The Ben Mulroney Show - What’s fueling Canada’s boom city/political panel

Episode Date: January 31, 2026

Guest/Topic:   Brad Parry — CEO calgary economic development Guest :  Tracey Bodnarchuk / Canada powered by Women CEO GUEST:  Max Fawcett/Columnist for The Observer GUEST:   Gary Davies / President and CEO of CSI (Calgary Sports Institute) If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. We are live from Calgary, Alberta. We've been having a great time getting to know this city, reacquainting ourselves, if you will, with the city of Calgary. And every time we come, there's something different going on here. We enjoyed, I'm salivating now. We enjoyed a tremendous meal last night.

Did we not? We enjoyed a tremendous meal last night at a restaurant called Major Tom. By the way, I went to the restroom, and it was playing Major Tom. And I was like, if that thing is not on repeat, that's a heck of a coincidence. The food was phenomenal. Phenomenal!

Phen, Crudeau, which was one of the best I ever had, and the steak was so good that I was literally smiling, smiling through the whole meal. It was amazing. Anyway, this is a city that is ascendant, and we had a big chat earlier this morning with a number of stakeholders across this city talking about where the city is, where it wants to go, where it needs to go, and how it's going to get there. And one of the people we were talking to was the CEO of Calgary Economic Development. Brad Perry, welcome, Brad. Thank you so much for having me. Ben, great to have you in the city.

Yeah, so talk to me about what does the Calgary Economic, what does Calgary Economic development do? I'm going to get that to a second, but, you know, before we do that, we've got to fix something. Because you know what? I heard something this morning that really, really troubled me, and I've got to make something right. What's that? So I'm going to ask the mayor to come in here in a second and make things right for you because you made a comment this morning, and we can't let you leave this city without this. Oh, my God.

So, right here, I have the official white hat from California. No, okay. And this is the symbol of the city of Calgary. And here in town, Smithabilt's hats has been making white hats in Calgary for more than 100 years, often using the same equipment that was used back in 1919. And inside each official white hat, you'll find everything that is great about Calgary, our warm and welcoming hospitality, our Western spirit, and the sheer joy we all feel at welcoming visitors to our city.

So as mayor, I have the opportunity here with Brad. to be able to officially welcome you to the city of Calgary. But there is a catch. You have to repeat after me. There is an oath that you will be required to speak. And then afterwards, if I'm satisfied, if Brad and I are satisfied, then we will provide the hat to you. All right.

Please repeat after me. Yes, sir. I, having visited the Blue Sky City of Calgary. I having visited the Blue Sky City of Calgary. And having experienced, exceptional, amounts and having experienced exceptional amounts of heartwarming of heartwarming handshaking hand shaking foot tapping foot tapping western hospitality western hospitality do promise to share this brand do promise to share this brand of warm and welcoming hospitality of warm and welcoming hospitality with all folks who

cross my path with all folks who cross my path so on the count of three let's raise our hats and give a loud yahoo yeah hold on let's just get oh no i'm stuck in here okay okay okay one two three yeah so am i in now you were in

okay and it fits i have a very large and if the half fits then oh my gosh mr mayor thank you so much yeah and thanks so much for bad and you and your team

coward economic development cowgur tourism that's amazing thank you here I thank one more one more picture there you yeah

excellent it's about time about time after my judges I thank you Mr. Mayor. And we've got a box out there for you. Oh, wonderful. And don't forget, you got to always turn it upside down.

Always store it upside down. I'll go like that for now. So how do you know my hat size? Well, we took a guess. I mean, that's impressive. Well, you know. That's an impressive thing because I have a large, I have a deceptively large head. That's the kind of city we are, though.

Yeah. So how do you, you're yelling at me. You're like, what's going on? You're moving the microphones around. Now you understand. You don't, you're not great with surprises. I got screeched in in Nova Scotia, right? Yes.

And I did, I guess, I can't remember what the, but no, no, that's in Newfoundland. I did the Nova Scotia equivalent of that as well, because they got their own tradition there. And when I was doing Canadian Idol, every single one of my judges got white hated, and I never did. And I was a little bit miffed. And now I'm very pleased and very proud. I'm very happy. That means a lot. That really does mean a lot.

That's awesome. I'm glad you like. Yeah. So how does it work with the white hat? If you have it, do you have to wear it all the time? When you come back next time, absolutely. Wear the hat with pride. I will.

