In this episode of the Critical Compass, Mike and James speak with Tim Hoven, a regenerative rancher who wears many hats and is an outspoken Alberta independence advocate. Tim talks about the lack of trust in government and the need to rebuild it.
00:00:19.760And I look into the future and I think things are not going to be okay.
00:00:24.780And unless someone has the courage to stand up and say, we need to change some of these things so that we can all have a better future, things are just going to get worse.
00:00:35.280We have to choose either to have the courage to change or just sit back home and watch Netflix until the end of the world.
00:00:43.540And I'm not comfortable sitting back and watching Netflix.
00:00:45.940I've got a lot invested in my family, in my province, and we have to act like the future is important to us.
00:00:55.740We actually have to care about the future so we act on it.
00:00:58.740Welcome back to another episode of the Critical Compass.
00:03:31.280Talking with many people who work at the county, they can't believe how people no longer trust them.
00:03:38.040For example, if any municipal employees going out to deal with the landowner, quite often they will have to have the county peace officers coming with them to make sure the situation doesn't get out of hand.
00:03:54.300I think that comes back to, I really believe it relates back to how the government at the federal, provincial, and even some municipal levels treated people during COVID.
00:04:03.360That, that level of trust, that level of a healthy relationship was broken.
00:04:11.320And it, it's going to be the biggest issue that we all have to face here in the next 10 years.
00:04:16.000How do you have a functioning society when people no longer trust the institutions that govern them?
00:04:22.520So we're, we're in this strange place where do we go towards increased tyranny and control from these centralized organizations or do we have people with courage in those leadership positions who are going to work to rebuild the trust that was broken?
00:04:38.420Yeah, we talk about that on this show a lot about how, you know, during the last potentially many decades people could point to, but definitely the last decade, um, the, the general feel of a lot of Canada has shifted from, uh, what used to be a quite a high trust society to a very low trust society.
00:04:55.060And it sort of seems, I mean, we're city guys from Edmonton, you know, so we don't, you know, we kind of view a lot of the rural areas or more rural areas of the province of Canada in general as sort of being somewhat immune to that.
00:05:07.140Maybe a little bit more grounded in their, in their, um, closer knit communities, but it's interesting to hear that that's not necessarily the case anymore.
00:05:13.620So it's still, it's trickled down even to you guys.
00:05:16.120And then, you know, a high trust community, that's an interesting statement.
00:05:20.360When I was growing up, we never locked our doors on our homes, right?
00:05:24.820The whole community, everyone had their doors unlocked in because what if a neighbor had car trouble and needed to come in your house and use your phone, right?
00:05:32.580That was a legitimate reason not to lock your door.
00:05:35.200You'd go to town, buy groceries, leave the stuff, groceries in the car and not lock your doors and things were never stolen.
00:05:43.620When I ran in 2017, the crime rate in Clearwater County was actually higher than the crime rate in New York City at the time.
00:05:51.140So when I wrote something and put it on my blog during the election, I actually had the local RCMP constable call me up and ask if I'd take that down because he didn't think it made the community look very good.
00:06:05.340Which was strange that the RCMP is monitoring a candidate's blog post to see what he's saying.
00:06:31.060It was about every second day, a neighbor within a four mile radius was getting broken into.
00:06:35.960Having gas stolen, a quad stolen, it was not a safe place to be.
00:06:43.760So I got elected, we did a lot of work with the RCMP and by work with the RCMP, every time we would see them, we would ask them, what are they doing about rural crime?
00:06:54.820And it took a few years, but we were able to put enough pressure, not just the council, but the people in the community.
00:07:01.960We were able to put enough pressure to get the RCMP out here more often, clean up some of these meth labs and chop shops that were in the area.
00:07:10.180And things have been good for about seven years.
00:07:14.100Yeah, so that pressure can be effective.
00:07:17.280It just takes enough people to apply that pressure.
00:07:22.320Like it literally took years to change the motivation of the RCMP in one community to clean up one small part of the community.
00:07:32.920And that's more of a bottom up rather than, so I feel like there's change that can happen within yourself, within your family, within your community.
00:07:45.060There's all these circles that they keep on expanding.
00:07:48.240And you're a good example of like, if you take control of the circles right around you.
00:07:54.460And you can affect a lot of change directly.
00:07:57.320But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't also push towards changing these larger circles, because often that sets the tone for a lot of what happens on an individual level.
00:08:12.140But maybe that's more why we're seeing, like we're seeing a lot of the same sentiments from Alberta independent supporters.
00:08:20.480It's that they want to be able to take care of these circles just around them, their family, their communities, and they don't want as much coming from top down.
00:08:44.220The Rocky Chamber of Commerce had an election forum.
