How the USA is Trying to Steal Canada's Oil

Speaker 1: Hello everyone. Welcome back to Fighting Matters. Today, we've got three countries represented. We've got me, Stefan Kesting from Grapplers.com in Canada. We've got Jeff Shaw from Bellingham BJJ in the United States. And we've got Tyson Lerone from the country of Albertica, or soon to be Albertica, uh, after they split off after US agitation. So, welcome to the podcast. If you've been following the news on this topic, the Alberta Prosperity Project, which is kind of the organization or one of the organizations arguing that Alberta, a very oil-rich province in Canada, should split off, possibly be its own country, possibly join the United States, has uh been meeting with the US State Department, the department headed by Marco Rubio, about getting funding or support for their their project. So, Tyson, can you fill in some more details beyond that pencil sketch? Speaker 2: Well, you know, one of these days we're going to have to do a podcast episode where we talk about something fun and not triggering. We could get together and talk about jiu-jitsu or something. I it is so strange being like living in Alberta in the generation I do, because uh these sorts of anti-Ottawa, uh pro-Alberta independence sentiments started long before I was born, but never really ramped up to the levels we're seeing now until about, I would say, the last decade. Uh and uh and it hasn't been a linear process either. These have been like sort of climbing, climbing, climbing over the last decade, and the last two years, it has gone crazy to the point where we now are it's we're we're at serious risk of at least being forced to go to the stage where we have a referendum in the province on whether or not we would like to start the process. And that is uh due in part to our premier Danielle Smith having gone out of her way to make the process of getting a petition approved for a referendum like that much, much easier. She she claims to be anti-separation, but she has done these sort of she's they've enacted this targeted policy to make it so that in order to trigger a referendum, they really only need signatures on their petition from about 6% of the voting population of Alberta to trigger a referendum on whether or not we leave. And that is uh uh that's to as somebody who's always lived in Alberta and always heard these same sorts of people being angry about these same sorts of things, to have it getting that real is is still now really hard to believe. Uh and infuriating all at once. Um, the the Americans are definitely not helping. Sorry to say, it's uh there there are several reasons for that, but uh once again, you have like you have the Alberta Prosperity Project claiming they talked to senior officials in the White House and like they they've they've gone so far as to say, uh the people we talked to left our meeting and went to the Oval Office. That's what they're claiming. So far, uh Scott Bessent is like the the highest profile guy that's actually mentioned this, and like they're making a big deal out of him having mentioned it, but really all he did was say that we're a very proud independent people and we're a natural partner for the United States and he didn't go he didn't say that he would like it for us to separate. He didn't give a he didn't give support to either side. He just kind of laid out what's happening, like what we're talking about. So it's it's it's all it's not quite real yet, but it's gotten so much more real in the last two years than it has ever been before, and the trend alone is alarming. Speaker 1: So Scott Bessent is not in the State Department. Scott Bessent is the head of the Treasury, head of the Treasury. So then we've had at least two US, well, we've allegedly the State Department, which would that would actually be the role of the State Department to talk to other countries. So what what's the Treasury doing involved with this? Speaker 2: One could one could ask a lot of those kinds of questions, right? It's like because they're because they're always very careful to say, well, we're we're just private citizens. We don't have to oh what was um God, I'm blanking on his name. The guy who was in like uh Dragon's Den. Um Speaker 1: Kevin O'Leary? Speaker 2: Kevin O'Leary. Right, same thing. Him him like flying down uh with Jordan Peterson and Danielle Smith to hang out at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and people are like, what are you doing? Why are you negotiating on behalf of the country and you're not even elected a like you two aren't even elected officials. And their response to that is always, oh, we're just we're just private citizens. We're allowed to go and talk to people. It's like, you're not just talking to people, you're talking to the President of the United States. And you're not you're not officially negotiating on behalf of the country, but you are giving him a very clouded and uh clouded and dishonest idea of what's actually going on back in Canada. Uh and uh so the Alberta Prosperity Project is kind of doing that now, where they're they're flying down there just to meet with whoever will agree to meet with them. I mean, these people in Trump's administration aren't that busy right now, right? They're they're they're there's plenty of people whose job it is to be like, sorry, who's here to meet with me? All right, whatever. I'll sit in a room with them for a couple hours and hear what they want to say. Like, if you're able to get past the if you're able to get past the point where you could at least be in the house talking to somebody, then you can claim you're talking to whatever level of officials you want to. And if anybody asks you or if anybody scrutinizes uh who you were talking to or why, you could just say, oh, well, I can't I can't divulge that information. They were just they were such high-level officials. Like, they're saying things that really mean nothing. And uh you know, I I I think the only reason Scott Bessent even brought it up is because they literally asked him about it. I think they I think the reporter actually posed the question to him. So he felt like he had to say something, but he didn't seem to have much to say. Speaker 1: So Jeff, as our token American here, uh obviously in the last uh year since Trump started uh talking about Canada becoming the 51st state, a lot of MAGA has fallen in behind this saying, yes, the United States needs Canada. And if our orange glorious leader wants Canada, then I want Canada as well. And there's been a whole bunch of, you know, shit coming out of the White House, like images of or maps that include Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela, and Mexico sometimes, as part of grand unified America or the American Reich, if you will. Uh but with regards to this Alberta thing, what percentage of Americans would even be able to tell you that Alberta is in Canada, would you guess? Speaker 3: I I would say less than 24%, which is the number of people who strongly approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. So, it's interesting as as an American watching this, and Tyson, you sound skeptical of this, which I'm glad to to hear. One of the things that's interesting as an American is things that were never on the table and that you would have thought were not possible, uh, are suddenly there on the agenda. And so it is difficult to tell exactly how serious this is. Before we go further, I should make make clear that I'm speaking as a private citizen, not in my official capacity as a representative of the United States government. Uh, but like if you Speaker 2: So wait on my chest. Speaker 3: If you were to tell if you were to tell me, and I I'll make some analogies later, but the the thing is, the US and Canada are not just historical allies or traditional allies, but Canada is our most important ally. And I live about 20 minutes from the Peace Arch border where there is a giant park that says Children of a Common Mother, and there's always been such friendship between the US and Canada. And so what I'm about to say would have been unthinkable to me even two years ago. But it is very possible that these Alberta Prosperity Project people are just kind of full of it and are trying to get something on the agenda that's not really on the agenda in the United States. That's very possible. It's also possible that this is a conscious strategy by the administration to destabilize our traditional ally, which like I said, two years ago would have sounded insane, but then two years ago the US president referring to our closest ally as the 51st state and threatening several times to do whatever he has to, including purchase or invasion to acquire it, would have seemed equally unthinkable. And so I don't know the the you know, it's very tough to tell with these people because as the great conservative columnist George Will wrote this week, um in this loudocracy, you should assume they're lying until proven otherwise. And so you can't really take anything the US says at face value. Um, so what do we know? Uh, we observe from their behavior that they seem to not want to let this go. Uh, it seems like it could be just a red meat for the base, as in this is a a muscular American longing for a bygone era of colonialism. I would also say side note, this is one reason it's really really dangerous to elect egomaniacs, because I think a lot of what Trump and the people around this are doing, like with the putting his name on the Kennedy Center, things of that nature, stuff that would not have made it on the policy agenda, are just things that he knows will be written about in the history books, which I think is where he's kind of obsessed with now. He wants to make an American triumphal arch that is 250 feet high. No American cares about this. He wanted to he dismantled half of the White House and is going to put up an ugly, gaudy, gold lame ballroom. No American cares about this. But these are all things that I think in his mind have elevated would elevate him to, oh, and this was a historical achievement by this historical president, as opposed to just someone that was both reviled by those who remembered him, but forgotten by the vast majority of Americans. So, this I think is a is a specific manifestation of that larger problem. Can't say for certain what's going on, but it wouldn't surprise me if the US was trying to destabilize our our our ally to achieve those goals. Speaker 1: Certainly in this day and age, we would expect that any invasion of Canada, let's just go with the biggest picture possible. Any invasion of Canada would be preceded by things exactly like this. And also a massive wave of bot-powered propaganda and a massive amount of misinformation and disinformation. So there'd be funding of local separatist groups. There would be a gargantuan full frontal assault on every social media platform, since pretty much all social media platforms or all major social media platforms are in the bag for Trump, right? The the oligarchs are all supporting him right now and they have control over TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, uh YouTube. So so that you would expect a ramping up of stories of how dysfunctional Canada is and how Canadians are protesting in the streets, begging the United States to come in and and free us from the tyranny of Justin Trudeau, who's already been gone for a bunch of years, but hey, we're just going to ignore that fact. Uh and uh that this is exactly what we would expect. Speaker 2: Well, it I mean, you bring up a good point. It's like, uh it doesn't matter how likely you think it is to happen. Uh it's not it's it's hard not to be worried about it when what it looks like before it happens or what it looks like before it doesn't happen are exactly the same. Speaker 1: So, so take us through the case for Alberta separation. I mean, the the little bits and pieces I hear from the separatist movement is how much Alberta has suffered at the hands of the federal government being trapped in a non-reciprocal relationship with the rest of Canada. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it the the separatist movement is based on several key talking points that sound good until you think about them for about five seconds. Okay? Uh and uh and I say that like it's a joke, but it it it really, really isn't. And the and I don't want to say that the people who are supporting Alberta separatism are stupid. Uh or that they are incapable of applying this kind of critical thinking process elsewhere in their lives. But what we know in the era of social media and the ability to find a sort of uh competently presented uh charismatic, professional-looking, um source to tell you just about anything that you can choose uh whether or not to subject your impulses to the process of critical thinking. You can choose what you want to what you want to uh just believe because it sounds good and feels good in your heart, and what you want to check like, hmm, maybe maybe I should ask somebody who actually knows what they're talking about about this. Because if you don't want to hear something, you don't have to hear it. And if you want to find something, you can find it. Uh it's it's kind of like when people are like, oh, I don't want politicians running politics because like why why you know, they're they're just not down to earth enough. I want a guy that I can have a beer with. Like, okay, let's apply that in any other aspect of your life. I I'm on a plane right now. Well, these pilots, they're out of touch with the common man. I don't like the idea that some pilot went to some kind of fancy-dancy pilot school and and uh looks down on me because they're educated as a pilot and I'm not. I could fly this plane, right? I want a pilot I can have a beer with, not one that can fly a plane. Like, they would never, ever say that. But when it comes to uh running an entire country, being responsible for one of the most important economies on Earth, all of a sudden it's, you know, who you want to have a beer with is the number one qualifying uh thing. So the so when they when they talk about the when I talk about these things and I talk about how they crumbled to dust when you nudge them with even the surface-level scrutiny, I'm not saying this because I'm saying that everybody is stupid that believes in this cause, because I really do believe that if you were to take all these people who seem to apply none of their critical thinking ability in this particular area of their life when they talk about politics, you could find endless applications of critical thinking skills everywhere else in their lives. But if they don't want to hear this, they don't have to. And if they don't have to, they won't. So I I I guess I'm just kind of prefacing that saying that like, I'm going to talk about why these key talking points are stupid, but I'm not calling you stupid for believing in them. I understand how you can how somebody can uh be very smart in some ways and still believe in some things that if they actually wanted to to apply some critical thinking skills, they could, they're choosing not to. And so like you said, the idea that Alberta is so hard done by, that that sort of manifests itself in several ways. Um, one big thing that people like to talk about is equalization. Because we have a process in Canada where uh tax revenue that is collected by the federal government is uh is paid out to provinces in several different ways. And equalization payments are one of the ways in which the federal government ensures that uh certain provinces that might not be as uh rich with natural resources or uh maybe the uh main sort of economic engines of their uh of their economy are not as are are not booming at the moment. They're for whatever reason, factors out of their control are are uh they're in an economic slump, that they can continue to provide the quality of life that as Canadians, we've decided that all of our citizens deserve. Right? We have decided as a as a country that if you are a Canadian citizen, uh that you deserve a this sort of baseline quality of life. So equalization payments are are uh are distributed by the federal government as a way to make sure that every province, regardless of uh what kind of economic challenges it might be facing, is able to provide that baseline of services for Canadians. Which, you know, sounds good, uh but the the issue that uh is brought up when it comes to equalization and Alberta separatism is the idea that Alberta uh doesn't benefit from equalization and we're just paying it to paying it to paying it to and then all of our money is going to other provinces and we're uh we're a have province that's propping up the have-not provinces and without us, the whole the whole opera would fall apart. Um and to me, this is it it's just a it's a it's a failure of education. I I think that this is uh a pure and simple failure of education. People think that uh people don't understand how equalization works. So it's very easy to tell them, oh, well, you know, if you if we just stopped paying into equalization, then all these other provinces would fall apart and we don't actually get anything out of equalization. Therefore, if we were to separate, we would just get to keep all of that money and it would stop going to prop up all these provinces that hate us. So, for for the listeners that don't actually understand what equalization is, there is no check that Alberta cuts to equalization. Okay, that's the first thing to understand. There's no, oh, Ontario contributed this and Alberta contributed this amount and contributed this amount and then these amounts went out to provinces. No. There's no there's no Alberta pays this. It is collected in income tax to the federal government. It is collected in excise taxes. It is collected in in uh GST, which is a general savings tax. Um and when we are when we're when we're talking about, oh, Alberta contributes this much, it's this is the amount of money being collected in these ways from people who live in Alberta. Okay? And so that's the that's a really important key factor to understand because when they say Alberta needs to separate because we're being taken advantage of and all of our money is going to Ottawa and then they're giving it to everyone else, that is an extremely misleading way to frame the situation. Because uh especially in the context of separation. If we were to uh if we were to break down uh what Alberta as a province contributes to uh Ottawa to to uh equalization in the form of all these different taxes, and then completely disregard where those taxes come from, and also how much of it we would actually get to keep and how it would be used if we were to separate. If you don't pay attention to any of that stuff, then it's sounds great. Like, okay, we're giving up this money, it's going everywhere else. Blah, blah, blah. But that's the first thing to understand is that it's not Alberta giving this money, it's Albertans giving this money. But not all not all Albertans contribute evenly. So, if you were to look at the breakdown of how much money from the majority of Albertans are actually contributing to GST and excise taxes and income taxes, it's really not that different from anyone else in Canada. What is different is that Alberta has the greatest wealth inequality out of any province in Canada. Okay? The uh the difference uh in income between the top 20% of earners and the bottom 20% of earners in Alberta has increased about 62% since the 90s. So, uh we have massive wealth inequality in this province. And that results in a small group of extremely wealthy Albertans contributing a lot in taxes to the federal government because they pay more in income taxes because they are taxed at higher rates because they make more money, and they pay more in GST because they buy more expensive things. So, if you look at it like uh uh if you look at it in terms of averages and medians, right? Because once again, you can present information in ways that are technically true, but are misleading. I could tell you like you could look at a a particular company where employees there are taking collective action and uh unionizing and trying to uh advocate for themselves because they're not being paid enough. And you could say like, okay, well, a good a good wage for this job is about $60,000 and the average income in that company is $60,000. So what are they complaining about? That sounds good on face value until you take a look at it and say, okay, well, in that company, one guy makes a million dollars, and the other 99 make 50,000. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: That that works out to an average income of $60,000. So you can say, well, what are they complaining about? They're you know, so if you present it as an average, it's very misleading. And the average the but if you look at the median income in that company, it would be $50,000, because the median income is the is the average of the 50th and 51st uh percentiles. So things like medians are much more outlier resistant than averages. So when they talk about the Alberta advantage and people in Alberta make so much more money than everyone else and we're just giving it all away to Ottawa and then they're giving it and then they're giving none of it back and then what they're actually describing is an average that's being pulled way up by that very small group of extremely wealthy people who live in Alberta, and it's giving a very different picture than what's actually happening on the ground. The vast majority of Albertans make about as much money as Canadians in every other province. The median income in Alberta is like uh $50 grand, I think it was. Median income in Ontario is about 49, median income in BC is about 48. Like, it's not a crazy difference. But the average income of Alberta is way above those provinces. So, when we talk about equalization and how, oh, we're giving all this money to Ottawa and they're giving none of it back, most Albertans are not giving Ottawa any more money than any other Canadians are. We have a small number of extremely wealthy people in this province who are giving a disproportionate amount of money uh away in taxes and don't like it and want to pay less in taxes. What most Albertans do, however, benefit from is the $9 billion, $10 billion that this province gets back in Canada Health Transfers and Canada Social Transfers and targeted infrastructure funding for affordable housing and all these things that we get back from the federal government that actually goes to benefit the majority of Albertans because the majority of us aren't making those crazy amounts of money. So, it's not our money that's being uh disproportionately given to Ottawa and then not given back in a way that benefits us. It's a disproportionate amount of people who are disproportionately wealthy, and most people in Alberta don't make enough money that they're not benefiting from all that money that comes back to provide the essential services that we depend on. So, if Alberta were to separate, hypothetically, and let's say everyone who who lives in Alberta stays in Alberta, hypothetically. What we would what would actually happen is the uh disproportionate amount of taxes that are paid to the federal government would instead be paid into whatever kind of tax system would be created for the country of Alberta. Right? So, these wealthy people, these uh these disproportionately wealthy people who are extremely wealthy, far wealthier than the than the actual majority of Albertans, they would be uh involved in the political process of negotiating, okay, well, what kind of tax system is the country of Alberta going to have? Okay? And we already know that the conservative government of Alberta and most people on the right side of the political spectrum seem to have this idea that if you tax rich people less, it's good for poor people. Right? So, any so any measure that was taken by the the new country of Alberta's government to say, well, you know, we need to keep all these rich people here in Alberta so that they can create jobs for all of you people. So, we don't want to scare them off. So, we're going to lower their taxes far below what the federal government was already charging them, because otherwise, why would they bother? Speaker 1: So, I once heard a description of conservatism or the conservative movement as using culture war issues to occupy the middle and lower classes while giving tax breaks and regulation cuts to the upper classes. Uh and that sounds like that's exactly what's going on here, that, you know, the people behind the Alberta Prosperity Project, the people associated with the Western Standard, which is a newspaper with big air quotes around news, or Rebel News, another like more sets of air quotes. These are not average down-home Albertans that you'd have a beer with. You're never going to have a beer with them because they are, you know, sipping champagne and uh, you know, having Speaker 2: You have no idea these people exist. And and they know you exist because they depend on you in a lot of ways, but they don't give a shit that you exist. Right? And this I mean, this not to not to go off on a tangent here, but this is why uh this is why Marxists uh really were really against the First World War because they were trying to convince people like, hey, you don't need to go and fight and die for these people because you, the working class in England, have a lot more in common with the working class in Germany than you do with the higher class and the royalty in your country. Right? So, uh so uh like I say, this is a a fundamental misunderstanding of what equalization is and the kinds of people who would benefit from a separation and a new country of Alberta tax system. Because I'll tell you something, the rich people in Alberta, if they do have an interest in separating from the country of Canada, they have no interest in separating from the country of Canada and all the economic fallout that would occur from that, just to pay more or even the same taxes that they're already paying. Right? Danielle Smith has said many times, we should be following the economic freedom examples of the United States, where uh where the the where obviously the wealth inequality is is uh some of the worst in the world and certainly in any developed country. So, we have a so if we were to hypothetically uh separate from Alberta, or separate from Canada, we would stop getting the $10 billion a year from the federal government in the form of the Canada Health Transfer, Canada Social Transfer, and all these targeted infrastructure funding projects and all that. That would be gone. So, those programs that the majority of Albertans actually do use and depend on, whether they know it or not, that's gone. And what is going to replace it would have to be some kind of similar uh funding structure from the Alberta country or like the the Alberta federal government, which is likely going to be a far less progressive tax structure than we have in Canada right now, which means these people are paying even less in taxes, and they're going to be the ones that are essentially in a position to say yes or no, we don't want to pay for this or we do want to pay for that. So, that fundamental misunderstanding of who's actually paying all this money to Ottawa, it's not the majority of Albertans, it's a few extremely wealthy ones. The majority of Albertans are paying the same amount of money into equalization that all Canadians are. So, uh that's a really important thing to understand. Uh and that's the first thing where I guess I've thought about it for more than five seconds, to be fair. Uh but uh but yeah, it's it's one of those things where like the the whole idea of the Alberta advantage has been really uh kind of has been really kind of amped up, not just for separatist rhetoric, but also just general conservative rhetoric. Uh, you know, because a lot of people voted for Danielle Smith, not necessarily because they actually understand the ramifications of her economic policies or social policies, but because she was a person that's going to fight with Ottawa. And as an Albertan conservative politician, if you say you're going to fight with Ottawa for the sake of fighting with Ottawa, that'll get you votes. Right? You don't have to get anything for it, but they they feel like we're in a fight with Ottawa. So any politician that's willing to fight with Ottawa, whether it makes sense or not, is going to be popular among the right-wing uh among the right-wing uh leaning sorry, the right-leaning voters in this province. So, uh this this idea of the Alberta advantage that, well, you know, we have everything here that we need, right? And we have everything that the rest of the country wants. That's why all these people want to move to Alberta because we're such an amazing place to be. Uh and we have such low housing costs and we make so much money and uh that's why we'd be better off on our own. So, all these different things that like you've heard the term the Alberta advantage, I'm guessing, right? It's something that we've actually our governments have paid to put on billboards across the country to encourage people to move here. But the Alberta advantage for the most part is bullshit. Again, like the the uh the difference between the average income in this province and the median income in this province is one part of that. Uh but even if you look at low housing costs, right? For a while there, we were attracting a lot of uh inter-country immigration from BC and Ontario because our housing costs were so much lower. What they don't realize and what we don't advertise as part of the Alberta advantage is that despite the insane predatory landlord uh practices out in Ontario, they actually have better rent control and and landlord uh and uh rental protection than we do in Alberta. So, despite the fact that our housing costs are still a little bit lower, we have the fastest rising housing costs in the country. So, this so even the lower housing costs aren't going to last for long. Then there's things like transportation costs, right? If you live in Alberta, you have to drive everywhere, basically. If you live in Edmonton or Calgary, you have to drive everywhere. There's a joke that in Edmonton, everything is a half hour away from everything else. Right? Uh the the uh urban planning is such that we are so spread out. We have more land mass than the city of Tokyo with less than a 10% of the population. Right? So, you have to drive everywhere. So, having a car, having insurance, paying for gas, paying uh paying to repair your car are essentially structural costs of living in Alberta. Like, less than uh if you live in Toronto, which has by far the best uh public transportation system in in all of uh Canada, something like uh 28% 28% of the population has no car at all. Speaker 1: And I think Montreal would also be similar. Montreal has a fairly decent transportation system and it was not unusual when I lived there for, you know, real life adults with real life jobs to not have a car and just rent it. It was a little bit like New York City, right? It's not unusual to be in New York City and not have a car. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And if and if you have one, then it's probably for work or maybe it's like a a car that uh or or maybe it's a car that you just drive when you feel like it, it's recreational. You have the money for that, whatever it is. But like, uh if you uh but something like uh 1% of households in Toronto have uh two or more cars. But in the province of Alberta, 81% of households have two or more cars. And less than 1% of households in Alberta have no car at all. Speaker 1: Well, you need all those cars to carry your guns around. Speaker 2: I mean, we wish. Uh lot there are our our government is uh certainly dead set on uh certainly dead set on the idea that we uh have the ability to have more guns than people have anywhere else in Canada. Uh it's part of it's part of this whole sort of sovereignty package that they that they were pitching back when they won the last election, acting like Alberta could unilaterally give itself more power than it already has from the Confederation. But uh, you know, things like that. Like people don't uh like again, the that is sort of um pushed to the back. Things like that are pushed to the back. The things like the lack of rent protection, the fact that having a car and driving it around to get around is a structural cost that's going to be like $6 to $900 that you don't have in Toronto. Uh things like uh trying to uh not talk about median income in this province and talk about average income instead. All those are part of the strategy of building up this idea that uh Alberta would be better off alone. Speaker 1: So you said that the argument for separation was based on several different strands, and I think we've covered this strand of financial grievance. What else is it built on? Speaker 2: Well, the the next one is is kind of uh is kind of interwoven in the economic um argument as well, uh because they all sort of they all sort of work together. Um the other one is the idea of Western alienation. Uh the idea that uh our that we that our uh values and our um and our issues are not represented in the federal government. And also that Ontario and Quebec uh kind of run Canada and what they say goes and what benefits them is what's going to get made into policy. Uh that they are anti- anti-oil and gas and therefore anti-Alberta. Um and uh once again, it's it's all it's interwoven into the economic argument because that's sort of the that's sort of the the language that uh the language that conservatives speak is is uh is the economics of it. Um but there's the there's the sort of social and uh value-based argument underneath that. They're like, we're not being listened to. Ontario doesn't care about us. Keep in mind, these are the facts don't care about your feelings people. If you ask them why they vote for conservative governments in Alberta, all they talk about is their feelings. We're not being listened to. They don't care about us. Like, they they they can't actually present the actual economic arguments for it because there's no evidence to suggest that the liberal government is anti-oil. I'll I'll give you I'll give you a great example, which is the the uh TMX expansion, or the Trans Mountain uh X uh pipeline expansion. Uh this is one of the biggest issues that conservatives are talking about for, you know, decades now, is that, oh, they Ottawa hates uh hates Alberta. They they want to they they uh and they don't want to build pipelines because they just hate oil and gas and they're they're radical environmentalists and they'll they'll they don't want to build a pipeline because that would benefit Alberta and all they care about is what benefits Ontario and Quebec. And it has gone to the point where they will pretend the Trans Mountain expansion never happened. They'll just pretend it never happened. There like they're still saying, Alberta needs access to tidewater. We need we need to build a pipeline. Like, we built the pipeline. The the pipeline got built. Like, you guys know the pipeline got built, right? But they they don't want to admit it. Why? Because Stephen Harper in 2012 approved the Trans Mountain expansion. But he approved it and tried to slam it through without any of his uh constitutional without fulfilling any of his constitutional obligations to the consultation of indigenous groups whose lands were going to be affected by the construction of the pipeline. So, uh in 2012, he says, uh yes, we're going to build this pipeline. It's in the national interest, we're going to build it. Uh Kinder Morgan was the proponent. And uh they started and uh they started the process of uh of trying to of trying to get this pipeline built. But then it started getting tied up in lawsuits and protests and it ended up going to court and courts, not radical environmental liberal governments, overturned the approval for the TMX. They said that the federal government under Stephen Harper, the conservative federal government under Stephen Harper, had not fulfilled their obligations for uh in-depth, good-faith negotiations and consultations with indigenous groups in the area, which is their duty as the federal government of Canada. You can you can hate that that there is there that you can hate the fact that there is their federal that their federal government's duty, but you can't argue that it is. It just is. So, the court overturned the approval. And then 2015 comes around and Justin Trudeau's liberal government comes in and they're basically given this mess of how to get this pipeline built and whether or not to whether or not to build it. So, they basically have to go back and do go back and do all of the things that Stephen Harper was supposed to do in the beginning. They have to go through the in-depth uh consultations with the indigenous groups and the environmental protection agencies and the province of British Columbia, who, by the way, has a right to weigh in on whether or not and how a pipeline gets built through their territory. Right? A lot of Albertans forget that because their expectation was that, well, this pipeline is in the national interest, so it should get built whether BC likes it or not. So, basically, you're asking the federal government to respect Alberta's provincial autonomy by wiping their ass with BCs. Right? So, Justin Trudeau went through the process. He did all of that. And then Kinder Morgan starts getting cold feet about this. Right? The uh you know, the fact that the first approval was overturned, the fact that there are still protests, the fact that there are still lawsuits, the fact that they can't see the light at the end of the tunnel for this project, they start thinking about walking away from it. And even then, Justin Trudeau, who is don't let's not forget, is being painted as this radical environmentalist that hates oil pipelines so much. First of all, he never once came out and said he wasn't in in in uh in support of the project. He approved it. He re-approved it. And when Kinder Morgan started talking about walking away, he offered for the federal government of Canada to backstop the project and guarantee Kinder Morgan's losses on the project. And despite that, Kinder Morgan eventually walked away. Then the Canadian government nationalized the TMX to bring it back from the dead and build it. Tell me how any of that sounds like a radical environmentalist who didn't want to get pipelines built. For somebody who apparently didn't want to get pipelines built, he did a whole lot of work. He stuck his neck out with his own supporters, right? To get this pipeline built. I mean, to me, this is part of my argument for how the Liberal Party has been center-right this whole fucking time, but we'll just talk about that another time. But Justin Trudeau has never been anti-pipeline. But despite that, despite the fact that, you know, if he hated this pipeline so much, it was dead when Kinder Morgan walked away from it. All he had to do was let it stay dead. But he nationalized it to revive it, to get it back on track, to get it built. And when you talk to people in this province about it, because like I say, despite the fact that this this project would not exist without him, full