I will. I will. Smithville hats, over a hundred, 20-year-old company. And they're still here. As a matter of fact, when we bring clients in from out of town,

we take them the Smith built and we give them the whole experience where they got a customized hat built for them. I can't believe you have, I can't believe you guessed my hat. I mean, that's seven to five-eight's. Did someone steal my hat? No.

No, no. We got a gauge this morning and I went back to the team and said, give me something it's pretty big. You guessed it? It's something big. Because it's not wide. My head's not wide.

It's just long. I'm really impressed with that. Wow. That's so nice. That's awesome. Well, I'm glad you like it. All right. Let's get back to the here and now.

And here, that's so awesome. Yeah, today we had a great conversation about where the city's going. And, well, let's go back to the first question I had. CEO of Calgary economic development. What's that all about? So basically our job is to help position Calgary for long-term economic success. And our job really then is to help attract companies. capital and talent through expansion and retention.

So we basically work with local companies to help them build out their business plans, their models, help them find new markets to grow. But we're also really core in bringing companies here. So companies who want to set up a footprint in North America or in Canada, we help them assimilate, we get them here, and we set them up for success. And then we also do talent for our companies. Because if we bring a company here, we've got a company growing. If we don't have the right kind of talent, we're not going to do well.

So that's primary our job. Our job is to really be the ambassador out there talking about the amazing things that are happening in our city and make. sure that we're set up for the long term. So you've been doing this for how long now? Five years now. This is my fifth year as a CEO. And so how does it feel different now than it did say five years ago? Oh, it's changed 180 degrees. I mean, I was in Toronto for 11 years before and it just came back five years ago and the whole vibes changed. I mean, I came here in late 2019, early 2020, and things were rocky still, right? We had, you know, going into the pandemic.

There was a lot of layoffs happening in the traditional energy sector. But one thing that we knew was happening was there's a lot more happening in the ecosystem around technology, other sectors. life sciences or agriculture. And so the community has been really rallying around that. But I think the biggest change we've seen is that people don't have to leave our city to build and grow a global company anymore. Historically, you've had to go somewhere to get capital. You'd have to go somewhere to find talent.

You'd have to go somewhere else to find clients. But isn't that, I mean, I just assume that that was a, that environment was across the country. Like I hear stories of startups in Ontario that, you know, do everything they can, and shake every single tree to get some investment. And sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But almost inevitably, if they do get success, somebody whispers in their ear, come down, come down south. Either come to Austin or go to Miami or come to Silicon Valley.

And it's easier to get money. They are far less risk-averse. Investors in early-stage startups are far less risk-averse in the states than anything up in Canada. I think we're seeing the change here, though. I think what you're seeing is a lot more people willing to take risks in Calgary. As a matter of fact, we had more venture capital come into. to our city last year than we've had ever. We did more deals in Calgary than Vancouver last year.

Now, the check sizes are a little smaller, but you're seeing the flywheel start to start. Sure. You're seeing that. So I think we have a lot of wealth in our city. We have the most family offices. There's a lot of traditional energy wealth. Yeah.

And they're learning how to invest in technology now. They're learning how to play the game. The one thing we talk about is it's game theory, right? So game theory, either play the game to end the game, or you play the game to keep the game going. Yeah. And I think we're starting to see that change of people wanting to play the game going. I may lose about it.

bit of money but I know something else big is going to come out right right well that's exciting um and is major tom the best restaurant the city it's one of me i mean you've got so many great restaurants right now i mean bridger bar lulus there's there's so me the food scene has changed dramatically since i left and i've been back in the last five years you're seeing all kinds of fusions you're seeing kind of different foods and flavors i mean the the migration that's happened our city is crazy right we've had 30% population growth over the last seven years but that's also bringing different kinds of cultures. Oh, yeah, when we were driving here,

I drove by a street where there was, on either side of the street, I looked back and forth, back and forth. There must have been eight or different, eight different cultures representing eight different restaurants right next to each other. And yeah,

this is not, it's not just a steak place anymore. It's not, although it's the best things in the world, man. But it was the dessert I had yesterday. I haven't had that lunch yet. But it was that London fog dessert. Oh, yeah.

