Robbie Picard, Métis advocate and founder of Oil Sandstrong, slams Justin Trudeau’s Liberals for $3.4B in Indigenous housing/mental health funding while 50 boil-water advisories persist on reserves despite a 2015 pledge to end them. He champions oil/gas partnerships—Canada’s top Indigenous employer—as the key to prosperity, citing Fort McMurray’s Indigenous businesses and criticizing "just transition" policies for threatening jobs. His propane-powered documentary bus tour and past movements like "I Love Oil Sands" clash with urban environmentalism, which he calls out for ignoring green energy’s carbon costs (e.g., lithium-ion batteries). Picard blames advocacy decline on rival groups, like convoy protesters, and dismisses media narratives framing Indigenous voters as a Liberal-controlled bloc, citing unreported protests and Mocha’s footage. Indigenous votes, he insists, must be earned—not assumed—by policies that deliver real economic gains. [Automatically generated summary]
Oh hey rebels, it's me Sheila Gunread and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show aptly called The Gun Show.
However, you know what, this is the internet, so watch or listen whenever you feel like.
That is the beauty, but also the liberty of not being tethered to terrestrial radio or TV.
Now tonight my guest is Robbie Picard, my friend from Oil Sandstrong, and we are discussing the municipal election, the useless federal election, and why fossil fuels and oil and gas are not at the forefront of this election, but also Justin Trudeau's empty promises to Canada's Indigenous people.
He just promised $2 billion for housing and mental health supports when we are still waiting on his 2015 promise to end boil water advisories on reserves to come to fruition.
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Indigenous Rights at Risk00:15:57
The Liberals are promising to phase out jobs in Canada's Indigenous communities.
Oh, but don't worry because the Liberals are also pitching in $1.4 billion in mental health supports because you probably do need counseling when the government unemploys you.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
The liberal election campaign must really be floundering because Justin Trudeau is reaching right into the bottom of his grab bag of empty promises.
Here's the headline from Monday, but really, friends, it could be a headline from any liberal election campaign over the past 15 or 16 years.
The party unveiled a plan to spend $2 billion over four years on housing on First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities with more than half flowing in time for the upcoming summer construction season as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau greeted supporters at a campaign rally in Ikaluit.
Now, further down in the article, it reads, the Liberals have also promised an additional $1.4 billion over five years for mental health and wellness strategies to be developed with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation.
This would be on top of previously announced funding of more than $597 million.
Now, friends, remember back in 2014-2015, then prospective Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to eliminate boil water advisories that are the result of the often third world conditions that exist shamefully on Canadian Indigenous reserves.
Well, if you check, Around 50 boil water advisories are on Indigenous reserves remaining on any given day of the week here in Canada.
But those empty promises, they sounded good during the campaign back then, didn't they?
So I thought I would have an advocate for Indigenous prosperity on the show today.
Not handouts, but prosperity, longtime prosperity.
My friend Robbie Picard is Métis himself, and through his work at Oil Sands Strong and his partnerships with Indigenous communities and oil and gas companies, Robbie works to promote resource industry jobs as the way out of the cycle of poverty that so many of Canada's Indigenous people languish in.
Robbie's on the show tonight to talk about Justin Trudeau's always empty promises to Indigenous people while oil and gas isn't really a major issue during this election campaign and why Robbie himself is getting involved in municipal politics as a campaigner, but not as a candidate.
take a listen.
Joining me now from his home in Fort McMurray is my friend, good friend of the show, Robbie Picard from Oil Sand Strong.
Robbie, it's been a while since we had you on the show and I regret that deeply.
But I wanted to have you on particularly today because you're such a strong advocate for Indigenous people and for job creation for Indigenous people and for Indigenous financial independence through partnerships with the resource industry.
And yesterday, Justin Trudeau announced billions of dollars for Indigenous people for housing and mental health.
$2 billion.
And he says if he's re-elected, he will give supports to First Nations rural communities, Métis communities, and Inuit communities.
And for me, I think this is just so insincere considering Justin Trudeau also promised to end boil water advisories on Canada's First Nations communities, and yet 50 still remain.