stop. He has become the face of the opposition to it. It is the craziest thing. And when you bring that up, when people are like, oh, well, Trudeau hates pipelines. Like, well, Harper didn't get a pipeline built. Trudeau did. Then they start talking about the cost overruns. Like, well, he the cost overruns and the the the explosion of price and it was it was so much more expensive. Like, hold on a second, let's go back a step. First, you said it didn't get built. Then I told you it did get built. Now you're saying, well, yeah, they built it, but it was expensive. Speaker 1: Show me a project that does come in on time and under budget. Speaker 2: There's never been a pipeline built in North America that came in on or under budget. Most pipelines that have ever been built in North America come in 100% plus over budget. It's going in over budget is what pipelines do. Because but but again, it's like it it it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what they just uh sort of retreat back to this line or retreat back to this line or retreat back to this line. It's like, okay, so now we're now we're living in a world where if Kinder Morgan had had had stayed on the project, they could have waved a magic wand and uh made mountains flatter and uh rivers shorter and uh, you know, prevented floods and mudslides and global supply chain disruptions. Like, all that stuff would have just been magically uh free if Kinder Morgan had held on to it. So, the the whole idea of of uh they hate us, they hate oil and gas, they hate Alberta. Uh they don't they they uh they don't listen to us, they don't value us. Once again, all of this, there's no actual evidence to suggest that that is the case. Speaker 1: Like, Jeff, can you think of some parallels in the US situation, this this narrative of grievance about how they hate us? Speaker 3: Not a one, although that did uh lead to a I mean, I did have a follow-up question based on that because uh so Tyson, you've uh you've said a lot about and I I want to talk about the difference between policy and this sort of narrative grievance. I would point out also that as as bad as Alberta's wealth inequality is, it's still better than every state in the United States and the US national government. So, uh when Albertans uh want to want to join with us, I'd say be careful what you wish for. Uh the the but it seems to me I I do understand this narrative of grievance, right? The however it flies in the face of evidence and statistics and historical reality, everyone is susceptible to there's us and there's them. And the people in Ottawa, they don't like us, they don't respect us. The people in Ontario, they don't like us and they don't respect us. One thing that I'm because we do have that in the United States all the time. Uh like consistently, and it drives really poor public policy choices. I am curious in like because you mentioned a lot of the Albertan conservatives feel more of a values kinship with American libertarian capitalism. I'm wondering with the American has that changed with the American saber rattling? I ask because of in unit cohesion, when you do unit cohesion research, the biggest thing that drives cohesion of units, whether you're talking about military units or, you know, human social groups, is the perception of an external enemy. And it sounds like there's a lot of Albertan conservatives that are like, our national government hates and disrespects us. But it seems weird when you have a neighbor to your south that's like, maybe we'll annex you. It would seem that to me, if I wherever I lived in Canada, that might galvanize myself against that external enemy. Have you observed that at all? Speaker 2: Uh, to a to a certain extent, I would say disappointingly little. I think that uh when it comes to Albertans in particular, I don't know what I don't know to what extent you would find this in like neighboring Saskatchewan or or uh Manitoba, but certainly in Alberta, people on the right in Alberta feel more kinship with conservatives in the United States than they do with progressives in Alberta. So, when they think about what group they belong to, they think about themselves as part of the sort of Canadian and American group that are tired of all this woke liberal environmental snowflake bullshit. Like, that's the group they feel they belong to, first and foremost. And uh American media outlets uh and American-owned Canadian media outlets have done a great job of of identifying and amplifying that. Um and this is this is another thing that a lot of people don't actually realize about the right-wing media apparatus in Canada, because a lot of it, a lot of it is either American-funded or American-owned. The uh the Fraser Institute, uh the Preston Manning Institute, uh not the not Rebel, but a lot of the people who uh who uh either started, owned, or worked for the Rebel, uh all came from the Atlas Network, which is run by the Kochs. So, Koch Industries, uh the the money from Koch Industries, who, by the way, also refines something like three-quarters of the oil that comes out of Alberta to the United States. Uh, you know, let's talk about whether that's a coincidence or not. Um, also happens to run the majority of the right-wing media apparatus in this country. So, uh American conservatives uh and Albertan conservatives feeling a kinship uh and feeling like that's the group they belong to and the group that they're against is people with conflicting ideology in both Canada and the United States is very much the result of a targeted marketing campaign. It's it's not something that has that has happened organically. I there's there's no doubt in my mind that it has been identified and amplified on purpose. Speaker 3: How do they feel about being woke globalists too? Is it like libertarians of the world unite? It's kind of the opposite. Speaker 2: Yeah, basically. And it's uh like, well, look at the World Economic Forum. Like, both both uh both uh Canadian and American conservatives are are in agreement somehow that the World Economic Forum is actually a globalist cabal of of uh supervillains that are that are looking to turn us all into turn us all into 15-minute cities and uh, you know, force force force our children to have transgender operations at school and like that both in the United States and and Canada, they they hate it when our leaders go to the World Economic Forum because they think that's what they're participating in. Like, uh it Speaker 1: Yet then they go shopping at Costco and get all their cheap shit from China. What do you think globalism actually looks like? That is what global like the ability to go into Walmart and get your bloody swimming pool for the summer for 100 bucks or go to, you know, Costco or Walmart and get socks for $3, when if they were made in North America, they'd be $15. They're they're more than happy to do that, but, oh, be careful with the globalists. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like, oh, they're all of our jobs are being outsourced to China. It's like, sorry, do governments do that? Or did companies do that because it was cheaper and they lobbied the government to loosen regulations so they could do it. And you voted for that. Speaker 3: It's one it's one of the most interesting things in terms of policy versus vibes and it's such a frustrating thing to argue against because if you take a consistent position and you have a consistent framework to address the world, it is one of the most shocking things in the world to talk to one of the make America healthy again people, because they will talk all about big corporations who don't have your best interests at heart and they fund science that is not in the public interest and all these greed heads that don't care about us. And then they will sell you their unregulated nutrition products and vote for politicians that gut the regulatory apparatus. And you wonder like like I I often try to get at these folks by talking with them about values, because we can all agree, look, the people in power don't necessarily have your best interests at heart, but the answer to that is not to give those people more power and more unrestrained ability to not have your best interests at heart. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, because that because the because the unregulated uh health supplements industry doesn't make any money in the United States. Speaker 1: So, with regards with regards to Alberta separation, are there any strands we haven't pulled on yet? Uh or and if if we have sort of exhausted the threads that are fueling this, what do you think is next? Speaker 2: Well, the the thread we haven't talked about yet is is perhaps the the biggest one that doesn't get talked about enough, which is um which is American interventionism. Um because when when Alberta when Alberta's government uh talks about uh fighting for Albertans, who they really fight for are American shareholders. Because uh when you because uh we've had this, once again, very targeted propaganda campaign to be like, if you hate Alberta's oil and gas industry, you hate Alberta. Right? We we've we have our whole our whole identity is conflated with the oil and gas industry. And when I don't think a lot of Albertans know about the oil and gas industry in Alberta, or certainly not a lot of people on the right, is that we Albertans do not actually benefit from the profits of the oil and gas industry in Alberta nearly as much as Americans do. Hey? Um because Alberta is really the only uh oil-rich uh jurisdiction in the world that allows this level of private ownership in the oil and gas industry. Right? If you want to drill in Norway, Norway reaps the vast majority of the profits from any kind of drilling or exploration that happens in Norway. Same thing in Saudi Arabia, same thing in Iran. But in Alberta, 75% of the shareholders in the oil sands are foreign shareholders. The vast majority of them are American. So, whenever these companies get these massive tax breaks or government-guaranteed interest-free loans or they are allowed to uh, you know, just uh dump oil wells that are uh, you know, dump these uh orphaned and abandoned oil wells cleanup costs. Hundreds of hundreds of billions of dollars we're going to be paying for decades to clean up these orphaned and abandoned oil wells that were just passed from one shell company to another until they were eventually dumped on the provincial government. So, we have a situation in this province where 75% three-quarters of the profits are being captured by foreign shareholders from our own natural resources. And it's crazy that more people don't know that. Like, I I would bet my house that if you were to go to the any hardcore right-wing conservative in this province and ask them the question, do you think the majority of the profits from Alberta's natural resources should benefit Albertans? What would the answer be? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: They're not going to say no. They're not going to say no to that question. Because they've been conditioned to think that's already what's happening. Most I think most Albertans will be shocked to learn how small the percentage actually is. So, uh the um so over the years, while production has gone up and profits have gone up and uh and exports have gone up and the oil industry in Alberta has been making more and more and more and more money, the actual profits, the share of the profits that go to Albertans has been shrinking at the same time. So, now we're down to about 24%. Albertans profit from about 24% of the profits in the oil and gas industry. And all the while that these companies are getting more and more and more tax breaks and making more and more and more money, they're not spending it on uh they're not spending it on hiring more Alberta workers. They're spending more money in Alberta. It's getting paid into stock buybacks, dividends, uh shareholder bonuses, or they're investing it in other jurisdictions. And then when the when the when the oil leaves the province, the majority of it is going uh you know, what doesn't go to the Pacific Coast and the TMX is going south into the United States where American refineries are refining so much Canadian oil that once again, the the the gasoline that they refine from us and then resell elsewhere in the world, exported refined Canadian crude oil, even that alone is like a $700 billion industry or something like that for the United States. Speaker 1: It's hard to see how that's ever going to get fixed. I mean, look at the grievance the United States carried towards Venezuela, nationalizing its oil. And was it 20 or 30 years later, boom, uh you get the the snatching of the president and then some kind of backroom deal. Speaker 3: That's what led to the CIA coup against Mossadegh in uh in Iran in the 50s. Nationalization of the oil industry, one of the things. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's well, that that's a great example. I mean, the the in any something like 19 countries that they've admitted to where the CIA has uh either directly or indirectly interfered in the political process because the government of that jurisdiction was starting to lean too far to the left for the taste of American corporate interests. So, the idea that uh oh, we're if if we were to separate from Canada, then uh then we would be our own little independent state and we can make these deals that benefit us from the United States to continue the flow of oil south. Like, what do you think would happen in an independent jurisdiction which is no longer part of Canada, but has an but has a natural resource where American corporate interests are already capturing 75% of the profits from those natural resources. How long do you think the United States is really going to let us be an independent state of Alberta if that's the case? Like it's uh so that that's why it's so important to that's why it's so important when you just look at the public opinion polling because our premier Danielle Smith maintains that she is not herself a separatist, that she believes in making Alberta work within a unified Canada. But what she has done strategically as a political move is started to try to focus more on the idea of not becoming the 51st state. Because she knows that even among Alberta separatists, only a very tiny amount of them want to become a part of the United States. So, even if we were to actually uh help people to understand how likely it would be that we would become a territory of the United States, not an independent state within, you know, the that that governs ourselves and doesn't owe allegiance to any particular nation, that wouldn't last a day. Like, the United States uh the United States has uh has no reason to allow Alberta to negotiate on its own behalf when it comes to natural resources. Their American shareholders already own three-quarters of our natural resource profits. Speaker 1: Yeah. So, Jeff, I I know you had some thoughts about uh other places in the world where uh internal dissent and separatist movements have been fomented by a large uh malicious superpower next door. Speaker 3: Yeah, I've I've I've um one of the things that not to be too America-centric, but I think about this through an American lens, and one of the things that's most disappointing to me as a as an American who loves his country is that our allies don't trust us anymore and and they're right not to do so. Like, even if we somehow fix this in the next X number of years, um I think the lesson for Canadians and other folks overseas, in Europe, uh places that have been our historical allies is that this is we're one one quick turn away from unthinkable stuff. And like, I I don't know how we come back from this. I think it's going to take