Robbie Picard and Sheila Gunn-Reed condemn the cancellation of Teck’s $21B Frontier Oil Sands mine, which promised 7,000 jobs and $70B in revenue after a decade of approvals, including Liberal-imposed conditions. Fort McMurray’s Indigenous communities, like the Métis, backed it for economic inclusion, but activists—including Sephora Berman and foreign-backed figures like Greta Thunberg—manipulated dissent, ignoring local support from leaders such as Chief Alan Adams. Picard warns of generational poverty risks, accusing Trudeau’s government of undermining Indigenous autonomy by favoring disputed hereditary chiefs over elected councils, while Gunn-Reed calls it environmental colonialism, threatening Canada’s energy sovereignty and Indigenous prosperity. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm Sheila Gunreed, and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
Tonight, my guest is Robbie Picard from Oil Sands Strong, and we're talking about the cancellation of the Tech Frontier Oil Sands mine, the rail blockades, and coastal gas link.
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What did it mean for the people of Fort McMurray, Alberta, when tech abruptly cancelled its Frontier Oil Sands mine?
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Frontier Oil Sands Mine was a $21 billion construction project that would employ 7,000 people during the construction phase and offer $70 billion in government revenue over the life cycle of the project.
The project itself had gone through 10 years of regulatory hell and met every regulatory condition put before it, including the ones that the liberals implemented when they changed the rules for regulatory approvals halfway through the process.
And yet, the project has been canceled by the company.
The company cited political uncertainty in Canada, and they're not wrong.
It's just not a safe place to do business here anymore with the liberals in charge.
But what did the cancellation mean for the people in Fort McMurray who were counting on this project to go forward?
Joining me tonight in an interview we recorded yesterday evening is my good friend from Fort McMurray, Robbie Picard from Oil Sand Strong.
From his hotel in Calgary is my friend Robbie Picard from Oil Sand Strong.
Hey Robbie, thanks for joining me now.
I haven't talked to you since the Tech Frontier Oil Sands mine was canceled.
You're from Fort McMurray.
Tell me what the cancellation of this project means for your community and particularly the Indigenous communities who signed on to support this project.
Honestly, I have seen many ups and downs living in Fort McMurray for as long as I have, and I've never seen more disappointment and devastation on the faces of all my friends, all the business owners I know.
Indigenous Voices Rising00:14:52
The tech project in particular was very special because tech went out of their way to do consultation like no other industry partner has done before.
And this was going on for, you know, around like 13 years.
I mean, it was a big, long process that it had unanimous support from all the indigenous groups and it was lifting the spirits of the community.
It is, people, you can't even coin a phrase for how devastating it was.
Not that it was a real shocker to me, but in a way, I had a feeling it wasn't going to happen.
But I also know deep down how much it meant to everybody in the community.
And it's been a wake-up call.
It's really, really bad.
The worst of it was like these so-called environmentalists were immediately gloating about it.
And it just goes to show you that they do not really care about Indigenous rights because if the Indigenous group supports a project, they will turn on them in a second.
And I think they realize that now.
It's unfortunate.
It's too little, too late.
But, you know, it's not good.
It's bad.
And it sets the tone.
We're hoping not for the future, but we're hoping this is not the new normal.
But yeah, it's not good.
Yeah, when I was in Madrid for the UN Climate Change Conference, I saw Sephora Berman and her fellow radical environmentalist cohorts there protesting the tech frontier mine when it was still a go before it was canceled.
And she had with her these groups of Indigenous people who were pretty clearly from the West Coast, just based on their traditional garb.
They weren't from Fort McMurray, but Sappora Berman was happy to bring these folks to Madrid, stick them in front of international cameras, and make it seem like Indigenous rights were being trampled on by this frontier mine when that couldn't be further from the truth.
And in fact, everybody keeps talking about reconciliation, reconciliation, you know, participation of First Nations in the economy.
That's what tech was.
That was really how these projects should go forward.
And yet we had people co-opting Indigenous voices to make it seem like First Nations were against this project when it's pretty clear that they weren't.