So I'd like your feedback on the issue.
When it comes to Indigenous issues like boil water, proper housing on reserves and stuff, I think the issue needs to be solved from the Indigenous communities, period.
And that's from economic opportunities and not just money that they've thrown at the problem over and over again.
What happens in Fort McMurray with our Indigenous communities is that they're, I mean, I just went through one the other day, they're thriving, right?
But that's because they have businesses and employment directly connected to the energy industry.
And I mean, I don't want to say that it's a bad idea to help, but I just, this last God, I don't know how long it's been now, like almost, oh my gosh, almost eight years of this has just been constant.
How long has he been Prime Minister for?
Six years.
I know it feels longer.
Six years.
Yeah.
So six years.
That's a long time because I remember the night that I remember that election night.
So it's kind of weird how the world's been a blur, but there's been so many empty promises from Prime Minister Trudeau.
I mean, we were supposed to have a balanced budget.
We're supposed to have this and that.
None of it came true.
What scares me about elections is that it's really just promise something that don't deliver seems to be the norm in this country.
It also seems to be the norm that, you know, narcissistic people lead us.
And I'm learning a lot about politics too, because I'm working on a smaller level on the local campaign here.
And bottom line is, is that I think that the only way for Indigenous communities and First Nations communities to fix problems is to do it themselves.
And you can't just throw money at the issue.
The community itself needs to take ownership of this.
And the government needs to provide those opportunities, that logistics, that support, and that training to maintain this.
So I mean, I guess on one hand, I'm great if he promises this, but I don't particularly trust all the promises that he's made because he's made so many false promises over the last little bit here.
Well, and that's the thing, like he's making false promises to some of Canada's most vulnerable people when you consider just the rate of poverty on some of Canada's First Nations reserves.
And you see the flip side of this.
You live in Fort McMurray, where so many First Nations communities are wealthy.
They're business focused.
They're wealth creators.
They're job creators, not just for Indigenous people, but for everybody, because they're partnerships with oil and gas.
And yet this is the same prime minister who says he's going to help Indigenous people while simultaneously phasing out oil and gas, which is when you couple that with mining, the single largest employer of Indigenous people in the country.
And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that that's where the oil and gas is.
It's out there outside of the big cities where the reserves are in rural Canada.
I think that we have a real problem coming down the pipe, so to speak, or not coming down the pipe, depending which way you look at it, with this whole nonsense of this just transition.
There is such a pressure to damage Canada's oil and gas industry.
And words matter when the prime minister says stuff like, you know, we'll phase it out, we'll do this.
And there's these so-called green energy jobs that are going to be popping up everywhere, which we all deep down inside know what's happening.
I think that the communities that will be affected by it the most are the Indigenous communities.
And right now, there's such a push for the Indigenous communities to get in oil and gas and get natural gas and pipelines and stuff.
And that's taken many years, but it's starting to come around, especially in BC.
I mean, BC, here it's a little bit different.
Our Indigenous communities here have been doing oil and gas for quite a while.
So some of them are incredibly wealthy.
I mean, incredibly wealthy.
And in BC, it's a little bit different because their indigenous communities have been shafted for so long.
So they've never really had an opportunity to recently.
And Fort McMurray is an example and a beacon for the rest of the country on how to do economic reconciliation.
And so I think that there is no such thing as green energy.
And I actually was reading an article last night about what happens to the batteries, these electric cars when they finally break down.
And I would argue that we're headed for catastrophe.
How do I say catastrophe?
Catastrophe.
We're headed for catastrophe.
We're headed for catastrophe if we go down this route and we don't have a plan to deal with these, the recycling of these lithium-ion batteries.
So I think the world needs to pause.
And honestly, I don't think oil and gas is that bad.
And I'm proud that I have a gas-powered car that I, and I bought a bus recently that runs on propane and gas.
And I'm taking that to Ottawa fairly soon.
I don't have the exact date yet, but I'm going to be going to Ottawa and I'm going to be doing a documentary along the route, stopping in all different cities, talking about how oil and gas has changed the lives of Canadians.