a long time. But if America is like anything these days, it's uh if if you think about what America is, it is an oligarchy that's driven by petrochemical interests, uh that has a concentrated wealth in the hand in the hands of a strongman, who has uh his oligarchic allies that works to destabilize uh free states nearby. It sounds an awful lot like Russia, because it is an awful lot like Russia. And I think ideologically, as well as strategically, um the the current regime in America has done a lot of the same things. And we have seen this is part of Russia's strategy with Ukraine is to foment like ethnic Russian movements in Ukraine to try to say, Ukraine has always been part of Russia, right? In the same way that, you know, and it's the rhetoric is even very similar. It's very short, simple words, destined to appeal to nativist elements that are not, as Trump says, the poorly educated or the folks he loves. And I think it's a lot of the same sort of stuff. And like, to to loop this back, um, you know, in terms of like my perspective on it, I think you're seeing the parallel I'm making between the way the US is treating separatist movements and the way Russia is trying to destabilize Ukraine, which is not a flattering comparison from for America, but we have to look at it in the face and see that it's an accurate one. And I think that whereas in the past, America would ostensibly stand on the side of the democratically elected government that was invaded by the hostile superpower. Unfortunately, we're seeing that that can no longer, you know, we can we can no longer rely on that. Speaker 1: There's even a martial arts connection there. We've had Stephen Kuffer on the podcast uh talking about how prior to the invasion of Ukraine, there was a lot of anti-Ukrainian government pro-Russian sentiment being stirred up in the martial arts community, especially in the Systema and Sambo communities, where you had, you know, Russian special forces who'd now been essentially sent to Ukraine to start martial arts clubs and uh create pro-Russian sentiment. So, I I if you we're all martial artists, we're all jiu-jitsu guys, and uh, you know, it's not that far a situation from some of the biggest pro-superpower, pro-might makes right, pro-strongman appeal in the martial arts. Speaker 2: Well, and and uh I think there's also an element of uh guru status. Like, you and I have discussed this before where like, I I don't know what in particular about the martial arts setting um sort of lends itself to this or what kind of perhaps it's more based on the personalities that are attracted to the martial arts, but there is a tendency once you, you know, once you're a person who loves Brazilian jiu-jitsu and and, you know, have have reaped all these benefits from it and found a sense of community in it and maybe turn your life around uh in in other ways. And you have so much uh respect and uh endearment towards the instructor that you trust in in this aspect of your life that you'll also take their advice on anything else. Like, there there's no there's no reason to think that somebody is an expert in taxes or health supplements or or uh, you know, politics just because they're a jiu-jitsu guy, but there's a lot of people who are like, well, I don't have any strong feelings about politics, but my jiu-jitsu professor seems to know what he's doing and he has extremely strong political opinions. He he must have thought this through. I'll just kind of go along with what he's saying. It's it's certainly it's certainly helps to endear me to him more and make me feel like I'm more part of the community and make him feel like he could trust me more and it develops that relationship. So, uh I think there's a lot of people that sort of their their personality sort of morph into that of their uh martial arts instructor, whether they even realize it's happening or not, because they just it becomes this uh, you know, the connection they have through the martial arts and all the things that all the things that martial arts can do to improve their lives, it it makes them just put this enormous amount of trust and respect in this person, even in areas where it doesn't really make sense to do so. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. We don't approach we don't go to our car mechanics for uh health advice, but we go to our martial arts instructors for everything advice. It's not Speaker 3: I always tell people, if I'd have known I was going to run a jiu-jitsu gym, I would have gone to school to become a therapist. I do. I get lots of advice that I'm I'm just that I am just not qualified for, but I can show you how to do an omoplata. Speaker 1: So, if people want to learn how to do an omoplata from you, Jeff, or if they want to follow your political thoughts, what do they do? Speaker 3: Uh, I'm really active on all the social media at Bellingham BJJ or Jeff Shaw BJJ. That's where I post a lot of my history content and such. Um, I also have a history class right now where we talk about a lot of the issues Stefan just brought up, including uh, the rise of Brazilian fascism and the Estado Novo and the role martial artists played in that. You can check that out at BJJmetalmodels.com/fight. It's always great talking to you, Tyson. Speaker 1: Uh, Tyson, if people want to learn an omoplata from you, or they want to follow your political thoughts, how do they do that? Speaker 2: Well, uh I'm most active on TikTok. I've got uh on TikTok, I'm uh the Warrior Philosopher, all one word. Uh and then uh on Instagram, I don't do as much on Instagram as I probably should, especially with TikTok's new ownership. Uh but nothing that matters, they're all owned by the same people. But uh on Instagram, it's uh the Warrior Philosopher IG. So, it's uh I don't really do original content for Instagram. I do I do uh I just kind of repost TikToks sometimes there. So, if there's somebody who happens to like Instagram but isn't really active on TikTok and they want to see some of my material, uh it is on there as well. Speaker 1: I'm going to encourage you to take all of your TikTok material and as part of your uploading to TikTok, put it on Instagram because it's really good. It's really well thought out. People have gotten a small taste of how you are off the cuff here. You should see this guy when he's given some thought to a specific topic. Uh and what about the whole learning how to punch someone in the head or uh or put them in a shoulder lock? Speaker 2: Uh, well, you can also uh find me at Ironside Martial Arts. Uh on uh I I think on uh on TikTok, it's literally just Ironside Martial Arts. Uh on Instagram, it would be Ironside Martial Arts Canada. Um, but uh I as much as I can, I try to keep that space non-political. But I don't know if you know this, uh Stefan, but uh if you're teaching um a no-gi uh omoplata and people happen to see that there's a pride flag visible in the background, uh it stops being a jiu-jitsu post and starts being a political post real quick. Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I I So, you're going to get reposted on BJJ Doc, aren't you? Yeah, you're you're going to be picked up by the BJJ scraper sites that are probably all owned by the same people. Uh and and get done to you what was done to me, which is when I posted that uh a good way to discourage neo-Nazis from training at your club was to post a pride flag. And this got magically morphed into Stefan Kesting believes all gyms must have a pride flag. So, yeah, that's not what I said, but of course, nobody checks the original. Speaker 2: They they know how to get clicks. I will give them that. Speaker 1: I believe what you said in the original is transgender for everyone. I believe that's what you said. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. We'll leave it at that. Stefan Kesting wants transgender for everyone. Take care, guys. Thanks, guys.