00:08:47.500And one of the questions that came up from the crowd was whether or not the candidate supported the Forever Canada petition or the Alberta Prosperity petition for independence.
00:09:03.140And the councillors, there must have been 12 people up on stage, only one of them would answer, and he was pro-Canada, but the rest would not come out and say whether they're pro-Canada or pro-independence.
00:09:19.300And I thought, isn't that a strange thing?
00:09:21.360Here it is in 2025, and to say you're pro-Canada in Rocky Mountain House is going to hurt your chances of being elected.
00:09:29.640Now, they weren't enthusiastic about being pro-independence because they didn't say that, but they realized it was a hot topic that's going to alienate half of the voters one way or the other, so they just chose to ignore it.
00:09:44.780It's an interesting, I guess, that sort of CYA attitude, you know, filters all the way down to small municipal politics, eh?
00:09:55.380In a certain way, it's even more here because it's, you know, in Edmonton, have you guys ever met your councillor or your mayor?
00:10:13.600You might have went to school with them.
00:10:15.080You live in the same small community, and all of a sudden politics, instead of being more friendly, gets to be a more personal level because the personal decisions of the council affect people on a much deeper level.
00:10:29.080It's a very interesting dynamic, the difference between rural politics and urban politics.
00:10:35.120Yeah, there isn't that insulation, and I guess if there's disagreements, they become...
00:11:00.180That, so I know Edmonton and Calgary very much, you have a lot of, you can draw some parallels of when it comes to city politics to them adopting a lot of these principles set, the tone set from like, let it be the UN with their sustainable development goals, or the WF with kind of their vision.
00:11:26.360Let it be kind of the climate side of things, as well as just their smart, trackable, analytical cities, everything's measured, they want to be able to have convenience, but also the monitoring tools for that.
00:11:45.900So you're in these cities, you're finding a lot of them adopting these ideas.
00:11:51.800Have you seen that as well in some of these smaller towns?
00:11:56.360Yes, but in a different way than the major urban centres.
00:12:01.240A lot of, one of the questions that the candidates were asked was all about, would you withdraw from FCM, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which I'm sure is something that got addressed up in Edmonton and in Calgary.
00:12:13.020I think the rural people tend to love the way things are more than urban people, and they're more resistant to change, whether positive or negative.
00:12:23.460There's a large portion of the population that wishes that we could go back just to be in a farming community.
00:12:31.220There are people that are still opposed to oil and gas industry because of how it interrupts agriculture.
00:12:38.780Agriculture is not going to be the industry that carries us into the rest of the 21st century, right?
00:12:47.020If we're, if agriculture is the way we're going to do that, we're going to be broke and poor for a really long time.
00:13:10.980Even though it's not going to affect them personally in a lot of ways,
00:13:15.360the transition in the community is a little intimidating to people and overwhelming.
00:13:21.920I think another issue that really is affecting people here is the concerns about the UNDRIP, right?
00:13:28.940The United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, on the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
00:13:35.100We can look at the land claims issue that came up in BC and Richmond where people got a notification that they might be losing their homes because it's traditional First Nations land.
00:13:47.300And that is a real pressing concern for people here in rural Alberta as well, because, you know, we, this land did used to be used by First Nations people.
00:14:00.660And once again, that's pushed by the centralized authority called the United Nations.
00:14:04.880And it's filtering down to our local communities one decision at a time.
00:14:09.520And people just don't know how to stand up and argue against the centralized authority like that.
00:14:17.560And it takes a lot of time, a lot of people, and a lot of pressure to turn that around.
00:14:23.080Is it your impression that people feel, people in smaller communities, maybe feel not powerless, but do they feel like, and I'm trying to put myself in that position, like, do you feel like sometimes like the world just kind of happens to you?
00:14:42.160Or, you know, they feel like they're, you know, they feel like they're, they're sort of blown about as the, as the globalists do, or do they, do people feel empowered in any sort of way to affect some, either some resistance or some influence on, on these things?
00:14:55.120I'm going to say, I'm going to sit on the fence.
00:15:00.020One thing I know about my mindset is being a rancher.
00:15:03.840You know, your whole mindset is to plant your seeds and then you wait for it to rain.
00:15:12.160And there's nothing you can do to change the weather.
00:15:15.040No carbon tax is going to make it rain.
00:15:18.000In so many rural people, the, the, the, the mindset, the way we've been raised, the way we've lived for our entire lives is you do the work and you wait.
00:15:29.620But I think that mindset is slowly changing because in rural communities, if you can get a group of 20 people, you can control the politics of an entire municipality.
00:15:43.180Whereas 20 people in Edmonton is, is nothing.
