EXCLUSIVE： Lindsay Wilson of Alberta Proud on Justinflation
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about how our grocery stores are getting expensive, and why we should be proud of Alberta's homegrown beef. I also talk about our new t-shirts we're launching to celebrate all things Alberta Proud.
Transcript
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I'm with Alberta Proud. We're a non-profit advocacy group. We're grassroots-based.
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We champion all things Alberta, especially our energy sector. We're very proud of our
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energy sector. We believe everyone needs more of our best in the world. Canadian energy,
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our Alberta energy. And we take issue with the Ottawa elites and our Prime Minister who
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want to beat us down for what we have and for fueling this country. And we just don't
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like that very much. So I want to show you, I brought props. Oh, props are fine. As long as
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nothing will get us kicked off. Well, no, I don't think so. I don't think so. So I'm going to credit
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my son for grocery shopping with me two days ago. And we took some photos of just everyday
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products that most of us would buy. Because I want to show you guys, not that you don't already know,
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but I want to show you guys how I'm experiencing, as you're experiencing, that we're going to the
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grocery store and buying everyday products that we all need to cook food for our family. And it's
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costing twice as much as it was six months ago. And then I'm going to credit my oldest
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daughter for creating these. So here's your first one here. This is Campbell's cream of
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chicken soup, $2.79. I can't remember the last time I paid more than a dollar and change for
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something like this. This one here, here's some just inflation for you. This is chocolate milk,
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Oh, that's my, that's my, that's the best for last. This is a cheese whiz here. This is $13.79.
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It's for that price, little boy. Well, no, for a lot of people do love it. I mean,
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it's a quick snack for families, kids, throw it on celery like some people do.
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It really is. Here's, here's one of my favorites. This is dairy land butter, a pound of butter for
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$7.29. Something that normally we're paying probably three or $4 for. And here's my favorite
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one. And this segues into something I'm really excited about to talk about today. This is our
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favorite just inflation here. Here is some ground beef for you, you know, homegrown Alberta beef,
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right? $16.59 for just under a kg. So that's about eight bucks a pound, which is more than double
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of what we're, we're used to paying. And so, yeah, that's kind of what a big thing that I
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wanted to talk about today is a new campaign that we're launching. I'm sure all of you have heard
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about this week, Health Canada, the federal agency is now wanting to label ground beef to tell you
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that it's not healthy for you to eat that. So they're, they're, they're wanting, they're saying
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that this is a, this is a health concern that they want to tell people what's high in sugar and fat
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saturated fats, but they're, but they're leaving these labels off of chocolate chip cookies and,
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and dairy and eggs. And they're targeting beef. Ironically, they're targeting one of our
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most important industries here in Alberta. So once again, we're seeing a case where, you know,
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it's Ottawa kicking Alberta while we're down. And if you talk to cattlemen's associations,
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ranchers associations, they can't afford this right now. They're already, input costs are already
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outpaced profits this year. They're not making extra money at what, what we're seeing in the
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grocery stores and what we're paying at the till. So that is why we have come up with a new brand
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that I'm really excited that we're launching. This is going to be our new t-shirts. They're going to be
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available. I'm hoping in the next week or two, we're going to have these online. You can go to
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shop.albertaproud.org. And it's just very clearly saying we are so proud of our Alberta brief. And I
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would just be thrilled to see so many people walking around wearing these. That would be more
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saleable than what I did on the show with the other day with my monologue when I said, get your
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hands off my meat, which, which made a very valid point. But I don't think a lot of people want to wear
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that on a t-shirt. Maybe not. So proud of Alberta beef. I can definitely see some merit there. And
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great. And it's good that we're bringing this up. Like these are staples. As you said, with those
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associations, I spoke with a gentleman from the Saskatchewan Cattle Association yesterday. And yes,
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they're livid. I mean, this is ridiculous. It's a perfectly healthy product. They're being targeted.
