Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #45 - Tim McMillan

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

A former Canadian politician, he represented the district of Lloydminster as a member of the Saskatchewan Party in 2007 & 2011. We discuss his journey into politics and what he thought of his experience.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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He's a former Canadian politician. He was elected as a SaaS Party MLA in the riding of Lloyd Minster in both 2007 and the 2011 elections. He was the president and CEO, of the Canadian Association of Petroleum producers for seven years. I'm talking about Tim McMillan. So buckle up. Here we go.

All right. It is September 10th, 2021. I'm joined by Mr. Tim McMillan. So first off, thanks for Drummond. I'm looking forward to it. Now, I was just joking with you. Normally, what we start off with is your first memory. And I'm not going to change the format because you're younger than everyone.

everybody. But I mean, back in the 70s, you know, normally we go back to the 40s, the 50s. What is your first memory of the 70s that you can remember? Hmm. You know, I think it's just being a kid and we did a cross Canada tour as a family in a old school bus. And I can remember just glimpses of things that we did on that trip. I think it was four or five at the time. get this straight. Your family took across Canada school trip in a bus? Dad got an old school bus and then gutted it and built some beds in it. And yeah, we just loaded up. And then I think we got to P.E.I. and back. And I think no one believed that he'd get to get to Saskatoon and he got all the way out through Quebec. What, what, you know, that's a memory, man. that's the one way to start this thing off.

When you look back at that, I mean, you're young. I mean, does anything stick with you from that? You know, I have glimpses of different things. And I try and remember, like, do I remember the event or do I remember the story of the event? I would have been four or five. But we did a lot of that kind of stuff growing up. We'd go up to the Yukon for summer vacations. And, you know, I think just that sense of adventure was something that was built in early.

and our family just kind of kept doing it. Yeah, that's fair. I'm curious, you know, I don't want to hop to politics too quick because a sense of adventure in politics kind of go hand in hand, and you have a strong record in the political world. And as we sit here as we talk right now, people won't hear this for who knows how long. But as we sit right now, the debates just happened last night.

I'm sure you were watching. I'm sure lots of Canada was watching. From a young age, is that something, you know, is that something you wanted to do? Like, how does that come to pass? Was that the sense of adventure you were after? Or how to going into that world, how does that come to fruition? I certainly always had an interest in politics and what was happening in the media. You know, as a kid, I can remember following it fairly close.

And I'd always know the names of all the premiers of all the provinces. not really thinking that I would necessarily run, but it wasn't until really early 30s and was married and we were living on the farm and we'd had a long string of NDP governments that didn't sit very well with me. And yeah, just a few things happened all at the same time that we said, let's go for it. Me and my wife, but obviously you don't get into this sort of thing

without it being a family decision. And I'd gotten a flyer from someone that was running for the Saskatchewan Party candidacy. And I was a member of the party, and I looked at it, and I actually threw it away because it wasn't a person I was going to support. And then later on that night,

I went back to the garbage, and I went through the garbage, and I pulled it back out, and I started to really think, like, holy cow, this is actually going on. So went and talked to my wife and said, hey, you know, this may be crazy,

but maybe this would be the right thing for our family to do right now. And Saskatchewan needs a change and I think we should be part of it. And she could have poured cold water on it. She didn't. And yeah, that just started the process that ended up in the election

and SAS Party winning. Do you have kids at that time? We had one. And she was just, she wasn't even walking when we first decided to run. I, as we all know right now, the political landscape is concerning. I'll say that word. Yep. And I'm a guy with three young kids.

So, you know, when it comes to politics, I find that interesting because to have a young family and to enter into that realm. Must have been high opening, hard. Probably there's a list of words there, Tim, that you can just expand upon. I think naive might have been the primary word. And, you know, you have a young family, and it was really the start of my career. I had some heavy equipment. I had some cattle. And it's either like we continue down this path or you do something totally different.

And if it had been five years later, you're probably at a point where you're so far into your business that you can't back up and you wouldn't take the chance. But it was still early enough that we had a window and went for it. And we regret getting into politics? No. It was more rewarding than I would have ever expected. And from the outside, you don't really know what it's going to be like. and you see a lot of political careers that end badly. But really from when we first got into it,

you get to know your community so well. We grew up halfway between Lashburn and Hillmont and went to school in Lashburn, and Lashburn was my hometown. But serving as the MLA, man, getting to know Hillmond and Paradise Hill and Piersland in a way that's, you know, far deeper than I ever would have was just terrific. And, you know, I spent seven years in politics.

