Western Standard - May 03, 2024


ALBERTA REPORT： Talking trains with Minister Dreeshen


Episode Stats

Length

28 minutes

Words per Minute

179.63654

Word Count

5,140

Sentence Count

137

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

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

In this episode, we talk trains with Alberta Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridor, Devin Dreschen. We discuss the Alberta government's new passenger rail master plan, the potential for high-speed passenger trains across the province, and the future of passenger rail in Alberta.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:00:30.000 For the report, my name is James Finkbeiner, and today we are talking trains with Alberta
00:00:37.320 Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors, Devin Dreschen.
00:00:41.820 And I would like for you, our Western Standard members, to join in on the conversation and
00:00:46.280 send me any questions you have for the Minister, and we'll try to fit them in.
00:00:50.200 Just enter everything into that chat, and let's get started.
00:00:53.100 Minister Dreschen, welcome.
00:00:54.960 Thanks for having me on your show.
00:00:56.240 I really appreciate it.
00:00:57.400 Thanks for coming.
00:00:58.060 So let's start with the announcement that the Alberta government will develop a passenger rail master plan.
00:01:04.320 What exactly does that mean?
00:01:06.040 Sure. Well, it's the first time that the province has ever looked at passenger rail across the entire province.
00:01:11.960 So in the past decades ago, there was a review on what an Edmonton to Calgary high-speed train would look like.
00:01:18.900 And this overarching review that we're doing now looks at commuter rail possibilities in and around the surrounding communities of Calgary
00:01:26.820 and also the surrounding the 13 communities around Edmonton that essentially connects the
00:01:31.440 downtown cores of both Calgary and Edmonton to their airports and also to surrounding communities
00:01:36.700 and also looks at the possibility of regional passenger rail out to our mountain park so
00:01:41.500 obviously Calgary to to Banff and Edmonton to Jasper as well as the possibility of passenger
00:01:46.620 rail to Fort McMurray, Grand Prairie and out to to Lethbridge so it's a holistic view of what
00:01:52.880 passenger rail could be in the province and essentially how to sequence that out over the
00:01:57.560 coming years. So it's a big visionary amount of work to do, but it's something that when we
00:02:04.340 have about $3.3 billion every year that we spend on our road network, we obviously do look at other
00:02:11.160 modes of transportation to make sure that people can get around our beautiful province in an
00:02:15.360 efficient and timely manner. So that actually leads right into my next question. Is there
00:02:22.040 demand for this or or are we looking to create the demand is there still going to be investment
00:02:27.160 into the highways and other road infrastructure you bet and and this review actually looks at
00:02:33.200 the feasibility of all of these different parts of a passenger rail plan a cost benefit analysis
00:02:39.160 and then also what it would mean to our roads budget um i'm someone who's riding is right in
00:02:44.420 between edmonton and calgary along the highway 2 corridor so we obviously have plans to take the
00:02:49.020 highway two to not just four lanes but six lanes um possibility of going out to eight lanes it
00:02:54.060 already is in certain areas so it is something obviously we look at our highway network and how
00:02:59.100 best to accommodate truck traffic and passenger traffic and even look at twinning of new roads
00:03:04.700 highway 21 or high load corridor to the east of highway 2 is is also something that we're looking
00:03:10.300 at as well so not just as our population is growing but our economic activity and our truck
00:03:14.880 traffic increases. It is something that we're obviously trying to take more pressure off of our
00:03:19.980 roads and make sure that we can build out to the future. Yeah, there's definitely quite a few
00:03:26.680 highways, 41 and 36, that could probably also use a twinning in the near future too. So why are we
00:03:34.460 putting tax dollars into this? There's been proposals, there's been rumors, there's been
00:03:39.160 different things that have come forward over the last few years and, you know, they all seem to
00:03:44.440 to come forward and there was a lot of private funding that was available for it there was
00:03:48.060 private corporations that were interested in doing it and and now we're looking at a crown