Right on the very day that the project was canceled, the Alberta government reached two more agreements with Indigenous groups that were sort of peripherally affected by it.
I think everybody was blindsided by this.
Well, I think Sapphora Berman's true colors have come out.
We know that she will play victim when she needs to play victim.
She'll be aggressive when she needs to be aggressive.
And she never came to the tech hearing because we had a mini protest against her there.
And I recall the tech hearing and I recall hearing how excited every Indigenous group in Fort McMurray was.
And if Sephora Berman cannot get what she wants from them, she'll just find a different Indigenous group to team up with.
I mean, that's very insincere.
I mean, even, you know, Chief Alan Adams supported the project.
All of them supported the project.
I mean, it might have been some last-minute stuff going on with the government, but overall, I had consensus.
And it wasn't just consensus.
They felt like it was part of Métis, particularly, like they were just so looking forward to this because they've been left out of so many deals.
And it was hope.
It was hope for the youth.
I've never seen anything like it.
Everybody wanted tech.
And there was very, in fact, I never heard of a single group that had anything bad to say about it.
You're never going to have everything perfect, but tech was as close to perfect as it could be.
And I mean, the fact that Support Bourbon is gloating about it just shows you how obtuse she really is.
And no, I don't have a lot of respect for her or any of them because they their true colors are coming out.
They want to stop, they want to shut Canada down.
And when they say shut Canada, and then they shut everyone down, including all of the Indigenous, you know, Indigenous groups that support these projects.
If it's BC LNG with the coastal gas link or tech in Fort McMurray or the Trans Mountain Pipeline, they're going to do everything they can to stand in the way of our progress.
And for what end?
Let's say, well, I mean, they are successfully winning right now.
They're stopping everything.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin's like, you know what?
Here's $189 billion.
We're going to build a natural gas plant.
Not to mention we're going to build a big highway and a pipeline to China.
But we sit here.
I mean, they always talk about what the world is going to look 20 years from now.
Well, what are we going to look like 20 years from now if Russia and China and Saudi Arabia have such a hold of the market?
Because we know that oil is not going anywhere.
Neither's natural gas is actually making the world better.
But we are for some reason going to stop developing our natural resources, stop investing in our Indigenous youth.
So Sephora Burman conversion signal is disgusting.
Yeah, you know, that's really a great point.
While Canada is basically shutting itself down, because that's really what's happening here, these projects could be going forward if we had a government with a will to deal with these issues and to just say, no, tech has met all the regulations.
We even changed the regulations on tech along the way.
They still managed to meet them.
They did everything right.
And they still can't get a project built.
The message to the rest of the world is that Canada is not open for business.
Don't even bother.
And when you see what's happening in the United States, they're having a renaissance in their oil and gas industry.
You know, when you look at the unemployment rates in West Texas, I mean, it's something that as Canadians, we could only dream about.
You pointed out that Russia's building, Australia is even exporting LNG.
And where are we?
We're just on the sidelines while the rest of the world is eating our lunch.
And we are the best in the world at this.
There are so many Canadian expats working in Russia, working in Australia, working all over the world, taking our expertise there to make other economies richer while we get poorer at home.
I think we also got to really look at, like, I mean, let's just say, you know, Justin Trudeau gets defeated and then you have a conservative government in there.
What are the long-term unintended consequences that we're going to suffer no matter who's in government now because of such piss per policy?
I mean, it's, I saw a picture of this guy who was walking his kid in a stroller too close to the tracks and he got a ticket.
And meanwhile, you've got people lighting, like lighting crates on fire and trying to derail trains.
And they're like, well, you know, it's like throwing a snowball at a train.
Like, I don't, I've never had a problem trying to be supportive of different governments that are in power at different times.
But it's just something that I've never seen before.
It's like watching the Twilight Zone.
We're in a weird position now because we are letting lawlessness become the normal and special privileges.
I mean, this John Kretchan, if he was prime minister, he would have stopped these blockades.
Even if he had to go and give the show and get handgape or handshake, he would have done something.