I got to serve in some cabinet positions, which were fascinating. I learned so much. And, yeah, I got to be part of the government at a time that, to me, seems like a pretty formative period in Saskatchewan's history where, you know, we'd really caught our stride with oil and gas. The potash industry was taking off. People were moving back. We surpassed the million people.

people population mark our economy was leading the country for a decade so it was it was just a really interesting time to have the opportunity to be part of the government when you say you got to know the area better like there's there's no way to get thrust in that position you always think you know your area and then you become the representative and i can imagine the phone calls emails etc that went on with that but what did you learn about our area that maybe you just had no clue about before. You know, I think a lot of it was getting to know how communities work. Like, you get to know who can move the needle in a community.

If something's getting organized, who's the driving force? And there are just some powerful people that are leaders in communities. One of the biggest learnings I had was shortly after the 07 election, Bruce Power started looking at putting a nuclear power plant in Western Canada. And they quickly resolved that putting it on the border would be a good idea. That way they could feed into both Alberta and Saskatchewan that have slightly different electrical grids. And then they picked a spot that they were interested in near Lloyd Minster. and I was naive as to what I thought, you know, how sensitive nuclear power was. I thought that that was an issue from the 70s and everybody was largely supportive of it.

That was not the case. And it became an extremely public debate and people that were very supportive of our party and me as MLA had some very big concerns. and it was very stressful and tense, but even people at very different issues were respectful, constructive. I got to know people that were on the other side of that issue very well and became very good friends of mine for years to come. Ultimately, they didn't go forward with it. Our government made a decision not to pursue it either, and we moved on,

but that was a real accelerated learning curve as being the MLA for Lloyd Minster. Can we chat just for a second because we're in, well, we're in the climate we're at. You said something there that I really like. You got to know people on the other side of an issue and they became some of your best friend. How, how, how easier, difficult was that to talk to the other side? Because right now where we sit, Tim, this is the weirdest world I've ever been a part of. And I've not been here long enough to say that probably. but I can't talk to anyone who's been alive that has seen anything as strange as what we're going through.

No, and it doesn't seem like that long ago. That was 2008. So 13 years ago is all it was. But social media has driven people to the polls. I remember when I was door knocking in 2007, you'd get a lot of apathy and people saying, you know, I don't vote. All the parties are largely the same. And at that point, everybody was congregated in the middle. where in the last eight years, social media are driving, people aren't talking to each other,

they're talking to people that think like themselves. And today, you rarely make the mistake that the different political parties are aligned on very many issues. And I would say that the specifics of the nuclear debate, a lot of them were very supportive of the Saskatchewan party. So I may not have known them, but my expectation is, you know, their free enterprise in general, hardworking, want small governments, things that we would agree on 95% of, but on this one issue, they were very concerned. And, you know, there'd be groups coming to meet with me,

and we'd be going together to Regina to talk to the minister responsible. And there was just a pile of work to figure out what we were going to do as a government and to do it in a way that was respectful of the community that that was trying to figure out if it was a good fit or not and ultimately it wasn't you know i it's interesting to talk to a former politician in the the climate we're in everything that's going on everything is being said and social media is a big one right like um i assume you had your detractors i've read a lot of things on you where you were, you know, the next Brad Wall at the time, that you were the next big thing. But there was also, I assume, some people that thought you stunk and you, you know,

and everything else. I wonder, do you sit back right now and go like, thank goodness. I'm not in politics because like, no matter what I did, I don't come out smelling rosy right now. Like, it is, it is a wild time right now. Yeah. it was you know there were detractors at the time and there were some some issues that that flared up there was some negotiations with some of the unions that that had some rocky moments and I can remember door knocking before the 2000 election campaign and and you'd go to 90% of the doors which were

pretty solid and you'd go to 10% that that weren't and it never really, it didn't bug me. In fact, I thought that that type of political debate was pretty positive. And after a night of door knocking, you go out and have a beer and you tell stories about the people you met and you meet people with all sorts of views. Today in politics, I think I would still be passionate about it. If you're in it, because you believe in something and you believe in small government and just basic freedoms. Those are worth fighting for. And even though the game is very different today than maybe it was just 13 years ago,

it's maybe even more important. The inability for people to express their views without getting, you know, cancel culture on media. God, there's battles that are as important to fight about today as anything that we had 12 years ago. I'm curious then. In all your time in politics, you mentioned the nuclear, and I remember that because dad was dead. opposed to it, as I'm sure a lot of people would.

Is that the moment that sticks out as a resounding, like you could feel the population say no? Or is there another example you have where you could feel the population say yes or no? It doesn't matter the answer. Just where you could feel the people go, we agree with this or we really don't agree with this? Yeah. You know, that was a very divisive issue.

and one where people that were against it were very vocal. I'd have people quietly say to me like, you know, no, we're good. We think this could be a great opportunity, but it wasn't very loud. And there was a moment where I think we as a government realized that even if you could win a ballot question on this and get 51% of the vote, it wasn't like it. It wasn't, we were never going to get a consensus that was positive. It was always going to be divisive, even if you had 50 plus one. I would say another one, maybe the most defining issue for us was when BHP tried to buy potash corporation. And it became a national debate about whether our Canadian champions were being bought up by multinationals that had different interests.