00:03:53.500 corporation and in the most recent history across canada most of the crown corporations usually end
00:04:00.980 up being boondoggles and and a lot of folks are starting to reference this to uh the springfield
00:04:06.080 monorail in in the simpsons so how are we going to ensure that this type of project doesn't go
00:04:12.480 off the rails, so to speak. That was a good Simpsons episode, I know. But no, it is something
00:04:18.660 that we are eventually, we're looking at this in its totality. So we're looking at how the existing
00:04:24.440 LRTs within Edmonton and Calgary could be connected into this rail network. And obviously that the
00:04:30.680 private sector is something that we're giving out this market signal for any private proponents to
00:04:35.940 be able to build a train with private dollars out from Calgary to Banff, from Calgary to Edmonton,
00:04:41.840 in the case of a high-speed rail as well as to edmonton and jasper so those regional long trains
00:04:48.080 um would be the private sector we just think for a possibility of a crown corp for the commuter rail
00:04:53.680 similar to ontario's metro link that in and around calgary and in and around edmonton to those
00:04:58.560 surrounding communities and connecting to the downtown core into the existing city-led lrt
00:05:04.480 projects that there may be almost last year there may be a design or a demand to actually have more
00:05:11.760 um to actually have a public public crown corp in in for those designs so that would be more
00:05:19.260 like uh ontario's go system um now that system essentially brings people in from the suburbs
00:05:25.780 into uh into the inner city um in the morning and then and then it takes them back out to the
00:05:31.820 suburbs in the afternoon but one of the large complaints about that system is that it doesn't
00:05:36.680 really run or it doesn't run well during the day so if uh if if i'm coming let's say from
00:05:43.380 bamf into calgary and i'm trying to get back to strathmore at lunchtime is that going to be an
00:05:48.640 option or or is that something that's going to have to be studied in this feasibility study
00:05:53.260 so so obviously studied and when we uh of the six point plan is also the a rail hub analysis of how
00:05:59.500 these could all be connected so obviously the the existing lrt or the existing systems into downtown
00:06:05.420 as kind of a grand central station which is essentially a point of convergence where these
00:06:09.740 trains can interconnect so that it isn't just uh you know if you had people flying into calgary
00:06:15.580 wanting to go to banff but then they wanted to go into other communities as well to have a seamless
00:06:21.260 point where they could an inflection point where they could actually go out and travel to other
00:06:24.940 parts of the province would would be the ultimate demand but or the design but obviously the the
00:06:29.740 demand of of how and when the sequencing of all this it is tricky and i'll give you that because
00:06:36.140 normally governments do announcements within a four-year mandate because that's how long
00:06:40.060 governments live before an election but this is a larger bigger broader review of you know going out
00:06:46.140 decades to to plan for the future of the province yeah so what exactly is the timeline on this
00:06:52.300 so we we've given ourselves a 15-year window and and view so obviously we want to have this first
00:07:00.220 study done by next summer it kind of sets the groundwork or the blueprint of what a passenger
00:07:04.540 rail network could be in the province and then from there we will send out a request for proposals
00:07:09.660 for private rail companies to be able to say hey we could build that regional rail line from
00:07:14.220 edmonton to calgary or we could go out from calgary to bam and here's our proposals here how it could
00:07:19.900 fit within this master rail plan for the province and then obviously from there we will look at our
00:07:25.740 commuter rail link as well the the possibility of a crown corp and how we could set up that
00:07:30.460 commuter rail system in and around edmonton and in in and around calgary so that uh after we get
00:07:36.480 this initial report done the sequencing will actually be set by what this study actually
00:07:42.000 finds would be the most logical way to to build it out so one of uh the the proposals that's come
00:07:49.600 forward before is using uh the canadian pacific lines uh to to get um a service from calgary to
00:07:56.000 banff um but aren't the cp lines across the province already jam-packed full um moving