00:15:46.020You need thousands of people to put pressure, but a small organized group of people who have a common vision can make a lot of good or a lot of bad.
00:15:56.640If you have the wrong people doing it, yeah, the consequences are greater.
00:16:01.340The, the, the effect is, uh, um, the individual effect that a person has in a smaller group like that is, is more consequential, isn't it?
00:16:12.900But it's that mindset of, of thinking that if we just do the little bit that we need to do, the minimum we need to do, and then we sit back, something will happen that makes things happen.
00:16:26.100And it was hard for me to come to that belief that instead of just waiting for the rain, I need to be involved and make it rain so that things happen.
00:16:34.820And that's a message that many rural people are finally waking up to that by getting off the couch, going to a few meetings, you can really affect change for the better.
00:16:47.160One question I had is, uh, in your, in your ranching, it seems like as a regenerative rancher, you are going against the system by nature.
00:16:59.060When did that mindset, uh, like when, when did you, has, has that been held throughout the family or is that something you shifted and you kind of, uh, started implementing, uh, a little bit later down the, down the lineage?
00:17:20.180Like when my great, great grandfather was in South Dakota, uh, he and his sons moved up north to Alberta in 1908 because they thought there was too much government in South Dakota in 1908.
00:17:32.260So when they came up here, the only sign of government was the survey stake in the ground that told them where their homestead was.
00:17:39.760I've always, I guess for me, I like to solve the problem.
00:17:45.480Um, and there are so many circumstances where the government just tries to kick the can down the road.
00:17:51.740We'll, we'll let the next people solve it because this is too hard.
00:18:05.300If I just put a bandaid on everything that wasn't working, it would fall apart.
00:18:10.560And that is what's happening with our government on all levels.
00:18:13.760Instead of actually thinking hard about the issue and solving the problem, they just put the bandaid on it and kick it down, whether for one year, two year, four years, or 10 years to let the next people fix it.
00:18:25.740Yeah, it's a, it's a fundamental problem that arises in, uh, in any democracy that gets, you know, as big as, as a modern nation state where you have, um, people who seemingly, you know, they, they get elected on these grand promises of the, the change they're going to bring and the benefits they're going to bring to their society.
00:18:45.100And really what it ends up changing into very, very quickly is what do I need to say in order to just get reelected so I can have another term?
00:18:54.220They don't, uh, they don't want to rock the boat anymore.
00:18:56.400And I don't think that kind of stuff flies at the, uh, the more, uh, like we were saying earlier, the, the more consequential your individual actions get at a community level, you can't, you can't behave like that.
00:19:28.140And then five people in the middle, and you have to come to a consensus that everyone agrees with and gets voted on.
00:19:35.500And then if you're the poor Reeve, you have to go out and explain it to the community when you might know it's the wrong solution, but it's the consensus.
00:20:03.160It's the best compromise solution, which really never fix as anything.
00:20:09.580It all depends where that decision making is coming from.
00:20:12.440And, um, sometimes you have, there's hubris that goes along with a lot of these government decisions where, um, sometimes they're stuck in spreadsheets, they're stuck in numbers.
00:20:22.840And they feel that they're trusting data that is often decoupled from the actual system.
00:20:29.560And the ground bubble, um, I think you can draw a parallel to the government trying to solve problems with how maybe, um, large agriculture is, is run currently right now.
00:20:43.660You have massive chemical interventions.
00:20:47.460You have like, okay, well, to grow something, we, we have to inject, uh, we, we have to fertilize everything.
00:20:55.760Everything's just a top-down intervention, which takes you farther away from the natural system.
00:21:35.920So much of this, the current struggle in agriculture comes from government supporting the wrong thing.
00:21:42.800Um, I think right now land in our area, it's probably cheap compared to a, the farther you get away from highway two corridor or sorry, the queen Elizabeth two corridor land prices decrease, right?
00:22:00.140And like a quarter section a year and a half ago sold for $1.1 million for 160 acres.
00:22:06.880So whoever bought that, you can't make enough money on that quarter section.
00:22:14.820You can't make enough to pay the interest payments, right?
00:22:18.700So you're, you're hurting your cashflow, but because the way the system is, so many of these big farmers have to expand and expand and expand just to keep the cashflow going through the system to keep the banks happy.
00:22:32.800There is no way based on our current system that small farms like mine are going to be surviving for another hundred years.
00:22:42.400A farmer should look to improve his, his land 1% every year, right?
00:22:47.560So you just do smarter, buy some new equipment, slow improvement over time.
00:22:51.720But because of what the federal government is doing with the money supply and this massive inflation, if you do that, you eventually are going to run out of cash and go broke.
00:23:02.920So the system itself is just against any small local producers trying to make a go at it.