And we should protect some of our champions. Man, the number of people. that I would never have expected to care about that that would come up to me. One of our Hutterite colonies, you know, I didn't know if they followed the potash industry at all, but at a bull sale, one of them came up and great guy. I've known him now really got to know him during the political career. He came out to me and he was passionate about the decision that we had made to defend Potash Corp as a Canadian company.

So that one would be where I saw a huge swell of interest. Okay, now a personal question because I've been thinking about this. Bradwall is one that always comes to mind. And I've never been able to sit down with Bradwell. But I get to sit down with the guy who was supposed to replace Bradwell. So you got to take this with a grain of salt. But I'm really curious. You come off as a guy level-headed, everything smooth.

You look apart. why did you leave politics? Why did you decide all I ever hear, and to back this up, all I ever hear, Tim, is that it's money, you can't deal with the people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I hear from you is I go, it sounds like you really enjoyed it. Sounds like you kind of hit a bit of your calling.

I've looked in what politicians make. It's not like it's peanuts. It's not like it's, you know, it's not like it's, well, I don't know, we can go down the list of jobs that don't make that much, but I mean, it's not like it's peanuts. So what turned, after seven years, you're on a track to possibly go on to good, great things. Why did you step away? So I really enjoyed the politics.

I enjoyed being the MLA for Lloyd Minster. If the opportunity at Cap didn't come up, I would happily still be every four years likely asking to re-up my contract in that career. But before I got into politics, I was in oil and gas. I had some heavy equipment in the oil field. Our family has been agriculture or oil and gas. And really from as soon as I got into politics, I expressed my interest in being part of the energy file. And Premier Wall fairly quickly allowed me to chair the Energy Committee, the multi-party energy committee. then I got into cabinet and served as Crown Corporation's minister for a couple of years.

But then I got the energy portfolio, energy and mines, and I loved it. As I said earlier, the Baccon had really been going on at that point. Oil and Gas in Saskatchewan was such an important part of Canada's oil and gas, that it was my dream job and I got it almost right off the bat, served in it for a couple of years. And then Brad asked me to take on the rural health file, which is an incredibly important file, but it certainly wasn't where my passion was.

And I would have served happily in that role for however long the Premier asked me to do it. But Cap, at the same time, called me out of the blue and said, hey, we're doing a search, and we're looking for a new president. And I, you know, kind of like, when I threw the paper away, I had to chew on it for a while, but the idea of being able to do

oil and gas policy and advocacy all the time, 100% of the time, was pretty attractive. And it was at a time where we're fighting to get Northern Gateway. We were fighting to get energy east. We were fighting to get LNG facilities. Our opponents were extremely well-funded. And I just thought it was a challenge that I would love to take on. and something that I thought would be, you know, important for Canada. And it's now been seven years and there's been a lot of challenging days on the energy file

and we've lost some of those fights. But I don't know, it was a tough decision to leave politics. But I think it was the energy issues that I was more passionate about maybe than some of the other issues that we were working on at the time in, in politics. That's a pretty good answer, actually. I always am curious, right? Like, of why people that love politics straight away, but you're talking about it immensely that you're following your passion.

We're following where your interests lie. And more people honestly should do that. If they got interests or passions, that's where the best comes out is when you follow what you love. So I can completely actually understand where you're at. I'm wondering under Brad Wall, because I think in Saskatchewan, lots of people love Brad Wall. Actually, I know that for a fact. You got to work, maybe not side by side with him, but certainly got to experience some of his leadership. What did Brad Wall teach him?

He's a once-in-a-generation type of leader. And no, I learned a pile from him. In fact, you know, you'll watch how he speaks. He is incredibly articulate and you try and pick up different pieces, his ability to take a strong stand, even if it's unpopular, and defend it. And he's not always right or he doesn't always win the day, but he isn't shy to take something on if he thinks it's right. And he built a team where, you know, you watch, you know, some political parties struggle with caucuses and stuff, just the way Brad, the expectations he had of his team were high,

but the way he empowered all of his teams, whether you're a cabinet minister or not, you were contributing and you were part of the bigger machine. So the unity of the group, kind of I played on a lot of sports teams. And what Brad did for our political team was very, very, similar to some of the best sports teams I ever played on. And that's why I don't understand why he left politics, because I hear that story over and over and over again. And isn't that what we want out of our leaders?

I think it is. Right? Like you say he would defend a position he believed was right. And even if he wasn't right, he still defended it. But there's no way to be like ever perfect. Like that doesn't happen in the world. There's nobody who's perfect. we can go back to Jesus.

