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The Honourable Pierre Poilievre is a Canadian politician serving as the leader of the Conservative Party and leader of the Official Opposition. He has been the Member of Parliament for Battle River—Crowfoot since August 2025. www.conservative.ca/pierre-poilievre/ www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/Pierre-Poilievre(25524)
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Jean-Yves Thériault, Full-Contact Karate
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
How are you, sir?
Pleasure to meet you.
It's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Great to be back in Texas.
I'm glad we finally did this.
Yes, me too.
I wanted to do it the first go-around.
Yeah, I know.
Well, when I got the invitation, we were in the middle of the election, and we
just don't
leave the country during election campaigns.
I get it.
And the problem we've had is we can't get you to come to Canada, and so we've
actually
hatched a full strategy to get you into Canada, because we think it's going to
do big things
for our tourism numbers.
So, do you mind if I present you with something right out of the gate?
Sure.
All right.
This is from a gunsmith and machinist in Calgary, Alberta.
His name is Jay, and he's designed, look at this kettlebell.
Guess what the weight is?
70 pounds?
70 pounds.
That's the weight you have.
It says on the front here, Jamie, it says here on the front, Jamie, pull it up.
So you've got that.
We've got, let me see here, some other stuff for a stand.
Oh, wow.
That's really cool.
Look at this stand here.
So we've got seeing is believing, which I think was the slogan of the first UFC
that you
were the commentator for.
I think it was number 13?
12.
Number 12.
Yeah.
And then we've got here your favorite quote from, what's his name?
The Japanese martial artist.
Miyamoto Musashi?
Yes.
And it says, if you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything.
Yeah.
So that's here.
And then Morse code, there's a thank you letter for you.
And we've got, you've got your flying saucer.
Oh, wow.
And we've got your logo here too.
So, but most important of all, we've got a subliminal message, which is the
Canadian maple
leaf.
Oh, cool.
Every time you do a kettlebell swing, you do a snatch, you do a clean, you're
going to
be seeing that maple leaf and you're going to be reminding yourself that you
need to come
back to Canada.
All right.
All right.
All right.
I'll present that to you there.
Thank you very much.
We'll go on there too.
Very cool.
Is that in the way, Jamie?
I can take it off.
We'll take it off.
I'll just pick it up.
Here, put it down here.
So, I saw your, I saw your interview with Pavel and I'm a big kettlebell free.
Are you really?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I started researching him after you had him on and I was trying to, I love
history.
So, I was thinking, why did the Russians come up with this?
And it turns out they used it as a counterweight at the farmer markets.
So, they would say, you know, you come in, you have to say, this is how much
potatoes you're
buying.
But instead of trying to do it by eyeball, they would put what is now kettlebell
on one
side of the scale and then the produce on the other.
And then at the farmer's expeditions, you had these big Russian farmers who
want to show
how strong they were.
So, they would pick them up and do all kinds of displays with them.
And then the Russian army took it on.
The Soviet army took it on.
And then that's where Pavel picked it up and then brought it over the Atlantic
and introduced
it to America.
Wow.
That's crazy.
So, it was just accidental that they made this very functional tool for fitness?
Yeah.
It was just, you'd go to a farmer's market, you want to buy some barley or some
potatoes,
but you don't know if you're actually getting the real weight.
So, they'd have a scale, a balancing scale, and they'd put the kettlebell on
one side and
the produce on the other.
And then you knew you got the right amount.
And then, of course, they have these big farmers, farm fairs, and they're
showing off their
horses and their cattle and stuff, and they'd want to do strength displays.
So, these farmers are throwing these things around, and the Russian military
picked it up.
And then the Soviets, of course, took over, and they took it on.
And then Pavel, I think he was a Belorussian, though, if I'm not mistaken.
Pavel.
I'm not sure.
And he brought it over to North America.
But the ancient Chinese did it as well.
You got...
Really?
Yeah.
The ancient Chinese, the Shaolin monks have used them, but they didn't do it
with cast iron.
They had, theirs were sort of a concrete, a concrete block.
And they did it for strength training as well.
Oh, wow.
A little history.
Yeah.
So, I'm a big kettlebell freak.
I love it.
And I really, I started to study what Pavel's teaching.
I wanted, I think he has an accreditation or something.
If I ever get time, I might take it.
Yeah.
Strong First.
Yeah.
That's his organization.
And you're doing, you have a whole program, I think, you do clean to press and
then...
Yeah, I do a bunch of different things.
Squats with overhead squat and all that.
It's a great functional tool just for your whole body.
Right.
You know, it's really one of the best pieces of exercise equipment I think I've
ever found.
Yeah, I think he calls it a cannonball on a handle.
And the thing I like about it is the, it's like a catapult.
Like it, all of the lift is in that instant where it flips over your hand.
And there you go.
Everyone's, wow, that's crazy.
That's so interesting.
So the handle was just to pick it up and carry it around.
Yeah.
Wow.
So it had a real functional use.
Well, it's just amazing how good it is for a piece of exercise equipment that
was accidentally
designed that way.
Absolutely.
And I think it's far superior to a dumbbell exercise because there's no, a
dumbbell, you
get a consistent lift, but that's not real life.
If you're in a fight or you have to pick something up heavy, it doesn't lift
consistently.
It's explosive in that small range.
And when, you know, when you're doing a snatch, by the time you get up to your
shoulder, the
thing's weightless because the catapult, the catapult effect has taken over and
now it's
actually negative weights, lifting your hand up in the air if you're doing it
right.
But like if you're in a fight or if you're in a wrestling match or you're, you're
trying
to push really hard against a heavy object, it's all about explosive power.
And that's what kettlebells give rather than just this sort of, uh, freeze and
contract
thing that you do with, with dumbbells.
Have you always been a workout guy?
Yeah.
Look, I, I was, um, big into sports until my mid teens.
I was on the wrestling team.
I wasn't great.
I was good, but I wasn't great.
Um, then I got a wicked, uh, tendonitis in my shoulder and it ended my athleticism
for
like four years.
And that's how it got into politics.
I was so bored.
I got to get home from school.
I had nothing to do.
So I took my, I told my mother, tendinitis got you into politics.
Yeah, that's what it was.
I just couldn't get rid of it.
Like I, every time I thought I had it beat, I'd go in and I'd train and it
would be full
of inflammation.
No one could do anything about it.
And so I was like bored out of my mind.
And I said to my mom, like, you know, you go to these local meetings with the
conservative
association, like take me to that.
Cause I'm going crazy.
And that's nuts.
Yeah.
So that, so what, what, what were you interested in when you first went there?
Like we just didn't like the way things were running.
Like what, what was it about it that got you so curious?
Well, I grew up in a suburban neighborhood in South, South end of Calgary, you
know, and my
folks were teachers.
I was adopted.
My mom was a 16 year old.
She, she was obviously a single mom.
She put me out for adopting two school teachers.
There was electricians and oil workers and police officers lived on our street.
Normal, hardworking, good folks.
And I always grew up with the impression they were getting screwed over and
that the government
didn't listen to people like them.
Didn't listen to people who grew up on streets like ours and living in Western
Canada, there
was a greater sense of that.
We called it Western alienation at the time.
And there was this guy, kind of a quirky guy, but a really brilliant guy named
Preston Manning.
And I saw this billboard of him and he had his fist up and it said, enough.
And I said, yeah, I like that guy.
So I got involved in politics and I started reading about different things.
I started, I read a biography on Fidel Castro and then I read some more.
Justin's dad.
No, no, no, not Justin's dad.
Right?
No, no, no, no, no.
His dad was Pierre.
His dad was Pierre.
His dad was Pierre.
I had issues with Pierre Trudeau too.
It is a great conspiracy theory though.
Well, it is a hell of a, I don't think it's a true one though.
His dad is Pierre.
His dad was very controversial when I grew up because he did a lot of damage to
the oil
sector and we're from oil country.
And so that was one of the things that I felt kind of resentful about the
national government.
And one of the reasons I got involved is because the West deserved a fairer
deal.
And, uh, but I read a lot of books like, you know, Milton Friedman, capitalism
and freedom.
And I came to, to develop a philosophy based on just maximizing personal,
financial, religious
freedom.
Let people make their own decisions.
And that, that animated me to get involved in politics and fight for that.
And I've been doing it ever since.
Well, that's a fascinating transition from wrestling and tendonitis.
Yeah.
Being deeply involved in politics.
Yeah.
I mean, like, you know, you're a sports guy.
If you had suffered an injury that took you out of Taekwondo when you were
young and you simply
couldn't compete at anything, you'd probably be looking for some other
adventure.
Yeah.
That's how it was.
Well, we're lucky that stem cells weren't around back then or you never would
have gotten
into politics.
That's right.
I would have been a wrestler.
I don't know if I would have won any awards, but, uh, but yeah, that, that was
how I got
started.
And, and I got very active very quickly.
I got my first internship making 600 bucks a month, uh, when I was, uh, 16 or
17 years
old and, uh, you know, take, uh, two trains and a bus and an hour and 45
minutes each way.
But I was so thrilled.
My dad bought me a used suit and a used pair of shoes.
And I thought this, I'm, this is so incredible.
I'm an important guy.
I wear dress shoes.
I wear, I wear a tie.
Didn't matter that the tie was bad, bought from some dead guy whose family had
sold it
to a, uh, used store.
But, uh, that was my start and I loved it.
Well, uh, I'm really excited to have you in here because I've seen you speak
multiple
times and you're a very reasonable, intelligent person that makes a lot of
sense.
And that is, that is a rare thing in politics.
And I love Canada.
Like, I should just say, I don't go up there anymore, but it's because I, I
think the government
went horribly wrong over the last, you know, X amount of years, but the people
are amazing.
It's like, I was always, I have always said that Canada has like, it's like
America with
like 20% less assholes.
Like every time I would go up there, I'm like, people are so nice.
They're like the nicest people.
And I think that's part of what went wrong for Canada is that people are rule
followers
and, you know, they're trusting and kind people.
And, you know, this wolf in sheep's clothing snuck in and, you know, was
pretending he was
a sweet guy and passing all these crazy laws.
And just when we saw what happened with COVID with just with what happened with
the truckers
and people's accounts getting shut down for donating to the truckers, like the
whole thing
was so concerning because it's our Canada was like a part of America almost.
I mean, you're a different country, but it's like you should be able to go over
there with
just a driver's license.
You know, it was like, it was such a cool place to, I started going to the
Montreal Comedy
Festival in like 1993.
I loved it up there.
It's like one of my favorite places to be.
Is it just for laughs?
Just pour vivre?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good.
How's your French?
Not good.
Okay.
We'll work on that.
We'll get you some French lessons.
It's terrible.
I don't know any French words.
My wife is learning French, though.
It's interesting.
She's got this app that she's learning French.
But it's just an amazing place.
It's a great country.
And to see it go the way it's been going and sliding the way it's been
happening over the last,
you know, X amount of years, there's just so many things that concern me.
You know, one of the things that really concerns me is this assisted suicide
thing.
Had one in 20 deaths in Canada is now assisted suicide.
That's insane.
Well, listen, my view is that people should have the choice.
But the concern we have is the suggestion that it would be offered to kids or
offered to
people whose only condition is mental illness.
Right.
I don't agree with that.
My concern as well.
I mean, if someone's got a terminal, like a good friend of mine went to Oregon
to end
his life because he had ALS.
But I mean, he was gone.
I mean, he could barely talk at the end of his life.
His name is Michael Lehrer.
He was a regular guest on Kill Tony.
Great guy.
Right.
And it was horrible.
I mean, watching him fade away and he wanted to go out on his own terms.
Right.
So he went to Oregon for assisted suicide.
And there's a place for it.
Yeah.
But I mean, there was a kid recently in Canada and he did it for seasonal
depression.
I'm sure you're aware of that case.
Like who allowed that to happen?
Who didn't counsel this young guy?
Who didn't give him a hug?
Who didn't tell him about diet and exercise and changing your surroundings,
your lifestyle
and just do something to give you some hope and happiness, like seasonal
depression, really?
You're going to end your life, this beautiful life on this planet for seasonal
depression.
That's why we have to do more to give people hope when they're suffering with
mental illness.
You know, give people the sense that they can take back control of their lives.
I think we do have to promote fitness more because it gives people, it turns
them into a
subject that controls their surroundings rather than an object being controlled.
It teaches people to that, that hardship is temporary and that the aftermath is
positive.
And, uh, and we have to give people, re-instill people with a sense of meaning
when they're
going through hardship rather than, than to say that it's all over.
And, uh, you know, I think, uh, we have to, our system needs to be geared
towards giving
people all the best options to live on rather than just suggesting made as the,
as the easy,
as the, as the automatic path for the system.
To impose on people.
So, uh, one of the things our party is pushing for is to make clear that public
servants who
are getting phone calls from people who are in need of help for something, they
shouldn't
be offering that they should be offering made.
People can seek it out if they want, but when you're calling up saying I'm poor
or I'm struggling,
or I'm having a mental illness, or I'm, I've got an injury, uh, we shouldn't
have a government
worker saying, well, consider made.
Well, the, the unfortunate thing is that any organization that gets formed
wants to grow and
you get financial incentives and then you hire more people and then it gets
bigger.
And then what do you have to do?
Well, you have to keep doing what you're doing.
Exactly.
What are you doing?
You're killing people.
So you're going to kill more people because you're actually financially
incentivized to put
more people through this program and end their lives.
That's, it's very sad.
I think we have to get to a, get to a point where people have the freedom to
make their
own decisions, but they also have hope that there is an option for them and
that's what
we're trying to pathway, you know, and like the exercise thing, it's not just
give them,
you know, control of their life, but it makes them happier.
It's, it's, it's show there's been studies that show it's much more effective
than antidepressants.
Absolutely.
Well, it's the, the first of all, there's the affiliate physiological side,
which affects the
brain, but it's also the sensation of discomfort that you push through.
Knowing that you have to focus on the thing you have to do and, uh, that I
think it helps
us in anything we're encountering, whether you're going through a divorce or a
bankruptcy
or an injury or an illness, if you know that pushing through to the other side,
because you've
got a meaning there that can give people hope for, for, for a better life, you
know, my favorite
psychologist is, uh, Viktor Frankl, Viktor Frankl, and he developed this, um,
Lagos treatment,
which was basically giving people a sense of meaning.
He survived the Holocaust in the concentration camp because he had a sense of
meaning that
he wanted to, his book was stolen from him in the concentration camp about this,
this theory.
And he wanted to live on so he could survive and write that book.
And then he found his, in his teaching that it wasn't so much people's
circumstances that
determined their happiness.
It was whether they had a meaning in life.
And he tells this incredible story of a group therapy session where he had this
very rich
woman who was married to a very rich man.
And he had next to him, another lady who was living in terrible poverty.
She'd lost a son and had a second severely disabled son.
And he said to both of them, what will your life look, look like when you're 80
years old
and you're on your deathbed?
And the wealthier lady said, well, I will look back and think that I had some
fun and
enjoyed the simple, the, the, the, the luxuries of being very wealthy and
having an easy life
that there wasn't a lot of meaning to it.
And whereas the mother who was struggling with a disabled child and had lost
another one
said, well, I gave my first child a great life, a short one, but a great one.
I struggled to give my disabled child a good dignified existence.
And I leave this world satisfied and happy that my life had purpose and meaning.
And the lesson that I take from that is that it is not about whether you have a
gazillion
dollars or whether your life is easy.
It's whether you have some meaning to invest your, your, your life into.
And I think we have to infuse people's lives with, with meaning so that they,
that they
can, they can live a good life.
Well, that's a great message.
And I think that's one of the most important parts of being a leader is having
a great message
and having a great philosophy and having a great perspective.
And I mean, that's what disturbed me the most about when Trudeau was running
the country
that I, I didn't feel like, I thought, I felt like he was manipulating people
with woke politics
and ideology and that it was just this weird slippery slope that people were
falling down
where they're losing rights and you're losing your ability to express yourself.
And it just, it just really disturbed me because I always felt that Canada was
like one of the
freest places and one of the most open-minded places.
And it just, I didn't understand how it could fall so quickly.
We, we still, you know, we are a free country and we, we are a democracy.
We have preserved that.
Um, you know, my leader, my, I had this funny moment when Joe Biden came to
parliament hill
and I said, um, uh, Mr. President, I'm Pierre Polyev.
I'm the leader of his majesty's loyal opposition.
And he said, loyal opposition.
How can you be loyal and opposition at the same time?
It's like, what the hell are you talking about?
And because you guys have a system based on the Republic, whereas ours is the
British system.
And in our system, the, the opposition is an act of loyalty.
That's what our system, it means that if you are opposing the government, you're
doing it
out of loyalty to the good of the people and our house of commons, you have a
half circle in your
Congress.
We have two sides in our parliament.
It's two and a half sword lengths apart because they used to literally kill
each other in the old
English days.
But the idea is the opposition is to prosecute the hell out of the government,
make the mighty low.
The most powerful people in the country are supposed to tremble every time they
walk in that place
because no, every mistake they made, every abuse of power, every corruption
they might have done
can be exposed and in front of all eyes.
So our system is really designed to constrain the power of government through
what we call parliament.
Like I don't work for government.
I work for parliament and parliament works for the people.
We call it the house of commons because the, it's a house of the common people.
It's green in there because they used to meet in the, in the fields of England.
And so I really view the world of our parliament to limit the power of
government, to maximize the power of the
people, make people bigger, stronger, and more fulfilled by having the
government narrowly focus on the, on the things it's supposed to do.
Roads, military, basic social safety net, borders, police, et cetera.
But then leave people alone to live their lives.
If I were to start a political party from scratch, it would be the mind your
own damn business party.
You know, just get the government to do its job well, do, you know, do four or
five things really well, and then let people live their lives.
Well, that sounds very reasonable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, anybody that doesn't go along with that, anybody that's opposed to that,
that doesn't even make sense.
No, look, like I said, the way I grew up and everything I've seen ever since,
when I talk to farmers or factory workers, electricians, I find they know just
as much or more than the so-called experts I encounter on Parliament Hill.
Like back during COVID, when all these governments were printing money, and all
the politicians and bankers said, oh, this is great.
Well, look at all this money we get to spend.
I'd walk around communities, and I'd have like mechanics say, you know, we're
going to have inflation.
And I would say, yeah, it makes sense to me.
And I'd go back to Parliament Hill, and the experts would all say, no, no,
there's not going to be any inflation.
And sure enough, all that money filtered into the economy, bid up all the goods
we buy, and everybody got smoked with higher prices.
But the point is that it was the common people who don't study this stuff for a
living, who don't read endless reports and studies, who could just figure out
that if there's money pouring into the economy that's not matched by goods and
services, it's going to bid up the cost of everything.
So that's my experience, and my ideology is the common guy knows how to make
his own decisions.
We need to empower him to do that.
Yeah, just stay out of people's lives.
Exactly.
So there's a narrative in America, and the narrative is that you were about to
win, and your party was about to win, but then Trump came along and said he was
going to turn Canada into the 51st state, and everybody went crazy.
Is that accurate?
I wouldn't say they went crazy.
I mean, like, it was a failure.
Well, they got very upset.
They should be upset, though.
I mean.
Well, it's a crazy thing to say.
It is a crazy thing to say.
Canada's not for sale.
We're never going to be the 51st state.
You know, we love Americans as neighbors and friends, but we want to be
uniquely and we want to be sovereign as Canadians.
It's our country.
It's where we grow up.
You're a patriot as an American.
I'm a patriot as a Canadian.
It's where my grandfather arrived.
It's where our collective ancestors put on military uniforms and sailed to
fight wars.
It's where our grandkids are going to live.
We're very proudly Canadian.
So we're never going to be the 51st state, and I just wish he'd knock that shit
off so that we can get back to talking about the things that we can do as two
separate countries that are actually friends.
Did that really have that much of an effect up there?
Like, did people take him seriously?
I think at first everyone thought it was a joke because we've always had these
jokes like, you know, one day we're going to take over Vermont and Detroit
should be part of Canada and all that stuff.
But then he kept saying it and saying it, and, you know, it became, it became,
a lot of people got upset about it, and I think understandably so.
Understandably, yeah.
I mean, it's a crazy thing to say.
It is a crazy thing to say.
I talked to him on the phone about it.
It was like so funny.
It was like, at first I was joking, but then people were like, it's a good idea.
No, no.
That's not a good idea.
I know what he's saying that.
I can assure him of that.
But, and the tariffs aren't a good idea either.
We should get the tariffs out because there's so much that we could be doing
together as neighbors and partners if we got rid of those tariffs.
You know, the, I think, what are the biggest problems in America today?
Affordability, security.
And we can help with both.
We knock the tariffs down.
Let's look at affordability.
We have the fourth biggest supply of oil anywhere on earth.
You guys pay a huge price discount for our oil because we're effectively, all
our infrastructure to ship it is north-south, and it's a very unique, heavy oil.
So we accept, unfortunately, and for now, a price discount on the oil we send
you, which can translate into more jobs and paychecks, but also lower energy
prices.
You've got $5 a gallon right now in lots of places in America.
You're buying, I want to produce more so we can sell 2 million more barrels of
Canadian oil into the U.S. market.
And then there's housing.
You've got huge housing pressures on young people.
They can't afford a place to live.
We're the biggest supplier of lumber for home building of any country that
imports to the United States, exports to the United States.
We've got very low cost, but high quality, softwood lumber we could be shipping.
Or the best truck, the best-selling truck in America for 45 years now is the
Ford Series.
It's aluminum.
It's a military-grade aluminum body.
You guys can't make enough aluminum here.
You don't have enough bauxite or electricity to convert it into aluminum.
You get your aluminum from us.
A tariff does not bring the production to America.
It raises the price of the aluminum and, therefore, the F-Series truck.
Get rid of that tariff.
You lower the cost of an F-Series truck for the miner in Appalachia or the
electrician in Ohio.
And that's just on the affordability side.
There's a lot we can do with our minerals to make the continent a hell of a lot
safer as well.
So I think it's in America's interest to come towards a tariff-free deal and
trade freely as friends.
And that will be good for both of us.
Have you had conversations with Trump about this?
No.
I believe in the rule of one prime minister at a time.
So I fought like hell to win.
I didn't win.
We came very close.
So I've said, listen, I'll leave it to the prime minister to do the negotiating.
And I've said I'll support him any way I can.
Even in my visit down here, I'm sending him text messages to tell him what's
going on,
to try and support his work.
Because what we want, we both want what's best for Canada.
Where are your elections now?
When do you have the next elections?
That's, this is a strangely hard question to answer because we're in-
I know, you have a weird system.
Yeah, it's-
Weird in comparison to ours, rather.
Yours are fixed, as you know.
Ours, we have technically fixed election dates, but the government can fall at
any time.
It's very simple.
A rule is that if the opposition parties bind up and they can vote down the
government,
that is to say the majority of MPs in the House say, we've lost confidence in
the government,
the election is now.
Or if the prime minister decides he wants an election, he can call it and the
election is now.
But it has to be sometime in the next roughly three years.
Oh, so you have a deadline where it has to take place?
Yeah, that's right.
But it could happen tomorrow.
It wouldn't necessarily be tomorrow, but like, you know, in the next few weeks,
if there were a non-confidence vote and the government lost it,
then they go to an election.
So it's kind of like the British system.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Well, it is the British system, really.
We adopted the British system almost identically.
So when you're campaigning, you're essentially, this is like a long game.
Yeah.
You're just laying out your strategy, laying out what you would do to make
Canada a better place.
Yeah.
Well, we have two roles.
So I said I'm the leader of the opposition, but I'm also prime minister in
waiting.
So the notion is that the Canadian people should not only have a government,
but they should have an alternative.
And that alternative has two functions.
Official opposition.
It's actually called that.
I think it's a proper noun, capital O, official, capital O, opposition, and
also government in waiting.
So you have to be prosecuting the government, but you have to present yourself
to people in a way where they say,
yeah, that guy or that team could actually be the government.
Those are the dual roles that I have to carry out.
Interesting.
And how long have you been attempting to become prime minister for?
How long has this been going on for?
Almost exactly four years because I launched my campaign in February of 2022.
Was this something that you had always had in the back of your mind?
I'd say in the back of my mind, but it wasn't something I was set on.
Like I thought maybe, you know, when I'm in my 50s or 60s, I would try it.
But I was in no rush to do that.
How old do you know?
I'm now 46.
And so what motivated you to do it?
Well, you know, after COVID, as COVID was unfolding, it wasn't just the COVID
policies themselves.
It was the economic policies because I've been very focused on economics in my
parliamentary career.
And I was seeing the size and cost of government, not just in Canada, but all
around the world, growing so much.
And that inflation was just destroying the working class people and that it was
going to get a lot worse.
And so I ran on the platform of making Canada the freest country on earth.
We had a tradition of freedom in Canada, one of our earliest prime ministers,
Wilfrid Laurier, he's asked, what's Canada's nationality?
And he couldn't actually list an ethnicity or a religion because we were
already mixed up even 100 years ago.
We had Scots and Irish and First Peoples.
So he said, look, yeah, French, most of all French and English and First
Nations.
So he said, Canada's free and freedom is its nationality.
And I wanted to reinstate that idea.
I wanted it to be the freest country anywhere on earth.
And so I ran on that platform and won the leadership and then ran in the last
election and stayed on after that election.
So that's kind of the last four years of my journey.
And so the way your elections work now, so you're essentially just stating your
case and going around and talking about what policies you would implement and
how you would do things differently and just waiting to see how it all plays
out.
It's we have.
See, our our our prime minister is different than the president.
He's actually part of the legislative branch.
So he comes in to the House of Commons and we debate multiple times a week, he
and I.
So it's not just, you know, in your system, the Republican and Democrat hold
like four debates right before the election.
In our system, we're always debating.
So he comes in, he's on one side.
I come in, I'm on the other side and I ask him like six consecutive questions
and then he answers and we go back and forth and that's called question period.
Then we have these committees where we prosecute and propose on finance,
natural resources, health care, you name it.
So we're constantly prosecuting the government, also proposing better ideas at
the same time.
So like the other day, I proposed to bring back the auto pack between Canada
and the U.S. to have tariff free trade going both ways across the border.
So that's an example of how I'm in a position to actually offer solutions, even
though I'm not in the government.
And then hopefully government actually steals my ideas.
And I've been encouraging them to steal my ideas.
So what is this coffee, by the way?
Yes.
I need some caffeine.
Yeah, some caffeine there.
I'm a terrible caffeine addict.
Me too.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Oh, and shout out to George St. Pierre for hooking this up.
Yes.
George is a good man.
He's the best.
Great guy.
He said he's going to have me do some pad work with him at some point.
Oh, really?
So that's pretty dangerous.
Oh, that's awesome.
He's here all the time.
He's a fantastic guy.
He's the best.
He's one of the best representatives of martial arts you could ever hope to
meet.
He's got humility.
I remember when he came to Parliament Hill years ago and I thought, geez, he's
going to be,
because he's, I thought he'd be cocky and swagger, but he was so down to earth.
Oh, he's so humble.
So much humility.
For what he's accomplished in MMA, I've introduced him to people and they have
no idea who he is.
Yeah.
And then I go, that is one of the greatest fighters that ever walked the face
of the earth.
Absolutely.
They're like, no way.
He's so nice.
And that's the Canadian way though.
Like it's soft-spoken and gentle and kind, but don't, don't piss us off.
Yeah, but tough.
Yeah, that's where Trump fucked up.
I wonder what would have happened if he didn't go along with that 51st state
nonsense, you know?
I mean, that, that is the narrative in this country.
Like I said, that if he didn't do that, that you would have won.
Well, you never know, but I try not to cry over spilled milk.
I focus on what I have to do and live in the present.
But this new guy, Malott, have you followed him, Mike Malott?
Oh, sure.
I know Mike.
Yeah.
He's going to be fighting in Winnipeg.
I think he's the next GSP.
He's very good.
You like him?
Yeah, he's excellent.
Yeah.
He did a great job in Montreal.
If you saw him there, but maybe.
I've been to many of his, called a bunch of his fights.
Is that right?
Yeah, he's excellent.
Yeah, he's, my buddy is his trainer, Crew Allen, in Hamilton.
He's a Hamilton steel, steel town guy.
And anyway, we're hoping that he has a big win in Winnipeg.
Well, you guys have one of the best gyms in the world, TriStar, in Montreal.
Is that right?
Faraz Ahabi.
Okay.
There's like maybe a handful of great masterminds in MMA as far as coaches, and
Faraz is at the
top of the list.
Is that right?
And what's his discipline?
He trained GSP.
Is his discipline karate or kickboxing, Muay Thai?
I mean, he's a true mixed martial artist, black belt in jiu-jitsu, kickboxing.
I mean, he can do everything.
And he has a, TriStar is a place where a lot of people from America go up there
for their
camps.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I'll have to drop in and see those guys.
Oh, it's phenomenal.
I mean, like I said, GSP trained up there.
A lot of fighters trained up there.
And he also had a great working relationship with a lot of people in America.
So he would come down and, you know, they would exchange fighters back and
forth and train
with each other.
Yeah.
Well, we have a great martial arts tradition in Canada.
I don't know if you know Mike Miles.
He brought Muay Thai from Thailand to Calgary, like back in the 70s or 80s.
And he still got a great gym there.
Do you know who Jean-Yves Theriault is?
Yes.
He's a buddy of mine.
Oh, really?
He's from Ottawa.
Yeah.
Oh, no kidding.
Yeah.
He was a hero of mine when I was a kid.
Yeah.
He's incredible.
When I was kickboxing, he was like my idol.
Really?
Yeah.
Does he know that?
I never talked to him.
Well, he's going to see this.
I bought his book.
Yeah?
I bought his book.
I started running stairs because of his book.
Right.
Because he was talking about how it increased his leg muscles and his kicking
power.
I remember that.
It was in one of his documentaries or something.
He said his kicks weren't strong enough, so he would do stairs.
But I went and trained at his dojo a few times.
It's in South Ottawa.
He was incredible.
Yeah.
He was one of the truly elite kickboxers of his time.
He was a great boxer.
Like, I know he never competed as a boxer, but his hands were fantastic.
Right.
Well, that's really what separated him from a lot of other people.
It was like his accuracy and his technique was pristine.
He told me that he would spend hours studying the distances that your limbs
would have to travel depending on how you moved.
He was kind of like a scientist in the way he learned and studied.
And he was all about simplicity and removing anything unnecessary.
I think Bruce Lee said that.
He said, simplicity, hack away at the unnecessary.
And, you know, how do you, what's the shortest distance to hit the strike?
And he's got a great, he's a really good heart too.
You know, he had, he has a jujitsu club as well.
And when I went in there, there was a blind fellow who was into jujitsu, which
you can do as a blind person because it's so much about feel.
But with COVID, he couldn't do jujitsu anymore because they, they, they disallowed
that kind of up close contact.
So he actually found a way to train this guy with focus mitts, even though he
was blind.
It was really incredible.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
It was just, but it was incredible amount of patience he had invested in making
sure this, this young man could keep doing his physical activity throughout
COVID.
Wait a minute.
So they allowed pad work, but they didn't allow jujitsu.
I don't know if it was a government policy or if it was just a, it was a policy
at the gym because you're, you know, you're just so wrapped up and sweating.
I'll let you.
The gyms in America, everybody just.
Just kept going.
Kept going.
They hid.
They would like put foil over the windows and like hide or coming through the
back door.
A lot of the gyms in LA, that's what they did.
They just plowed ahead.
They just figured out a way to not get in trouble.
And some people did get caught and get in trouble and nothing ever came of it
because it's pretty unconstitutional to tell people that they can't work out
together.
Like the government really didn't have the right to tell people that they
couldn't do what they wanted to do.
That was a legal thing that you can do.
Like all of a sudden there's this mandate.
There's this law or rule being passed down, or at least it's being promoted
that you're not allowed to go to a gym and work out with other people.
Like, but those are the healthiest people.
Those are the people that are the least likely to get sick.
Like this, this is crazy to say.
And you know, if you're sick and if you just have a good gym with good people,
say, hey, don't show up if you're sick.
Everybody should be okay.
These are the people you should worry about the least.
We need to have common sense again.
And too many governments in the Western world have gotten way too bossy.
They're just looking for every excuse to boss people around.
And that's what we have to push back again.
It's, you know, EV mandates or, um, you know, excessive, uh, control of the
internet or, um, the massive increase in the cost of government, which is
really like appropriating the private, voluntary economy into the coercive
government economy.
Uh, that's, uh, that's what we're seeing across Europe in the UK, parts of the
United States, as well as, uh, back home.
So we need to, we need to reverse that trend and get people back in charge of
their lives.
Well, the narrative has always been that rights lost are never regained or are
very, very difficult to regain them.
So how could you reverse that?
Well, you have to keep fighting.
I mean, we did regain, uh, our rights, uh, after COVID and, you know, the, the
people have to look, look at the history of it.
How did, which rights did you regain?
Well, the, all the mandates are gone now.
Of course, but those were ridiculous anyway.
Yeah, they were ridiculous, but, uh, a lot of programs.
And they also impeded business.
They, they ruined people's lives, social lives.
But freedom has always had to be taken.
Like you go, our tradition goes back to 1215 with the Magna Carta, the great
charter.
And most of the freedoms we have today were in that original document, right to
a jury trial, uh, no arrest without charge, no conf conf confiscation without
compensation, no taxation without representation.
All comes from that one document, the Magna Carta, and, uh, it was because King
John was taken aside by the barons and they said, listen, pal, this is the
choice.
Either you sign this and follow it, or we overthrow you.
And as a result, we got the Magna Carta and all of, when you guys had your
Boston tea party and said, you can't tax our tea because we don't elect you.
That was, uh, an appeal as English, you were Englishmen saying, I'm not, we're
Englishmen.
We have the right not to be taxed unless we vote for it.
And we're going to throw you out otherwise, but that came out of the fields of
running meat in England in 1215.
So it's a long March towards freedom and it's never actually done.
Like there's no permanent victories or defeats.
You just have to keep going forward.
So if you were elected, let's say you get in right now, what's one of the first
things you would do?
I would unblock our resources.
So we have the most resources of any country in the world per capita bar none.
We need to have to make it happen though.
We need to have the fastest permits anywhere in the world and the lowest taxes
on producing those resources.
We're the fourth in oil, the number of number one in uranium, number one in potash
for fertilizer.
We have the fifth biggest supplier of natural gas.
We have the longest oceanic coastline.
Like we are, we have 12 of NATO's, um, sorry, we have 10 of 12 of NATO's
defined defense minerals.
So, you know, you had that guy, a Palmer Luckey on, I don't think he can make
his stuff without Canadian minerals.
So maybe I'm wrong, maybe he'll correct me, but like night vision technology,
you need to have, uh, you need to have germanium for that.
You need to have a gallium to make, uh, semiconductors and radar.
You need to have aluminum for armored vehicles and, uh, airplanes.
You need cobalt for heat resistant alloys and fighter jets.
You need tungsten for, uh, body, sorry, um, uh, armor piercing ammunition.
We have it all.
And what I want to do is unblock those resources, produce them in abundance for
ourselves and our allies, make, you know, $200,000 paychecks for our trades
workers, build up an enormous strategic stockpile of it.
So that we have tons of leverage in international relations.
And if God forbid, there is ever a global conflict, we would have all the
resources necessary to win it.
So, uh, but we need to, we need to pass, we need to get rid of a lot of laws
that are blocking and, and replace them with laws that have fast permitting.
So that we can produce this stuff on scale very quickly.
So is the concern, the environmental impact of extracting these things?
Is that what's holding it up?
That is the, that's the ostensible reason, but I just think across Western, the
Western world, like Europe, UK, parts of the U S and Canada, there's a problem
with bureaucracy just growing way too damn big.
Like, you know, the first nations in our country are incredibly forward-looking
the Squamish built 6,000 units of housing on 10 acres of land.
You can believe it in a town, in a city of Vancouver, where it's very hard to
get a permit to do anything because it was their land.
So they did it.
They're trying to build, they're building now an LNG liquefaction plant where
they replaced, uh, an old dirty mills.
They cleaned it up and put an LNG plant there.
But the federal government took a lot of time, 14 years to give them a permit.
So we need to think like they're thinking, which is entrepreneurial speed of
business, get it done quickly.
Um, that's how you develop.
Like we have this community in my district, it's called Hardesty, 600 people.
They manage a hundred billion dollars of oil in a town of 600 people.
Why is it there?
Because their municipality offers a permit in one week with one page.
And I wanted to tell this story.
So I called them and I said, can I have someone come and do a video with me?
And they said, we don't have anyone here.
We don't have like bureaucrats that can help you.
Like they're all out on their farms right now.
They come in, they stamp the permit and they go back to their farm.
Well, that's why we have a hundred billion dollars of energy moving through the
area, which is bigger than the GDP of many countries because they have fast
permits.
And that's what we need in Canada.
We need to be the fastest place to get things done.
But don't you think you need some safeguards to protect the environment?
And how do you balance that out?
Protect it quickly.
We can figure out what, what, whether a project is damaging to the environment
in weeks and months rather than decades.
Like there's nothing you're going to learn in year 14 of the review that you
couldn't have learned in, in month 14.
So there's ways to protect the environment when the Germans, so when the
Germans had to break their dependence on Russia after it invaded Ukraine,
they approved an LNG import terminal in 60 days.
They completed the whole damn thing in less than 200 days.
And guess what?
No environmental problems.
They, they got their engineers to sit down and figure out how to do it quickly.
And that's the, that's the mentality that we need to get in Canada.
So what would you be able to do to bypass all this bureaucracy?
How could that be done legally?
Well, you slim it down to one project, one environmental review instead of 20
or 30, you have a fixed timeline that the bureaucrats have to give an answer of
six months rather than just as long as they want to drag it on for.
Um, and the other thing I would do is study areas where they're, they're
perfectly situated to have a project like a pipeline or a mine or an LNG export
terminal or a port expansion.
And I would pre permit it.
I would say to our officials, go in study, make sure that the environmental
aspects are all in good order.
I will issue a pre permit and then anybody who comes along and wants to build
it as long as they follow the terms and act responsibly has a guaranteed permit
before they even apply for it.
Uh, and, uh, that, I think we would have a roaring economy if we did that.
That sounds awesome.
But the great fear is that if you do have an impact on the environment, that
impact is often permanent and that it's devastating.
And I, I've seen some of the oil extraction that they've done up in Alberta
where you look at the area, it looks like, like scorched earth.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's the most responsible or oil extraction in the world.
But when you, when you see these, what is that one area that often gets
criticized?
Fort Mac.
Is that what it is?
Yeah, it's, they're open pit mines.
You, you open up a mine, you take out the, you take out the bitumen.
Um, you subtract, you, you separate the sand from the oil, you, you make it
less viscous by putting diluent in it and, and you ship it off.
And then after the oil is, after the mining is done, they, they resurface it
and you wouldn't even know there was a mine there.
And there's no impact to groundwater, no impact to the environment.
I mean, there's an impact no matter what you do.
But at the end of the day, the people who live there are very healthy and very
happy.
And they're the strongest supporters of the expansion of the oil sands.
It's an incredible, it's the best resource in the world.
It's like, uh, there's no decline rate.
You guys have shale here, but you know, as the years go by, you get less and
less out of a shale, uh, reservoir.
We, we have very little decline.
We can keep producing and producing.
Uh, we have, um, what's called the in situ where there's an entire oil sands
operation under your feet.
You could be out in a forest hunting and you wouldn't even know that under your
feet, they're extracting it through a whole system of pipes where they inject
just steam, steam vapor.
That loosens up the oil.
It sinks down.
It goes into another pipe, comes up to the top and you can have beautiful, pristine
nature.
The bears, the, the, uh, the deer, the birds, they don't even know that there's
extraction happening under their feet.
So we have the best industry, the most responsible industry anywhere in the
world.
It's been a really disgusting PR campaign by extremist environmentalists.
And frankly, some of our competitors to try and make our industry look bad, but
it's the best industry in the world.
Yeah.
They got me.
Yeah.
I saw some videos on it.
I was like, oh my God, what are they doing to the ground?
What are they doing to the earth?
It looks horrible.
They're all, it's, it's all bullshit.
It, we have the, it looks horrible.
Yeah.
But I mean, it, it, that's just a superficial look at it.
You, I'll take you for a tour in the oil sands.
I mean, you'll be amazed we have the best engineers in the world.
And by the way, the first nations people absolutely love it because it's
lifting their people out of poverty.
They're getting enormous job opportunities out of it.
One of our MPs is a former chief, uh, where they took, uh, 18% unemployment,
brought it down to three, balanced their budget.
Another one of my members of parliament in Northern British Columbia negotiated
a $40 billion LNG plant on his, uh, on the Heisla territory.
It's completely eliminating poverty for the first nations there.
And by exporting clean Canadian natural gas, which we can liquefy 25% cheaper
because it's cold as hell in Canada.
Um, they, uh, actually displaced dirty coal overseas.
So instead of Asia burning coal, they're burning clean Canadian gas, uh, that's
delivered by first nations partnership.
So this is the best way to do it makes everybody richer and makes our entire
continent better off.
Well, it seems so simple the way you're laying it out. I don't understand why
this hasn't been implemented.
Yeah, this is, this is the story of my life. Uh, it's frustrating.
Is it, but it's, if it, is it that simple? Is it really that this is what's
holding everything up?
The bureaucracy and the, the time it takes for permits and yeah, like a lot of
things.
Regulations.
We have the same thing in housing. And, and so do you, like, if you look at you
look at California, California is terrible.
Like, why is there such a housing shortage in California? It's because it takes
forever to get a permit.
And there's always bureaucracy standing in the way. And it totally screws over
the working class youth who can't find a place to live because they're not
being built.
And, uh, we have that challenge in Canada as well. So that's why I proposed
ideas to cut the bureaucracy and the taxes so that we can build affordable
homes for our youth.
Because right now we have a whole generation that can't afford homes.
And that was one of the biggest issues I ran on. Home ownership is necessary
for family formation, for civil peace and society where, you know, everybody
feels like they have a piece of the pie.
We need to expand home ownership. But to do that, you've got to get the
government gatekeepers out of the way, speed up the permits, free up the land,
cut the development taxes.
So let's assume that you got an office. How much time would it take to start
implementing these things?
And how quickly would that impact be felt by the Canadian people?
Look, I think a lot of them could move very quickly. There's a lot of projects
that are people that that investors are sitting on, but they don't have
certainty and permits.
So I would unblock that. And I think in the first year, you would start to see
immediate benefits for the working people who'd be getting these jobs.
Some of it would take more and more like a medium term, like the second thing I
would go after is just the inflationary.
spending, which is a big problem all over the Western world. Like people just
can't afford to live.
I don't know if you, you do, do you, you encounter that around here?
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, inflation is crazy.
And it's, I mean, the national debt in America just went up to 39 trillion.
Right. Which is bigger than your GDP.
It's a lot of money.
So, so explain this to me. 50 years ago, a barber and a, a barber and a waitress
could buy a house with a big yard for a dog and raise four kids, meat and
potatoes on the dinner table every night.
And now an accountant and a lawyer can't do that. Why is that?
Well, there's a lot of spending and a lot of making money.
A lot of just turning, you know, just making dollar bills with nothing behind
it, nothing to back it.
This is the biggest fraud perpetrated on the working class people in the last
hundred years.
Printing money is just insane. It's just the, the idea you just print more
money. It's like, and people go, okay.
Well, it looks, it looks painless at first, but if you have an economy with 10
apples and $10, it's a buck an apple.
You double the number of dollars to 20, but you still only have 10 apples.
Well, all of a sudden it's two bucks an apple. It's not that the cost of apples
has gone up.
It still costs the same resources to grow the, and pick the apples.
It's that the, the price has gone up because the value of the money has gone
down.
Right.
So in America, over the last 55 years, you've doubled the number of homes in
America from both 70 million to 150 million.
You know how much the money supply has grown? 30 times.
So you have twice the homes, but 30 times the cash.
So what's happened? Housing costs have gone up 15 fold in 55 years.
And now an entire generation of kids can't afford homes. We have exactly the
same problem in Canada.
This is the biggest wealth transfer from the working class to the, the elites
from, uh,
I say the have nots to the have yachts and Washington and wall street love it
by the way,
because it inflates the stock market, inflates the bureaucracy. Politicians get
to spend,
CEOs get their stocks, uh, inflated. Um, but it destroys the working people and
we need to get
back to, to hard money. Everything should be getting cheaper by the way. You
know, it takes 80,
60 to 80% less resources to grow food. We grow four times the food on the same
acre,
get four times as much milk from the same cow. We use 80% less water and
fertilizer. So why isn't it
that food is not less expensive? It's because all of those gains are being
erased by monetary inflation.
So it's not that food is more costly. It's that the value, the money we use to
buy it has less
purchasing power. And, uh, we need to do what the Swiss do, which is they don't
print money.
They have balanced budgets. They have almost no deficit and they have almost
zero inflation in
Switzerland. They have the strongest money in the world, the Swiss franc. And,
uh, we would all be
better if we operated like the Swiss when it comes to our money.
So in a real world scenario, it's like you, you take over Canada.
How would you go about implementing this?
You got to cut bureaucracy, consultants, which consume by the way, $26 billion
of spending.
How big is your debt in Canada?
Uh, 1.3 ish trillion.
Oh, that's baby debt.
It's compared to you. You guys are wild, but you know, you've gotten away with
it because the dollar,
the American dollar is the reserve currency. So all of these countries prop up
the value of the
U S dollar by keeping it on reserve. Um, better hope that doesn't change.
Yeah. Better hope.
And we, we, we don't have that luxury. And so, uh, but we do have a lot of debt
and we have a lot,
we have provinces too. They're quite indebted, but, um, I would cut the
bureaucracy.
I would cut a consultants, foreign aid. I'd cut way back on foreign aid. Uh,
the,
we give a corporate welfare, these checks, the corporations, I believe business
should make money
rather than take money. So I would get rid of that. We're giving a lot of money
to fake,
fake refugees. Um, people who come in and don't, uh, actually, are they're not
actually fleeing danger?
Um, like I love real refugees. My wife was a refugee, but I have no time for
people who are
pretending, but they're not really. And what do you mean by pretending to be a
refugee?
How are they doing this? They're not actually endangered in their home country.
So they've come to be declared themselves as students and then wanting to stay
declaring a
refugee status. Oh, and this is common. Yeah, it happens. It happens. And I
mean,
they just want to have a better life. So I don't, I don't begrudge them as
people, but we can't,
we can't spend money on social service, stay enhanced social services, advanced
programs that
we as Canadians don't get for people who are not paying. So you're not opposed
to them being there.
You're opposed to them getting. Well, I'm opposed to them. If, if they're not
real refugees,
they shouldn't be brought in as refugees. I think we have to distinguish
between those people who are
actually in danger in their home country, which is the definition of a refugee.
And someone who just
wants to come, uh, in, uh, in excess of, uh, of their, their proper immigration.
Is this that common that it's actually affecting your economy?
Right now it's a challenge because, um, we had a big number of international
students and temporary
foreign workers that came in and very large numbers in like two or three years.
Um, we were bringing in
about a million people a year, which in America's terms would be 10 million,
like just if you're doing
per capita. And it really caused a housing shortage. Um, like some places where
you have 26 of these
students living in one basement. Um, so we're trying to unwind that now. And
how, how do you do that?
Well, when their work permit and their visitor visa runs out, then we have to
encourage them to, to head back, um, lawfully.
Right. But you don't want to do it ice style.
No, no, I don't think we need to do that. I just think we have to be orderly
and lawful about it.
And is that supported by the Canadian people?
Yes, because we're a very welcoming country. We're a nation of immigrants, but
we're also a nation of
laws. And we, there's a general consensus, like across the spectrum in Canada,
that there, there was
the population growth was too fast for like four or five years. And, uh, so we're,
we're trying to
unwind that now. Um, what are the, what are the other things that you would
have to do to
drop your debt and sort of balance your budget and begin to turn things around?
Well, in addition, so I, I like this idea that actually, believe it or not, the
Clinton,
that bill Clinton and the Republicans did in the nineties in the U S it was
called the pay go law.
It was a very simple principle. Every time the administration wanted to bring
in a new dollar of
spending, they had to match it with a dollar of savings. So there was no extra
net spending
for like eight years. And that's when your government balanced his budget and
paid off
$400 billion of debt. That law lapsed in 2002. And immediately after that,
America went back
into deficits and you haven't emerged. You've been in deficit now for 25 years.
This is about internalizing scarcity. Every creature in the universe, every
bird in the trees,
every fish in the seas has to live with scarcity, maximizing use of scarce
resources.
The only creature who doesn't do that is the politician because he's always
using someone else's
money, right? It's like, oh, I'll just print it or borrow it or tax it. It's
not my money.
And so they routinely show up to their cabinet meetings and say, well, I've got
a new idea.
It's a hundred million dollars. Where are you going to get it? I don't know. We'll
print it.
We'll borrow it. We'll, we'll tax it. Not my money. But if you had a loss and
you can't actually
bring a proposal to cabinet unless you have matching savings to pay for it,
well, then you'd have these
politicians walking up and down the hallways in their departments looking for
waste and like rooting
it out. So instead of making the single mom, the senior or the small business
owner live with scarcity,
I want the politicians and bureaucrats to live with scarcity. And that's what I
would impose by law
on my government. Well, it's just a rational way to deal with the problem. Like
don't spend money
unless you could save money. Exactly. That's how you balance things out. I mean,
Clinton did balance the budget. He did during his time. And people forget that
because we've always
assumed that there's always been this extraordinary debt, but that's not the
case. They're in the 1990s.
I mean, he did a fantastic job at that. Yeah. I mean, it was the Congress was,
was very disciplined as well. And the American people just got fed up and said,
we're not tolerating
these deficits anymore. And, and they imposed scarcity from the center. And by
the way,
the economy boomed because the government was restrained and the free market
economy could just
roar. And that's another part of the equation, by the way, is unlock the power
of free enterprise.
Like this is the 250th anniversary, not just of the declaration of independence,
but also of Adam Smith's wealth of nations, where he basically, for the first
time in human history,
described the free market system. And, um, that was starting to flourish in the
States and in parts
of Europe. And that system basically started to come into place after, you know,
the late 1770s,
the growth since the free market system has came and come into place in, in the
world has been 200 times
faster than it was before because there is the most powerful system for
generating material benefit
for the people. And that's what we need to restore in Canada. I want to make it
the freest economy in
the world. Well, that all sounds amazing. How the hell did you lose?
How can a rational person not vote for that? I mean, you're not saying anything
that's restrictive.
You're not saying anything that is in any way infringing on people's rights or
liberties,
or it just sounds like it's just a hundred percent positive for Canada.
That's what I think. That's my mission. And I think it will be positive. And we'll
get there.
You know, um, Canadians do things through evolution, not revolution. So I'm
just going to keep pushing
my ideas. And I think that I think overwhelmingly we'll, we'll win the next
election.
Well, it sounds like I just can't see how someone would listen to what you're
saying
and say, I find fault in this other than like the potential environmental
impact of extracting
resources. I could see how a lot of the greenies would get like really upset
and get their panties
in a bunch about that and be very incredulous to the idea that you're going to
protect the environment
while you're extracting all these resources. But if you could lay it all out
and also lay out this enormous
economic impact and how it would uplift impoverished communities, how it would
completely change the
economic landscape of the country. It just only makes sense. That's why I'm baffled.
Well, listen, the people render their judgment, but I, it means I have to do a
better job of,
uh, proselytizing. What were the criticisms of you? Like, what did your
opponent say that like
people that resonated with people? Um, what were they trying to say?
It was funny because they all disagreed with my ideas and they said, these are
all very scary ideas.
Scary. And then they said, first of all, they said, they said that I had no
policies. Then they said,
uh, they're scary policies. And then they stole my policies right before the
election. So, uh,
uh, but Hey, listen, if the government that's in power now steals all my ideas
and does the things
I want to do, then I, then I've won. That's why I came here. I didn't just do
it so that I could have
the, my name on the door. So I keep saying to the prime minister, steal my
ideas. Right. But he doesn't
want to, well, he, uh, I, I won't criticize him on foreign soil, but we'll, uh,
but, uh, good for you.