I would argue that Pierre Elliott Trudeau would have done something he would have called the army in.
I don't know where Justin Trudeau's head is at because I've never seen such weakness in a leader before.
It's like he's not all there.
I don't know if it's weakness.
Some people are saying it's weakness, and I could be convinced of that.
I think this is all by design.
I think that he has wanted to phase out oil and gas from the very beginning.
And this is just a means to an end.
He doesn't actually have to do the phasing out.
He's done his best to do some phasing out through the carbon tax, through increased regulations, through C69 and C48.
But he's letting the activists do the phasing out for him.
And he's just not enforcing the law.
And that might be the easiest way politically for somebody quite as lazy as him.
I wanted to, now you did mention the rail blockades, and I think that's a great segue into what I wanted to talk to you about next.
The rail blockades in support of what the mainstream media will say, the Wet Suetan people, but it's really not.
It's actually rail blockades are disenfranchising the elected band council of the Wet Suetan people in favor of, I think it's five of eight hereditary chiefs.
And it seems as though some of these hereditary chiefs are not even legitimate because the proil and gas hereditary chiefs were stripped of their titles and they were, it's a matriarchal system and it was given to men.
And so now Justin Trudeau's feminist government is negotiating with these illegitimate hereditary chiefs who basically stole their titles from women.
What's happening right now is so astounding.
Please give me your take on the rail blockades.
I think you have a group of Indigenous people that for a long time have had suffering.
They've been in poverty.
They don't quite grasp the business around them.
And when they make a deal that's going to benefit them and they're going to benefit for their generations and their children and all that, they want this.
And the vast majority of them do.
And they voted for it and they support it.
And then there's this aspect of, I can't really coin a phrase for it, but it's like a certain level of bullying that's going on.
That if it was in any other aspect of society, it'd be considered wrong and frowned upon.
You can't run a country like this.
It's like preschool.
It's embarrassing.
The vast majority of Indigenous people support this pipeline.
They support the coastal gas link.
They want the project.
They acknowledge the project's going to benefit them.
And then you might have one or two fractions that don't support it, but the ones that don't support it are being heavily manipulated by these so-called environmentalists.
And they're being used as political props viciously.
I mean, like, I mean, I've never seen anything like it.
They don't care about what happens to them when this is over, the long-term negative effects, and it's going to be big.
But it's embarrassing.
And if we as a country don't get a grip on this soon, I don't know what's going to happen to us.
Like, I know that this wouldn't be happening in Donald Trump's America right now.
It wouldn't be happening anywhere.
But for some reason, I mean, maybe this is Justin Trudeau's design or Gerald Butz's design.
I'm not entirely sure, but it's embarrassing that we can't seem to get a project done.
Yeah, you know, you make a good point when you bring up Donald Trump.
After Donald Trump was elected, after what felt like years of protest with the Dakota Access Pipeline Project, I mean, and it was.
It was massive protests from all across the country, these environmentalists just converged on Indigenous land and set up basically hobo camps with broken down cars.
And Obama seemed to let it go on forever.
Once Donald Trump came into power, he signed the pipeline into life, sent in the Army Corps of Engineers, cleaned up the mess, cleaned up the abandoned cars, rounded up the abandoned dogs.
And I think between 90 and 120 days, that pipeline was pumping.
And then you see in Canada, tech has to go through 10 years of regulatory hell just to end up having to cancel because of the political climate in Canada.
Again, it goes back to that issue of why would anybody in their right mind ever invest in Canada when just to the south of us, sometimes sharing the exact same oil field in the case of the Bakken, why would anybody do business here?
It doesn't make any sense.
And I think what we've talked about is now becoming reality.
Little by little, you're seeing, you know, they're succeeding.
They're planning.
I mean, let's make no mistake about it.
If they succeed and, you know, they severely damage our natural resources, and we're not recovering from that.
And there's not going to be new green jobs popping up everywhere.
Elizabeth May is going to be the CEO of some solar panel company.
Sephora Berman will be out there.
It's not going to happen.