I'd never seen any like that. It was so. good. Everything last night was phenomenal. That was a real, and the view. I'm not used to having that view in Calgary. I'm used to being street level and seeing, you know, a certain type of architecture in the downtown core. To see it from that high up is really impressive.

Brad Perry, thank you so much for being here. The optimism that I've felt in this city is not something I often feel in Toronto. So I thank you very much. And thank you for the White Hat ceremony. My pleasure. Great. Hopefully we'll host you back here in the summer again, too. All right. When we come back, what are we going? Oh, what are we talking next? We are talking about, let's shake it up.

The view from the energy future. Different perspective. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show, and that was quite the honor. I got white-hatted here in Calgary, and I honestly have no idea. I'm going to be dead serious with you. I have a deceptively large head. I'm not suggesting there's a large brain in there.

I'm just saying it has a very significant circumference. And I'm really surprised that they guessed at the right, at the right, a size hat. I'm really pleased and really quite honored. So I thank the mayor. I think Brad, thank you to my intrepid producer for hooking that up in such short order. That was really wonderful. I have no idea

how we're getting that hat home, by the way. You're wearing it on the plane. I'm not wearing it on the plane. That's not happening. No, you're wearing it on the plane. You know how I fall asleep on planes. I don't know where I'm going to put that. We'll have figured out. But anyway, so this next conversation is one that I think is really important because sometimes lost in these

conversations of, you know, a growing economy and sort of booming this sector or that sector. Sometimes, you know, I think it's important and incumbent on us to ask the question, like, who are the stakeholders that we're not talking about? And who are the people who are helping build something that don't often get the spotlight put on them? Or even take a look at a traditional topic at issue from a different lens. Yeah. So I want to interview.

I want to welcome to the conversation. Tracy Bodnerchuk, the, from Canada Powered by Women CEO. Tracy, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me, you guys. So, yeah, so I wanted to, I want to pass you the microphone because your research shows that millions of Canadian women now tie energy policy directly to affordability, job security, and national prosperity. Absolutely.

And it's true, they do. So Canada Powered by Women were a nonpartisan organization. We have a national footprint, so we facilitate discussions that happen with women around energy and energy policy. And we do that with Legge. They do all of our polling. And, you know, I would say it was about four years ago that we decided we were going to go and start asking women about energy policy. And the reason for that is even though we originated out of Calgary, we were like, there has to be other women in the country who recognize that what's happening with energy affects.

our economy and them personally. And we found consistently that it does, and they know that. So what has your, like there's a survey that you've done that represents insights for more than 6.7 million Canadian women. What did you learn from that? What issues are driving that engagement? Well, we know right now for sure that women are feeling that there's financial hardship more than they've ever experienced it.

Yeah. And what we mean by that is really struggling to get by. We've never seen the numbers that we've seen where we have over 40% of our audience of women who say they're struggling. Yeah. We've also seen that they also are worried about jobs, their jobs, job security. And, you know, we saw concern and financial hardship that was really allocated to energy policy when we had the consumer carbon tax.

And now we don't have that carbon. tax, but the concerns are higher, even more higher now. So we know that that connection is being made, and there's significant awareness, like over 80% of women who know that that's being tied to energy policy. Is it a, I don't want to be trite, and I don't want to oversimplify things, but I've got you here, so I'm just going to ask you the questions that are on my mind. Is it, just generally speaking, are what are you suggesting? or is it how do I say this? Because I want to make sure I nail this. Would our decisions on energy and energy policy be better served with more female voices in the room?

Yes. And I say that because women have a counterintuitive perspective when it comes to things like energy and energy policy. For example, they support a pipeline. Yeah. They support responsible energy development. they want Canada to be energy independent. They want us to lead on the world stage in terms of lowering global emissions, but not at the expense of our standard of living or our prosperity. And it's an assumption that women would lead with an environmental perspective, but the fact is from our data, they don't. It's super important to them, but it's not their driver.

Yeah. So security and financial security and jobs, that's more important. important right now. And so we've always seen that women want the policies to be more balanced. Yeah. And that they... Can you give me an example what that would mean? Because when you, when you listed, when you, when you listed off sort of the priorities of, of women in the energy sector, those are my, those are my priorities as well. And so, so, so, so tell me what, I guess I might be over indexing in terms of my policies in terms of I'm more feminine in my outlook.