00:08:02.440 agricultural products oil products uh you know getting goods and services or well goods out
00:08:07.980 out of the prairies and out to the west coast you're right the cp and cn their primary business
00:08:14.260 is is freight and and we love that because obviously billions of of alberta goods leave
00:08:19.660 this province on both cn and cp's line and then billions of goods coming in uh from around the
00:08:24.840 world to alberta goes by rail so we want to make sure that that freight capacity is maintained and
00:08:29.880 isn't hindered in any way so but we are also talking with cp and cn to see you know if there's
00:08:35.940 possibilities of right-of-ways or what's what they obviously could could bring to the table in this
00:08:41.380 But it's very high level as of right now. And obviously, we don't want any bit of freight capacity to be hindered by this.
00:08:49.220 Yeah, exactly. Especially because, you know, we've already got issues with the train lines and just the amount of time and the amount of traffic.
00:08:57.360 You know, is there a possibility that there should be something where the province would team up with CP and possibly a private rail operator to operate the service, but team up with CP to twin tracks across the province?
00:09:10.120 Yeah, and I guess the trickiest part that we have to identify right off the bat is the downtown area, especially in Calgary.
00:09:17.120 CP, it's very congested, going right down to the heart, the downtown of Calgary.
00:09:21.380 And obviously the pinch points of having a downtown passenger rail location is wedged between skyscrapers and CP's own tracks.
00:09:30.700 So being able to find a way to navigate through those pinch points and to be able to build train stations in downtown Calgary,
00:09:37.720 where there's tremendous amount of density and utilities already there that i would say is
00:09:42.200 probably going to be the trickiest and will take the longest to be able to design how best to be
00:09:47.080 able to integrate this and then also in with the green line uh the calgary's lrt to make sure that
00:09:52.440 its future downtown uh coordinates in with a passenger rail plan as well as not affecting
00:09:57.640 freight so a lot of not a civil engineer going engineering going on to make sure that we can
00:10:03.160 design this properly yeah exactly uh while i was researching some of this i actually came across
00:10:08.680 some interesting numbers so uh edmonton's actually the first light rail system in north america and
00:10:14.600 currently has about 85 000 trips per day which is more than portland's max or the san francisco muni
00:10:21.320 metro and by the end of 2023 calgary had a daily ridership of 260 000 trips per day and is the
00:10:29.640 most used light rail system in the USA and Canada and actually has a higher daily ridership than
00:10:35.480 the San Francisco BART and the Muni combined. But we've obviously seen LRT projects in both
00:10:40.940 Calgary and Edmonton suffer delays, massive cost overruns, well actually back to the boondoggle
00:10:47.720 word again because you know the green line started out as fully from the north side of the city to
00:10:52.460 the south side of the city system and now we're only going one direction. So wouldn't it just be
00:10:58.800 more cost-effective to team up with the City of Calgary,
00:11:03.800 the City of Edmonton, and expand their LRT systems
00:11:07.780 into a regional service, or is that just not possible?
00:11:12.140 Well, it's essentially what we are doing.
00:11:14.740 As the province, we commit a third of the funding
00:11:18.320 back a long time ago to the Green Line
00:11:21.620 and also to Edmonton's LRT project.
00:11:23.320 So about $3 billion of Alberta tax dollars,
00:11:26.900 provincial tax dollars have gone into both of those cities combined for their LRT expansion.
00:11:33.040 And again, this master plan is making sure that any future growth of those LRT systems
00:11:39.040 are connected in with a province-wide passenger rail system. Because obviously there's only one
00:11:44.260 taxpayer, there's only one Albertan, and we want to make sure that they can use not just the
00:11:48.940 cities, Edmonton and Calgary's LRT network, but also a provincial passenger rail network as well.
00:11:54.500 So we, as like a nervous system, the train networks are, they have to be interconnected, or at least the best ones are.
00:12:01.520 So that is something that we are obviously going to be working closely with Edmonton and Calgary to make sure that we can design this in a logical way.
00:12:08.900 Well, and that interconnectability is going to be important.
00:12:11.700 The Calgary-Edmonton corridor is just under about 3 million people right now and growing.
00:12:17.540 But, you know, every person is going to want to be connected to this system.
00:12:21.760 So high-speed transit between Calgary and Edmonton, in order for it to be competitive with a passenger vehicle or with an airplane, obviously there's going to have to be very limited numbers of stops.
00:12:33.120 But if there's no stops, then you're not connecting Red Deer, you're not connecting Lacombe, you're not connecting some of these other municipalities between the two major centres.
00:12:43.480 So how do you mitigate those issues to make sure that this is actually competitive with airlines, competitive with flights, and competitive with passenger vehicles?
00:12:56.140 Yeah, exact. Great, great question.
00:12:57.920 And that's something that the review will look at in their feasibility study.
00:13:01.540 But our initial thought was for the Edmonton and Calgary high-speed train to have a stop in Red Deer.
00:13:07.240 So it would be essentially from Calgary to Edmonton, stop in Red Deer.
00:13:11.440 I know there's lots of question marks of, you know, do you stop obviously at the international airports as well?
00:13:16.560 So then you have five stops and a high speed train where it's the stops that probably are longer than than any of the traveling on on the actual train itself.
00:13:27.280 So that's that's something that obviously would be taken into consideration into this feasibility study of how best to design these.
00:13:33.740 And as that line could possibly be a private sector one, that's something that their feasibility and cost benefit analysis will look at as well, because they don't want to go back to the way things were back in the 80s, where there was many, many stops because you're not talking high speed trains with the steam trains that used to go up and down the CP track.
00:13:54.640 Well, exactly.
00:13:55.720 I'm originally from Medicine Hat, born and raised there.
00:13:58.340 So I know that you were with the Premier on Friday, I believe,
00:14:03.880 taking the train from, I think, Calgary down to the Brooks area.
00:14:10.080 So there's lots of small areas in there that the original CP line services.
00:14:15.780 And obviously, for any type of high-speed transit,
00:14:18.580 you're not going to be able to service all those areas,
00:14:21.540 but uh like it'll slow you down but at the same time you're gonna have a hard time with buy-on
00:14:27.480 in a lot of these rural areas if they're not connected into the system yeah no no you're
00:14:32.660 you're absolutely right and it's it's a catch-22 of to be able to you know you look at the highway
00:14:37.160 to um the all the different towns being spaced out almost evenly is because they needed to to
00:14:42.540 reload with with coal to be able to to make the trains work so there's obviously making sure that
00:14:47.720 everybody's connected as much as possible is important but also that the viability of the
00:14:51.300 project is important as well and at least within that edmonton and calgary corridor currently
00:14:56.240 about 80 percent of alberta's population does live within it so even if there are regional hubs
00:15:01.060 people have to be able to go into certain locations as
00:15:03.620 oh it looks like we lost the minister for a second there well uh oh and he's back
00:15:12.400 sorry i know that was me but i was just saying that yes obviously to be able to make sure that
00:15:17.440 there's a good mix of, you know, as many people as possible to be able to be connected to this.
00:15:23.180 80% of Alberta's population is in between Edmonton and Calgary. So making sure that there's 1.00
00:15:28.860 close proximity to train stations so folks can use the train is going to be important for the
00:15:35.400 viability of it. And for the further connections to Fort McMurray in the future, there's several
00:15:43.340 flights a day that leave both Calgary and Edmonton getting workers in and out of the
00:15:48.700 oil sands mining sites. So do we have industry partners that might be interested in this that
00:15:53.640 would consider instead of, you know, investing in private flights and their own private runways and
00:16:00.060 everything else, the infrastructure that they have to move workers in and out, would they be
00:16:05.060 interested in this train system to get folks out of Calgary, Edmonton, faster into Fort McMurray,
00:16:11.400 or because of the distance from the sites to Fort McMurray,
00:16:14.900 would they still be interested in continuing with air operations?
00:16:19.360 Well, that would be the hope.
00:16:20.800 And especially when you talk about Fort McMurray and the possibility of passenger rail,
00:16:25.100 obviously freight goes into that question as well.
00:16:28.120 That if you're going to have a right-of-way and essentially a rail line going all the way up to Fort Mac,
00:16:31.760 how you could expand the freight capacity of leaving there as well is something that we'd look at.
00:16:37.300 So yes, to answer your question, we want to make sure that everything's on the table.
00:16:42.300 But I think from our early discussions that we've had with companies that operate trains and build trains around the world,
00:16:48.700 is they're excited to the fact that there is this vision, that there is a blueprint essentially that's being laid out by the province of this is the vision.
00:16:55.740 This is what we'd like to see in the decades to come.
00:16:58.200 And hopefully that does make some interesting investment decisions from the private sector.
00:17:03.520 So the plan is going to consider freight then across the province as well?
00:17:09.100 Well, I think essentially with the Fort McMurray one is something that we would look at just because of obviously so much economic activity up there as well to be able to see if there's any possibility of expanding it.
00:17:20.000 Once you're talking about the right-of-way and going up there to see if there's any additional opportunities there as well.
00:17:26.900 But it wouldn't be part of the passenger rail plan.
00:17:29.600 Okay, for sure.
00:17:30.620 So you mentioned the right-of-ways.
00:17:32.900 um how much do we already own for these right-of-ways uh these economic corridors uh i know
00:17:39.460 one of the one of the the points that comes up all the time is that the calgary ring road was
00:17:44.420 essentially uh the idea of it was around for about 60 years and it took about 40 years of negotiation
00:17:52.020 to uh to get parts of the ring road um the the right-of-way purchased and then and then get it
00:17:57.860 built um are we looking at that or is that what this study is supposed to tell us well essentially
00:18:04.820 is what the study will tell us of what do we have and what don't we have where should we go or
00:18:09.060 shouldn't we go but that is a very it's a really interesting story when you look at the the ring
00:18:14.180 roads in around edmonton and calgary especially calgary it was the the social credit government
00:18:18.500 back in the 50s that actually put a line on the map and designed what the future of calgary could
00:18:23.540 look like and the need to have a ring road and then 20 years later was the law heed government
00:18:28.820 in the 70s that actually bought the land around calgary where the ring road currently is to start
00:18:34.100 to make sure that there was utility areas as well as the future expansion of it and then it was last
00:18:40.500 christmas when when i was transportation minister we actually finished the final section of the
00:18:45.060 calgary ring road after four plus billion dollars later so that was a massive transportation and
00:18:51.460 infrastructure investment into the province that literally took decades to realize but now uh you
00:18:56.820 know just huge benefits to to not just people living in and around calgary but also the movements
00:19:01.780 of goods um up and down our province so it's sometimes a lot of these big visionary projects
00:19:07.140 take time to realize but uh i'm sure that this some the social credit guys are happy to see that
00:19:11.940 their vision uh finally became a reality well for sure and i mean albert has done these types
00:19:17.140 of projects before like i said earlier edmonton was the first light rail uh passenger system in uh
00:19:24.020 well the the first lrt type system i guess in the in the more the modern times
00:19:28.180 so uh but the with the the public investment the public dollars um that would be here or a crown
00:19:34.100 corporation can we just not do these projects anymore in canada without public money because
00:19:40.500 we've seen uh like trans mountain pipeline that needed public dollars uh the keystone xl pipeline
00:19:46.500 we had to put public dollars behind that are have we just over regulated the country that
00:19:51.940 there's no path forward unless the government helps de-risk these types of projects well if
00:19:57.540 you don't have certain levels of government adding risks to these projects and needing government to
00:20:03.220 help de-risk other governments from these projects uh i i'd agree with you that hopefully we can
00:20:09.300 actually get to a part uh point in this province or in this country even where we can build big
00:20:14.500 nation building projects and that's something that we're obviously striving to to do but i at least