00:23:08.720If you were to look at the numbers of people who were direct marketing 30 years ago, when we started, um, maybe 5% of people left.
00:23:19.420It just is too much work and there's not enough money in it, even with the high beef prices now to make it a legitimate business.
00:23:27.720It's not a business that you can sell off to someone else because of the great profit margins in it.
00:23:31.920Do you, forgive my ignorance here, Tim, but do you find then because of the, uh, the increase in, in land costs in those, in, in the areas you're talking about, do you, are you seeing that, um, fewer and fewer, uh, farmers and people looking to get into farming or to expand farms?
00:23:53.280Uh, you're, you're, you're getting fewer people doing that and more people who, uh, already, you know, have wealth or come from money, buying up those lots to turn into like pleasure properties.
00:24:03.680Like it just acreages and stuff like nonproductive land.
00:24:06.960Um, one of the things we've noticed is people, at least in Clearwater County is people coming out from Toronto and Vancouver.
00:24:14.500They can sell their little house in Toronto for a lot of money, come out here, buy a whole quarter section with a much bigger house.
00:24:22.340And still have enough money left over to buy a brand new $120,000 truck and a 70,000 RV trailer to pull behind it.
00:24:31.200So financially for them, it makes a lot of sense, but it drives up the prices for everyone here trying to make an actual living off the land.
00:24:49.120This is where you're also seeing a lot of houses sold where it's used to be that whole section was being farmed.
00:24:57.840It was owned and farmed by that family.
00:24:59.300And now the house is being sold and then the land is sold off or rented and it's, it's not being maintained in the family as well.
00:25:06.160So you're, you're losing these generations and perhaps there's a part, part of that is tied into how maybe anything blue collar farming, anything that wasn't a university based like path for somebody to go down.
00:25:24.180So that was demonized as lesser than, um, as a career choice.
00:25:28.820And I wondered if some of these skills are going to be lost, if not for a revival, um, a passion with like, you, you kind of need the next generation to be passionate about farming or you're not going to have any regenerative farms.
00:25:47.660It's all just going to be cookie cutter, top down, a very, uh, equipment and kind of bureaucratic heavy.
00:25:59.760Well, there's a farmer, uh, I remember reading the story in the Western producer a few years ago, he was farming 20,000 acres in Saskatchewan.
00:26:11.800He was stressed because of all his money worries.
00:26:15.040So a Chinese corporation bought him out, hired him as the manager, and he can do what he loves, which is the farming.
00:26:22.700And he lets them worry about the money and the financing.
00:26:25.540The problem, the big problem is that generational knowledge that he had that came from his dad and his grandfather and his great grandfather is all going to be gone because there is absolutely no guarantee that his son is going to become that farm manager.
00:26:41.860The son's going to get some other job.
00:26:43.880The son's going to remember the tremendous stress the dad lived with when he was farming.
00:26:48.280And he's going to go get a job in the city where at five o'clock at the end of the day, you're done.
00:26:53.580Farming is a lifestyle, and if you don't love it, it's hell on earth.
00:26:59.220And if you love it, it's the greatest thing you could ever do.
00:27:04.020And now in the meantime, then when that family's line, uh, isn't, decides they no longer want to be involved in farming, well, there's another piece of land lost to a, a foreign interest that further erodes.
00:27:15.820So like whatever you think personally about whoever, you know, whatever nationality owns the land doesn't really matter if it's not a Canadian and it's not a, uh, you know, an old stock kind of somebody who's been here and worked the land for generations.
00:27:28.220It's that, that, that changes a community that changes, it just doesn't feel quite right.
00:27:35.380Farming in a sense is, uh, especially at like a family, like if you own the land, work it, and you have your family involved, you pretty, that's pretty much the ultimate expression of personal responsibility.
00:27:49.680Like everything on there is just dependent on you making it happen and, and it takes that constant involvement, that constant work.
00:28:00.300You can't just defer it to somebody else.
00:28:03.240It is, it's the person they're working that is responsible.
00:28:08.740Um, and I, I feel like that's an attitude shared by many independent supporters.
00:28:14.000Um, my bigger question behind this is, uh, when, when did you realize that Alberta would be better off as an independent country or as not a part of Canada anymore?
00:28:32.660I've always considered myself an Albertan before Canadian, but that didn't, that does not mean I've always been a, as Separatist.
00:29:07.060And you're like, did I say white before or did I say Alberta?
00:29:09.920Yeah, the, the other issue, both nationalist and Sovereignist, um, they're still muddy terms in the sense that the Sovereignist could be somebody trying to advocate for Canadian sovereignty.
00:29:22.920It doesn't, um, it doesn't relate to the provincial level or like Alberta itself.