Sure, we'll go back that far. But right now, the world is constantly evolving very, very, very, very fast. When I hear those words, I just go, like, that's what I want out of a leader. That's what I want out of a team, right? He assembles a team around him that are these people that, like, are pushing the ball for it. Like, that sounds fantastic. Yeah. No, no, carry on.

Yeah. And, you know, some of the team that supported all of us were people that Brad had met in university. One, yeah, and, you know, others had just come to it, had got elected. I had never met Bradwell in my life until I had won the nomination to represent Lloyd Minster. And, you know, he worked very hard to bring people along. But why would he leave? You know, I let Brad speak for himself. I think he gave a lot of reasons, but Brad gave, I don't know how many years of his life to politics and served over a decade as premier.

He carried a lot of water and, you know, I think he could continue to get elected as long as he wanted to put his name on the ballot to be premier. But, you know, he certainly is one of the longer serving premiers in Saskatchewan history. And maybe the reason I think about it so much is the times we're in, you want the best. best. I don't want mediocre. I want the best. And I'm not knocking Scott Moe. I don't mean that. I just mean I want the best. They had the leadership debate last night. And I watched it and I just went, Brad Wallace would be here, right? Like, that's my biased, very biased opinion from being an original Saskatchewan boy who watched Brad Wall growing up, right? Like, you can chuckle. We can all chuckle about it, but that's where I sit on the matter. He was very, very good. And he still continues

to be. I see him on debates and everything else. It's interesting to hear you talk about him in the way you do. And it confirms a lot of things you hear. Now, in your occupation now as the president, you've had, while you've had some, I think of them as fun times, because, you know, times where things are happening, right? Things are happening. And whether they're good or bad, there's something going on all the time. What have you learned from switching from politics to your current position and maybe just you can go wherever you like that, Tim? Yeah.

I think the first thing I learned is that timing is extremely important. No sooner had I got to cap, then about three weeks later, the price of oil dropped under $90 a barrel. And a week later, under 80, then 70, 60. all the way down to $26 a barrel within a couple months of me showing up at the Oil and Gas Industry Association. And then it has been a slog for about seven years. And, you know, we have streamlined operations. We've seen consolidation.

It has been extremely challenging. But it feels like we're now at a point where we may be coming out the other side. Natural gas prices are really high compared to where they've been in the last four or five years this time of year. Oil is hovering around $70. We're seeing good cash flows. For the first time, really since I've got to cap, I'm getting a sense of the optimism that I think has defined our industry for most of the last 20 years, maybe 30 years. other than, you know, I've learned a pile about working with different governments and stuff, too, but one of the big learnings is just some of the companies that I work with have such unique cultures

and how the CEO shows up at the board table is often so consistent with the way their company operates and just big organizations that can drive a consistent culture to an outcome can be so powerful where I had never really been involved with big organizations and to watch several of them that all do it slightly differently. That's fascinating. And some are successful and some aren't. And over the last several years, you've seen some Canadian companies get a lot bigger and some companies decide they don't want to operate here anymore. Can you expand on that just to Smith? Because I find that extremely interesting, how they walk into the board room. I'm just curious. I guess I would just like you to expand on that because I'm wondering, are you meaning they walk in, slamming papers down, sit down, drop an F-bomb?

Or is it just like how they, like, I really want you to expand on that. I find that thought very interesting. You know, some companies are just straightforward as you can get. If we don't think it's where we're going, we're not going to say we're going there. We're going to do the work. and, you know, we aren't going to overpromise. We're going to deliver on time. Others that are, you know, we see some distant point in the future.

We don't know how we're going to get there, but we're going to, you know, talk about some future state that is our aspiration and just less tied to the mechanics of what they think is possible. and yeah so that would just be two examples but some are just extremely focused on cost and it shows up in their office that they got the fluorescent light bulb hanging there and when they show up at our board table it's all about cost like am i getting value for money how does this work do we really need to do it this way why don't we do it the less expensive where others are like you know we're going to spend the extra dollars and you walk into their office and it has a very different feel. So the consistency in these organizations, I think, is what has made them successful. Even if they're not the same, they've got a program for a reason and the most successful ones drive it from their workforce.

And I would say I even saw some of that culture reflected back when I worked in the oil field around Lloyd, that working for CNRL, the feeling you got working with their folks isn't unique to Lloyd Minster. It's consistent with the discussions I'm having with the senior folks here in Calgary, that that is intentional. You say a word I love. Consistency is, well, it's part of the building blocks. It's success, right? Like you have to be consistent no matter what you're doing. And, well, if you said, even if you're consistent in a different way than other people,

that might just in itself breed success because you're being consistent across the board. There's nothing that confuses people more than when you're inconsistent in leadership. Yep, totally. Well, you've been a guy that, you know, Brad Wall, now where you're at. I guess I should point out or I should discuss in your position, how have you enjoyed leadership? Is that something you've pulled across from where you were under Bradwell? Because now you're in a position of now you're the leader. You're the guy who dictates, sorry, the consistency.