We'll be in severe financial trouble and we will discover what it's like to face generational poverty.
Or we can say, you know what, as Canadians, as Indigenous people, as just basic common sense, if we apply basic common sense to humanity, we can say, no, Berman, no, Greta.
You're not going to come here and bully us and tell us what to do and get a couple pipelines built, get our resources to market, develop it in a sustainable way, and continuously improve on it.
And that said, there's no such thing as green energy.
Every type of energy requires some sort of cost.
Batteries that have tailings ponds because of the rare earth minerals, nickel, everything.
So Canada really should just be the center of all good things energy and stop this ridiculous fight that we're doing because we're losing, fighting ourselves.
And the rest of the world, other countries, our competitors are winning.
It's going to benefit Russia.
It's benefiting the states.
It's benefiting.
And they're laughing at us.
They look at us like we're just losers.
They know that we have more resources than all of them.
We're the third largest proven oil resource in the world.
That's just proven.
We're not talking about what's in Saskatchewan and we have uranium, we have everything.
And what are we doing?
Canada's Energy Future00:05:48
We're sitting here fighting about it and allowing special interest groups to ruin it.
And, you know, it's embarrassing that it's at this point.
It's embarrassing that we're being duped.
And I just hope we will wake up.
I mean, people in Fort McMurray just woke up about tech.
I mean, they're all like, wow.
And I'm like, well, great.
You guys want tech now?
Too late.
I mean, nothing's just going to, like, you have to fight for what you believe in.
You can't just expect it to show up and take it for granted.
And I think that we've done that as a country for too long.
And I think we've been a bit protected.
When you have people influencing public policy in the prime minister's office and tanker bans that are not necessary, extra regulation to stop pipelines like the Energy East.
I mean, if the end goal is to ruin Alberta, well, they're almost there.
I wanted to ask you: what message does it send to Indigenous people when Trudeau deploys a minister to meet with the hereditary chiefs, one of which for sure is illegitimate, over sending a minister to meet with the Wet's Wet elected band council?
For me, I think it sends a message that lawlessness is now the way of the land here, and that what Indigenous people, what they vote for, really doesn't matter because Trudeau is going to pick what they want.
Well, like I remember many years ago, there was a chief by the name of Teresa Spence, and she was on a fake hunger strike.
And she's the only person in history to actually gain weight on a hunger strike.
And she was staying at a five-star hotel.
And it turns out the whole thing was because her boyfriend at the time was getting $900 a day from the ban for his counting services.
So I think that the elected chiefs have spoken.
They've all voted.
The vast majority have supported it.
You have to go with that.
And I don't know what his game plan here is, but if we have this for our society going forward, that we can't trust the leadership with these Indigenous communities to make their own decisions, which they clearly did, and we're going to act as if people like Sephora Berman can speak on their behalf because she doesn't agree with what they've just did.
Well, then we will never get anything done as a country.
And we were going to take many steps backwards before we take anything forward.
Yeah, it feels like it's environmental colonialism.
100%.
I'm old enough to remember when the radical left was against colonialism.
I wanted to ask for your prediction.
Do you think Coastal Gaslink is going to go forward?
Well, I do think so because I don't want to bet on it, but Horgan supports it, Trudeau supports it.
Everyone supports it.
It's got the most Indigenous support that I've ever seen.
It benefits all the Indigenous people in British Columbia in a way that I've never seen when I was in Prince George.
I would argue that it's more impressive than Fort McMurray.
And here's why: it's that Fort McMurray, like, I mean, it's the poster child for what reconciliation for Indigenous people needs to be.
Like, I mean, the vast majority of companies now are owned by Indigenous people, and the white people are working for them, trying to get on with it.
It's completely, it's a total success.
You don't see racism in Fort McMurray that often.
In fact, when you have business leaders like Nicole Boucher or Doug Glossky or Dave Tuckeru, you find like they're mentors to everybody.
And you don't, I mean, you don't see it.
In BC and places, you see a little bit of that.
So here's my point.