And honestly, like if you look at plastic in the ocean, a good chunk of that comes from Haiti.
And that's because they don't have the infrastructure, the fossil fuel network to handle their garbage.
So they just pour it into the rivers and that takes it into the ocean.
And fossil fuels have made this world so much better, particularly in North America.
And we have not done a proper, a proper marketing campaign to celebrate that and protect it.
We have nothing to be ashamed of, but somehow, some way, we have told ourselves of what we're doing is bad.
And I would argue that the future could be worse if we don't actually stop them from ripping apart perfectly good infrastructure, ripping apart perfectly good, a good system that has benefited us all for so long.
So I think that this virtual signaling and this social justice stuff just needs to end.
There's not been anything better for Indigenous communities than oil and gas.
That is the only thing that has been proven to work to improve the lives of their people, lift them up from object poverty, take them up a level.
And this messing with it and all this stuff that has been done by these so-called environmentalists has put us in this horrible position.
So I'm not going to accept this notion that somehow, some way, some government bureaucrat or government, you know, a person from any level of government is going to tell me that I need to give up my way of life for something better that doesn't exist.
And I'm very worried about the future.
I mean, look what's happening in Afghanistan right now.
I mean, all both Canadian government, all the presidents, I mean, look what they just did.
They just handed back a country to the Taliban, who basically will rape, murder children and women and do all kinds of things.
I mean, I'd hate to have a daughter in Afghanistan right now that was 12 years old because that's the end of their lives.
And our governments with this wonderful North America, we just handed it back after basically, you know, screwing them with them for 20 years.
It's just a sad state of affairs.
And I think that Canada, if we could just build our own country, get our energy to market so we're rivaling Saudi Arabia because we are the third largest proven oil resource in the world.
Never mind the rest of it, natural gas, uranium, everything else, the precious earth minerals that we have for solar and wind and all that, we have it all here.
And we have just allowed the rest of the world to determine where we sell it, how we build pipelines, et cetera.
And that allows countries in the Middle East to reign heavy over weaker countries like Afghanistan.
And we could actually do more for the world if we were in a stronger position.
Our competitors around the world are, you know, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, some of the Iran, like some of the worst places to be a human being and be alive in 2021.
And yet we're landlocked because environmentalists tell us the fate of humanity hinges on it.
But for me, humanity means, you know, living with human rights, where little girls can go to school and not get shot in the head, where women can wear whatever they want, even if I don't like it.
It's very funny to hear environmentalists from downtown Vancouver in downtown Toronto tell us what human rights mean when they really aren't affected by any of this firsthand.
I mean, they would care if they lost their iPhone, if they went to plug in their iPhone to charge and nothing came out of the wall because there was no electricity, or when they went to get on their diesel bus to go to their job at the coffee shop, there was no diesel bus to come pick them up.
But for them, it's not for people in indigenous communities and around the world, these are jobs.
These are the way out of a circle of poverty.
And, you know, when we are competing against countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, it's about human rights.
It's about human dignity.
And, you know, it's interesting to see people who claim to be advocates for peace and justice not care about any of that.
I spent a little bit of time in some big cities recently and just watching and observing how people are.
And I would argue that the people in the big cities are far more dependent on fossil fuels than the people in the smaller cities.
They just don't realize it.
Right?
They think when they're eating their, you know, their avocado toasts and they take the packaging and they put it in the recycled area, they don't understand the whole power that goes to firing that entire infrastructure that is a city.
And so there's a disconnect.
Like they might plant a little urban garden, but that's not going to feed more than 20 people.
They don't understand the true value of what happens with farms and where food comes from, where meat comes from, and all that.
And there's just such a disconnect.
And I don't know how to fight it.
I mean, we've been, I try in my small ways to step up and stand up for, you know, for the oil and gas industry, but they're the disconnect of the, I call them the educated, uneducated.
These are people that are highly universally educated that have still live in their parents' basements and don't have real world practical skills.
And we're in an interesting spot, but the truth of the matter is that, like, every day we get up, and no matter what side, I have a pretty good life.
You know what I mean?