Yeah. You know, our team at our organization is about 80 people. We have offices in Newfoundland, in Ottawa, in Vancouver. And something that I guess I take very seriously is leadership and culture. It has been hostile at times in our industry. It has been a stressful seven years. Sometimes our members don't see issues the same way. And it can be tense around our tables.

And that's healthy. In fact, we need to foster, like, get it on the table. If we're going to solve this, we can't have shrinking violets. But to enable that, I have put a real focus on we have to have the right culture at cap so that we can handle the types of pressures that we're getting so that we know that each other have each other's backs when this gets really difficult. There's a lot of folks on the outside throwing rocks at our industry in general. on a cap in specific.

So, yeah, I think learning from Brad on how he did things in the government, going back to being part of sports teams, I think that's the first training ground for a lot of people on how teams operate and what makes them successful. And I rely on both of those experiences a lot. I guess I'm wondering right now, the oil industry in particular has been under, I don't know

I don't even know siege barrage absolute full on attack for two years at least where you sit and you're laughing maybe is it longer than that

I think it's longer than that how do you come to work every day knowing that you're not walking into you're the green industry you're the darling of the the ball. You're, you're, you're the bad boy. Like this is nobody's like, like where I said,

we all understand the importance of what's going on, right? This is the, one of the big industries that drives where we're at. But, you know, around the world across Canada, not quite the case. Hell, they just, in the debate last night, they pretty much had a debate on you and how to shut you down. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there is an organized, orchestrated, well-funded campaign to demonize oil and gas. They've largely demonized coal and they've shifted their focus to oil and gas. The reality is global poverty is at its lowest level in decades. And it's because people's ability to harness energy.

The International Energy Agency predicts oil and gas will grow substantially, out to the end of their forecast. And the bulk of that growth will be in India and China. And it's people that are heating their home for the first time or cooling it, eating better diets, freedom of movement. And we are essential to that. And if Canada decides we don't want to produce oil and gas that will heat those homes or give better diets, that oil and gas will come from Kazakhstan or Venezuela or Nigeria or Iran or Iraq. Canada is unique in our ability to produce responsible oil. And it I think gives us the moral authority to push forward and increase our production to meet that global demand.

So that's one thing that I think bolsters my ability to my job. The other is I know the majority of Canadians support our industry, though it sometimes is more difficult in some sort of. to voice it. It's popular in some circles to demonize it. But I think that's probably a strength I get from politics is folks that live in Lloyd Minster, hardworking, conscientious, environmentally responsible are the ones that are doing the work. So this isn't an abstraction of whether it's good or bad. It is unquestionably a good product being produced in a very responsible way by some of the hardest working people in Canada. And I get the luxury of pushing back against those that would diminish it and diminish all

those pieces of it. What is the most frustrating part of the well orchestrated campaign against you that you're just like, man, this hurts the brain, right? You mentioned the heating, the cooling of the houses. I think that's something that specifically in this part of the world, we're like, people realize if we just take away what we got, like we're all dead. Like, I mean, I shouldn't say that. I'm reading the Fort Pitt Trail.

My father has imparted on me hard that I read it because you get to hear firsthand what settlers went through coming here with no oil and gas for sure, living through minus 40, what they had to endure and what we come from, right? Like what our heritage is. And you read that and you're like, oh, man. So we can't endure it. saying we can't. But at the same token, where we sit right now, the importance of what we do, I think in this specific area, we don't get it, or we do get it, sorry. What is the biggest

frustration that they try and pin on you that you're like, man, live? Like, really, that's what they're hung up on? Hmm. You know, I don't get terribly frustrated or even surprised by our opponents that I watched the campaigns they run against coal or against forestry in the 90s. It's the same game plan over and over again. A lot of times, even the same language and tactics. So I don't get terribly frustrated by that. But I think part of what gets me frustrated is when we, on our side, take the bait. that and we do it for all the right reasons.

We are conscientious. We're engineers and geologists are a lot of the folks that are leading companies and sit on my board. And they want to just tell the story. We need to educate people about our industry. And sometimes I don't know if people want to get educated. They want to live their normal lives and trying to bridge the political element with the earnest desire just to tell people how we do it because if they knew more, they would agree with us. And, you know, this is so political and so non-logical some days that my job is often translating the political motivations of what our opponents are doing to us to people that are very earnest and hardworking. and thoughtful about what they're doing.

And they just can't understand how those two things don't align, but they don't align on purpose. It's a very deliberate tactic to get us taking the bait on things that aren't in our best interest. I want you said they're very thought-provoking in the sense that certain people just don't want to learn, right? They don't want to. That's a wild thought, you know?