00:29:28.620And then also in a way, yeah, we are nation building, but the term nationalist is generally like, well, it's, somebody will default and assume you're talking about the Canada's identity first, more so than, than Alberta's identity.
00:29:44.960Uh, but I think separatist is still used kind of in a negative sense.
00:29:51.440So I've been leaning towards independence.
00:30:09.660So, like I said, I've always been a proud Albertan, but it's really probably the last two years that really made me think that there is no solution if we decide to stay in Canada.
00:30:21.720Or if we, if the people of Alberta choose to stay in Canada, there will be no solutions to the problems that we have.
00:30:29.260In fact, I believe things are going to get worse if we stay in Canada.
00:30:32.640We've got the federal government pushing in their increased censorship.
00:30:35.360We've got them changing, we've got the RCMP changing a rule that makes legal gun owners now criminals.
00:30:45.280So they didn't change anything they did, but the, and it's not even a law.
00:30:50.360It's a, it's a regulation that the RCMP commissioner made and that turns people into criminals.
00:30:59.400I, I put this on my sub stack and it was questions to ask over Thanksgiving a month ago, just if the conversation gets dulled, just ask your, ask your Canadian supporter friend, these questions.
00:31:12.500And the first one was, do you support having your vote in Alberta be worth only 66% of what a vote in the Maritimes is worth?
00:31:22.920I asked, what do you think about Senate, your vote, your Senate seat here in Alberta is worth less than a Senate seat in Ontario, Quebec, or the Maritimes.
00:31:40.380There are three Supreme Court justices from Ontario, three from Quebec, and then three spread out the rest of the country.
00:31:46.460So do you have any pride, any dignity in your heart to stand up for yourself and say, Hey, at a bare minimum, my vote, my say should be equal to everyone across this country.
00:32:02.640And the, and I don't believe there's a way to change that.
00:32:06.680There's no benefit to the people of Ontario or Quebec or the Maritimes to give up any of the power they have so we can take what's equally ours.
00:32:19.800And to have it change, that's a, that's a difficult thing to change.
00:32:24.480It requires the East to cooperate to change.
00:32:26.900So it's not, it's not going to happen very easily.
00:32:30.660But any other change that Danielle Smith is pushing for is only a policy change and it's negotiated.
00:32:37.400And all it takes is for the next prime minister to think differently and everything's rolled back right to where we are.
00:32:44.020We have a constitutional problem, not a policy problem.
00:33:00.280I would say that that's such an important question to, you know, to ask people if they even think about what their vote is actually worth at the end of the day at a federal level.
00:33:09.900Cause I would, I would venture a guess that most never think about it.
00:33:13.200Most just think, Hey, you know, I voted for this person in my riding and he either won or she either lost or whatever.
00:33:20.840And then if they, if they see that their riding is represented by a member of their team, then great.
00:33:26.540Or if it's a member of the opposite team, then boo, you know, they, that's kind of where the thinking ends, I think for a lot of people, because at least in my experience and, you know, James and I are, we, we describe ourselves to, to guests that don't know us, you know, as well as, um, as recovering liberals.
00:33:41.740And, um, we, uh, you know, we, a lot of our family members and our friends are all, you know, sort of, they haven't necessarily followed us in this journey, um, post COVID.
00:33:53.260And, um, and so, you know, I, I would say that the, at least with the people that we're most familiar with, they tend to view themselves as more of a member of a, of an international community or a member of a, of an interest group of some type, or they're, you know, they identify with a, some sort of cause more than they identify with, um, their own national interests.
00:34:17.040And so when people like us, you know, start talking about, um, these bigger nationalist causes, they sort of view that as a threat to what they perceive as a status quo, I think.
00:34:27.140And that's why there's that sort of visceral gut reaction, uh, to oppose it, even if we're all actually trying to work in each other's best interests and it would actually be in their best interest.
00:34:39.460The, the biggest problem we have right now for the independence movement is that things are okay.
00:35:11.720Well, for my sons to look at getting a good enough job that they can afford to save a down payment so they can have a house by four, by the time they're 40 is just about impossible.
00:35:24.900And that's the same for millions of people across this country.
00:35:29.780And unless someone has the courage to stand up and say, we need to change some of these things so that we can all have a better future, things are just going to get worse.
00:35:40.520We have to choose either to have the courage to change or just sit back home and watch Netflix until the end of the world.
00:35:48.500And I'm not comfortable sitting back and watching Netflix.
00:35:51.420I've, I've got a lot invested in my family, in my province, and we have to act like the future is important to us.
00:36:00.880We actually have to care about the future.