My, you know, I have a nice yard.
My biggest complaint now is the sod that I laid is not taking, and I'm pissed off because I paid too much money for it.
And, you know, I'm going to have to put it down.
A Pretty Good Life00:02:25
Meanwhile, in other countries in the world, and even the rich oil countries, the people are so suppressed that they don't have rights.
And I would argue that our energy industry has given us these rights.
It's allowed people the choices.
And I would handle this and I would not do a just transition.
I'm not saying that I'm against solar energy or wind energy.
They all have their place.
I mean, they use solar up here in a few places like that.
And it's not always the end of the world when it comes to mixing the two energies.
Like I was at a lodge that has solar on the roof, and then they've got a diesel generator backup and a battery backup, and the two complement each other.
This war that we have against our fossil fuel industry is ridiculous.
But if you go and mine all this metal and to make these batteries, and they don't have a contingency plan for the real toxic tailings ponds, which are far worse than these tailings ponds here, and everything that comes from the consequence of that mining, you know, 20 years from now, you're going to be hearing ban solar power, ban this.
Like we have a pretty good thing right now, the way we're doing it.
And all we need to do is build on it and improve it.
Like, I mean, if we get this carbon capture that they're talking about here in Alberta, you know, we'll be ahead of them.
And I would argue right now that there has not been enough research done on the carbon footprint of making batteries and solar panels and windmills because there's a great carbon footprint in processing those.
And I don't know, yeah, we have it pretty good with what we have right now.
And I think that we, it's a lot, it's just been such a long fight and you burn out because you've been fighting this fight for quite a while.
But because you're fighting Saudi Arabia and the Americans, they don't care.
I mean, the America has built enough pipelines to go around the earth twice, but we're just trying to get Keystone.
I mean, we're going to get one pipeline built.
You know, we're not, we still have to ship oil through the Panama Canal to go to the other end of our own country.
I mean, at least we're doing that now.
I mean, that is a step in the right direction.
But I mean, we have the greatest resource in the world at our fingertips sitting here that we need to develop in a sustainable, responsible way.
And for some reason, allowed these so-called environmentalist organizations to tell us our story.
And we shouldn't have done that.
So I guess that sort of answers my next question, but I'll get you to expand on it.
Propane Powered Progress00:03:43
Why did you buy a propane-powered bus?
And why do you have this one to take it across the country and make a documentary?
Because I'm not a white supremacist.
The reason is, is that after the Carlton Liberal Association labeled my organization, I was angry at first, but more just sort of sad because these so-called, I don't even know what to call them.
I would say that they are recession proof, out-of-touch yuppies in Ottawa, labeled an organization that actually I own and I funded and I started that is all about inclusivity and bringing a united message.
So I figured because I found this bus online and of course like you know it's practical to buy a 1977 bus that's 43 years old and take it across the country.
But I thought, you know, what a great way if I take my time and I stop in every little town along the way and I sell t-shirts and give out buttons and stickers and then I connect to people that hopefully some good of that, you know, what they, that horrible thing they called us comes out of it.
And we can show them through the videos that you can't just sit across the country and call down argument the most important region in the country that they benefit from without some sort of consequence.
And so I've I sat on that for a while.
In hindsight, I probably should have went for it when they did that.
But I think that this bus is really cool.
It's going to be fun.
I think I'll bring my dogs and it'll be a little bit of a road trip.
And my plan is to try to shed a light on the human factor of what the people, people in Ottawa make these decisions that affect people across the country that they never meet, see, or touch.
And that's wrong.
I think that the fact that we are the second largest country in the world, that there's places, I mean, I still haven't been to Newfoundland.
I've only never been to certain areas.
And it's hard because, you know, we're so vast.
But the truth of the matter is, is that those people are a world away.
And you kind of wonder sometimes, like, how can they make these decisions that affect us?
So I'm hoping in my small way that I can bring attention to that issue.
And I mean, it's just cool to take a propane-powered bus on the highway.
I mean, it's pretty awesome, right?
Yeah.
To drive Edmonton and it's a five-speed low and high.
Oh my God, it was so terrifying.