But what's what are these policies looking like without that, without those priorities being discussed? Yeah. So, for example, you have something like the priority for us to be independent from the U.S. So you think about like the whole elbows up type of initiative. Yeah. And women are saying, you know, we need to be energy independent. it's tied to our economic sovereignty. So you really need to, as a policymaker, think about simplifying legislation.

So if you've got something like the Impact Assessment Act that is a complete barrier to actually getting projects approved and moved through and actually built, you know, that is a correlation that women make and say that policy, maybe they don't say the Impact Assessment Act. But what they will say is we need to build things. You need to generate revenue for the country. So that's a message that we try to take to a policymaker because they'll be sort of looking at you like women think that. Yeah.

Yeah, they really do, right? And women do make these connections. So that's an example of like how that connection is made to like what's important to you as a person and how that affects the, you know, Canada's overall prosperity. And that really layers down into daily living. And if you think about jobs for kids and careers and all of that stuff, they also understand that if you take resource-based industries, that those are good, high-paying jobs and careers. And they want to see that.

So they're looking for government to get out of the way. And, you know, I always think about the whole phenomena that we see in the U.S. And we have so much more that's within our own control that has nothing to do with that. So when women are saying, you know, let's build, we don't need to deal with the U.S. to make decisions and move things forward. And they want to see us just get done. Yeah. We need to do. And no more ideology.

Well, that's, I mean, I'm a best practices guy. And by the way, I reject the idea that responsible resource development is somehow not environmentally conscious. and yet this idea that it's a binary choice that if you support, if you support resource development, then you are not somebody for whom the environment is a priority. I reject that. And I suspect a lot of women. Women do too.

Yeah. Like, they fully rejected. Yeah. So where do we go from here? How do we leverage the information, the data, and the voices that you represent to have, to get to a place where we have more women's say, more women's voices in these policy directives. So a big part of our work is going and meeting with policymakers and sharing this voice of women

and doing it in a way that's not emotional, that's data-centric, it's based on opinions. And we do that on purpose because it's our value proposition to women that if you tell us what you think, we're going to take it forward for you. We're going to bring that to the policymakers. And we go to advocacy days. We meet with liberals and NDP and conservatives. But the main message that we're bringing forward right now is you have permission from this audience to do bold policy reform, to, you know, buck the conventions that have been sort of the policies of the last number of years. And we're giving you that license to do what you have to do.

do. And that is responsible energy development. And also letting them know that women are actually very proud of our resources. You know, Ben, we saw a lift in the support of oil and gas, particularly, of over 20 percentage points in every single province, including Quebec, in the last six months. Wow. Tracy, we're going to have to, we got to leave it there. We've got to leave it there. But thank you so much for an eye-opening conversation. I really appreciate and continue your good work. I really appreciate you. We will. Thank you so much. All right. When we come back, a political panel out west in person. I never get this. This is quite a treat. Don't go anywhere. It is time for our political panel of the week, the last one of the week. And I tell you, we had this,

gentleman as a regular on the show, a trusted advisor and a great friend of the show to be in his hometown, in his presence in real life. It's an oddity and a good one. No, it's a, it's a pleasure to welcome you here and we got our best weather so I should mention it's Max Fawcett but thank you for having us and we got a new a new addition to the crew please welcome to show Gary Davies is the president and CEO of CSI not the TV show Calgary Sports Institute Gary was a TV show what what is Calgary Sports Institute Gary so the Sport Institute is we are basically the sports science folks behind the Olympic and Paralympic athletes

that will be representing Canada in Milan and did represent them in Paris. So if you're an Alberta-based athlete, we provide sports science solutions, strength, conditioning, nutrition, mental performance, everything you think that goes into an athlete. How are our athletes,

what's their status going into the Olympics? I mean, if I was putting money down on Team Canada. Yeah, well, the numbers right now, if you look at the projections, 21 to 26 medals, so they're saying top five to top three, Obviously, nobody knows till it happens. Opening ceremonies a week today.

Yeah. And I was saying to a gentleman earlier about just under half the team, either trains, lives, or as part of our facility in some way, shape, or form here in Alberta. So big contribution from the 88 games is still going almost 40 years later. I was at those games. I loved it. I got every single pin available because when we would do. Max, I don't know if you'd view this as an abuse of power, but we would watch the pin alerts on TV,

and then we'd send the RCMP out to go get it for us, and they'd come back with the pin. Didn't ask any questions. Didn't want to know what they had to do. Get the pin, but we got all the pits. I think in the current context of abuses of power, that is adorable. Okay.