00:36:04.020But it's also agreeing on what that action actually is, because I feel like we have decades of people, they've been told that the solution is that the government has to be the architect and fix these problems.
00:36:24.020It's not, in a way, it's actually disempowering at an individual level.
00:36:32.100And I feel like it's gone hand in hand with a sense of demoralization.
00:36:36.660As things get worse, it's like things are bad, things are bad, people are struggling.
00:36:43.260And the government's creating the problem that only government can solve.
00:36:48.040And people are voting and they're begging for like, well, yeah, I will, I'll take my little rebate check.
00:36:54.540They're helping us, they're giving us money, not realizing like, well, where does that wealth come from?
00:36:59.720Like, what is, like, whose money is that?
00:37:04.620It's not the government's money, it's taxpayers' money.
00:37:06.620So where does that taxpayer money come from?
00:37:08.640And if you distort our sense of what money is worth, you start, people can't even properly navigate, they can't make good long-term decisions.
00:38:18.080And we had a really good discussion after about what they, what they thought of the speakers.
00:38:25.580And my one son said, it was really angry.
00:38:29.800And I thought, you know, I thought the speakers were pretty positive because I've heard angry independent speakers before.
00:38:36.600I didn't find that event to be overly negative.
00:38:40.140I'd say it was honest, which is kind of negative, but he was, he made the comment that if we want to reach the young people of the province, we can't just be the F Kearney and F Trudeau crowd.
00:38:54.800We need to have that hopeful vision of the future and let these young people know that the best way for them to have the best life possible is by being more sovereign, like we discussed earlier, and being more responsible for your own lives.
00:39:14.860Because if you let someone else run your life, they're going to run it for their benefit, not yours.
00:39:22.500And that's, and that's why, um, that's why young people need to be involved in the direction of this movement, because we've, we've noted similar things before, even, you know, same as you, like, you know, we're, we're able to kind of discern the tone of, you know, when somebody is speaking about a, you know, a politically contentious issue, but maybe, uh, you know, an 18, 19, 20 year old, maybe they're not really.
00:39:45.160And, and their vote is going to count in this referendum.
00:39:47.480So maybe if, if they're only exposed to the light, you know, they've been kind of airdropped into this, uh, the situation where, and they don't have the, you know, decades of working experience and seeing how the economy ebbs and flows and seeing how the social constitution of your community has so radically shifted in, in, you know, recent years.
00:40:06.480And like, they don't really, all their sort of, they only know what they know.
00:40:10.160And, and I've, I've spoken with people before too, who are like, oh, you know, these guys are rednecks.
00:40:15.180These guys are just, you know, these are, uh, you know, far right extremists or whatever.
00:40:19.500And it's like, actually, if you're there, you would know, like, these are very, very normal, well-adjusted people, very nice, very kind without fail.
00:40:28.260Um, they, people say the same thing that you just did, you know, we're in this for the future.
00:40:32.400Like we're, we're, we're, we're forward looking where this is not about me.
00:40:36.760This is about what I'm going to leave for my children and grandchildren.
00:40:40.140And that's a very, very, uh, positive and benevolent thing.
00:40:45.060And so it's, it's difficult to be passionate about.
00:40:48.760So I struggle with this myself, it's difficult to be passionate about something without coming across as frustrated or angry.
00:40:54.960Um, and so, yeah, that, that's such an important point.
00:40:58.060That's, um, that's something that we could, we could note for this movement, I think.
00:41:02.200See that the independence movement has to have a new story.
00:41:07.760Um, for years I, I was trying to sell expensive organic meat to people at a farmer's market.
00:41:14.240So I read many, many books on marketing.
00:41:16.980Uh, Seth Godin was very inspirational to me.
00:41:20.080And his big thing is you have to tell a good story.
00:41:22.700You have to tell a story that resonates with people.
00:41:24.960I think the story that's being told by the independence movement has probably reached all the people who were open to hearing that story.
00:41:34.820And we need to find a new story that's going to bring in the next group of people.
00:41:40.380And I think it has to focus in on a better future for your kids, not just F Trudeau and F Carney.
00:41:46.380Uh, and it's, it's hard when you don't have a lot of money behind your movement.
00:41:51.400It takes a lot of money to get a message out in this digital economy.
00:41:55.760Uh, but it's, it's what we have to try to do.
00:41:58.960And honestly, if you have a good story, it should share itself and not take a lot of money to be shared.
00:42:07.820Yeah, there's, sorry, James, just one final thought on that.
00:42:10.780In addition to the, to the, having a good story behind it, you also have to be, um, we also have to be cognizant of the fact that there's a lot of defeatism on, even with people who are on our side.