And we see it all the time. Both sides. I don't mean just one. side, both sides. And something I challenge folks I deal with a lot is, you know, genetically modified food is a campaign against agriculture. And I ask people in oil and gas business that we get offended that people in Ontario don't know much about oil and gas and they're unwilling to learn.

And they may be taken in by some of our opponent's rhetoric. Who around our discussions has done any research, on genetically modified food and are making decisions in the grocery store when it says no GMO. And I guess I am a little bit political that if I see no GMO on a food, I will not buy it. That's virtue signaling that is diminishing farmers that are using modern technology to grow food. And there's all sorts of other issues. take it from from forestry in the 80s.

Did we as an oil and gas industry do anything to help the forestry industry in British Columbia? I don't think we did. I wasn't old enough to be part of it, but I don't think Calgary was rallying to tell the American activist to go home and we probably should have been.

I don't know who's next. I bet agriculture is probably the industry that has the biggest risk that as the next campaign after oil and gas, you know, it could be a lot of things, but I'm seeing the early stages of agriculture finding its way into the opponent's campaigns. Is there any way to counteract that before it gets, you can see it coming, right? You can see the train slowly moving towards it.

Is there any way to get ahead of that and just be like, no, you're going to take this course, you're not going to come here? Like, you're just not, you're not coming here. I spend quite a bit of time trying to get ahead of it, that we're in the middle of it. It's probably been a decade-long campaign against oil and gas in general, against the Tar Sands campaign, which was an American campaign against us, you know, pipeline campaigns against Keystone XL. But we're in the middle of it.

We have built a lot of tools to manage it. And I'm trying to build networks with the agricultural industry, with forestry, with others to say, we need to all stand together against this and hopefully be prepared for wherever they shift their next efforts. But it's tough to get people to pay attention because it's not their problem today and how much effort do they want to put into something that may or may not happen in five or ten years. I think Canadian citizens have a role in this, though. And one of our strongest pushbacks is something called the Canadian energy citizens. It's 250,000 people strong. They share content about energy issues. If there's a poll in Victoria

about banning oil and gas or something, they motivate each other to go to that site. So I think Canadian citizens are increasingly aware of how this works. And the polarization, is something that you're either a victim of or part of. And if it's your industry, you need to stand up. Let me flip the question on its head then. Is there a way you can become the train that rolls and now they've got to adjust to what you're doing? No, it's an interesting way to look at the problem. I don't have a quick answer for you.

But finding ways to do things differently is, is key because this their approach continues to change. We continue to modify, but I would rather not be answering the, the shitty question they're posing of us and pose one of them. And you see a bit of that, Vivian Krause has done a lot of work about where does the funding come from? How does this actually work? And it's pretty damning when you realize that a lot of it is American activists funded

by American foundations that may or may not be designed to landlock Canadian assets. And if that doesn't get Canadians upset, I don't know what would. Yeah, well, it gets the same people upset who look into it before and are upset, right? I think I go back to what you said about certain people want to learn. And certain people, you know, just can't be bothered by that problem. So it's an interesting dilemma. and when I go back to the train thought, I just go, you know, so much of life, so much of the oil industry, you play it on the defensive because they're constantly trying to attack the ways. I just, you know, you can flip that on your head, on its head because, you know, I've watched different videos and I heard you mentioned part of it already is, you know, the heating and cooling of the house, but how about the meal on the table?

When I hear things like that, my brain goes, maybe you need to explain. what the oil and gas industry does beyond keeping our houses heated and cool. Like what else does it provide to life? And I don't know if people fully understand that. Actually, I'm wondering if I fully understand that. Yeah, there's a great commercial that was put out maybe five or six years ago. A guy sitting in his living room watching TV, just your normal everyday scene. And all of a sudden, the oil and gas products start disappearing.

the remote control, the TV, you know, his pants, the chair under them. I'm like, everything is gone because it's made of petroleum products or is fueled by natural gas electricity. It's just ubiquitous in everything we touch. Yeah. Once again, that's coming from a guy who lives in the community that does it. I work in the bloody industry and I'm going, actually, I don't know if I fully understand. I've actually had a conversation with guys.

guys who talk about coal and it being the same way. And we just don't fully understand how much of life it really impacts. And they focus on, you know, a couple of things that maybe there's smart ways to get around it. And when I, when I hear the discussion, I go like, geez, yeah, like, is there some detriments to the oil and gas industry or coal? Absolutely. But do the outweigh the pros? I don't think so.

And if we look at the detriments, the cons, are there ways to feasibly solve me? You got some of the most brilliant minds on the planet working in this industry. Why not enlist them to solve them in a constructive way? But that doesn't seem like it has happened over my entire lifetime. And I don't assume, Tim, that that's the way it's going to go for the rest of, you know, the world for its lifetime as we move forward. No. And our opponents have very effectively crafted the questions to compare the benefits of some energy sources to the challenges of others. You wind and solar have a lot of challenging environmental and reliability issues, but you never compare those to the benefits of oil and gas. The question is always stacked the other way.