I was up a hill in rush hour trying to hold the clutch and not roll back.
And the thing was trying to stall.
So I am cheating a little bit.
I am putting an automatic transmission in it before I go because I just like it's the novelty of a five-speed low and high wears off in about an hour.
It's fun for a few minutes.
Like, yeah, I can drive a standard, but trying to figure out what gear and low when you hit a hill and it clugs.
So it's amazing.
And it runs on propane.
And actually, so I'll tell you how affordable it was.
So it's a giant bus and it only cost me $110 to come from Edmonton to Fort McMurray, which is less than my pickup truck right now.
Oh, that's less than my Jeep right now.
That's really affordable.
And propane is clean burning, a clean burning fossil fuel.
100%.
It's very, yeah, it's amazing.
And then you can flip a switch and it runs on gas if you get a situation where you need to have a little bit more power.
But yeah, so I'm pretty excited about it.
Oh, that's cool.
Now, I want to touch on something that you're involved in.
Common Sense in Fort McMurray00:05:32
And normally you don't get involved in politics.
You sort of stay out of it.
But because Fort McMurray is your hometown and you love Fort McMurray, you're a little bit involved in the local mayoral campaign.
You're not running for mayor, which is a bit of a disappointment for me.
But tell us what's going on up there.
So I've decided to get involved, and I'm actually helping a few candidates that are running for council.
And yes, I'm working on the Marius campaign.
And I'll tell you why.
I'm going to be really, really candid here on why.
Our city has been very divided for a long time.
You have sort of this left and this is very liberal, like it's a very liberal city, and then you've got these people kind of thing.
And then to be honest with you, two friends of mine, one, she typically would help.
You know, she's kind of a more of a, I go to a vice program all the time, but she's a little bit more liberal thinking than me.
But we all kind of, we all like, we're all kind of like, we all kind of have the same philosophy.
I don't care what you do in your life.
I want to be fiscally conservative.
I want to spend money properly, protect the vulnerable, but give everyone a chance to make their own way.
And then honestly, I'll say it.
Brian Gene, he talked to me a little bit.
And these two are so polar opposite, but they agreed on one candidate, Sandy Bowman.
And I thought, you know what?
We need some unity in Fort McMurray.
Second of all, I'll be candid.
I'm sick of the way they blow money here.
They piss away millions of dollars all the time on decisions.
For instance, we had a place called Jubilee Square.
The estimates are either 20 million to 40 million, whatever it costs.
I don't know.
I know that there was a $2 million weather catcher built that was taken down a few years later.
And our racetrack here actually, you know, doesn't have any money and it actually attracts people.
So we have recreation centers that are worth $50 million that only one or two people go a day to.
We don't just build one of them.
We build two of them because we can't learn from our first mistake.
We destroyed our downtown and excapited and put anything there.
And it's been going on for quite a while.
And I can't watch our community die the death of a thousand cuts.
I've seen what happens to communities that have had to make adjustments when they lose coal.
And we're way ahead of that.
We're very blessed to be one of the richest municipalities in the country.
But the community needs to speak for the people.
And I think a lot of times people come to Fort McMurray that have no real interest in being here for a long period of time.
They come here for maybe five or six years and they leave a legacy.
And then we have to pay for that legacy forever.
We have a football, we have multiple football fields we don't use.
Conklin, I love the town of Conklin.
I'll say it, I support Conklin and that $50, $60 million by every cent should have gone to Conklin, but not in a giant arena that for a town of 300 people that sits empty.
It is ridiculous.
And they don't even have, they don't barely have running water, which I think that because they're kind of like little acreages, you probably could do cisterns and wells, but this town should still serve that.
They could have taken that $50 million, gave Karen's gas station a million dollars for a grocery store.
They could have gone to the local hotel and said, look, we'll put a pool on this hotel for you.
Let the kids use it and you have your guests use it.
They could have done a lot more.
But no, they took $50 million and they blew it, put it on a giant arena that no one goes to.
And the town doesn't even have a football team and they've got like a two, three million dollar football field.
So yes, I'm sick and tired of the waste in our community.
And I have used my massive platform to push this place for industry for a long time.
And I've always stayed out of local politics, but I'm sorry.
These decisions are so stupid and they keep happening over and over again.
So yeah, I'm going to try to get some common sense people in there that will actually have business sense because this philosophy of building things we don't need.
We were about to build a $17 million art gallery here.
Thank God the premier put a stop to it.
And we have an empty building where the brick used to be.
So here's common sense.
I'm not against the arts.
You know, I'm a gay, gay guy with 200 or 2,000 Avon bottles.
I'm not judging nobody on anything because I'm like centric, very eccentric.
That being said, you could take the brick building, throw a couple million there, and now you have your art gallery.
But why is it that the racetrack people who actually love their passion as well have a beat up old track that they can barely afford bleachers for?
The wealth in this community needs to be distributed far more evenly than it's ever been.
And that is why I've decided to back a few candidates this time and use my whatever I can to help.
Because the point is, is that we need to have some like common sense change in our region.
And also, we need to start defending ourselves.
I'm so sick and tired of like me being the only one that ever talks in defense of oil and gas in this community.
Like we also have to understand in Fort McMurray that there's a bigger world out there.
I mean, I just was in Banner.
I had a great visit.
I talked to a lot of, I felt very inspired.
I sat down and I heard Rex Murphy's same speech that I've heard like 200 times, but I actually, this time I felt connected to it because like, I don't know what is wrong with us, but we, we, it's almost like we are apologetic of being successful here.
I am no, I'm not going to hide it.
Step Up For Oil00:05:58
I love burning fossil fuels.
I'm proud that I can burn fossil fuels in a free country.
I'm proud that I can have the freedom of buying a giant old bus and take it across the country.
And everyone else here should have a little bit more, I don't know, I guess respect for themselves and respect for the industry that has given us this great life.
So yeah, I typically don't speak about local stuff and I try to stay out of the fray here because I mean, it can be quite vicious.
But at the same time, I'm sorry, no.
And the amount, the hundreds and millions of dollars that have been pissed away in our region, it's embarrassing.
So last thing, Robbie, how do people support the work that you do?
Because you're largely self-funded.
I mean, this documentary project in your beautiful propane bus, that's all self-funded.
So how do people support you and keep you going and keep that fire in your belly?
It's real simple.
There's two ways, okay?
You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter now.
We're going to charge five bucks a month for something that I'm going to write.
And please subscribe so it's ongoing.
That helps.
And two, buy a ton of t-shirts.
We don't have shortages and t-shirts anymore.
I know a few people ordered shirts and it only took them like eight months to get, but we eventually got them to them.
That's all been fixed.
We fixed our postage too.
We sold a ton of shirts.
And thank you when Pierre Polyev wore the shirt in Ottawa.
The problem was that our postage was so screwed up because we weren't used to selling that many shirts.
So we didn't have the proper charge for postage.
So we actually kind of had to watch on that because sometimes a shirt that 15 bucks to ship, we fixed that.
We're charging a little bit more for postage now, but we're making money on the shirts.
And yeah, I fund it.
So anyway you can support my Robbie Card Media, which is my marketing company, funds it.
So, you know, sponsor our videos or whatever.
That would be great.
I've got my series Fort McMurray 1000 that I'm still looking for some sponsorship for.
I'm basically going to be running two things, the Fort McMurray 1000 series and Ol Sandstrong.
I'm stepping up on Oil Sunstrong.
There's going to be daily videos, all kinds of stuff.
We're going to take it up a whole level.
But, you know, I listen, the other day, I got burnt recently.
I'm not going to say who burnt me, but I felt very burnt.
I had an idea that I pitched stolen by a government agency, and I was very, very hurt by this.
And I realized something at that moment that I was kind of proud of.
You know, I'm one guy.
You know, I've got four employees in my small business, but I'm one guy.
And I have my moments where I'm up and down in this cause, but I have skin in the game.
I have a ton of skin in the game.
I always have.
And this is what I will say.
I'll say it to the energy center and all these organizations.
Put your own skin in the game.
