00:18:35.540But the problem is, it could be a heck of a lot better.
00:18:38.900We could be like Dubai here if we wanted to be.
00:18:42.140But we're shackled to this anchor called Confederation.
00:18:45.160Let me throw to a question put by our own reporter Angelica Toy to Premier Daniel Smith today about something that I think is so shocking and it has been extremely underreported in Canada.
00:18:58.220In fact, it's really weird to me that I had to learn about it in the New York Times of all places.
00:19:03.140Apparently, and here's the excerpt from the New York Times on the screen,
00:19:08.440Canada, Mark Carney, was sort of offering to the states to revive the Keystone XL
00:19:13.040as part of a friendly back and forth negotiation.
00:19:16.180But in the end, a Canadian official told the New York Times,
00:19:19.760yeah, we took that off the table when they weren't giving us enough.
00:19:23.560So it was sort of something that Carney would only do if the United States would sort of bribe him or give him a concession.
00:19:33.980But instead of realizing that building the Keystone XL pipeline would be $25 billion a year into the Canadian economy, and especially Alberta and Saskatchewan,
00:19:44.100Mark Carney just said, nah, no, no, I'm not going to do that after all, because I'm in a spat, I'm in a bit of a fight with Trump.
00:19:52.080The New York Times reported that Mark Carney had initially brought up the idea of reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, but then, quote, a U.S. official had said that in the last few hours, Canada had expressed reluctance to cooperate.
00:20:04.000A Canadian official said that the trade deal on offer was not good enough to make the pipeline make sense, end quote.
00:20:10.720It sounds like we could have had the Keystone XL pipeline revived at no cost to the taxpayer, but Carney blocked it.
00:20:17.060Did he kill a $25 billion a year project?
00:20:20.560No, we have, there's a couple of things I'd say.
00:20:23.800Southpaw and Bridger are currently using the old Keystone assets.
00:20:29.340There's 150 kilometers that have already been constructed.
00:20:32.660They've already gone through their open season.
00:20:34.340They've got pledges of barrels, and they're working towards a final investment decision.
00:24:10.580You've long said energy is a non-starter.
00:24:13.400Is there anything that could happen in this back and forth between our two countries that would lead you to believe that energy could be on the table and could be used as a bargaining chip?
00:24:24.120Yeah, I mean, the way I've said it is if the prime minister wants to pledge additional barrels
00:24:28.500to close a deal, another million barrel a day pipeline or two million barrel a day pipeline,
00:24:32.640he has my full support in doing that. Because I think that that ultimately is where we're going
00:24:37.840to end up with a trade deal, is it's going to shift at some point, as opposed to talking about
00:24:43.020some of the technical issues that are causing irritation to the broader trade and defense
00:24:49.040relationship. I think energy is a part of that. I think critical minerals are a part of that.
00:24:53.580And I think defense spending is a part of that.
00:24:55.800So I hope we get on to stage two of the discussions very soon.
00:24:59.200And that would be the way in which I think energy should be brought to the table.
00:25:20.220The only people who were punished were Albertans.
00:25:22.300So maybe Joe McCartney doesn't think of it as a failure. But I'm being negative. Tell me the positive things about Alberta. How can it be? Why is it that Alberta is more freedom oriented, more individualistic, more rugged, less governmenty, more of that American style of, you know, revolution as opposed to evolution?
00:25:41.540You know, it's the kind of place where people might start a revolution.
00:25:47.200I mean, maybe it's no coincidence that some of the noisiest freedom fighters during COVID were from Alberta.0.57
00:27:07.740You know, I grew up just west of Calgary, and one of my core memories, as the kids would
00:27:15.880say, was when there was a grass fire, like a huge grass fire that was moving pretty quickly.
00:27:21.240And everyone came out to fight it, like moms and dads and kids, and everyone sort of gathered
00:27:27.200around and it was sort of a communal, I wasn't, I'm not going to use the word fun because it was
00:27:31.360a serious matter, but to see everyone come out together to fight this fire, it's just with
00:27:37.420whatever means, like seriously, bring a bucket. And you know, one guy had a potato sack that he
00:27:42.680would dip in the water and sort of hit the flames with, like everyone was pitching together. It was
00:27:47.600almost, it was the closest that we ever got to like when the Amish build a barn together in like0.98
00:27:55.040a day. That's a little bit of how it felt, that feeling of solidarity and mutual reliance.
00:28:00.120There was no welfare. There was no government saying, you have to do this. This was people
00:28:05.200on, in a, I mean, when the West was settled, it was inhospitable. I mean, they did build1.00
00:28:12.020sod houses. And so they had to rely on each other in a good faith, high trust way. High
00:28:18.540trust that's the word and um i learned i learned things growing up west of calgary i mean i and
00:28:26.020some of them are still little affectations i carry to this day like i just remember that whenever we
00:28:32.200drove around and we would pass someone else my dad would just always wave you just always wait
00:28:38.160and why aren't you waving are you not friendly are you not like it's it's just a little bit of
00:28:43.220saying hey man i know you're out here and and we're out here together and you're doing whatever
00:28:48.360you're doing, keep doing it, you know, go get them." Like it was just a little bit of
00:28:52.480brotherliness. And I think a lot of those things are missing everywhere because of the
00:28:58.540age of cell phones that actually atomize us. But I think in the cities in particular, people
00:29:05.280forget who they are and where their roots are. And if you say, where does food come
00:29:09.640from? They'd say the grocery store, the freezer. Where does energy come from? The socket in
00:29:14.580the wall. Like we're disconnected from the land and from each other. I think Alberta still has
00:29:19.860some of that. And I think there's a spirit there. There's a spirit of freedom and get her done and
00:29:26.040entrepreneurialism. There's less, like out here in Toronto, there's fancy, things are fancy. Well,
00:29:32.400what school did you go? There's some really fancy schools that are, you know, they're trying to
00:29:38.580mimic, you know, the prep schools of New England or, you know, the Ivy League. Like you have a
00:29:45.880little, I don't know, snobbery is the word, but there's a bit of classism out here. There's no
00:29:52.260classism in Alberta. Like everyone there started on the ground level. There was no Lord's leaping,
00:30:02.140you know, there was, it was real people who built themselves up in a communal collegial way.
00:30:08.580Well, and you see that snobbery frequently when people look down their noses at trades people or people who work in the oil patch.
00:30:18.180You know, you have the Andrew Coyne types of the world versus someone who manages some drilling rigs who makes probably more money than Andrew Coyne.
00:30:27.280But you wouldn't know it because that person makes their living with their back in their hands.