So, you know, every energy source has benefits and challenges. There's a role for all energy sources and where they work together efficiently. That's where we're best off. But the debate is too rarely about those simple, straightforward issues. Now, I've got to shift gears because I've been harassing about politics and, you know, the oil industry, everything else. when I do these and as you know you've been listening, I certainly know this from my own life and every other great person that's come before me

he says the same thing about having a specific someone standing behind you who makes sure that you do the right things and they're, you know, answering the right questions or maybe answering the difficult questions. How did you meet your wife? Could you maybe tell us a little bit about that story and then I'll pick you apart from there on? Sure.

So I ended up going to university in Victoria, largely because I played rugby. If I didn't play rugby, I probably wouldn't end up at university probably anywhere. And my wife played on the field hockey team. So the rugby players would go and watch the field hockey game. And I think we actually met in residence the first time. But big groups of friends and just. Yeah, pretty quickly figured out we probably should hang out together. How long have you been married now?

17 years. Okay. Now, I'm going to give you a little bit of trouble here because most of the people I've been talking to are I think the last one was 47 years. Most of them are 50 plus. So 17, although impressive, you'll have to forgive me, is not quite 50. But in 17 years, what have you learned from marriage? What does it taught you? A pile, obviously.

The choice you make on who you marry is probably the most important choice you're going to make in life. I think I chose pretty well that, you know, all of us have things we're good at and things we're not. Allie, my wife, man, where I have holes, she is usually very good, and she's usually kind enough to point that out. but on, you know, beliefs and straightforward on kind of how we're going to do things, yeah, we're a pretty solid team. I'm chuckling on this side because I almost had you tongue tight on your wife question. Of all the questions, Mr. Politician, that's the one that ties you up. A quick story on that.

After the 2011 campaign on election night, And during campaigns, you're just working nonstop and you're door knocking and you have all these volunteers that are like committing their time. And you're just so grateful and thankful. And on election night, we were successful fortunately and had a little party at our campaign office and thanked the volunteers and thanked everybody. And then I'm like, oh, shoot, I have to thank my wife who actually did more than anyone could possibly imagine. And I couldn't thank her. I got tongue tied. I said something about us being through thick and thin,

and she has ground me on that ever since. And I don't know why it's so hard, but the people you love the most are sometimes the hardest ones to put into words. Actually, that's pretty well spoke. That's exactly the answer, right? I think what you say about your significant other, that is the most important choice you make in life.

Absolutely, because they're either going to ground you or leave you, right? Like there's a multiple scenarios that happen there that will impact the rest of your life. You mentioned in the questionnaire one of the toughest times in your life is when she broke her neck. Care to share a little bit about that? Yeah, it was early on. I think we were only married about a year, maybe a year and a half. We had a toddler. She was doing a little barrel racing and it just got a new horse.

I was out moving some cattle around and I said, hey, why don't you jump on your horse and you can just tag along and I'm just pushing them from one pastor to another. And yeah, I'm back and forth through a bush and she yells at me and I look over my shoulder and her horse just going to it and nose dived off the front and, you know, immediately she couldn't feel anything and it was it was horrible and uh yeah got got an ambulance out there into lloyd into a plane to saskatoon and spent a couple months you know the scariest that's just by far the scariest day of my life and the scariest month of my life and uh you know that was

really a lot of stuff since then i almost almost get strength from it. Like, we were okay. And as shitty as we thought the outcome might be, I resolved and she resolved, like, we're going to find a way through this. You know, it may look very different than what we thought it would be, but we were so fortunate that after a few weeks, she could move her legs. And after a month, she took a couple steps. And by two months, she could walk to the truck and back. And today, if you didn't know her, you would have no idea that she had a problem. But it was really a tough time for our family.

And it was right before the letter came in the mail. We were actually living with my parents when we moved back to the farm because we couldn't really manage things on our own. I was trying to work. And we had a toddler. and Allie was still recovering that the letter came in the mail about the nomination for the SAS party. And the community had just rallied around our family so much that it just seemed like a way to give back. And, you know, a community that's that strong.

When I was politically interested, it just, I might not have considered it hadn't that happened. And yeah. So it's something that you never want to have to deal with, but we did. That's, well, that is every parent's, well, I mean, every couple's nightmare on top of every parents because, I mean, like, you had a young child at a time. And then to have your spouse get into something like that, man. And I mean, coming from this area, I have no idea how many people will ever listen to this. You know, I always chuckle about the archive interviews because you never know.

