On this episode of The Gunn Show, my friend Robbie Picard joins me to talk about his plans to take the fight for Canadian oil and gas all the way to Ottawa, Canada. He talks about his recent trip to Fort McMurray, Alberta, and why he thinks it s the perfect place to launch his campaign.
00:09:59.960I think, you know, we're going to give stickers out.
00:10:02.560We're going to do like we did back in the day.
00:10:04.640Maybe I'll do a protest outside of an Ottawa Tim Hortons.
00:10:07.800I mean, I'm going to go back to my roots.
00:10:09.140And but I think it's very important that they that they understand that what happens in Fort McMurray with our oil and gas industry powers the entire country.
00:10:30.680And while we sit here and infight and act like immature children, we are holding back billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to make our country better, make their lives better, too.
00:10:43.740And what they do is they benefit from our oil and gas and they live the lives of upper class or let's say, like, you know, middle upper class, upper middle class, like Jagney with his beautiful BMW with the dual exhaust.
00:11:01.080I think they need to wake up call on where that money really comes from and they need to understand there's this country's bigger than Quebec and Ontario and the Ottawa bubble needs to be burst a little bit.
00:11:13.240I'd be happier if Winnipeg was our capital.
00:11:15.960I think that would be geographically a better place than Ottawa.
00:11:18.780It's a little bit more central to the country.
00:11:20.500I think it would provide some balance, too, because it's got that sort of a little bit of east meets west and it's on the prairie and it's not that far removed from its agricultural roots.
00:11:33.000But I wanted to ask you, do you think that it is some of the misconceptions about the oil and gas sector?
00:11:42.600And I'm glad that you touched on the fact that the Liberal Association for Carleton called oil stands strong white supremacists.
00:11:52.900Do you think that it is willful ignorance?
00:11:56.940Like, do they know better, but they but they just don't care or are they truly ignorant about the social and societal impacts that the oil and gas sector has on indigenous communities?
00:12:08.020Because that's one of the things that you're such a strong advocate for, is telling the stories of indigenous communities that are benefiting from oil and gas.
00:12:16.540I would argue that people at the very top, they know what's going on.
00:12:20.820And to this day, I still don't understand their political motives because it just doesn't make sense.
00:12:26.240If I was, you know, in a position where I was the prime minister, I'd say, OK, like my job is to make this entire country hum like a motor and I need to make it run its best possible.
00:12:38.200And I would work on each and every one of those coast to coast.
00:12:41.840And I would try to build bridges and understand each region.
00:12:45.720And so but I would argue the people that are under the leadership, I don't think they know, per se, because I know that when we've gone out there before, we've given out flyers and stuff and explained to them, like, we only produce 0.15 of global emissions.
00:12:59.920And you guys are importing oil from Saudi Arabia anyway.
00:13:03.700You're still using oil every single day.
00:13:06.480They sometimes are a little naive to that.
00:13:08.900So I think that they need a little bit of an education.
00:13:11.200And I mean, you can only do so much on Facebook and graphics and websites.
00:13:16.060Sometimes I think you need to be in there in the flesh.
00:13:19.420Now, I've seen some pressure right now sort of towards Justin Trudeau.
00:13:25.160Now that we're coming out of the fog of COVID and restrictions are lifting, there's still this pressure for the federal government to use COVID to rewrite the economy in this green way.
00:13:40.800That sort of leaves oil and gas out of the equation.
00:13:43.160This is, for lack of a better term, their great reset on oil and gas that they don't, they can sort of leave it in the dust and use COVID as a way to do that.
00:13:54.820I guess, how do we, how do we change that?
00:13:56.960Because there are a lot of well-meaning people who are saying, yeah, that's a great idea.
00:14:28.160Our mission is to try to educate the average people so that at least they come on board and support us, finish the Trans Mountain pipeline and try to get Energy East built.
00:15:15.820And our oomph is the fact is, hey, as long as the world needs oil, as long as you use gasoline, as long as you're living your lives, brushing your teeth or anything, you know, the oil, if you're going to need it, it should come from Canada.
00:15:34.700I mean, for all the nonsense of Biden and Kamala Harris and all that, the United States is still the largest producer of oil.
00:15:42.340We have the second largest, or sorry, the third largest proven reserve, but I would argue that we have way more than we haven't even found yet.
00:15:50.140So we have, we're sitting really good here.
00:15:52.060And if we develop our resources in a responsible way, we can make this country better for generations to come.
00:15:57.900We just have to stop the insanity of all these people who think that they're somehow environmentalists and they're green when they're really not.
00:16:07.240And that's, we need to get like, listen, like, let's push this country forward.
00:16:10.520I've never been against solar or wind.
00:16:15.220Like, if you have a solar power plant that is backed up by a natural gas, it's not really solar.
00:16:23.000And let's just be honest, you can't make a solar panel without fossil fuels.
00:16:26.220And here's the other thing, too, I was thinking about this.
00:16:29.360Maybe the way we're doing it isn't that bad.
