The Critical Compass Podcast - April 21, 2026


BertaProudDad ｜ The Mechanic Who Lost a $160K Job Fighting for Alberta Freedom


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

154.47581

Word count

2,447

Sentence count

162

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the podcast, I sit down with a good friend of mine and talk about his life story and how he got to where he is today. He talks about his struggles with drugs and alcohol addiction and how it almost cost him his job and his family. He also talks about the dangers of being an influencer and how to deal with the hate he gets online.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 All right. How's everybody doing?
00:00:04.340 I was told 20 minutes for a guy who makes videos that are 90 seconds long.
00:00:11.520 That is hard. That is very hard.
00:00:15.660 But look at this lineup, right?
00:00:18.720 You got journalists, you got professors, you got politicians,
00:00:23.380 and then you got a heavy-duty mechanic.
00:00:26.460 And that's me.
00:00:27.520 and we're talking about bearing witness and do i gotta stand somewhere like i i'm a talker and i
00:00:35.380 i move around so talk about bearing witness it's going to be a little bit of a depressing story
00:00:41.900 but i promise near the end um it'll get a little bit better but if the hope is that we all start
00:00:49.560 talking and we all start being vocal we have to know what that takes because I
00:00:57.660 just fell into this by accident and I had no clue so I actually used to make
00:01:03.420 videos when I was seven years old my parents got a VHS camcorder you guys
00:01:08.880 know what those are you plug the tape in and I remember when President Bill
00:01:14.580 Clinton did the little thing with Monica Lewinsky. I did a news story on it. And yeah, this little
00:01:25.880 kid sitting at a table and you know, I should dig that up actually. And I should, I should put that
00:01:33.280 out there. And I pull the tape out, put it in. And you know, after dinner every night, my parents
00:01:38.960 would watch my news stories.
00:01:41.820 That's what they did.
00:01:44.700 Yeah.
00:01:47.000 So fast forward to today.
00:01:50.480 I would have never thought
00:01:52.120 that making videos on the internet
00:01:54.980 would put me on a stage
00:01:57.260 with some pretty impressive people.
00:02:01.680 But influence,
00:02:03.300 and being an influencer,
00:02:04.140 that's a hard one.
00:02:04.680 It was said to me today,
00:02:05.380 I don't like calling myself an influencer.
00:02:07.960 But you are.
00:02:08.960 And it comes with huge responsibility. Huge responsibility. You know, we mentioned the 30-year-olds. I can tell you my demographics. I look at them all the time. I have men and women between 18 and 80. That's everybody. That's huge responsibility.
00:02:28.020 And yes, if you've watched my videos, I rant. I go off. I might look angry. Because I am. I am upset.
00:02:43.080 And I'm not trying to get people angry to do something stupid. That's not what I'm trying to do. 0.92
00:02:48.900 I'm trying to get people engaged. As a society, we become so indoctrinated and so brainwashed by these institutions
00:02:56.600 that so many people out there think,
00:03:00.280 well, we can't do anything.
00:03:01.820 There's nothing we can do, right?
00:03:05.620 I lived an act of addiction for 20 years of my life.
00:03:09.740 Eight of those years was cocaine.
00:03:12.900 It just so happens that after Justin Trudeau got elected,
00:03:16.820 my life absolutely nosedived,
00:03:19.580 and I felt like I couldn't do anything else.
00:03:22.680 And that's hard for me to talk about. 0.90
00:03:25.620 My wife is sitting back there.
00:03:28.060 And without her, I wouldn't even be alive today.
00:03:35.820 That woman has been through so much with me.
00:03:40.960 She's watched me hit rock bottom.
00:03:44.220 And when nobody else was there to help me back up and she could have left, she stayed.
00:03:50.820 And I think about that every day.
00:03:53.320 We're going to be grandparents.