Maybe it just gets locked in a vault. But for this area to go out and move some cattle on horseback, it's pretty standard operation. Like, that's a fun little outing. And on top of it, I don't know, maybe I'm just thinking too far ahead of this. It might even been a nice outing because you probably had the kids somewhere. and it was just the two of you out moving some cattle having a good time and all of a sudden something like that it just shows you how quickly things can go from zero to a hundred or zero to a minus hundred for all that matter just like that snap of a finger yeah no it it absolutely was it was a

beautiful summer day and you know from just having some fun and enjoying life to alley on the ground saying squeeze my leg and I'm squeezing with all my might and she can't feel it. I'm like, I am. So we knew we had a problem right away. And yeah, it just changes everything in your perspective and you question everything. And yeah, luckily we found a way through it. And luckily she had a recovery that was better than we ever would have expected. I appreciate you sharing that with me.

That is, well, that's what I enjoy about these interviews is you get to feel out a person and find some things that have really impacted their life. Now, I got to switch to something that I think you'll get some joy out of because I've sat down with them in Murray McDonnell. You talk about great leaders. This guy, when I sat with him, I got to sit with him. Why do you think about this, Tim? I interviewed him at the Lashman School in front of little kids. And this was like interview like I can't even remember Maybe 20 of mine

So you can imagine I'm pretty fresh at this I've never had an audience before doing it in front of the school And Murray does not disappoint And knowing you're a rugby guy and got coached under Mr. Murray I have to assume you have some stories or some thoughts about the guy Yeah Yeah no Murray is a mentor to I think a lot of people that played for him.

And I learned a pile from him. He's a guy that never played rugby until he coached it and opened up a book and worked and worked and worked to understand the game, watched games, became a student of it, and networked and brought in other coaches to support him, and pulled together a team that it was really special that a lot of us played hockey together and then playing rugby, you kind of already had a bit of the camaraderie, but a lot of the guys didn't play hockey with us. It just worked. And Mack became a good coach and knew the game and was a student of the game, but his ability to motivate a team is as good as I've ever seen.

That mentally he could get you fired up. And I remember the first time we won the Crush tournament and Regina. He broke a light in the change room, I think, because he was just like firing us up and he whipped a ball and a bounce. And I played rugby and Regina then for a few years after. And every time I'd see that light, but the corner broke out of it,

I'm like, yeah, I know how that happened. But, you know, he was an exciting guy to play for. And yeah, he got the best out of his teams. You know, that's, you know, over the course of all the interviews I've done, Murray McDonnell is a special one. And if you go around that community and mention his name,

I mean, everybody's got their ball off the light story. Everybody's got that story. They all talk about his ability to motivate and how much momentum he was, only for the players, but the community. Yep.

As we close in... Can I just add one thing on that? Murray is also, like, grew up in Montreal, just like his bring such a unique perspective to rural Saskatchewan. And his story of, you know, he got this phone call after he finished university and it seemed like an adventure for him and his wife that, you know, wow, what a different world from Montreal to rural Saskatchewan. And just to embed himself in the community. And I look back at pictures of that first win at the rugby tournament.

Regina. Murray had a long ponytail and shaggy hair. You know, our dads didn't have ponytails, but man, he, he's a big guy now, but he was, imagine what the dad's thought. Look at this guy with a ponytail coach in our kids rugby. That must have been some hilarious conversations in small town, Saskatchew. Maybe, but, you know, Murray was just, you know, he's so legitimate and like, what you. you see is what you get and you know everybody respected them and you know i think everybody could see murray is getting the most out of the team and pulling people together that uh you know his impact on the community is is what has given him the the well-deserved respect that he has

well i'm going to leave this is the final question you mentioned your surreal moment in life was a minister of energy uh resources and trade and it was a meeting in china Do you care to elaborate? I'm always curious about surreal moments in life. So when I was the Minister of Energy and Mines in Saskatchewan, we had had a pile of investment into the province in the few years preceding that. A lot in potash and a lot, some were Chinese investors that had bought big assets. There was a investment, a mining investment contract.

conference in China. So we went over there to promote the province and investment there that we wanted to develop new minds and create jobs. So went and presented. But while we were there, we connected with some of the individuals that had made major investments over the last few years. And, you know, you'd be invited to dinner at an office tower in Shanghai. And yeah, it just, you'd be going up these elevators. in this very ornate office, have dinner with this individual that may own car parts and others, their assets were all over the world. And I'm like, holy cow, how did I get here? And you'd talk about Saskatchewan and they'd be engaged in that. And a neat experience that even at the time I felt was pretty special. I know exactly what you mean with. How did I get here? I once sat with Jim Patterson in Vancouver in his office on the high rise and up the elevator, I went, what am I doing here? I don't belong. So I fully get as a small town Saskatchewan kid, when you get into those places, you're like,

I don't know what I'm doing here, but let's carry on. Yep. Exactly. I appreciate Tim, you're giving me an hour of your time and sitting and chatting and insurance some stories. This has been, wow, it's been thoroughly enjoyable. Terrific. No, I've had a great time. So thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity.