Western Standard - Where the Sun Don’t Shine： Rural Alberta rises up against solar farms

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to the second edition of the Business Standard. My name is Sean Poolzer and

00:00:24.480 we're here to take a look at some of the big breaking news stories in the business world and

00:00:28.480 how they affect us here in the business capital of western canada calgary alberta first out of

00:00:33.840 the gate we've got a lot to talk about in terms of market volatility there's an old saying in

00:00:38.400 stock markets that volatility is your friend and the caretop in the white house there is nobody

00:00:43.840 more volatile you'd think that mr trump would be welcomed by the markets but as we've seen

00:00:49.040 that's not entirely the case with the main indexes firmly in the bear market territory

00:00:54.720 going back to where they were before even Biden was president, or even the pandemic,

00:01:01.520 coincidentally when Mr. Trump was in power. Now today they're up a little bit, but you know the

00:01:07.760 the downward trend is down as far as it goes with tariffs and trade wars and trying to take over

00:01:13.920 Canada as the 51st state, and Greenland is, I don't know what we're going to call Greenland,

00:01:18.400 but it's ironic that Trump used the stock markets as a proxy for his success or failures of his

00:01:27.540 economic policies in the first administration, which he has seemingly totally avowed in the

00:01:33.740 midst of the latest market girations as the markets have swung back and forth from red

00:01:43.400 to black territory, you know, especially as it happened last week, you know, he's got very good

00:01:53.020 reason to, to be doing what he's doing, getting that every time he changes his mind, you know,

00:01:59.540 the issue of tariffs, the market goes either way up or up or down. So just doing a little bit of

00:02:06.620 thing, because we're going to talk a little bit about markets on this show. And, you know, I have

00:02:12.420 had a look at him I tend to agree with people that the you know the markets

00:02:17.520 aren't the be-all to end all it's it's not proxy for the economy as much as

00:02:21.900 anybody would like to think it is or or however or comment on on Trump's

00:02:27.980 economic policies in general or even for that matter the policies of the

00:02:31.840 liberal government in Ottawa as we go through this federal election campaign

00:02:35.460 but you know the almost daily fluctuations in the market even though

00:02:41.180 they might not be good for your retirement portfolio or maybe the long-term health of the

00:02:46.380 country. They're awesome for speculators, you know, because it's long-term investors know that

00:02:53.040 it's almost impossible to pick the tops and the bottoms of the market, but speculators know that

00:02:57.280 it's always about, say, you know, the roller coaster ride, shorting it and going long back

00:03:03.120 in when it seems to suit you as it did last week. And, you know, it helps when the insider trader

00:03:10.600 in chief tweets out his own personal stock ticker gjt and and urges people to buy out on twitter

00:03:17.180 you know which is coincidentally owned by his uh good buddy the you know the doge hunter uh elon

00:03:23.260 musk you know and two later hours later he's announcing a pause on tariffs after you know

00:03:28.400 this very elaborate ceremony on the white house lawn you know barely a week ago uh proclaiming

00:03:34.640 them on all of the world and you know including the penguins in antarctica right and uh you know

00:03:40.500 it helps that his own personal company has about $450 million in market cap, you know, after losing

00:03:46.020 $400 million last year, you know, when people buying into his big token and everything, you

00:03:51.200 know, which is all to say Trump didn't become a millionaire for nothing. And so, well, it's a

00:03:55.640 stretch to think that he's capable of single-handedly fixing the market. You know, that would be like

00:04:01.180 fixing the New York state lottery or the 649, you know, which we all know is pretty much impossible

00:04:08.460 to do you know it's certainly possible that some of his friends and associates you know

00:04:13.900 the donald as he likes to refer to himself and the third person included could have made out with

00:04:18.460 some really well-timed stock tips um martha stewart went to jail for less you know just keep that in

00:04:24.220 mind and all of us here in the western standard are big martha stewart fans you know we we follow

00:04:30.220 her gardening tips and everything religiously so martha went to jail remember um anyway so uh that

00:04:40.620 said we're going to talk a lot on the show today about uh not just tariffs but uh we've got um

00:04:47.580 jeff calloway from enrl um energized natural resources is going to come in and we're going

00:04:53.980 to talk about uh some utility corridors through the hudson bay in addition to maybe a little bit

00:05:00.140 about uh orphan wells uh jeff's company uh operates some well obviously they're not orphan wells but

00:05:09.340 they're they're marginal wells are the kind that the alberta government wants to keep going until

00:05:15.180 the end of their useful economic life and we're also going to talk with uh russell barnett of

00:05:22.140 the rural alberta concerned citizens group who are opposed to uh solar farms out in

00:05:28.460 in uh caroline and since it's come to light it turns out that there are literally dozens

00:05:35.500 of communities all across alberta that are fighting with uh similar issues with the alberta

00:05:39.500 utilities commission and some of the regulators on how to stop these things but uh in the meantime

00:05:46.060 we're going to take a look at uh some of our stocks here that we follow at the western standard

00:05:51.420 i've got a little bit of an index going here so in addition to the usual oil companies we've

00:05:56.700 I wanted to put WestJet on it, but WestJet apparently is privately owned these days,

00:06:01.160 so I had to put in Air Canada so that we could top it off with our vacation index,

00:06:08.220 which is a look at some of the currencies and how the Canadian dollar is performing

00:06:12.940 against our popular destinations like the American dollar and the peso.

00:06:19.500 We're also going to take a look at some of the big broader markets,

00:06:22.500 which, like I said, are up today, but I've got this nice little article here from

00:06:27.340 themarxist.com. So just in case you didn't think that communists were

00:06:32.480 business people, it turns out they are. And we've got a defense of Trump's trade policies here

00:06:41.500 from themarxist.com, from a fellow named Nikolai Abilin-Sevinson. And in it, he says, quote,

00:06:54.200 the fact that the nation state puts a limit on the development of the productive forces has been

00:06:59.500 explained time and time again by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. So there you go. If that's

00:07:06.640 not an endorsement of Trump's economic policies I don't know it is so and I'd

00:07:12.940 just like to know what I know that a lot of Western Standard readers are Trump

00:07:15.760 fans but he's not my president I didn't vote for him it's not my problem and so

00:07:20.920 far as it affects the price of oil and in that regard the price was going down

00:07:25.480 which is bad for our government here in Alberta because I know talking to

00:07:32.760 uh premier smith and some of our finance ministers that every dollar up or down in the price of oil

00:07:39.540 is worth about it's it's a ridiculous number it's about 750 million dollars to the provincial treasury

00:07:45.400 and uh it's only become steeper in the last few years as more and more of these oil sense

00:07:51.880 projects uh pay out and uh start paying royalties back to the government uh so

00:07:58.500 take it with a grain of salt. I filled up my huge beast. It's got a hundred liter tank.