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They're being pulled out. And it's adding fear and expense to people when, as you pointed out,
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the cost of groceries on every level is going up. This is hard on families. And these are the staples
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going up. And that butter is outrageous. It is. But why do we keep targeting beef? Why are we
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labeling Alberta beef as unhealthy? It's high in B12. It's high in iron. It's a great source of protein,
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particularly when you're eating lean or extra lean ground beef. And this also, from my understanding,
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I think it applies to ground pork and veal, I believe. Ground pork, for sure. Lamb, I believe
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it's applying to, too. So it's not just the cattle ranchers that are affected. It's all ranchers
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Well, I mean, to be honest, a couple of commenters brought supply management, of course. I mean,
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just getting it kind of sidetracking a bit. But that's something that affects the dairy and poultry
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prices very directly. And it's funny, they left chicken alone, of course, and they leave dairy
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alone with their labeling or things. But we've got to remember, where is all this coming from?
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Oh, Quebec. I mean, if Quebec was a main cattle producer in Canada, I got a feeling they wouldn't
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be putting this gross labeling on beef products all of a sudden.
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Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. And it's just, to us, it's just the height of just inflation.
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You know, our country, for seven years, we're not building back. We're not building better.
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What has he done to lead our country? He's just leading us down the wrong path. And I think we
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are just, things are so good in Alberta right now. Oil is over 120 a barrel. There's investment in
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agriculture. There's investment in technology. You know, things are looking really promising.
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And I think we're just, I think the biggest message I want to send home today is, other than
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supporting our farmers and ranchers and supporting our Alberta energy, is to not be complacent.
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This next year is very critical. We've got a provincial election that's T minus 11 months
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away. And I can't even imagine if, if, if we elect an NDP government and anti-resource and
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anti-energy government to steer us off the course that we're on right now. You know, no government
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is perfect, certainly, but we need to support these pro-resource politicians and, and ensure
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that they keep fighting Ottawa and taking Ottawa to task. We're in trouble if we don't.
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Well, let's say we're being governed by an ideologically driven party right now. I mean,
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that's the bottom line as well, our coalition of those parties. And I mean, I'm sure there's
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got to be some wise economists behind closed doors that work for the liberals that are
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screaming, please guys, cut this out. I mean, we're a country in recovery. We've got interest
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rates are rising. People are going to be losing houses soon because they're trying to push down
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the inflation. You've got tools right at your hands to reduce the inflation by getting pressure
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off of our energy production and, and our food production. And this government just will not
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back off. They won't stop. Well, it's shocking. Like we're sitting here, we're looking down the
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barrel of a gun. That's 6.7% inflation. One in four Canadians are skipping meals. One in four Canadians
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just this week, these reports that one in four Canadians have said, Hey, if you increase the
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interest rate on my mortgage, I'm out. I can't afford my house. I'm going to lose my house.
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And which is, it's, it's shocking when you think about that. When you think about those numbers,
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one in four, that's, that's tremendous. And, and again, it's not luxuries. You know,
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people say, Oh, just tighten your belt or just do without some things. This is food.
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This is housing. How can you tighten your belt anymore? It's eight bucks a pound for ground beef.
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Yeah. One of the staples, one of the most economical meats that you can cook up for your,
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for, for a family. This isn't filet mignon, which by the way, I have no doubt that Trudeau and the
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auto elites are enjoying their filet mignon and traveling around on their, on their private jets as well.
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Well, unfortunately, yes. I mean, this is again, the problem with some of the, it's not just the
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ideology, but we've got some very disconnected leadership. I mean, Justin Trudeau has never
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had to worry about paying a grocery bill his entire life. Jagmeet Singh is, you know, as much
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as he leads the people's party on the left, lives quite a life of privilege on, you know, very,
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very expensive Ottomans and, you know, with some high-end clothing. Hey, good on you.
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An $1,100 nursing chair, wasn't that what that was?
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Yeah, something like that. So, you know, whatever, that's fine. It's the hypocrisy that's galling.