My point is that when I was at Prince George and I saw them talking and they weren't talking about having a multi-million dollar company, they were saying, well, I'm going to get a job and maybe I can get a house.
And they were tearing up.
And it was so emotional to see what they were getting.
And in Fort McMurray, it's a different animal, but this was just real.
And it's like this, you know, I can feed my kids and I'm going to have a pride in a job.
Maybe I'll get a truck and I'm going to earn my truck.
And Berman and Hadima and those losers are going to take that from them for what?
For what?
They've already ruined their traditional way of life with the fur trade.
So what are they trying to do?
It's sick.
It's absolutely sick.
And the environmentalists are far worse than the oil companies.
I'm not saying that oil companies are always perfect, but what I will argue is that oil companies, there's benefit agreements and they try.
I know most of the people involved and they try.
They want to be successful.
They want to make sure that these deals have benefits.
They actually have training in that.
Environmentalists, I mean, just get a bunch of losers from Hastings and you put them onto a side of a road.
And then, you know, like that's not, it's not, it's not real.
It's not authentic.
It's just so sad to see that these folks who just want a future are going to be robbed of their dignity by a bunch of rich foreign-funded a-holes.
I mean, it's just, it makes me sad and sick as a Canadian.
Step Up00:08:27
Robbie, I want to give you a chance to tell people where they can find you and how they can support the work that you do because you do a lot of your activism and advocacy for families like mine and for families like so many of my viewers out of your own pocket.
So please give yourself a shameless plug.
A shameless plug.
I don't have my keychains.
So it's real simple.
Okay.
So go to oilsandstrong.com and please buy our bundle pack, which is a keychain, a magnet, and a sticker.
And those are 20 bucks.
It helps.
I'm going to be doing a lot more stuff.
I'm going to be making some announcements.
I'm teaming up with some different media partners.
I'm going to be taking our Facebook, sort of our oil sandstorm website, turning it into something very massive.
And I'm going to be traveling a lot, going around the country working on some different projects.
But in the meantime, we finally filled our t-shirt order.
And I apologize to everyone who ordered a t-shirt six months ago and didn't get it.
You're going to get it now.
I just spent a ton of cash and the order is coming in.
We've got a team together.
And we are going to be going into places like Ontario, British Columbia, and I'm going to be connecting with regular people that want to talk about these issues that are facing Canyons.
I am going to step up.
I've taken a little time.
I'm going to try to find another Jane Fonda moment, but I can't sit back and let this happen.
I mean, I was talking, you know, like there's all this controversy about Greta right now.
And I was really thinking about this today because there's another version of Greta.
You have the concern of Greta now coming out.
And it's like, there's these two clashing things.
And I'm like, what a world we're in right now where we have both sides being influenced by children.
And we're like, well, we have a Greta, we have this and we have that.
Bottom line is, Greta Toonberg has a lot of influence, a lot.
And whether we like it or not, every time she cries on TV with her nonsense, she does.
And bottom line is, if she succeeds and your family loses their jobs and can't feed, the breadwinner cannot feed the family and put their kids through college, that's what will hit.
So we need to stop acting like Gretas are, they don't have reach or they don't have impact.
They do.
And when we sit back, one of my favorite moments is when I confronted Jane Fonda, you notice that they're protesting tech, not in Fort McMurray.
They're in Washington protesting tech.
They won't come back to Fort McMurray because if they do, I will kick up a massive stink.
And they know that.
They know that I will find where they are and I'll track them down.
Greta, I decided not to.
And I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
I'm going to regret that decision when she was in Fort McMurray.
I kind of let it be.
Bottom line is: Greta has hundreds and millions of people who look at what she does.
And if she tells our story and she says that these pipelines are bad and tech is bad, we're the ones that will suffer.
We're the ones that are going to go without because we don't stand up.
So I have been doing this for a while, and I've had some good success.
I've had some struggles as well.
But it's time to really step up.
I believe we do have a future.
I think there's a chance of getting Trans Mountain.
Suncorp might be doing some stuff.