00:08:05.080 The carbon tax came off and I was able to fill it up for, I think it was $1.47,

00:08:12.060 whereas about two weeks ago, it was over $1.80. So I'm saving 30, 40 bucks on the tank gas,

00:08:19.020 which is to say that, you know, Marx and Lenin would be proud of some of the things that Trump

00:08:23.520 is doing and fighting against you know like currency manipulation intellectual property theft

00:08:28.640 and then trading practices down with the bourgeois you know trump is merely fighting fire with fire

00:08:35.360 and we'll have to see how it all plays out um but if you're the canadian government well you're just

00:08:41.760 gonna have to get and bear it because nobody really knows what's gonna happen next which is

00:08:45.520 by design and we're gonna have to take it one day at a time one thing that we can say is that we are

00:08:50.320 going to be able to keep our nation for better or for worse and for richer or poorer because

00:08:54.960 donald trump has done us all a favor when it comes to national unity he has done the one thing

00:09:00.880 that governments for a hundred years in this country have not been able to do and so this

00:09:05.120 notion of removing inter-provincial tarried barriers and becoming self-sufficient and things

00:09:09.520 like energy we shall see and in that vein um not only are we going to look at some of our favorite

00:09:17.840 stocks like i said they're up today but uh the energy complex which we're all concerned with

00:09:24.160 here in calgary will seem to hold up better than most because the old tnt investment philosophy

00:09:30.000 when recesses take holds tnt stands for toilet paper and toothpaste which are things that people

00:09:35.920 are still going to need no matter if the economics are up and down and energy and gasoline is

00:09:42.240 certainly one of those things so and it also helps that the carbon tax has been repealed

00:09:49.760 so it's a double-edged sword and we're gonna have to take whatever we can get

00:09:53.920 i've got a record i've got a report here from semaphore these are well they're net zero

00:10:00.400 investment gurus and they're talking about the global fundamentals for things like crude oil and

00:10:06.720 ev batteries which are particularly subject to tariffs and as we all know subsidies here in this

00:10:12.160 this country, which they predict will spark a trade war outside of the US,

00:10:17.320 particularly places like Canada and Europe, where the governments are

00:10:21.920 fighting to keep the value of these subsidies. The good news is that there's

00:10:28.420 LNG competition in Europe. Remember, there's no business case. Our

00:10:34.120 illustrious leader, dear Chairman Justin, said that there was no business case to

00:10:40.480 shipping LNG to Europe or Germany but I when I was in Houston at the Sierra week energy talk

00:10:48.400 conference I was able to talk to some gas company executives in Houston and they insisted that it's

00:10:53.600 not too late for Canada to still get into the LNG game the massive LNG Canada facility is taking

00:10:59.680 on gas as we speak starting in the first week of April and is on track to start exporting to Asia

00:11:05.680 sometime this year. So assuming that we get at least one or two more of these export terminals

00:11:13.840 up and running on the coast, there's a good chance that Canada could still be the third or fourth

00:11:17.920 largest exporter in a market that's expected to double within 10 years. Like they always say in

00:11:23.600 investing school and rehab, it's never too late. You just have to get started. So with that we're

00:11:30.880 going to dive into our show and talk to some of our guests and hopefully turn this into a regular

00:11:38.240 thing so here we go take it away john i'm here with jeff calloway from energized natural resources

00:11:46.800 for those who don't know jeff is also the chairman of the western standard board of directors and

00:11:52.720 he's got his offices here just down the hall in the elvedon center in western standard world

00:11:58.000 headquarters. He's always been a valuable resource. I can just walk down the hall and pick his brains

00:12:03.600 on some of these issues that are affecting the oil patch in the day. The government's mature

00:12:09.080 well strategy was one of them. Jeff's company specializes in some of these older, lower

00:12:14.720 productivity wells in the rural areas, which at the end of the day is good for both the Alberta

00:12:19.800 government and the rural communities where the activities take place to keep them going longer

00:12:24.740 for their maximum lives but that's not what we're here to talk about today we're going to talk about

00:12:29.940 corridors and utility corridors and specifically to the hudson bay where jeff was a little bit of

00:12:37.060 a mover and shaker and some of this activity that's going on in churchill and and the railway

00:12:42.100 to revitalize it to get uh not just uh energy commodities like oil and gas and pipelines but

00:12:49.300 also power electricity and uh commodities maybe such as uranium in saskatchewan to uh either one

00:12:57.940 of these ports either churchill or i think it's port nelson port nelson i'm i'm being informed here

00:13:05.060 port nelson uh that they're talking about redeveloping and using the hudson bay as a

00:13:09.940 deep water port to get to some of these overseas markets in europe so i would just like to welcome

00:13:16.180 jeff to the show and say hey how's it going this is our second edition oh yeah we are yeah i'm too

00:13:24.420 bad i didn't make the first i'm not sure how that happened it was it was kind of a work in progress

00:13:30.100 it just kind of happened uh it was quite spontaneous guinea pig for someone else okay

00:13:35.300 but uh anyway thanks for uh coming on today and uh taking a few minutes so what can we say about

00:13:41.860 energy corridors uh mark carney was in town here the other day and he was pitching sounded kind of

00:13:48.260 like a pipe dream he was talking about energy corridors going east west north south uh maybe

00:13:54.420 you can tell us a little bit about uh your involvement in uh hudson bay and uh maybe what

00:13:59.220 you thought of what mr carney had to say well i mean it's a nice change in tone at least in some

00:14:04.820 of the the language but it's kind of like uh prime minister trudeau's comments about the budget will

00:14:10.100 balance itself it just doesn't work that way so they're still holding on to you know bill c69

00:14:17.380 the tanker band c48 we've seen so many projects uh just get stymied and just can't get approved

00:14:25.540 and move forward on under these bills and yet they seem steadfast in wanting to keep those

00:14:31.620 so you can say you want to do utility corridors and you know unleash the energy independence

00:14:38.980 so to speak of, of Canadian resources and get resources to global markets,

00:14:43.400 but you actually have to do the actual real work to make it happen.

00:14:48.080 And they say, they're not going to do that. And Carney has said that, you know,

00:14:52.540 he wants to give, you know, basically veto rights to various provinces. Sure.

00:14:57.300 And, you know, and consultations with indigenous communities.

00:15:00.460 So if you're starting out giving effectively vetoes to various provinces or

00:15:07.200 interest groups, whoever they may be, it's just not going to end up happening because each of

00:15:11.980 them are going to want to extract the maximum of a pound of flesh and then you just don't see any

00:15:17.580 projects going forward. We saw that actually with, there was a multitude of LNG projects

00:15:23.640 proposed out on the West Coast and ultimately under Christy Clark's government out there,

00:15:29.880 she was holding so many of them to such high standards that they all ended up collapsing.