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But these guys don't understand. They don't, when they bring these policies, they've never
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had to feel that pressure. They never had to worry like, how am I going to feed the kids
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properly before I get them to school while still making the rent, while maybe making a
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car payment or getting decent clothing. They just don't get it. So they don't care.
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No, they don't care, Corey. They, these are people that probably don't even grocery shop
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for themselves, let alone realize, realize the stark contrast in how much groceries have gone
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up in the last six months. Everybody I know, myself included, we're just shocked every month
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when our utility bills come in. Every time we fill up at the pump, like we are, we are living,
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we are living with the consequences of budgets that just balance themselves, right? We are living
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with the consequences of just printing money. It's this false, like probably the greatest economic
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myth of our time is that the liberal government wants you to believe everything's fine. We can just
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keep printing money. Well, it's, it's not okay. It's not okay.
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Every, again, even a, even a Keynesian economist, economist can understand that you do that,
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you're going to cause inflation. That's just like the law of gravity. You add more currency into the
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supply, it's going to devalue the currency. And they use every excuse in the book. Oh no, it's,
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it's the war in Ukraine. It's international. We can't do anything about it. I mean,
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there's some degrees of world commodities they can't control. Sure. But in our domestic policy,
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yes, you're contributing to it when you keep borrowing. And they won't even consider getting
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spending under control. So again, it's a frightening outlook we have.
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Well, I mean, you've got this band of eco radicals, right? You've got Trudeau with uneven
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Stephen, Stephen Goubeau, our, our environment minister, who's an eco radical, as we all know.
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And, and you've got them just, just raking us with these, with carbon taxes and punishing our energy
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sector and, and putting barricades up for pipelines to be built. And, and, and then even when it's not up to
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them, just doing absolutely nothing to facilitate development of pipelines. So, I mean, it's, there's so
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much more that we can be doing that if we had the right people in charge at the federal level, there's just
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so much more that we can be doing, where we wouldn't be paying these kinds of prices at the pump, at the
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That's absurd. Yeah. I mean, we're in Canada where we've got, again, what, I think the third or fourth
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largest deposits of, of hydrocarbon energy in the world, and some of the largest tracts of
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agriculturally producing land in the world. And we're paying these kinds of prices. It just doesn't
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make sense, but we can see that it's, it's bad policy. It's bloody bad policy.
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And we're living, we're living with the realities of those bad policies and the politicians who've
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So what other initiatives then has Alberta Proud got going? I mean, you're bringing it to light.
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So we're, yeah, we, we, we're coming up with an email today. So if you're on our email list,
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that's great. And we'll have these shirts up at shop.albertaproud.org over the next,
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I would think the next week or two here. Aside from that, we were launching a petition today,
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and we want to put a petition to the feds to stop this stupid labeling. Like we, we, the farmers,
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the ranchers, they can't afford it. It's unnecessary. And it's just so insulting that the federal
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government thinks the consumer is so stupid that we need them to tell us that they're going to charge
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us more. We can pay more for the privilege of them telling us what's healthy and not healthy
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to eat. I think most of us can do our own research and we know what to eat, not to eat.
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And certainly putting a warning label on homegrown proteins is not my version of educating Albertans
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and educating Canadians on what's healthy to eat. So that petition will be going out on social media
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today. We're, we're on all social media channels. Our primary one, of course, is Facebook. We have
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over 200,000 followers. And we use channel most of our advocacy through there. But of course,
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we're on Twitter, we're on Telegram, we're on Instagram. We're, yeah, we've got everything up
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and running and LinkedIn too. Yeah, well, we've got lots of means in this. As I was kind of saying
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earlier, the government, some elements of government have actually been paying a bit of attention
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lately. They're getting a bit reactive. I mean, as much as it's tempting, and you can see a lot of
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evidence that they're all indifferent fools in there. There are some who are paying attention.