All right, well, let's talk about some of the big news that is happening in this town, and that is the big speech from Pierre Pollyev tonight in anticipation of the vote on his leadership. I don't think any of us would be surprised if he got 80 plus percent of the vote. But that doesn't necessarily, necessarily mean that that's the end of the issues for the party and the and so the uphill climb

that they have if and when there is another election max yeah i think in a lot of ways he's more speaking to his caucus tonight than he is to the people on the floor uh at the convention i think there are very few people there whose votes aren't locked in they they arrived knowing how they were going to vote i suspect a vast majority of them will vote uh to keep him on his leader but you know i think there are members of his caucus who want to see if he can meet the moment if he can present a bit more of a, I want to say mature style of leadership. You know, poll after poll is showing that there's this big golf between him and Mark Carney. It's getting bigger seemingly with each passing month.

And I think they need to know that he's capable of rising to the moment. And if he doesn't, I think a few of them are going to walk across the floor. So, yeah, you know, this is sort of the end of the beginning. Yeah. And, you know, we just had the mayor, the new mayor on. who went through his own issues of sort of losing an election and being decried as perhaps too much of a political firebrand, too partisan. And granted, he was very young at the time. But he had the wherewithal to appreciate that if you put some water in your wine and you can build bridges across the aisle that there could be success there and success he has found.

I tried to get him to compare his situation to a federal leader and he did not bite. But I can't help but see some parallels. Absolutely. And I would question, I suppose, can Pierre make that switch? I mean, that's, I think that's the big question is right now a lot of people, I mean, let's be honest. I mean, most of his policies that he campaigned on, Carney's now run with. People seem to be okay with that. In fact, very happy with that. But the personality is just not selling well with a lot of people, especially women. I think that's a challenge. So can he move the needle? Well, I wonder whether there's one of the issues is tone, right? The last election was exceptionally negative. On one side, you had the Tories throwing down that everything was broken. And on the other side, you had the liberals saying, you need to be always in perpetual fear of the big, bad, orange man. So you had fear and anger.

Those are not, that's not a hopeful beginning for any government. So I got to wonder whether if they throw out the tone completely. And instead of here are all the things that are broken, here are the things we're going to build. Right. And if he comes out of this with 80 plus percent and a new tone and a hopeful vision and some new policies, I mean, they're debating new policies at this thing, perhaps some policies that are conservative enough that the liberals won't want to lift. I mean, I don't know that you have to throw out the leader if all that other stuff changes. I'm just putting it out there as a question.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to see how big the gap is between support for the party and support for the leader. You know, if you look at the party, it's more or less in a dead heat with the liberals right now. You know, maybe the liberals are a few points ahead. When you look at personal favorability ratings, I'm not sure there's ever been a bigger gulf between the two leaders of a major party. So clearly something has to change there. The challenge for Polyev, or one of them at least, is it's not clear which direction he needs to go. there was a really interesting abacus data poll that's asked conservatives you know do you think that the leader should be stronger more conservative or more moderate and it was split down the middle

yes so the party doesn't have a clear consensus on which way it wants to go yeah um you know i think i think you know the the broader voter voter universe would like him to be more propositional um more moderate more uh positive i'm not sure that the conservative base wants that and so he's going to get pulled in two directions really no matter which way he can goes. Gary, I want to switch the topics to these stories that popped up that the separatists, the organizers of the referendum who are looking to achieve Alberta's separation from Canada

have been having high-level discussions with U.S. administration officials. And the premier of British Columbia was very quick to describe this as treasonous. Now, I don't know what kind of conversations they're having. On one hand, if you're saying, hey, can you help us become an independent country? That's probably treason. But if you're saying, hey, in the event that we do achieve this goal, can we count on you for some sort of support? That's planning. And in 1995,