00:03:54.680 my daughter's expecting in July my grandson is never gonna see his
00:04:02.220 grandfather drunk stoned he's only gonna see his grandfather fighting for his
00:04:07.340 future but making these videos online doesn't come without sacrifice I
00:04:16.920 mentioned that I'm a mechanic I'm a mechanic that nobody will hire because
00:04:23.680 i'm vocal because i got fired for doing this we talk about leftist ideology we talk about
00:04:30.160 on the right when i look at somebody i disagree with the last thing i want for them is not to be
00:04:36.800 able to feed their family i screenshot every threat every every time somebody wants to cancel
00:04:44.520 me i screenshot it because you never know if you're going to need it in a in a case right
00:04:51.060 A defamation case.
00:04:52.280 We're working on one right now with a guy in Nova Scotia
00:04:54.500 who tried looking up things on my wife, on myself, on my kids.
00:05:00.660 Like, this stuff is real.
00:05:01.980 I don't just make a video, you know, complaining that I get hate.
00:05:07.720 This actually affected my $160,000 a year job,
00:05:11.920 which I was happy to do.
00:05:13.940 I loved my job.
00:05:16.600 So I'm not trying to scare you.
00:05:18.620 I'm not trying to say don't do this
00:05:21.760 but I don't want you to do this
00:05:24.820 and think that there are no consequences
00:05:26.860 but when I look at my kids
00:05:28.900 and I look at my daughter
00:05:30.680 man, she's like, it's crazy
00:05:32.720 like it's, it is weird
00:05:34.920 it's when you're looking at your daughter
00:05:36.820 and you're like, whoa, what the, what's going on here
00:05:39.180 like it's not supposed to be right
00:05:40.860 but you know she's married and she loves her husband
00:05:42.660 and is right, yeah, anyway, that's a whole other thing
00:05:44.960 did I mention I have ADHD?
00:05:48.620 but I'm doing it for all future generations
00:05:55.120 and the weird part about it
00:05:56.940 is the people that cancelled me
00:05:58.860 who say all the hateful, nasty things
00:06:02.980 they're the same people I'm fighting for too
00:06:06.500 and I want to talk about independence
00:06:11.260 I know this isn't an independence thing
00:06:12.620 but we're going to talk about it
00:06:14.180 I pushed Pierre Polyave
00:06:18.220 so hard in the last election where's the head of the united party is he here still
00:06:23.200 anyway you're not here but i apologize man i bashed him like i did i did because i hate vote
00:06:32.680 splitting okay so i was going to come up here and be mr big man and apologize so hopefully he sees
00:06:38.040 this but i respect him for running for sure but then i look at the federal party and the federal
00:06:45.840 conservatives, and then I look at what's happening in Alberta, you can't fix Canada.
00:06:53.520 You can't. Man, that pains me still to say that. Like, it truly does. Because I have
00:07:02.660 not only family throughout this country, like many of you do, I have followers throughout this
00:07:07.680 country. And if you look at the current system and how it's designed, you know, Chris touched
00:07:13.760 on it. Well, Chris stole my speech. Thanks, Chris. The thing is, we're ruled by a crown,
00:07:22.700 and people don't understand this. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms might as well be called
00:07:25.720 a charter of privileges. They're privileges granted to you by the crown of England that
00:07:29.820 can be taken away from you at any single time. You noticed it during COVID. So what happens
00:07:37.260 in the next big event? Why is Mark Carney right now gone to the Supreme Court with the
00:07:43.400 ruling he lost in an appeal. Why is he doing that? He's going to use it again. That's why.
00:07:49.660 And he can't get egg on his face. He's going to use the Emergencies Act the next chance he can.
00:07:55.220 Because he set precedent. Because COVID was literally an experiment. That's what it was.
00:08:00.620 How many of you will comply? How many of you will listen? And then, okay, look how many are