00:20:19.380 think when it comes to the the commuter rail system when you when you look at places around
00:20:23.300 the world that essentially it's it's a it's a big lrt system to have the surrounding communities
00:20:28.660 around edmonton and calgary connected to the downtown core um we've just looked at models
00:20:33.300 where there's there has been crown corporations public um organizations that have been set up to
00:20:39.620 to administer those types of trains um so that's that's something that you know we we look at and
00:20:44.900 then again it it's it's kind of a so it comes out as a wash when you look at you know if we had to
00:20:50.340 add six or eight more lanes on our ring roads or expand uh roads from from you know suburbs
00:20:57.060 essentially out into uh to the downtown cores there we're going to spend lots billions of dollars
00:21:02.820 on transportation to make sure people can get around so whether that's rail or roads uh it is
00:21:08.020 something that we want to have a bigger broader view of but yeah i i'm with you i wish that we
00:21:13.620 could um make sure that we can look at these big projects like they do in other parts of the world
00:21:18.180 and get excited about it rather than stare at uh miles and miles of government red tape
00:21:23.540 uh government red tape uh but you know with uh the federal environment minister saying we're not
00:21:28.740 going to invest in any more new roads and obviously there's parts of alberta that very
00:21:33.300 much need some more roads, a connection between Grand Prairie and Fort McMurray for moving both
00:21:38.680 rail and roads for moving goods and services between there. You know, like I said earlier,
00:21:44.880 Highway 36, Highway 41, those give a better access from Northern Alberta into the United
00:21:51.180 States in different ways. But, you know, there's a lot of folks that are worried that with this
00:21:55.960 type of investment in public transit and mass public transit, that we won't see the same levels
00:22:01.600 of investment in the roads, in the road infrastructure, or some of them that are even
00:22:06.960 thinking that, you know, we're only going to be able to move by train and we're not going to be
00:22:11.280 able to travel between Calgary and Edmonton by car anymore. So, you know, will this report also,
00:22:17.080 you know, look at a holistic approach for transportation across the province and make
00:22:21.780 sure that those investments are still being made? Yeah, and we constantly review that. We have 64,000
00:22:27.160 lane kilometers in the province of alberta that we provincially own we have 5 000 bridges across
00:22:32.200 the province that we provincially own and we want to obviously maintain that and grow and expand that
00:22:37.400 and uh you mentioned minister gibo we have a new project highway 686 that we're working with three
00:22:43.960 first nations in northern alberta to essentially connect fort mcmurray across to the west to
00:22:49.400 grand prairie or essentially connect with peerless trout lake and the bill c69 the federal impact
00:22:55.480 Assessment Act actually had any new road over I think was 150 kilometers in length would have to
00:23:01.260 go through a federal environment review which was just asinine and the the fact that when when I
00:23:07.200 raised that hey Alberta we're planning a 200 plus kilometer new road in our province without
00:23:12.160 crossing any borders and the federal government wants to uh to get involved it we weren't having
00:23:17.600 it and obviously thankfully the Supreme Court ruled in in Alberta's favors and all in favor
00:23:22.720 and all provinces favor to make sure that that federal piece of legislation was wildly
00:23:28.500 unconstitutional and something that obviously building of roads, provincial roads within a
00:23:33.660 province is obviously the jurisdiction of a province. So we'll continue to advocate and
00:23:37.780 fight and build roads here in the province because it's the right thing to do. And we
00:23:41.720 obviously, in Alberta, we have so many communities all over the place that couldn't be connected just
00:23:46.480 by rail. So we have to make sure that our road network is built and maintained as best as it can
00:23:50.740 be so this is going to be a very long-term plan there's not going to be shovels in the in the
00:23:56.380 ground in the next few years here um it's going to be a very overarching plan right like we're
00:24:03.420 not going to rush into uh more bad decisions right i i wouldn't run to the train station uh tomorrow
00:24:09.700 if if i were you uh no it's this this will take a year obviously just to get the blueprint of of