00:15:35.020 we finally had one now which is fantastic yeah and likely we'll see if if id you know come on

00:15:41.680 phase two there which would be fantastic for the natural gas markets but um yeah we we should have

00:15:48.920 had more by now oh yeah absolutely for sure yeah i've got this thing from uh some of four of these

00:15:54.460 are our net zero people and they were talking about reviving some of the lng talks and uh not

00:16:00.460 specifically about Canada per se but generally yeah you know with the global

00:16:04.340 LNG market expected to double within the next 10 years or so which is something

00:16:09.140 that we're gonna be talking about a little bit later well and we've seen

00:16:11.980 China now they're stopping any imports of US LNG right hey would be great if we 0.95

00:16:19.100 had our LNG plants operating out and timely exactly yeah and you know you

00:16:24.300 can't just turn these things on on overnight like Trump seems to think you

00:16:28.080 can move a manufacturing plant and get it operational in a month or two but it doesn't

00:16:32.920 happen it takes years well you gotta admit like when i started covering this in the u.s um you

00:16:38.560 know they didn't have anything there was there was an export ban on natural gas and now they've got

00:16:42.720 a dozen of these things going along uh yeah say the gulf coast yeah and uh you know they're they're

00:16:48.700 they really are moving and shakers in the in the game um so when we're talking about hasn't bay

00:16:54.320 this isn't really a new thing is it no um well really it's far from a new thing it's like call

00:17:02.500 it late 1800s is conceptually when it started and it actually originally started with a port

00:17:09.800 development uh at Port Nelson which is just south of Churchill on the Hudson Bay and the Canadian

00:17:15.940 government really got behind it at the time and they actually built there's a rail bed that goes

00:17:21.240 right out to port nelson port nelson there's nothing there now but the rail bed is out there

00:17:28.160 they had built a 17 span train bridge out to an artificial island but this is like 1910 so with

00:17:35.580 those winds coming across the hudson bay to into that kind of shallow delta on the nelson river

00:17:41.800 they just couldn't they didn't have the technology and equipment to really handle that at the time

00:17:46.660 So that was just before World War I. World War I happens, kind of puts a pause on everything 0.64

00:17:53.460 as the country's resources get focused on World War I. And, you know, then the thought is, okay,

00:17:58.980 well, let's go up to Churchill, where you've got, you know, the Churchill River. It's a little

00:18:03.700 better port. And at that time, it was a little bit colder. The trains were smaller. They built

00:18:09.300 that, it was about 300 kilometers of rail line from Gillum up to Churchill. The problem with that

00:18:15.360 land is it's very

00:18:17.660 muskeg-y, very soft. 0.98

00:18:19.440 So the trains that you can run there

00:18:21.280 can only go about 10 to 15 kilometers

00:18:23.680 an hour. There's hardly any

00:18:25.800 siding, so that means 0.89

00:18:27.080 if you have one train going this way,

00:18:30.100 you need a siding so that it can pass

00:18:32.120 and the other one can come by.

00:18:33.740 So more sidings need to go in.

00:18:36.120 And again,

00:18:37.560 if you're only moving 10 to 15 kilometers

00:18:39.500 an hour, it's something like

00:18:41.520 it takes 30 hours to get

00:18:43.400 from the paw, which is kind of

00:18:45.360 west side of manitoba past thompson and then up to up to churchill so that impacts your

00:18:53.200 the amount of of products you can put on that rail line and really the solution is to go to

00:19:00.160 port nelson as part of a larger utility corridor type of concept for a at least a rail line it's

00:19:06.400 only about a little over 100 kilometers from gillam out to port nelson you don't have to spend the

00:19:12.720 gargantuan amounts of money on that last 300 kilometers going over muskeg and actually like

00:19:19.120 i was actually part of a group going when omni tracks held the the rights to that they kind of

00:19:24.720 put it up for sale because the it had flooded again and the railway was right operational so

00:19:29.980 omni tracks was was that the american that was the american rail that were running it yeah and

00:19:34.440 they had uh they were basically abandoning it yeah yeah so we actually had a deal to buy that

00:19:40.980 The railway, the port, the port authority, the tank farm that was there and Churchill had been used to import as well as transfer like different fuels from that port up to other communities around the Hudson Bay.

00:19:57.020 Right. And so you could use it as as oil and gas export facility or, you know, for fertilizer.

00:20:04.160 That's been talked about a lot. It's currently being used for exporting zinc from one of the zinc mines in northern Manitoba.

00:20:10.800 Really? I did not know.

00:20:11.880 Yeah, they shipped about 10,000 tons last year to do 20 of ours.

00:20:15.660 I went on Mars or on ocean-going tankers.

00:20:17.280 Yep.

00:20:17.740 Really?

00:20:18.120 Yep, yep.

00:20:18.700 So that's happening.

00:20:20.840 And obviously, it's a major resupply point for northern Manitoba and just northern air,

00:20:26.600 because they bring ships around from Montreal up around northern Quebec to Churchill.

00:20:31.280 Sure.

00:20:31.720 As well as there's talk of putting, like, well, loading containers and stuff.

00:20:38.360 Right.

00:20:38.560 either at the port or putting them to the port there and then shipping because if you're talking

00:20:43.280 about inter-provincial trade barriers uh you know most people haven't been up in the arctic but they

00:20:48.000 don't realize how remote these communities are like you know i've been to uh anuvik and you know

00:20:54.480 and they have to barge fuel up in the summertime yep um you've got a short shipping mckenzie river

00:21:00.560 right because there are no roads there are there is no highway yeah like you either airlift this

00:21:04.800 thing like you're gonna have oh yeah dirigible you know heavy lip blimp yeah there's been those

00:21:11.040 kinds of concepts as well and you know like there's a couple big gold mines that are being

00:21:14.880 built up in the northwest territories and yeah northern ring of fires northern ontario but these

00:21:21.360 are up in uh like was it the george mine deposit mount hope bagel way way north and so they've only

00:21:29.280 got a short it's up there too right well that's the vetera i can never say it it's like on some

00:21:34.880 island where they in the northwest passage where they can refuel the diesel ships yeah it's um

00:21:42.160 it's a big empty empty place not a lot you can't just pop down to the store to you know get your

00:21:48.880 parts for whatever whatever gets broke so you need to load up you know in that short shipping

00:21:53.360 season but in terms of Hudson Bay you know obviously you know yes it's ocean

00:22:00.540 it's salty right but of course it's fed by a lot of the freshwater lakes so it's

00:22:05.300 not as salty is what say the Atlantic Ocean is but a lot of that ice that's in

00:22:11.120 there is only first-year ice and so it's easy to actually traverse it's not it's

00:22:16.860 not very hard. And the open ocean, like the lack of ice in the Hudson Bay, that season is expanding

00:22:25.240 here as we are progressing through time. One of the benefits of climate change. Climate change.