00:08:05.740 indoctrinated and misinformed, right? Brainwashed. I don't want it. That's not Canada. That's not
00:08:12.620 the Canada I grew up in. That's not the Canada I want my grandkid growing up in. So I will have
00:08:17.240 my grandchild live in the Republic of Alberta and have a future. And it's hard. It's hard for people
00:08:27.540 in the East to understand why we're fighting for that. And I get that. I was invited as an
00:08:32.300 influencer to the Conservative National Convention that was in Calgary. I'll probably never get
00:08:36.160 invited again. That's okay. I didn't get kicked out, so I'll give them props on that. But I spent
00:08:44.520 the entire time talking to members of parliament and people from all over this country about
00:08:51.280 Alberta independence. They don't have a clue. They know what the Toronto news says to them.
00:08:58.680 They know what they say to them in Halifax, but they don't have a clue. And it's not their fault.
00:09:05.320 It's not.
00:09:06.640 You know, Melissa Nell Hansman, she came up to me, she gave me a fist pump.
00:09:10.540 Right?
00:09:10.840 The next day, somebody must have said something to her, bad photo op or something.
00:09:13.820 She just walked right by me.
00:09:16.860 It's like, hi, Melissa.
00:09:18.420 Nope, not having any of that.
00:09:19.960 No bird of proud dad, that's for sure.
00:09:23.280 But I really had to draw a line in the sand.
00:09:25.620 And it doesn't mean that I'm letting my conservative brothers and sisters in the country down.
00:09:30.280 Because I'll fight shoulder to shoulder with them.
00:09:32.060 I still make videos about Mark Carney and the overreach.
00:09:34.480 I'll still continue to do that.
00:09:36.480 I'm now trying to tell every single conservative who has a job and actually can pay taxes to 1.00
00:09:40.580 move to Alberta because, you know, we got immigrants over here that weren't economic 0.98
00:09:46.420 migrants.
00:09:47.420 They came and they started using our social programs and that's what you're seeing in
00:09:49.860 our schools right now.
00:09:52.620 You know, and the left is attacking Danielle Smith on that.
00:09:56.360 Did you know there's 112 languages in our school system today?
00:10:00.720 112. 1.00
00:10:02.960 No wonder why it's a disaster.
00:10:06.140 Teachers can't manage that.
00:10:07.460 How much money will it take to fix that?
00:10:10.140 That's the thing that people don't understand, so that's why my channel exists.
00:10:13.560 That's why a mechanic who's a drug addict who got sober, five and a half years sober
00:10:17.680 by the way, that's why I decided it's important.
00:10:25.400 But when I came up here and I talk about responsibility, I can come up here and say, hey, you know
00:10:29.200 what guys pick up a microphone pick up a camera anybody can do what i can do and then i can walk
00:10:34.480 away and not tell you the bad part about it and that's not fair so i'm blessed enough and this
00:10:42.720 is what i love about this movement this is what i love about conservatism is when i go out there
00:10:47.120 and i tell my story and i say i lost my job for this and then you look at a video and you're like
00:10:53.360 why does this guy put his shirts in the end of every single video it's because
00:10:59.060 this is my job now this is all I can do trucking companies won't even hire me
00:11:04.880 oil companies won't even hire me these are the same people that share the same
00:11:09.260 values and beliefs in fact I had a job right after I got fired from an oil
00:11:15.260 company up in Fort McMurray the vice president follows me actually fairly big
00:11:19.160 oil company. I was sitting in a first aid course in Calgary. Phone rings. Hey Lawrence. Hey, how's
00:11:26.560 it going? Can't hire you. Love what you're doing. Love your voice. Keep it up, but stay
00:11:34.340 starving. That's the message I got out of that. So this isn't a pity party. This isn't
00:11:41.060 a poor me party, but I'm just trying to tell everybody we're not backed by anybody. I don't
00:11:47.620 get government funding. I go around with people like Chris who stole my speech back there.
