire like highway tunnel under the ocean like why are these prices so inflated and lastly

beware this being simply a dinner bell being rung for corporate welfare. Like the idea of crony capitalists, not real capitalists, showing up in order to sell us a pocketful of beans, a taxpayer's expense, and we're going to make, you know, solar and wind be major producers of electricity and it's going to make everybody money. We shouldn't be giving a nickel of corporate welfare into this plan. If they truly cut all that red tape, knock off all that nonsense, it's been strangling our stuff and our development and our capital investment.

and our capital investments, that would be a miracle. I'd be so happy. Sylvann, David, Chris. Thanks for doing this. Sylvan, your face got stuck in a funny spot. Regardless, I just said, Chris, I was talking about corporate welfare. We need a show on how much money is wasted on university campuses across the country. I think we need to do that.

Yeah. Let's do it. We'll bring in our generation screwed youth group. And you can talk about that. I like this group therapy thing. It's good. I feel better. It's funny. I need to plan like an eight-hour show and just be like, listen, you're coming on it this time. I don't know when you're getting off.

You're going to enjoy it. It's going to feel like therapy as Sylvain said. So, Sylvain can sort out like what we should eat through the course of the show. Yes, that's right. Get some proper Canadian sponsors. Get a good ranch, a couple steaks. I'll get food delivered to you guys. Perfect. Perfect.

Thank you all for doing this and hopping on and staying for extra time. I did not see this roundtable going as long as it did. But I've been pleasantly surprised or happily enjoying the conversation. I don't know. Regardless, thanks again, guys. Sylvand, great to see you again. And Chris, David, always a pleasure to have you on. Great.

See you. See you. Bye-bye. Okay, folks. That's mashup 224 in the books. No twos, but we muddled our way through, didn't we? feel like you can't be go wrong with with all the guests that have come on today. So wherever you're at, happy Friday.

I'm in this weird place of Newfoundland. Great place. I'm kidding. But it's weird because it's half an hour ahead of everywhere, right? I'm like, strange. No, regardless. Here's some happy news, okay? I think it's happy.

Listening to it is maybe not so happy, but it's getting airtime. And I think that's great. If you haven't tuned in this show and you've been tuning in somewhere else, namely the Allison Inquiry, it's been going pretty much all week. and I was listening to Shannon Holmes. You know, I'm watching all the guests on there. I'm like, oh, I've interviewed that person. I've interviewed that person.

I've interviewed, you know, Detective Helen Grus, for instance, along the road trip. But I'm like going through all that, you know, Dan Hartman, Dr. Gary Davis and Rodney Palmer, Detective Helen Grus, Ken Drysdale, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Charles Harp, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Denny Rencore, Michelle Wharton, Carrie Lynn Sakamoto. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, right? if you've tuned into that, good on you. If you haven't, you should. If you got somebody who doesn't want to hear anything,

just have them tune in like that much. Man, and I was listening, like I said, I was listening to Shannon Holmes this morning about the pain in her back and then the stabbing in the back and the video they showed her. I was just like, man, uncomfortable stuff,

but I'm happy that it is getting airtime that the Canadian Dean Allison, MP Dean Allison, is, you know, tabling that. So I feel like that's the happiness of the week. I could probably go on about a bunch of other things. I think that one deserves it. And, yeah, I hope you all have a great week.

I'm out from Newfoundland next week on Friday. I think I'm in Nova Scotia, as long as weather, you know, allows for it. But regardless, thanks for doing this to all my guests. Thanks for being here. And we'll catch up to you next week, folks. Tell me whether I'm wrong or right. East or west up or down side to side. I sit to stand and fall to fly.

I've 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. Welcome to the mashup.