00:16:31.720But maybe if we start mining all these rare earth minerals and, like, they're doing in other countries and making all these giant strip mines and open pit mines that they're not doing reclamation on, maybe you're going to end the world a lot quicker than if you just say, okay, look, we've got good things going here with our natural resources right now.
00:16:56.820I mean, I kind of got motivated on my tour with Aaron because even myself, I mean, with everything going on, I haven't done a reclamation tour in a while.
00:17:04.380I mean, the reclamation that the sites have done is stunning.
00:17:13.640And we are, and every time we get better at it.
00:17:16.160So, I mean, the rest of this country needs to wake up and recession-proof Ottawa needs to have a little bit of an awakening.
00:17:25.940And I really, like, I find myself just almost angry at the amount of the bureaucrats that just get paychecks no matter what happens in the world.
00:17:37.100And then they make decisions that affect the rest of us.
00:17:39.900And I think that that's something that people on the, you know, in the West need to start being more vocal about.
00:17:45.380We, just because our population is not as big as Ontario and Quebec's, doesn't mean that we shouldn't have equal representation.
00:18:14.560And I just think that we really need to, as Albertans and people from Western Canada, including BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, we need a stronger voice.
00:19:35.620I have some contacts there that I have been wanting to reach out to.
00:19:38.200The problem, though, is that, and the truth of the matter is, the reason that they're so anti-oil and gas has a lot to do with Naomi Klein when she wrote the Green New Deal, which is a different version of the Leap Manifesto.
00:19:50.780And she got with AOC, and they pushed that agenda forward.
00:19:55.900And then I think the Democrats leaned on it.
00:19:58.380I don't, yeah, we need to spend a lot of time in the states.
00:20:01.520We need to spend a ton of time trying to find common ground.
00:20:05.280We have a ton of common ground in the states already.
00:20:07.400Like, one of the things that surprised me is I had, like, make your profile pic like this.
00:20:12.900And 250,000 people made their profile pic the same as ours, and most of them were American.
00:20:21.480So there is a lot of support down there.
00:20:23.600And to build a better world and, you know, instead of supporting crazy dictators, Canada and the United States should work better to get our oil to market.
00:20:34.240And I think that the Americans could benefit greatly with energy security.
00:20:39.660The problem is that, you know, it's just we need to be assertive.
00:20:44.920And, like, and the fights, they come up all the time.
00:20:51.900But why do we have to go through just the sheer stress of everything we have to go through all the time of fighting this and fighting that?
00:20:59.600And I think that's something we need to address.
00:21:03.000Well, I think the fact that so many Americans changed their profile picture to oil sand strong speaks to the deficit of oil and gas activists like you in the United States.
00:21:13.600They had a pretty good for a while down there with Trump, so they didn't have to really fight for their oil and gas sector.
00:21:18.400And now, really, they're in the same boat as we are up against a federal government that wants to phase out their industry altogether.
00:21:26.040Now, Robbie, you and I both have to go very quickly.
00:21:29.020But please tell us how people can support the work that you're doing, particularly to bring the fight to Ottawa.
00:21:35.860Okay, so just buy at least six shirts per person.
00:21:55.760We're going to try to have one store in every city to get our gear.
00:21:58.720The gear's been moving like crazy since Pierre Polyev put it on.
00:22:03.180So we want to keep going and, yeah, like we, the difference between us and the other groups is that we try to be nonpartisan, but we also are not scared of a fight.
00:22:14.640We take on celebrities and we call it hypocrisy.
00:22:18.960So, you know, and that's essentially it.
00:22:22.580So hopefully this COVID is over soon and we can get back to living.
00:22:27.640I'm going to be speaking across the country at different events and stuff.
00:22:31.160But the main focus is to, like, before we go insane and try to somehow pretend oil is dead and it's not, we need to just say, like, look, let's build our country.
00:22:43.300And by putting pipelines and building our resources, you're building a stronger country, protecting the environment and the economy simultaneously.
00:22:52.200And that's the reality of what needs to be done.
00:22:54.740And, yeah, and then just don't, you know, if you're going to drive a BMW, I mean, that's fine.
00:22:59.920Maybe we should get, you know, I, okay, you know, I'm going to do an Ottawa.
00:23:03.260I'm going to get an orange oil sand strong sticker in a circle.
00:23:07.160I'm going to find that Beamer and I'll put it on there.
00:23:10.400Well, Robbie, thank you so much for being on the show.
00:23:24.740I normally do my best to attribute ignorance as opposed to malice.
00:23:39.300But I think when it comes to the battle against oil and gas development, which truly does mean the battle against Albertans' best interests, I think malice is rightly attributed.
00:23:51.960I think by and large, most anti-oil activists and politicians at this point know exactly how reliant they are on oil and gas.
00:24:00.200They just don't want to get it from us.
00:24:06.020You see, they don't want the dirty work.
00:24:07.020They don't want the dirty work of getting oil and gas done in their own backyards.
00:24:11.780They'd rather offset that to some place that they don't have to look at, even though we in Alberta do oil and gas better and cleaner than anybody else on the entire planet.
00:24:23.760Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.