If you're one of these people that are doing this type of cause, put yourself in an uncomfortable position.
Use your own money for something, not just the money that you get from your wage, and step up.
One of the things that I'm very sad about, and I'll say it because I'm in a mood.
We had a good thing going.
I didn't always agree.
I was not treated fairly by Canada Action.
Anyone knows that I wasn't.
I was shafted huge, majorly shafted.
And the reason people know about the I Love Ol Sons movement is because of me and the work we did up here and a couple other people that I worked with here.
It wasn't just me, but we had a big hand in it.
But one thing I will say is for a little brief period of time there, Rally for Resources, Canada Action, a couple other organizations, we had these rallies across the country.
And when we had that, I was so proud of that moment.
My favorite moment actually be, I'm not sure if it was Halifax or Vancouver because that was pretty awesome when that puppet attacked me from the stage.
But the truth is, is my ultimate favorite moment was probably Vancouver.
We were only less than 500 people at our rally.
And Greek peace, I mean, either had five or 10,000, but they had a big rally.
Rival rallies.
We start our ground, we did our speech.
And the news that day was so pro-energy in Vancouver that we actually canceled out their little, like, you know, their little crybaby fest that they had.
And we had, we all worked together and we moved the, we moved it forward.
Now, my personal brand, Ol Sandstrong, I didn't have the buttons and the stickers and the signs and Canada Action had all that covered.
But so what happened was that Rally for Resources, Canada Action myself, we kind of fell apart and we were on to something good.
We had that stupid rival convoy.
And in hindsight, that convoy, like we actually had the first convoy, but they got the jump and then theirs.
And we should have just stopped and let them have their convoy and regrouped and gone back to our roots, which were rallies.
And we didn't.
And we kind of fell apart.
And that's, but, but here's the thing: these other organizations that they're hard to compete with when they're like when you're going and you're saying, hey, listen, you know, I've got this idea.
Can you fund us or whatever?
Well, you know, the government is doing this.
Well, the government sucks at advocacy.
They've sucked at advocacy the entire time.
That's how we got here.
That's how we got here.
Exactly.
And groups like ours that actually move the needle.
I mean, I had Rachel Notley in an I Love Oil Sands hoodie.
Okay, that's nonpartisan.
I have been nonpartisan this whole time.
I have worked with all parties.
The only times I've gone after them is like Crazy Elizabeth May or, you know, the BMW driving NDP leader, because, you know, because he's so fuel efficient in his Google sauce BMW.
But my point of the matter is, is that we've done that.
So respect the grassroots.
Don't get watered down with 3 million organizations that are, and I'm an ad agency, but I'll be honest, like, I'm also an activist.
So they kind of tie in.
Respect The Grassroots00:02:15
But we need to get back to that and respect the people that have skin in the game because we're the ones that actually made this happen.
And now going forward a little bit, as I'm about to dive back into this, I will be taking care of the business and way more.
But it's hard when you're in the field, when you're squaring off with a multi-millionaire dollar celebrity in a parking lot when it's minus 40 on your cell phone that's about to have a dead battery, tracking her down on your own with your own money and putting your own risk.
And that's the thing.
Like, it's like, I'm just, I guess I'm just kind of angry because where we are now, we don't need to be there if we respect the people who got us there.
Yeah.
Robbie, that's a great spot to leave this interview.
I have to move on to my very next thing today.
I know you do too.
You're a very business, very busy business owner and advocate for families like mine.
I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and we'll talk again very, very soon.
Thank you for having me.
If you got all your news from the mainstream media, you would think that Indigenous people are some sort of monolithic, uniform voting bloc that the Liberals own every single election season.
But I think the tide is turning this time around and we saw it firsthand.
As reported by our chief videographer, Mocha, when he captured a scene not reported in the mainstream media and even called fake news by the mainstream media, Indigenous people protested and blocked Justin Trudeau's campaign bus for over a half an hour, something the mainstream media didn't think was newsworthy enough to report on.
Indigenous people are not any different than the rest of us.
Our votes cannot be bought and sold.
They must be earned.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.