00:22:31.480 We have no editorial policy. That's right. Yeah. So what do you see happening in the future? Are

00:22:38.720 you encouraged by some of these developments? Now the government in Manitoba has been talking,

00:22:42.360 the new premier can you yeah canoe yeah I can't say it but I can kind of visualize it yeah so

00:22:50.220 they've donated some money for some studies and they're going to build some hydro out there I

00:22:55.600 think hydro is a missing link well there's there's a few dams already on the Nelson River like it's

00:23:01.100 designated as an industrial river already they are talking about expanding more of their electricity

00:23:07.240 production and then clean electricity production in manitoba sure and you could run you know like

00:23:14.120 these big power lines like say straight across to fort mcmurray and like for some perspective it

00:23:19.400 sounds like a long a long ways but it's kind of it's it's like going from calgary to northern

00:23:25.240 alberta it's the same distance across a little over a thousand kilometers and you know it's over

00:23:31.040 pretty empty ground so right um you could easily easily go and do that you could easily um if you

00:23:37.760 just put a little bit of a rail spur out to uh port nelson you could you can really start shipping

00:23:42.720 a lot of goods out there like through offshore um terminals uh type of thing more than just like

00:23:50.320 oil and gas yeah yeah yeah absolutely no more goods yeah yeah 100 percent um what was it they

00:23:56.080 They were talking about one of those inland ports in Winnipeg, right?

00:24:01.260 Yeah, that's almost like a tax-structured type of development, you know, in Winnipeg.

00:24:10.160 Yeah, like free trades are.

00:24:11.560 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:24:12.900 Like they did in Europe. 0.93

00:24:14.200 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:15.260 There's lots of them all around the world.

00:24:16.880 We just should get on the boat here, too.

00:24:18.940 Well, that's always the story about Amsterdam.

00:24:21.500 So Amsterdam, you know, Holland had a storm.

00:24:24.160 There was a global warming, washed away half the country, moved to, shipped to the rivers.

00:24:28.460 So they put a dam on the Amstel.

00:24:30.280 They called it a free trade zone.

00:24:32.100 And then the next thing you know, they were world traders, right?

00:24:34.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:35.860 So it would, it would really, I mean, it would, it would save a ton in, in shipping costs.

00:24:43.040 It's done everywhere else in the world, like on all across the North of Russia, we've seen 0.97

00:24:47.560 dozens and dozens of oil tanker ships, even not even ice rated tanker ships now going

00:24:54.140 across northern russia not recommending that but uh but they do and you've got the gulf of bothnia

00:25:00.220 which is off uh finland you know that's often ice laden people who live in eastern canada will know

00:25:05.820 that the saint lawrence is often you know we're full of ice and we still ship you know product

00:25:10.220 into montreal and quebec city so yeah i know like uh through the saint lawrence yeah that seems to

00:25:15.500 me like uh how often is that thing uh frozen i remember when we were in school we used to see

00:25:20.940 see the pictures of the you know the boats that would get stuck in the winter do they even get

00:25:24.500 stuck through the whole entire winter anymore yeah they i i i can just say i know for a fact

00:25:30.200 they do because i just saw an article on that the other day that there was a ship stuck in the

00:25:34.100 in the st lawrence it needed some some help because of some ice but uh you know they they

00:25:38.940 deal with it now as canadians we deal with it there's a there's a great canadian shipping

00:25:43.220 company i mean they they go all up to the north and they ship through the ice like we we do it

00:25:48.380 canada already it's just people aren't aware of it so right yeah and then uh it's kind of timely

00:25:54.460 with these uh trump tariffs if we're looking for a way out and we're going to increase into

00:25:59.500 provincial prey trade and reduce barriers and things then we're gonna have to get it somewhere

00:26:04.620 right yeah and what if it is a very central location yeah oh yeah 100 and we've got massive

00:26:12.460 amounts of resources in this country to actually ship like we have no no risk of running out i

00:26:18.460 mean as much as people are have probably become aware of the immensity of the oil sands the

00:26:24.380 amount of oil that's there yeah we have probably multiples of that in natural gas reserves and

00:26:29.900 resources in i heard it or else on critical uranium hot ash yep yeah copper mines and that

00:26:37.980 goes diamonds yeah diamonds in the north yeah and that actually kind of goes back to what

00:26:42.620 you know carney says these words about you know getting these resources to market but if you're

00:26:47.900 going to keep you know bill c69 we're going to continue to see things like mines take i mean

00:26:56.140 5 10 12 years for approval and so despite um it's good it's welcomed that the carney has said that

00:27:04.460 oh we're going to get the the approval timelines down from five years to two years through a single

00:27:09.100 regulatory window yeah that's what we we used to have right vote conservative though because

00:27:14.940 they'll do it in one so sure or even uh you know we were talking before the show that uh it's going

00:27:22.140 to take him probably at this rate five years to be able to come up to the with an agreement to

00:27:26.700 actually lay the foundation for this uh two-year window so and how long is the liberal term going

00:27:32.380 going to last i mean and if you give provinces and or other interest groups uh an effective veto

00:27:39.280 on it you're never going to end up seeing and why wouldn't you if you i mean if you're a rural

00:27:44.840 uh native band up uh you know on your reserve you've got maybe 10 000 people well there's only

00:27:49.740 40 000 people all in the entire northwest territories yeah and they handed you a video

00:27:54.460 or a veto wouldn't you take it well i mean just in the sense of calgary here make demands yeah

00:27:59.800 Yeah, we've got the Sucina Reserve, right?

00:28:01.940 When the province wanted to put through the ring road,

00:28:04.580 they, you know, I mean, credit to them,

00:28:07.980 they leveraged their negotiations to the max

00:28:10.380 and they got a billion dollars out of the province

00:28:13.280 in the city.

00:28:14.120 They had to change the name of the one stretch there

00:28:16.040 that went past the casino.

00:28:17.280 It's not the Sucina, it's over by where the Costco is.

00:28:21.800 And they had to get a deal to break the curb,

00:28:25.620 to break the smash curb so that they could put the road

00:28:28.060 in through there, right?

00:28:29.120 Yeah. Yeah. So if you don't have that will from the federal government itself and you're giving vetoes and out, it just it's not going to it's not going to happen.

00:28:39.240 I mean, business and capital is fluid, so it will flow to other places where it can make make things get projects actually developed.

00:28:49.060 And that's just not Canada right now. And unfortunately, we've burned a lot of these foreign investors as governments.

00:28:56.420 And so they're they're very cautious on deploying capital here.

00:28:59.700 So by contrast, you you look at my wife is Ugandan.

00:29:05.620 So, you know, go over there and you can see how you've got a country of 50 million people.

00:29:12.240 You know, third world country wants to, you know, improve its economic plight.

00:29:16.700 Sure. They've got a lot of oil resources in the west side of the country. 0.82

00:29:20.660 the president is strongly pushing through you know a pipeline for export as for tanzania to

00:29:26.860 get to the coast you're seeing massive investment in oil and gas development because they know and

00:29:32.160 they see the positive impact that oil and the revenues and the royalties will have on jobs

00:29:39.480 infrastructure development so you know social services funding health care education all that

00:29:44.380 we seem to have like they can they've got that figured out in africa like maybe we should

00:29:51.600 start taking a lesson from the africans i don't know right so um are you still involved in this 0.76

00:30:00.000 like where do you see no i'm not i'm not anymore so after how to pie it's gone back into the pie

00:30:06.920 in the sky well in terms of hudson bay um was was involved for a while and then you know there's a

00:30:13.460 group that really pick up the torch from well to be very blunt about it um we hadn't we had an

00:30:20.160 agreement and we were literally told by the representative from uh trudeau's the prime

00:30:24.800 minister's office there's no in way we're going to let you uh buy this those are that's that's

00:30:31.840 the quote you can fill in the blank right and um so that kind of put a put a pause on that but

00:30:38.580 another group called Niestan has really picked up the torch. It's an indigenous-led 1.00

00:30:44.500 entity that's moving the whole utility corridor forward. And yeah, it's fertilizer, grains,

00:30:52.740 which is very applicable to there. Yeah. So yeah, I was talking with Robin before. He's a mutual

00:30:59.220 friend. And it is a very interesting concept and they've persevered. I give them a lot of credit

00:31:07.060 because negotiating with, you know, three different provincial governments and all the various native bands that they've been able to cobble everyone together.

00:31:14.920 And, you know, then there's election changes and changes in government and changes in band leadership.

00:31:20.020 And so they've they've but they've done a good job.

00:31:23.140 They're moving it forward.

00:31:24.080 It is good now that we've seen Trump's tariff threats.

00:31:28.420 It seems to be catalyzing and coalescing some opinion around making this a priority.

00:31:33.920 And so I hope that the various governments get behind them and make it happen.

00:31:37.680 A little candle.

00:31:38.900 You have to give Trump credit for that.

00:31:41.140 I mean, he has managed to do something no leader in this country has done for the last 150 years, which is unify it, right?

00:31:50.120 Well, unify it and hopefully it results in some action and not just words.

00:31:56.220 And that's the problem I see with Carney's pronouncements on energy.

00:32:02.160 They're words, but they lack the actual substance to make things happen.

00:32:06.540 So, again, I chalk it up to nothing more than like Trudeau's comments about, you know, the budget will balance itself.

00:32:11.940 You know, they're as worthy as those words.

00:32:14.720 So what we've seen out of the Conservative government proposals and their campaign platform is much more encouraging to actually seeing Canada unleash its wealth and potential,

00:32:26.240 which is really important when you start

00:32:28.580 looking at the economic performance of

00:32:30.540 Canada over this past decade

00:32:32.380 under the Liberals

00:32:33.440 we've really fallen behind

00:32:36.220 the Americans and other countries as well

00:32:38.340 so we've got to get our act

00:32:40.420 together and your comment

00:32:42.080 in terms of Trump, yeah it's hopefully

00:32:44.440 given us a bit of a kick 0.99

00:32:46.520 in the butt to actually 0.98

00:32:47.540 get out there and do 0.98

00:32:50.800 something

00:32:51.120 well thanks a lot Jeff

00:32:54.920 i appreciate you taking the time yeah pleasure yeah uh as always yeah likewise so if you want

00:33:00.680 to talk about orphan well stuff too you know that's maybe let's save that for another show

00:33:05.000 yeah that's a work in progress as well and it is it is and it's another one of those complicated

00:33:10.360 issues extremely complex issues there are some solutions but there's no overnight uh quick fixes

00:33:17.720 to the to the issue so and there never are so uh there we go there's uh there's jeff and uh

00:33:24.360 talking about utility quarters and a little bit about orphan wells thank you very much

00:33:30.360 okay here we are with uh russ barnett who heads up nobody really knows what it's called they're

00:33:36.920 going by the formal handle of the rural alberta concerned communities group acronym raccg

00:33:45.000 it's kind of an informal coalition of landowners and concerned citizens near caroline who are

00:33:49.640 opposed to a solar farm that's almost twice as big as the town itself and since putting together this

00:33:55.320 coalition um it's against an alberta utilities commission ruling which by coincidence came down

00:34:01.320 on friday the february 28th at five o'clock which we in the news business called the witching hour

00:34:07.560 because that's usually when the bad news comes and the powers that be don't think that there's

00:34:11.720 going to be a chance for anybody to really respond to it well caroline did and i happened to travel

00:34:17.480 out for a meeting in the arena where skating legend and Canadian icon Kurt Browning spent

00:34:23.080 his formative early days training and I can tell you firsthand that these are motivated people

00:34:27.960 they're reasonable people and they are exposing a shortcoming in the legislation when it comes to

00:34:32.200 renewable energy in general and for all the right reasons. Surprise, surprise when we started

00:34:37.400 covering the story here in the Western Standard it exploded and as it turns out there are at least a

00:34:42.120 dozen other municipalities across Alberta that are in the same situation with respect

00:34:46.680 to unwanted renewable developments in their communities and they're mostly on private land

00:34:52.360 it was like all these voices thought they were crying alone in the dark and it's starting to

00:34:56.200 turn into a real movement so uh one of the other interesting things was after we started running

00:35:02.680 these stories and i'm not sure that russ knows this uh we got a letter from uh people in wayburn

00:35:08.040 saskatchewan which is experiencing some of these similar issues and they wanted us to cover their

00:35:12.360 story as well. So here we are with Russ and we're going to check in and see what they're doing and

00:35:18.040 what some of their next steps are. And it seems like there's been developments every day, Russ.

00:35:22.820 How's it going? No, it's going pretty well. Thanks for the opportunity, Sean.

00:35:26.740 Well, thank you. So you sent me a quick little email here today about how the AUC is starting

00:35:33.780 to pull down the videos of the public meetings that are going on on their website. Do you think

00:35:38.700 that that's kind of a response to maybe some of the negative coverage that they've been getting

00:35:42.380 from this you know i'm not sure if this is a if this is a new thing or whether they uh this has

00:35:48.380 been standard practice since the beginning i know that uh i certainly watched all the five days of

00:35:55.040 proceedings that that we had and i looked at other ones as well and uh there's been a couple of other

00:36:00.920 articles done by other media that's been put up on youtube and and that's been removed by the auc as

00:36:06.200 well. Really? And so this whole, like how this started was a couple of years, two and a half

00:36:12.740 years ago, I live in Caroline and the, we were notified that there was going to be a developer

00:36:19.960 was moving into Caroline and would like to put a solar farm here in Caroline and within the

00:36:25.620 village limits and about twice the size of the, of the community. And so there wasn't that much

00:36:33.340 resistance because the possibility of this being approved, uh, based on, you know, common sense

00:36:39.620 and the people's thoughts were like, this has no chance because it's going to be built across the

00:36:43.820 street within village limits, uh, across from a kid's park, the outdoor rink, et cetera, like

00:36:49.140 literally across the street. And so it started and then the UCP government, you know, they were

00:36:55.380 elected in May, 2023, you know, by the representing the people of Alberta. And then in, uh, I guess

00:37:02.680 was august of that same year august 2023 they brought uh daniel smith and the ucp government

00:37:08.680 brought in a pause on renewables while they assessed what was happening and so that pause

00:37:14.840 ran for a year and we thought that okay it's been paused and common sense is going to come back

00:37:20.520 and uh and these things will you know be evaluated on on the merits and you know with municipal input

00:37:26.600 etc and following well there's four main things that the ucp government brought in

00:37:32.280 uh in for the renewables and they wanted the auc to focus on agricultural land and that's a big one

00:37:39.960 and then they wanted to protect viewscapes for you know this the wind farms and the solar projects

00:37:45.160 etc yeah the other one was to pay attention to municipal input and then to make sure that there

00:37:51.000 was reclamation costs even if it's on private land such that when the solar farm or solar project

00:37:57.480 had run its life then there would be you know reclamation dollars and everything would be

00:38:01.320 taken care of and it would be removed and so we we never really got that involved because it was

00:38:08.440 on pause and these things were coming and and there's absolutely no way that anybody would

00:38:13.240 look at the project proposed project in caroline and say okay so you know that's that's okay it

00:38:19.880 protects the view scapes you know it's only across the street uh it's on agricultural land but that's

00:38:25.480 no big deal we've got a new term called agrivoltax it's a marketing term like solar farm like it's

00:38:31.000 not a farm it's a project and agrivoltax is a not it's a you know it's a dreamt up term right and

00:38:37.480 so they just kept it just kept moving along and uh you know we got involved and when you look at the

00:38:44.600 AUC you know they're a quasi judiciary and they're supposed to be under the control of mr newdorf and

00:38:50.520 ultimately uh daniel smith yeah and uh you can't fight the AUC because they control the process

00:38:58.600 there's no such thing as an appeal because you're going back and you're asking them you're you have

00:39:03.880 to prove that they've made errors on their regular decision it's the same group you're going back

00:39:08.920 it's a request for variants they don't even call it an appeal right and so right from the beginning

00:39:15.280 we realize that the group and other folks like you said before around rural Alberta we recognize

00:39:20.780 that you can't fight the AUC they control a process it's the same group they have a huge

00:39:25.580 propensity to approve every sort of project and they'll go through contortions to justify those

00:39:31.260 approvals so much so that they look foolish right well perhaps that's the reason that these videos

00:39:38.320 and these hearings on YouTube are being removed

00:39:42.080 because if you went back and watched them, 0.95

00:39:44.120 their justifications make them look ridiculous. 0.99

00:39:47.020 You'd be shaking your head. 0.97

00:39:48.460 Yeah, I've snapped through some of these hearings in the past,

00:39:51.500 and, yeah, I know kind of what they're all about.

00:39:54.980 So you must have been encouraged, though,

00:39:56.800 by the letter from Emily Nixon, Jason Nixon.

00:40:00.820 I've met him a couple times.

00:40:02.340 He's a pretty amicable fellow,

00:40:04.500 but he seems to be kind of on your side in all this as well.

00:40:07.820 would you would you agree with that for sure let's face his his uh constituency offices in

00:40:13.560 rocky mountain house yep so because of the amalgamation uh you know clearwater got in got

00:40:20.100 engaged you know rather late i would say but they had the opportunity to go over and sit down

00:40:25.540 personally with with nixon and explain everything that was happening yeah and that caused him to

00:40:31.160 write the letter to mr newdorf yes and i followed that letter who's been a little less committal i

00:40:36.880 i understand you know um and i've met him as well and he's an amicable fellow but uh you know yeah

00:40:43.360 he's he's almost kind of a junior minister in the in the whole thing because he's said before that

00:40:47.760 like his portfolio isn't really that big and when when we're talking about this power portfolio and

00:40:53.440 in terms of like exports from alberta you know we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars

00:40:57.680 it's not a million of dollars kinds of kinds of things so it almost seems like you guys were

00:41:04.000 probably a little bit off the radar yeah the when you think about that from the power power uh you

00:41:10.340 know generation capability and what it does to actually rule alberta and alberta in general

00:41:14.580 the if the solar farm here solar project was up and running and it ran for a complete year based

00:41:21.520 on all the previous statistics and sunlight area in this area etc it would generate it would add

00:41:26.800 to the alberta utility grid 0.013 so why are they going through all this uh it's an insignificant

00:41:35.200 amount for 0.01 why would they raw so many feathers oh and i and i understand that caroline's 0.90

00:41:41.500 only 500 people but you know uh it seems to have really kind of caught fire across uh the rest of

00:41:47.920 the uh alberta well if you could build something and let's say it costs you a hundred dollars and

00:41:53.620 and you got $50 from the government to build it, then you could turn around and sell it for $75

00:41:58.340 after 12 months of operation. Why wouldn't you do that? Sure. Why wouldn't you? Exactly.

00:42:06.340 So, yeah, all these emissions credits and they're using the credits to finance these things.