Jacques Paris-O was doing that no problem. He checked with the Americans. The Americans said, we're going to take our, we're going to take our cue from Canada. Thank you. But they checked with them. There's nothing treasonous about that. And so until I hear what the topic of those conversations is, I don't know whether it was just good planning or treason. For some reason, the Premier of British Columbia was very easy, very willing to jump on the treason thing. And I'm curious to understand why. Yeah, I think he's probably a little ahead of his skis because he's got us, you know, out in public on that. That's said, I'll be frank. I wish our Premier would push back a bit more

on this. I mean, I think she's hesitant to do so because of her base. I mean, I'm born and raised here, right? 1970. I'm one of the few. I'm still around. I would argue that 20% of this province has been separatists from the time I was born. Yeah. It's just been, it's just an underlying thing that's been here. And if the number is now 2530, so be it. So it's not like this is a new thing. It's just being amplified a lot more. So, yeah, I'm not sure I would have gone to the treasonous route if I'm in a position of the Breesie C Premier, but on the flip side, I'd like our own leader to at least kind of stand up a little more and say, this just isn't cool because when Quebec was doing that in the 80s and 90s, believe me, I heard all around here how treasonous that was. Yeah, yeah. Max, hold your tongue on that and get your opinion on it on the other side of the break, because we're talking about that.

We're talking about if Alberta joins the United States, is there a state that could join Canada? I want to hear your opinion on that. and Don Lemon went into a church and came out arrested. We want to talk about that as well. So don't go anywhere. Our political panel continues after the break here on the Benmorenese show. Happy to be joined again by Max Fawson, Gary Davies, for the second part of our Friday edition of This Week in Politics.

And Max, I was going to pass the mic to you because David E.B. is thrown around the T-word, treason as it relates to the separatist movement here in Alberta. And again, I think the devil's in the details of one type of discussion. is just good planning and the other is absolutely treason and we don't know which it is yet but for some reason he's using he's using some pretty interesting language i think he wanted to snap a lot of people out of this kind of sleepwalking we're doing towards a pretty dangerous situation um you know where you know you brought the example of jacques bezo and and of course he was an elected officially wasn't just someone working off the side of his desk and those meetings i i think were prudent

you know, we're talking about a Trump administration that has invaded Venezuela for the stated reason of getting access to its oil. We have a lot of oil here in Alberta famously. And it doesn't seem implausible to me that the Trump administration would want access to that and would see a separatism movement as an opportunity to kind of wedge into Canadian politics and get their hands on it. And, you know, the Premier Smith came out and said, well, I don't want to demonize a million people in my province. No one's asking her to demonize a million people. We're asking her to demonize three people, the people who are going down there and taking meetings with the Trump administration. And the fact that she won't do that is not a good sign.

And listen, I'm not as close to it as the people here. The stakes are the same, whether you're from Alberta or not. And I don't know. I don't know why I'm not, tell me, I don't know why I'm not as concerned. I guess I want to be concerned, but I want to be concerned for the right. reasons. I don't want to, I don't want to turn it up to 11 if I don't have to. And, and I get the, the premiers in a different role. But as me as an observer, I get that they're not elected, but they, they still have assumed the same role as that elected official, as a Jacques Parrizo, right?

And I don't know that just because they, if they, I don't know that they don't have the, the right to have those conversations. And I do appreciate that they are, they're playing, they're playing ball with a guy who, uh, he, he respects very much his own borders. But not so much anybody else's. Yeah, I, you know, I just, when people compare Quebec separatism to this movement, you know, Quebec separatism is, you know, as you know, it's like rooted in these long historical issues. It's well informed by facts.

You know, you can disagree with their arguments, but they still make good arguments. The arguments these folks are making have no basis in fact. They are a whisper of a rumor of a conspiracy, it's grievance, its anger. And for some reason, the pre, well, it's not for some. reason but the premier seems determined to continue amplifying and encouraging their arguments and the reason is these guys are in her party and she doesn't want to get thrown out by them yeah good look Gary and I'll pass a mic to you in a second but the only issue is there are a great many people on the

Quebec separatist file who used a motion and and and avoided fact at all at all cost as a matter of fact so there was a man who did a wrote a book about independence movements around the world and he went to a Buethe-Sha-son with these Quebec independence seekers and said explain to me what your problem is when Canada was founded you were a you had a population by 85,000 and today you're 8.5 million of which 7 million or 7 plus are francophone where's the problem they said well if it weren't for the anglophones we would be 85 million which is a complete ignorance of the quiet revolution where people just

started to know no no Catholic church we aren't going to have 18 babies anymore in fact we're just we're not going to have any so uh but i I do take your point. I do want to move. Yes. Can I just, yeah. We do that here.