00:11:54.940 That's $40, by the way. And we do this. Grifters got a grift.
00:12:05.140 And we do this because we actually care. We do care. And when I look at a demographic,
00:12:11.340 like I said, 18 to 80, both men and women, that means I'm hitting the young generation,
00:12:15.100 the older generation the people that are ready to retire and and leslie tells the story the best but 0.77
00:12:19.900 i'm just going to say it i almost got ran over by a lady in costco in her electric scooter right she
00:12:25.980 was about 80 years old because she was rushing up to shake my hand and thank me for everything i'm
00:12:30.380 doing and i love that i absolutely love that but conferences like this one bearing witness is
00:12:41.100 is what are the costs of telling the truth
00:12:43.980 when you're up against a billion-dollar machine?
00:12:46.900 Billions of dollars, not just a billion dollars.
00:12:50.360 You're going to lose your livelihood,
00:12:52.240 and they're going to attack you.
00:12:53.960 A podcast I just came out with,
00:12:55.380 I'm going to plug myself here,
00:12:56.360 is called Over the Target with Berta Proud Dad,
00:12:58.360 because when you're over the target,
00:12:59.980 they're going to do everything to destroy you.
00:13:02.180 Everything, and you guys all see it.
00:13:04.680 We bear witness to that.
00:13:07.500 Sometimes the truth hurts.
00:13:08.600 I'm a realist.
00:13:09.460 being a realist is not always easy
00:13:12.940 because I don't like vote splitting
00:13:16.360 I decided to support Pierre in the last election
00:13:19.260 right
00:13:21.020 I'm a supporter of the UCP government
00:13:23.600 you guys know that
00:13:24.800 I stand with Danielle Smith
00:13:26.420 I don't agree with her on everything
00:13:28.520 there's a couple things
00:13:30.140 initiatives I'm trying to change right now
00:13:32.100 one of them being Care First Insurance in Alberta
00:13:34.540 which is going to strip every single person in this room
00:13:36.820 of their rights to sue if they're in an accident
00:13:38.700 and we've got to stand against that.
00:13:41.220 I'm trying to get that changed right now.
00:13:43.800 Another thing is separation. 0.93
00:13:45.320 She believes in a sovereign Alberta
00:13:46.520 within the United Canada.
00:13:49.320 Right?
00:13:50.560 When you believe in faith, family, and freedom,
00:13:52.700 she has the freedom to believe that.
00:13:54.160 She has the freedom to go out there and say that.
00:13:56.400 But I have the freedom to go up against it.
00:13:59.260 And I know there might be people in here
00:14:00.920 that don't want that either.
00:14:03.280 But just months ago,
00:14:05.120 I was in the exact same boat.
00:14:06.640 So just know you've got to educate yourself before you make an informed decision on independence.
00:14:15.580 And that's all I'm asking people to do.
00:14:18.220 This is just wild for me.
00:14:19.780 And I just want to say thank you to everybody who does support me and who does follow me
00:14:23.100 and who does listen to every single person on there.
00:14:26.720 Because this is absolutely amazing that a mechanic from Hinton, Alberta, that's where I was raised,
00:14:32.280 is now standing on a stage.
00:14:34.720 Thank you.
00:14:36.640 My parents would probably be like, what are you doing?
00:14:41.800 My parents are liberals.
00:14:42.780 Did you guys know that?
00:14:44.340 No?
00:14:45.140 Okay.
00:14:46.220 I tried asking them to come.
00:14:47.420 They weren't interested.
00:14:48.940 But maybe next time.
00:14:52.060 But in all reality, I just want to thank Jason, his wife, for putting this all together.
00:14:55.520 Because this is extremely important.
00:14:57.060 I want to thank you guys for your patience.
00:14:58.320 I'm not a public speaker.
00:14:59.340 everything i do is from the heart everything i do is off the cuff and uh and it really comes
00:15:11.620 from passion because i do love this province and and i i do have to it's my duty to stand up
00:15:17.860 for the future of this province so thank you
00:15:20.460 Thank you.