00:42:13.540 You know, I got a real lesson in renewable economics just talking with you over the last

00:42:19.620 a couple weeks here you know that you can you know steven jabal was running around touting

00:42:25.380 uh alberta's renewable grid market while alberta's got the only deregulated power market in the

00:42:30.660 country and yeah if you can go and get 30 tax credits from federal government you can use

00:42:35.380 emissions credits and then you can bankroll this thing and you know you're from germany

00:42:39.620 or wherever they're from yeah and then build it and then turn around and sell it without having

00:42:43.940 to put up a dime of uh you know the reclamation like you you talked about you know we've got this

00:42:48.580 big issue in Alberta here with the abandoned orphan wells and some people are saying that's

00:42:54.020 going to cost a hundred billion dollars and you know don't quote me on that because I'm going to

00:42:57.740 have a Alberta energy regulator calling me up and saying that the no taxpayers aren't paying for that

00:43:02.540 but you know really we are right yeah it's the it's the it's the whole AUC process is corrupt

00:43:10.100 and there's some you know some blatant things that highlight that for example the developer

00:43:16.360 has to is tasked to re to report to the AUC the municipal i guess opinion of of the project

00:43:25.720 so of course you know the developer you go out and tell us and of course that you know they're

00:43:29.400 motivated to get it done so is the AUC so in the example of caroline you know we've got about 500

00:43:35.720 people 302 voters you know eligible voters ecp type or you know and most of them were in the in

00:43:41.800 the arena there that day it was like pretty much i was still sitting there thinking that wow that

00:43:46.600 must be pretty much the entire voting population of the town that's right and so uh you know i'm

00:43:52.440 an accountant on the back side so i like numbers and so i went in and looked at all the information

00:43:57.160 that was put forth uh by pace which is the company which is only 50 uh out of the uk and 50 out of

00:44:04.280 germany so it has nothing to do with really with canadian operations other than the local people

00:44:08.920 hired or the community right yeah or the community so i went and looked at the information that pace

00:44:15.160 put forward and and they put forth to the AUC that the population of the village of caroline supports

00:44:21.560 it and so then they had nice pie graphs and bar graphs and things so i went in and took a look

00:44:27.320 because i know i'm within it's literally if i look out my window here i would be able to see it

00:44:32.760 and so we looked at and the sample size that was provided to the auc was 12. oh my gosh the amount

00:44:40.380 of people that supported it were seven and so that got a favorable review unbelievable and so

00:44:46.160 so the auc says well the village didn't object the people didn't object the village council

00:44:52.260 i mean they were basically you know missing in action the whole process well and you're being

00:44:57.780 uh amalgamated into clearwater county right there's a devolution there the town into a

00:45:02.400 amrit that's correct so anything that isn't explicitly stated uh is viewed as a positive

00:45:08.980 by the auc right so you know it's it's just it's a corrupt process and that's one and then they

00:45:15.820 have the same company that's going to provide the uh reclamation costs or the bonding or what's

00:45:22.280 supposed to happen that's the same company that provides the estimate as to what you know what

00:45:26.700 is supposed to be removed so there's multiple things throughout the process that really make

00:45:30.880 technological sense well and one of the things that you were talking about too was this mitigation

00:45:35.540 they're going to use the sheep to eat the grass underneath the solar panels but you're on the

00:45:41.360 eastern slopes of the rockies and you know there's wolves and coyotes and bears and well all these

00:45:48.000 mitigation efforts right are are basically you know none of them have been proven in in the

00:45:53.660 you know in the agribaltics one what's the fallback you know when the saskatoon berries never

00:45:59.240 work right or the lettuces don't work and the bears come in and eat them yeah right and then

00:46:04.760 so like you said with all you know here's the plan to put sheep in well who's going to do the

00:46:09.620 sheep who's managing the sheep well we don't really know do they have any experience no

00:46:13.760 it's almost like bugs bunny and the and the coyote right the coyote and the dog

00:46:18.380 so the developer the developer is able to say this is a process that works and there's no

00:46:24.000 empirical evidence required from the developer's side right when the community because it's never

00:46:28.840 been done really i mean like we're talking about an industry that's they don't even ask for evidence

00:46:33.240 right so when we say it's going to reduce property values and it's going to do this and we hire

00:46:37.940 independent experts h3 you know environmentalists and all these other people right and they then

00:46:43.800 they produce information in the auc hearing well right you know you need all this evidence but auc

00:46:49.780 can just say well you didn't have anything specified there was no land use bylaws in

00:46:55.240 the land was zoned for

00:46:57.580 future residential

00:46:58.960 and because there was nothing in

00:47:01.580 our land use bylaws with regards

00:47:03.680 to solar farms because they didn't

00:47:05.000 exist 20 years ago

00:47:08.100 that was

00:47:09.640 approval

00:47:10.560 the land use bylaw

00:47:13.420 is basically the essential foundation

00:47:15.760 of the municipality right some of these

00:47:17.380 land use bylaws go back when was

00:47:19.380 the town of caroline even founded like

00:47:21.240 in the 1940s

00:47:23.040 yeah it must have been a long time ago or the 50s right so they just keep on amending these

00:47:28.700 bylaws as time goes by right and it's like you said these uh solar developments haven't even

00:47:33.240 really been around so what's the position of the county yeah so the big problem that the county

00:47:38.920 has and all the other municipalities and things milo and hannah and lamond and all these other

00:47:43.160 ones that i'm talking to sturgeon lake and smoky river and things is that these municipalities in

00:47:48.800 the Municipal Government Act, there's a clause

00:47:50.960 619 that

00:47:52.880 basically allows the AUC and other regulators

00:47:55.160 to ignore any

00:47:57.040 land use bylaws or anything

00:47:59.020 that the municipality comes up with. They can

00:48:00.940 override if they feel

00:48:02.140 it's warranted.

00:48:05.180 And so a lot of the communities won't

00:48:07.000 go forward because they said, well, what's

00:48:09.180 the point? Because the AUC is just going to

00:48:10.980 override us.

00:48:12.820 So it took some conversations

00:48:14.920 with the Clearwater Council because they face the same

00:48:16.940 thing well why why do that because the AUC can just override us in my where do they stand now

00:48:22.280 where does Clearwater stand on it they're fighting it they are they're they are they are participating

00:48:27.980 in the proceeding they've highlighted palpable errors they've hired lawyers they filed a game

00:48:33.140 this morning up onto the onto the AUC proceeding so that that the county is now you know involved

00:48:39.680 they had to be pretty much they were over there talking face to face with Mr. Nixon right and

00:48:44.580 And so, well, and you guys have only amalgamated with the county since, I think it was effective January 1st, right?

00:48:52.780 That's correct.

00:48:53.840 And Mr. Nixon did note that in his letter.

00:48:57.920 For sure.

00:48:58.840 Yeah, to the AUC.

00:49:00.540 So we were also talking about, Premier Smith was on her talk radio show.

00:49:06.140 As we all know, the Premier Smith used to be a talk radio show host when she was kind of in the political wilderness.

00:49:12.140 For sure, yep.