I think we do that here from a motion standpoint, too. Like I have this conversation with friends of mine who are very conservative and had this just last week and I hear about, you know, all the grievances. And I'm listening to this as I'm in this person's house worth $2 million with his six cars in the garage and his place out in the valley and B.C. And his two trips to Hawaii. And the fact that the average Albertan makes 20% more than the next level, which I think is Ontario.

Like, it is a bit bananas, like that we have so many grievances when you look at our position compared to so many other people across the country. So I do think we pull on a motion. Everybody keeps bringing up the NEP from a million years ago. Like, we do have to look a bit at ourselves and go, it's not that bad where we are right now. Well, let me ask you a question. Would it be a fair trade if America got Alberta, but Canada got Minnesota? No. No deal.

Yeah. Well, according to Jesse the body venture, the former governor, he thinks that there's a case to me made that people of Minnesota would very much like to join Canada. And I'm making up the trade part, but I think if that were actually brought to the radar of Donald Trump, he might propose a swap. I mean, I think in some respects, playing fantasy baseball or fantasy football, but with geopolitics as well, you know, playing geopolitics is really, right up his alley. I don't think we would want to trade. I think if California and Minnesota and New York want to join Canada, I think we would welcome that with open arms. But no, I just, you know, Albertans, by and large, are not interested in leaving Canada. You know, this is still a 70-30, 75-25 issue. The risk that I see is that we get to a point where we have a 75-25 outcome and then

the Trump administration moves in on us. It opens a door that I just don't think we want to open. And I believe by, I think there's some constitutional rule or something that every state has to agree if one state leaves. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's a little different. So I think it's a bit of a non-starter. Yeah. Okay, so depending on your perspective, Don Lemon, the former CNN host, former host on X,

now independent journalist. Don was either exercising his right as a journalist to cover a story, or he participated in a mob and now he finds himself arrested. Where do you guys land on this story? Gary? Well, I commented earlier, I don't care, but I shouldn't say that. I mean, I do care in the fact that somebody is basically being arrested because I believe that somebody wants to make an example of them. And I think that is very, very concerning.

I think the fact it's Donald. And I honestly think Donald Trump just operates in a world where he thinks he's still on reality television. And every decision he makes is based. The polls are now his new ratings. Yeah. So if he can get good ratings with his base, then I think it works. And I think this is an example of it working. Obviously, it's a very unfortunate situation for Mr. Lemon and the other journalist.

But, yeah, it's unique. I mean, it's sort of this classic aspect of Trump 2.0, which is it's simultaneously very serious and very silly because there's no universe in which Don Lemon is actually going to get prosecuted, much less spend time in jail. I mean, they tried to bring this charge through prosecutors to judges, and the judges said there's nothing here, leave it alone. So this is clearly a politically motivated prosecution, but it's a politically motivated prosecution of a journalist, which is the sort of thing they do in authoritarian countries. And I don't think we can just brush that part of it off. It's interesting to me that, you know, Trump came to power, was elected, is supported by the people

who most fervently valorized the U.S. Constitution, this is the First Amendment. He's gone after the Second Amendment in the shooting of Alex Preddy. He is going after all of these amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and there doesn't seem to be much pushback from the people he used to talk all the time about the Constitution. I don't know if it's a complete slam dunk that he was exercising his right as a journalist. I watched it. I watched. He, in my, I could make the argument that he wasn't there as a journalist.

He was there doing PR for that, for that organization. He knew they were going there. And in real time, he was justifying it in, in that church with the interviews that he was doing. They weren't interviews. They were, that he was, he would, that, that's the argument I could make. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, participated in that if it had been a different, uh, a church of a different ethnicity. I don't know if he would have done that if he'd been in different religion.

And so there's, no one has clean hands here. But Donald Trump is not, Donald Trump's not necessarily a great president. Donald is not a great journalist. And neither one of them are quitting themselves with honor in this situation. And I think they've both gotten so much under each other's skin that they have forgotten that they actually have other jobs to do. They should be both rising above this sort of thing. Gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for joining us and for joining me here in studio. It's rare that I get to have one of these conversations in person.

I mean, I have you in studio all the time, but sometimes there's... And you should be happy. Too much for that. Too much of a good thing. Guys, thank you very, very much. I appreciate it. And thank you for inviting me into this beautiful city.