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There are some that are speaking up. And if we keep the pressure up, they can, they do bend
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sometimes. And the Senate actually knocked down C7 the other day, like, holy crap, or S7, I should
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say, we wouldn't have seen that coming. So get these petitions going, put the word out. I mean,
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make these guys realize that they've crossed the line, they've gone too far. Even some liberal ones
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can hear some reason. I don't think Trudeau ever will. He spent $700,000 to renovate his kitchen there
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at his cottage tax dollars. And as you know, speaking again of us trying to make the bills, and I doubt
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he's ever going to cook in it, but his chef will enjoy the renovations. Imagine having $700,000 to
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renovate a kitchen that's more than most of us will ever pay for a house.
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Well, yeah, I know. It's incredible. And I mean, how much time does he spend there? I mean,
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that's only the time that, you know, between surfing trips and, you know, going overseas and
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embarrassing us. He's a busy guy. He sure does a good job of that, doesn't he? And speaking further,
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I mean, Andrea Kettle's asking, yeah, what is this, you know, red labels? So yeah, there's labels
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though, just to kind of remind everybody what Health Canada is proposing, that they want to make it
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like cigarettes or liquor and essentially put labeling, mandatory labeling on front of package
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to show that ground beef products and ground pork and others are unhealthy, to say that they're
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unhealthy. They want to push people off it. And when I spoke to the fellow from the association
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yesterday, the Saskatchewan Cattle Association, he also pointed out, this is embarrassing Canada
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and costing us problems for exports. Like more than half of our beef gets exported.
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Oh, and we will be the only country in the world to do this.
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We will be the only one on the planet. And it's competitive. And there's a lot of protectionism.
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And you know that there's producers in other countries that would love to shut down Canadian
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meat. And it's, hey, look, even Canada doesn't feel that their own product is healthy. We should
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stop bringing it in. It is setting such a, you know, the tone always comes from the top. So what
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are, what message are we sending out to the world by doing this? I think people might think, ah, it's
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just another label. It's just another warning. No guys, it's, it's, it's so much more than that.
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And rest assured, you will be paying more for your ground meat products and, and what's next,
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right? Where, so they'll start with this and then what? Well, and that's part of the bigger principle too.
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Yeah. Andrea saying, yeah, beef and get, no, isn't labeled. Yeah. This is proposed by health
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candidates. Not in yet. And that's why the times now to push back and make these, these autocrat
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busybodies realize you've crossed the line. But as you said, where does it stop? Because it's an
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indication of how much control these bureaucrats want to have, what they want to do. They want to
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tell you what you can eat, what you can't eat. I mean, this is the first step on who knows where
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they're going to stop. And again, it's, it's crushing us economically. We don't have time and money for this.
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Yeah. And I hope you guys will go to our social media, check us out Alberta Proud on Facebook or
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on all the channels and please sign and share that petition. Let's get loud. Let's get rowdy about
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this one. This is our, one of our core industries and we have to stand up for it. Cause if we don't
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stand up for it and if we don't push back and if we remain complacent, you know what, what the answer
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is, it's going to be more of the same and it's only going to get worse. And I don't know about you
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guys, but I've got three kids at home and it, I struggle to, to go to the grocery store and make
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sure all my bills are paid to keep feeding them. And I'm sure the same is for most of you out there
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watching. You have to push back. Well, I appreciate that. And also that, you know, you've pointed out
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that it's not, everybody's on Facebook, people do different social media platforms and things.
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That's your main one. If you're really check out Alberta Proud on Facebook, that's a well-populated
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busy site. When you have a couple of hundred thousand people participating on it, politicians take note,
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you know, we feel powerless sometimes. We don't necessarily have to use our tools. We can pressure
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these guys. So, but also, as you said, you're on Instagram, Twitter, all of those other good spots.
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Well, great. Well, I thank you for coming in and showing off the props and swag and all that good
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stuff, but, and, and the efforts, of course, again, if we don't, it's like I'll talk about in our
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sponsor in a moment, but if we don't stand up for ourselves, we'll lose. That's the only way we'll lose.
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So thanks so much. And thanks to everybody out there listening and, you know,
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keep on loving and being proud of Alberta beef.