You know, we can't let this bring us down, but we also have to stop having Stockholm Syndrome and assume that the rest of the world thinks we're as great as we think we are because Russia doesn't care.
Russia could care less, like neither do the states.
So we like, if we shut our industry down, we're just destroying the lives of our people that are here.
And there is not going to be some giant green bus coming with all these green jobs.
Elizabeth May is the CEO.
It's not going to happen.
So if you care about your mortgage and you care about your kids and you care about your future, your job and that, then fight back.
Don't let them destroy everything you believe in.
And it's hard because it's hard because they're on a different, what these guys are willing to do, clearly, it makes no sense.
A person that has a job and a mortgage and responsibilities, they've got something to lose.
But people that are just like, you know, these upper middle class, stuck up, rich kids that feel that they need to have like a cause, well, they don't have like their parents, like they don't have anything to lose.
And then if they're picking, I know they pay people to protest.
I've been researching this too.
A lot of when you, when you, like, when Keyan interviewed them and they don't even know what's going through the pipeline, right?
Well, that shows how stupid they are.
They're not there because they care.
They're there because they're getting paid to be there or they're because it's cool, but they're very uninformed.
Well, if we're going to let a bunch of uninformed losers that don't understand the difference between a natural gas pipeline and a bitumen pipeline determine our futures, well, then we're stupid.
So we have to step up.
So my plan in the next bit here is to really step up and get back at it.
And it's not easy.
Like, I mean, I have a business and I've got responsibilities too.
So it's hard, but we have to.
And we have to get rid of the Stockholm Syndrome.
And we have to fight back.
And we have to fight back hard.
And we have to fight back like we care and we actually value because we do care.
We do.
Like in Fort McMurray, the Métis were the worst hit by this.
Not the ACFN, not Fort Mackay, the Métis.
They were hit so hard by tech because tech was finally recognizing the Métis.
The First Nations always get first all the time.
The Métis, not so much.
And they were recognizing the Métis.
So boom, they finally have hope, jobs, futures.
You know, everybody was excited and then just gone like that.
I can't sit back and let that happen again.
Like, we can't.
We have to try and fight.
And we can't just assume that tech is just going to, you know, when tech is under a constant attack, constant attack.
Bear in mind the intelligence behind the, I mean, as much as I take credit for them not coming to Fort McMurray.
I just thought of this.
When they're in Washington, do you think tech loves it when Jane Fond is saying shut them down?
Or Martin Sheen or Susan Sarandon standing there back?
Because tech is bigger than just Fort McMurray.
Tech has interests everywhere.
So we have to say no, Suzanne Sarandon or Martin Sheen.
I mean, what the hell does Martin or Sheen know about anything to do with Fort McMurray?
I mean, seriously, we have to say no.
We're going to tell our story.
And we have to jump in and take those opportunities because Naomi Klein and Pora Berman and all those guys when they're on in Washington, they're telling our story.
They bring some Indigenous people not even from Fort McMurray to there and act as if they speak on behalf of everybody, which is total BS.
Robbie, I want to thank you so much for taking the time today.
I know you're traveling for work, and I want to thank you for telling our stories and not allowing our Alberta voices and, in your case, Indigenous voices to be co-opted by a bunch of rich white liberals with no liability in this cause.
Whatever decisions come down about oil sands projects, it really doesn't affect them, but it really hurts people like those in Fort McMurray and really all across Canada, but in particular the West.
Robbie, please come back on the show very soon.
We leave this too long between your appearances on the show and best of luck in your future ventures.
Thank you so much.
Foreign-funded environmentalist activists are robbing generations of Canadian Indigenous people of the dignity of work, the dignity of home ownership, the dignity of entrepreneurship, and the dignity of independence.
Generational poverty will be the death of some of these communities and the loss of some of these cultures.
It's inevitable.
Like Robbie said, the foreign-funded actors who are blocking Canadian oil and gas development do not truly care about Indigenous people or, for that matter, Indigenous rights.
Foreign-funded actors are exploiters of Indigenous people.
They don't care about the damage they are doing.
For them, it's all a means to an end.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.