00:42:22.940I personally know, you know, a few people who are, you know, would describe themselves as fairly conservative, fairly, uh, independent people who, um, you know, would not be opposed to, to such an idea, but they'll say things like, uh, you know, it'll never happen in my lifetime.
00:42:37.360Or this is, you know, this is a pie in the sky kind of thing.
00:42:40.000Like we can only, you know, do what we can with what we can.
00:42:42.780And it's like, yeah, like maybe with that attitude, but definitely not how, you know, that you can just do things, you know, if you just really want it, you can just do things in this world.
00:42:50.960So we got to, we got to overcome that hurdle too.
00:42:54.360And, and part of this is, I would love to highlight, and we'll see if we can get, uh, get some more conversations.
00:43:02.240Uh, we, at the event, at the rally, we tried to, we had our sign, uh, independence is best for all, for all Albertans, change our minds.
00:43:12.800Um, so yeah, we had our sign and we didn't get anybody there who were like pretty much everybody were there with signs wearing blue and everybody agreed with us.
00:43:26.680So there was no mind changing needed, but I, I feel like some conversations with people that don't agree to get outside of this echo chamber will be actually very, very important.
00:43:38.760Um, partially to unpack what people believe in, why not being judgmental about them holding those opinions.
00:43:48.220Cause I feel like a lot of the time they're existing in a different informational landscape, their diet of information is different than ours.
00:43:58.100Or may, yeah, different screens, they have a completely different, they're seeing a completely different world.
00:44:04.580And I, I feel like they haven't engaged with some of these ideas in the way that we have.
00:44:10.920Um, and I, I guess maybe this is where Mike and I do have a strength of, since we used to be left leaning and we used to think in certain ways and we weren't full on collectivist by any means.
00:44:25.160But we, we never had blue hair, never had blue hair.
00:44:29.460Yeah, the, uh, we, since we've had some, some of that mindsets and, or been in these circles, I, I feel like we can understand that perspective a little bit because we've had to step away from it.
00:44:45.360So if you're going to get a lot of the people in the middle on the fence, um, there has to be more conversations, there has to be culture shift as well.
00:44:55.640There needs to be honest conversations and non-judgment for somebody having the wrong opinion, um, or like having those opinions.
00:45:06.320If they haven't bought on for Alberta independence, I feel like there is a tendency on the right and it can just be sometimes just as tribal as the left that, well, somebody may believe something and you're like, yeah, there's just a dumb leftist.
00:45:22.940Like we, we're not going to win any more votes.
00:45:25.900We're not going to win any more hearts by demonizing those ideas.
00:45:31.220Because there's obviously some people that are so far entrenched, uh, and there's activist level that you won't convince them they're ideologically entrenched at that point.
00:45:42.740But I also feel there's a good range of people who are, they believe things partially because it's the compassionate thing to believe.
00:45:52.940And maybe let's put that in quotations, they feel like it's the compassionate thing, like, well, we need more immigration because these people are looking for a better life and we got to extend our help.
00:46:03.680And, uh, maybe a little bit of our, like tax dollars should go to helping them out.
00:46:21.760How many people can be, be compassionate for all at once?
00:46:26.160And you see that some of these things come from a great place, feels great on the inside, and now get a little bit more uncomfortable when they're forced to contest with the actual consequences of, of some of these ideas pushed to their kind of logical conclusion.
00:46:43.900So it's gonna, it's gonna take a lot of conversations.
00:46:46.520A lot of, a lot of talking is gonna have to be had in the next.
00:46:50.480Well, I, I guess a year, 12 months, let's say, until we have a referendum.
00:46:55.360And it sounds like it might come up sooner than later.
00:47:00.120Um, partially because you had the forever Canada petition, which I feel like accidentally accelerated the referendum process.
00:47:14.940So, um, what is your, uh, maybe, I don't know, this is a huge question, but what is your feeling since, since attending, uh, the I am Alberta event on this week, uh, this, this last weekend?
00:47:26.380Do you, did you come away feeling fairly positive?
00:47:29.980Did you come away with more questions than answers?
00:47:32.180Did you, what, what was your general, uh, feel on the whole thing?
00:47:35.320My first thought after the rally was over was that's a good start.
00:47:40.820If there were 12,000 people there, you know, we need a hundred times that to even have a chance.
00:47:47.940So if you can imagine every person there needs to find a hundred people and convince them, and even that probably isn't gonna be enough.
00:47:55.540We got to get up to 1.8 million, um, that was my first thought.
00:48:00.800We've got such a huge undertaking ahead of us.
00:48:05.480It's gonna take all of my effort and all of your effort if we want to have a chance of getting this done.
00:48:13.460But I firmly believe we have to do that because the alternative is not very good for my family or your family or any family in Alberta.