00:24:15.180 how we could connect all these different types of train projects together uh then you know
00:24:20.400 obviously a more we take the request for proposal we design what we would do from a government side
00:24:25.200 we'd see all these private sector proposals coming in and best best case scenario to get
00:24:30.440 starting uh some construction you know might be three years out from now but um we we want to
00:24:36.000 make sure that if you know for this 15 year window if we could actually see some of these projects
00:24:40.180 completed um that's that's kind of the horizon that we're uh we're thinking that we could actually
00:24:45.040 see some some projects be completed well uh i i have to tell you i like the idea but uh there's
00:24:53.120 very few people around here that are on board um i dream of a day where i can hop on a train i can
00:24:59.580 open my laptop i can get some work done i can have a beer and uh and uh you know just get some work
00:25:06.480 done relax while i'm moving around i'm also uh elder millennial so we kind of see things a little
00:25:12.980 bit different than how my parents see it. When I told my dad about the plan, he said that
00:25:18.180 my great-great nieces and nephews might ride a train someday across the province, but it won't
00:25:24.300 be anytime soon. So I'm looking forward to see the plan. I'm hoping to see an approach where
00:25:31.300 very, very, very little, if any, of taxpayer dollars have to be put into this system.
00:25:37.900 I'd love to see some private investment.
00:25:40.600 So I'm going to approach it with some healthy skepticism.
00:25:44.300 But anyways, thank you very much, Minister Dreschen, for joining me today.
00:25:49.120 And I hope that we can chat soon.
00:25:52.780 No, well, thank you so much.
00:25:53.700 And hopefully we're going to do better than the 70-year social credit realization of the ring roads.
00:25:59.120 But yeah, no, I thank you.
00:26:00.420 Thank you so much for your time today and your questions.
00:26:02.400 And happy to be on your show again.
00:26:04.700 Awesome.
00:26:05.200 Well, thank you very much.
00:26:06.580 You take care.
00:26:07.460 And thank you to the Western Standard members for joining us today.
00:26:12.240 We hope to do a few more of these special Alberta reports in the future.
00:26:16.240 Just a reminder, if you'd like to become a Western Standard member,
00:26:19.600 you can join today for $10 a month or $100 a year.
00:26:23.420 Thanks.
00:26:25.440 All those in favor of Grandpa Simpson's plan for rebuilding Main Street, please.
00:26:31.380 You know, a town with money is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel.
00:26:35.680 No one knows how he got it, and dang'd if he knows how to use it.
00:26:42.580 Mule.
00:26:43.300 The name's Lanley. Lyle Lanley.
00:26:46.320 And I come before you good people tonight with an idea.
00:26:49.440 Probably the greatest...
00:26:51.460 Oh, it's not for you.
00:26:53.060 It's more of a Shelbyville idea.
00:26:56.400 Now, wait just a minute.
00:26:57.940 We're twice as smart as the people of Shelbyville.
00:27:00.400 Just tell us your idea, and we'll vote for it.
00:27:02.700 All right.
00:27:03.760 I tell you what I'll do.
00:27:05.460 I'll show you my idea.
00:27:07.680 I give you the Springfield Monorail.
00:27:12.940 I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook,
00:27:16.780 and by gum it put them on the map.
00:27:19.760 Well, sir, there's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail.
00:27:24.440 What'd I say?
00:27:25.820 Monorail.
00:27:26.460 What's it called?
00:27:27.620 Monorail.
00:27:28.180 That's right, monorail.
00:27:29.900 Monorail.
00:27:30.820 Monorail.
00:27:31.840 Monorail.
00:27:32.760 I hear those things are awfully loud.
00:27:34.800 It flies as softly as a cloud.
00:27:37.020 Is there a chance the trap could bend?
00:27:39.040 Not on your life, my Hindu friend. 1.00
00:27:41.060 What about us brain-dent slobs?
00:27:43.180 You'll be given cushy jobs.
00:27:45.140 Were you sent here by the devil?
00:27:47.100 No good, sir, I'm on the level.
00:27:49.000 The rain came off my pudding can.
00:27:51.140 Take my penknife, my good man.
00:27:53.000 I swear it's Springfield's only choice.
00:27:55.040 Throw up your hands and raise your voice.
00:27:57.300 Monteries!
00:27:58.140 What's it called?
00:27:59.420 Monteries!
00:28:00.200 Once again!
00:28:01.600 Monteries!
00:28:04.800 But Main Street's still all cracked and broken.
00:28:07.440 Sorry, Mom. The mother's spoken.
00:28:09.520 Monroo! Monroo! Monroo!
00:28:16.040 Monroo! 1.00
00:28:17.860 Monroo, don't!
00:28:34.800 You