00:49:12.660 Were you encouraged by some of her comments? She made some kind of encouraging comments that maybe perhaps this is a little ideologically motivated from the previous NDP government, but at the same time, it seemed like she's kind of stopped short of maybe implementing another moratorium 2.0 or making some actual legislative changes.

00:49:34.460 yeah so we were encouraged and uh mark was one of the one of the folks that i've been speaking

00:49:41.500 with and things and he called into the show and uh and she acknowledges that this is left over from

00:49:47.980 you know from the knotley era this is ideological driven there really is no sort of common sense

00:49:53.920 behind it she talked about the need for baseload power you know in order to have a reliable utility

00:50:00.600 grid etc well she's talked about that uh a lot or since she became premier yeah and she is very

00:50:06.440 uh knowledgeable about some of these issues i would say yeah and then she brings up the private

00:50:10.760 ownership thing and the protection of of you know private ownership and what they can do with the

00:50:15.560 with the land well with your own land yeah but of course that that's a that's a ridiculous uh

00:50:22.360 point in my opinion because well to a point i mean you know there's a thing in chastamere

00:50:29.000 do you know the story on the water slide park there guy built it on private land and it's like

00:50:33.320 one of the world's largest one slides and it's completely abandoned and it's on uh totally on

00:50:39.560 on the interweb of one of the like the top 10 creepiest places on earth you know after like

00:50:46.040 you said after it's been abandoned like and how do how do you pull up all that cement and uh you

00:50:51.400 know everything that went into it right so i don't feel that you know you you can't just take when

00:50:57.320 you buy a piece of property it comes with rules and regulations and zoning and mineral rights

00:51:02.680 all the other sort of stuff so to protect that i understand my house in calgary i can't uh start

00:51:07.640 painting up murals on the front of my house well no and like you know i can't bring i can't bring

00:51:13.880 drilling rigs into my backyard here and start drilling for geothermal feet you know yeah they'll

00:51:19.080 probably frown on that yeah for sure and so i think that's a weak excuse but her acknowledgement of the

00:51:23.960 the rest of it i think is encouraging okay and and i think that's what uh as a as the members

00:51:30.120 all around alberta um you know i guess become more and more cohesive then the voice will get

00:51:37.860 stronger and stronger but there's but there's definitely that i receive calls all day long

00:51:43.660 people are sending in my flyers and that's another one too i think when you were up in caroline you

00:51:49.180 saw the flyers that were created you know stop this insanity let's tell the AUC yep so you know

00:51:55.560 print your name and address and everything and phone number and email and all that sort of stuff

00:51:59.540 well those were all excluded those I filed all those up on the proceeding with the AUC yeah and

00:52:05.620 the AUC uh fought back with the freedom of information and privacy act saying that these

00:52:10.580 people explicitly didn't say that they their names and everything could be made public right

00:52:16.740 and so my comment back to the aec because it says right on the flyer let's tell the aec you know if

00:52:22.020 they have a different interpretation as to why people sign this i'd be very interested to hear

00:52:25.700 it sure so but anyway so they just killed they just killed all those people that signed the flyers and

00:52:31.620 you know to show their support the aec denied all that yeah that happened here in calgary with the

00:52:36.500 recall day that's right 60 000 signatures on on a petition so uh what are the next steps here

00:52:45.380 Russell, what have you guys got up your sleeves?

00:52:49.440 One of the next steps that came off, and keep in mind,

00:52:52.700 I don't speak for all these people, but just sort of passing on what's happening.

00:52:57.180 But I think the next step is each person is solidifying their support

00:53:03.620 in their different areas.

00:53:05.880 And so we're going to get together sort of as a more formal group.

00:53:10.040 And I think we'll multi-author a letter to the political people as well.

00:53:15.380 you know, expressing concerns. And the other one is to take some of the decisions that have been

00:53:22.360 previously made and compare those decisions and come up with some sort of commonality

00:53:27.920 as to how the AUC is going through contortions to justify things that just don't make sense.

00:53:33.300 There will be a common track in that. And so I think that's one of the things that we need to

00:53:38.160 do so we can sit down with Newdorf and the other politicians and say, look, this is what, it's not 0.92

00:53:43.300 just caroline caroline was the one that sparked this because it's probably the most ridiculous

00:53:48.220 one that's been proposed and been conditionally approved right the conditions are just you know

00:53:54.700 just crazy right right and and it's like you said i mean they promised to do this with the

00:54:00.140 that was the whole point of the moratorium pauses because people really didn't want this and it was

00:54:04.840 be able to give them a voice and and the saying how it was supposed to go right yeah but the ac

00:54:10.960 you know by their actions they've basically told the public that they don't really care

00:54:15.040 right or they're operating under some different standard yeah okay we're gonna have to cut it

00:54:20.960 there okay okay so i was just gonna say yeah go ahead i was just gonna say so if you if you win

00:54:28.140 one of these auc if you win in the hearing yep then the ac will coach the developer encourage

00:54:34.280 them to reapply right so that's and that's sort of sparking absolute outrage so that's what the

00:54:40.340 group is going to carry on that was in another one of your letters was kind of like um the open

00:54:45.920 door rejection policy or something like that this is the easter veil project yeah oh 700 acres of

00:54:52.660 glass on agricultural land right and yours isn't even 700 acres no but it's twice the size of the

00:55:00.200 village right like you said it's it's almost the absurdity of it all that's driving oh for sure

00:55:08.320 No, it's not, Sean.

00:55:08.940 Thanks very much for the time.

00:55:10.620 Yeah, thank you, Russ.

00:55:11.480 And chances are we're going to have you back on real quick

00:55:14.580 so that Western Standard readers can stay tuned

00:55:18.380 with what's happening in Caroline.

00:55:20.420 And in that regard, now it's time for me to make the pitch

00:55:23.400 to become a Western Standard member.

00:55:27.420 If you're not already, just go up to westernstandard.news, sign up.

00:55:33.300 People like Russ will be able to tell you.

00:55:35.200 You know, one of the things when I went to Caroline,

00:55:36.780 I was really impressed with was how many people actually read the Western Standard and how many

00:55:41.420 people are using us as their main source of news to cover some of these exact issues like

00:55:47.260 that they're dealing with you know with the solar farms and the rural developers and so we just want

00:55:52.860 to make a pitch to all you folks out there to sign up it's extremely reasonable we're only talking

00:55:58.620 about 10 bucks a month which was I used to work at the Herald and I think you know one of the

00:56:03.500 criticisms was it was about two bucks a day and you know so the question was is like would you

00:56:07.820 pay two bucks a day to get basically wire copy and you know news that you can pretty much get

00:56:13.500 anywhere else. So there we go.

Western Standard - April 16, 2025

Where the Sun Don’t Shine： Rural Alberta rises up against solar farms

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