00:48:24.100So many of those people who signed the forever Canada petition, they just looked out their windows and said, oh yeah, everything looks okay.
00:48:32.400And like we discussed earlier, it's not okay.
00:48:35.740And so how do we tell them things aren't okay without looking all super negative and pessimistic and, you know, being Eeyore and having a cloud over our head that's raining all the time.
00:49:00.340And if it's just a bunch of 50 plus people, 50 year old plus people trying to do this, it's gonna fail.
00:49:09.760We have to talk to all these individual groups.
00:49:12.400We have to talk to different ethnic groups that live in the province and explain to them how it's better for them to join this train.
00:49:21.000That's another thing that, that sort of works against, uh, any sort of movement like this, where you've got, um, you know, people with a little bit of life experience who have seen, you know, they've been in the workforce for a while.
00:49:32.780They see, you know, the power of their dollar shrinking.
00:49:35.240They see, um, you know, their, their influence in their communities shrinking.
00:49:39.320And then you have people who, who haven't experienced that.
00:49:44.100If you don't know, if you haven't felt the shift, it doesn't hit you as hard and you maybe don't feel as empowered or you don't feel that same sense of, um, uh, kind of, uh, calling to, to, you know, recover something that was lost from you.
00:49:59.020You know, um, so that's something that's going to be a challenge to try and impart on people is that, um, like you don't know how good it could be.
00:50:07.340You know, it's kind of like you have a crappy girlfriend, but you kind of like her and, but you don't want to take the risk to break up with her so you can find a new one.
00:52:07.840And then if this lifestyle is what you want for your family, come back and we'll find a place for you.
00:52:17.460That's a really healthy way of looking at it.
00:52:19.360You said something earlier that was a really healthy way of looking at things too, that maybe you, you just, you take for granted being on a farm and seeing that.
00:52:26.200But, uh, in the city, we could use, we could use that, um, uh, that mindset where you, you say, you know, you, you plant your seeds and then you kind of wait, you know, you can't control the weather, you know?
00:52:37.020And that's that general idea of you, you do what you can, you do what's in your power and you don't stress and worry about the stuff that you can't.
00:52:42.920That's a, that's a, that's some deep psychology there.
00:52:46.240Now, James, you, you take her, I've been Bogart in the mic.
00:52:49.580No, it's, uh, we bounce back and forth.
00:52:51.860That's what we do is the, uh, yeah, very much that stoic mindset of, uh, like control the things within your control.
00:52:58.400And you, if you can't control it, then you, you can't put that emotion into it because that's not something you can, you can change.
00:53:05.640So I feel like if the movement is a little bit stoic at times, like if there's a balance between outlining where things are failing or where, like what's wrong with the system, having that hope, but also having that like clear head and that like calm, grounded, uh, sense of stoicism.
00:53:30.780I, I feel like that might help as well.
00:53:33.140Um, so, well, I guess to finish it off, any, anything that we, we didn't cover today that you'd like to, you know, that you wish we asked or?
00:53:46.720The one thing that's coming to my mind here is the chain hat, the change has to start right here in our hearts and it sounds kind of hokey, but no matter what happens in the future, if you become a better man or woman through this fight for independence, you've won.
00:54:03.600And if there's a million people who become better people because of this fight for independence, we will win that bigger battle.
00:54:13.960But if we focus on the externals, if we focus on the big picture, instead of doing what's necessary for us to improve our lives right here in our homes and in our local communities, if we can do that, we will change the world.
00:54:26.860And we don't know how this story is going to end.
00:54:31.380That's the most exciting part about this.
00:54:33.260We are in about chapter three in the story of Alberta and it's the action of myself and you two and 2 million of my closest friends.
00:54:42.700They're going to finish writing this chapter so we can go on to a new one, right?
00:55:04.680Um, hey, for our, uh, our listeners, uh, where can people find you, uh, uh, online or, or do you, um, you have, uh, speaking engagements coming up, anything like that?
00:55:14.680I've got one speaking engagement in T's in a couple of weeks.
00:55:17.660The best place to get more information is to go to my sub stack, timhoven.com.
00:55:22.420Um, I try to write as much as I can and get a few videos up, but life sometimes gets ahold of me.
00:55:28.780Um, and if you're interested in regenerative organic beef, you could check out the family website, hovenfarms.com.
00:55:35.400I'll let everyone know we're sold out on just about everything except our ground beef right now until the new year.
00:55:52.220Uh, Mr. Tim Hoven, thank you so much for your time.
00:55:54.780Thanks so much for your, for your message, your positivity.
00:55:57.860Um, you're, you're a fantastic voice for the movement and, uh, we hope to see a lot more of you around and I'm sure we'll speak again in the future.