Yeah. I mean, uh, we have a mutual respect Canadian thing to do. So polite. You
know,
that's what I'm saying about Canadians. They're so polite. It's funny. Your
security guy was talking
about the Canadian standoff of, uh, you know, when you get to a door, you go
first. No, you go first.
No, you go first. You can stay there all day. I actually looked this up the
other day. Ontario
actually has an apology act. It's a law that defines the apology because we
always say sorry
in Canada. So they wanted to clarify that sorry is not a legal admission of
guilt. So like,
if we get into a car accident, I say, Oh, sorry, man, I was terrible at your
bumper. It doesn't
mean that I'm guilty. So it's actually in law. There's so many apologies. Even
if somebody else
screwed up, you say, sorry. That's funny. That's so Canadian. But you know, the,
the great thing
about Canada is we've always sorted our shit out peacefully. Like the, the, the
Protestants and
Catholics tore each other's eyeballs out in Europe for like hundreds of years.
And then we came to
Canada and just got along. And, and that's the great thing about Canada is like
you can come, you know,
Muslims and Jews, Christians, uh, and, uh, uh, sorry, um, Protestants and
Catholics, uh, Hindus and Sikhs.
They come to Canada and they just get along. They live on the same streets.
Eventually we all
start intermarrying and, uh, it's a, it's a great thing about Canada, but it
really is a great melting
pot, you know? Yeah. And, and like folks get to keep their, their cultures,
like, uh, at the same
time as, uh, blending into the Canadian identity. Like my, my wife's from
Venezuela. And, uh, so like,
you know, oftentimes I like, I'm, I'm in the house and there's like 16 Latinos
and they're all speaking
Spanish. I have no idea what the hell's going on. And, uh, they have this food,
it's called the
jackass. And I said, you know, when they start, start cooking this stuff, I
thought my wife,
I said to my wife, did, did your mom just call me a, a jackass? Um, cause that's
what it sounded like.
I don't speak any Spanish, but. You should probably learn. I should now. They're
yapping in your house.
You should know what they're planning. It's a great, uh, my kids are starting
to learn Spanish. So
I'm going to be outnumbered. Yeah. You better learn it. Yeah. Yeah. Bye. Um, so
what else is, uh,
an issue in Canada that you would like to fix? Um, we need those napkins. We
have to, we got a,
I got an allergy I'm dealing with. We, we got to toughen up our justice system.
Um,
we, it got way too soft. And, uh, what's wrong with your justice system?
Basically bail. Um,
I mean, we all believe in the basic principle that you're innocent until
approved,
proven guilty. But if someone's convicted,
as have like 150 prior convictions and they're newly arrested on their latest
crime,
yeah, I don't think we should be released, releasing them onto the streets. And,
uh,
so we got two lacks on bail. So there's now a consensus in Canada that you
should have severe
restrictions on repeat offenders. Like in Vancouver, they had to arrest the
same 40 guys,
6,000 times in one year, 40 guys, 6,000 arrests. So they're basically being
released within
hours of their latest arrest. So we're, we're, we now brought built a
bipartisan,
a multi-partisan consensus to fix that. And, uh, we're pushing to toughen the
bail system,
um, and ensure that it's the repeat offenders, a tiny group. We don't have a
lot of criminals
in Canada, but they do a tremendous amount of crime. So if you take them off
the street,
you put them in prison, you can basically reduce the crime rate dramatically.
Well,
we probably have more crime percentage wise in America, but it's still a small
percentage of
the population that commits the crime, but it's the same issue. Like in New
York city,
it's extraordinary. The amount of people that are repeat offenders and they
just let them go in
California, no cash bail, let them go. It's like, it is bananas and it doesn't
make any sense. And it
doesn't make anybody help. I understand you want to be empathetic. And I
understand these narratives
that the prison system is racist and the justice system is racist. And these
people never been given a
great shake in life. Well, if you want to fix that, start in these impoverished
neighborhoods,
establish community centers, establish better education, fund that, but don't
let hardened
criminals back on the street when they, they're habitual. They've been, if you've
been arrested 40,
50 times, it doesn't seem like you're getting any better. So whatever
rehabilitation process they have
going on there, that's not working. So keep doing the same thing over and over
again. Unless you like
crime, I don't understand why you would do that. This has been, you know, it's
imposed by these so-called
experts. They tell, oh, we've done all these studies that show that the soft on
crime policies work,
but everywhere it's been tried. It's been an absolute disaster anywhere in the
Western world. We have a
town called Penticton. There's one guy who the police can tell by looking at
the crime rate, whether he's
been in jail or not. When he comes out of jail, the crime rate for the entire
town of Penticton actually
goes up. That's so crazy. But you just keep them in prison. That seems so
simple to solve. It's like,
there's so many of these problems with government that it's just like rational
thinking. Exactly.
One of the great interviews that I loved about you, you were eating an apple
and you were talking to
this guy who was being completely ridiculous. You were asking him to define the
issues that he had.
And it was so funny. It was like, this is what happens when a rational person
meets a person with
empty narratives. It was such a weird moment because you just kept eating that
apple. It was such a,
it was such a good apple. It was so good. That's the thing. And the thing is, I
didn't even realize
I was being taped. I thought it was a print interview. Oh, that's hilarious.
That's why
I think I was so relaxed. Uh, but so I'm in the most beautiful place in the
world. If you ever,
if you haven't been at the Okanagan, it's unbelievable. Like it's lakes, it's
mountains,
it's nice dry weather and there's orchards and vineyards there. Like you'd love
it. And so I'm in an
apple orchard and I'm walking around just talking with people and my staff says,
this reporter wants
to do an interview and I'm enjoying the apple. He comes up, starts asking
questions. Nobody who was
there thought this was a moment. Like we'd have thought nothing of it. We
dumped the whole thing.
My, my staff unbeknownst to me was recording my whole walk. We dumped this 50
minute video on the
internet and no one noticed it. And like three weeks later, my phone blows up
and people say,
Hey, how about that apple? I'm like, what is he, what are they talking about?
This apple thing.
And then, you know, within three days, everybody's talking to me about this
damn apple that I had
almost forgotten about eating. So weird things. Well, that conversation sort of,
it embodied this issue. It really did because you have rational thinking and
empty narratives colliding
right while you're eating an apple. Like you're so casual about it. You're
actually eating an apple,
which was so perfect. I mean, you couldn't, if, if you planned on, like, if you
had a PR team,
I think you should be eating an apple. They'd be like, Ooh, I like it. So he's
casual. He's eating
fruit. It's healthy. You know, it was totally coincidence. Like out of nowhere,
not planned
and not even noticed. Like I said, no one there thought this was going to be a
moment. We just like
totally forgot about it. Well, it made it in America. It was viral in America.
And we were like,
how come that guy's not the prime minister? What the hell's going on? Well, in
the meantime,
you can buy Ambrosio apples from the South Okanagan. I'm really plugging a lot
of sales for the Canadian
economy today. You know what I found out about Canadian, um, maple syrup? What's
that? It is
actually a superfood and it is actually better for you than honey. Is that
right? Yeah. It contains a
bunch of polyphenols and a bunch of like healthy nutrients. I always thought
maple syrup was just a
guilty pleasure. You poured on pancakes. No, it's a totally Canadian thing. It's
really good for you.
So you take it before your workout? No, no. I just watched a Instagram video
yesterday. Somebody
sent it to me and I was like, what is this? We'll have to send you a bunch of
maple syrup from Canada.
Oh, I've got a bunch. I've had a bunch of Canadian friends send me some. We
actually have a maple syrup
reserve in Canada, like a reserve of, of excess stockpiles. Like oil reserve?
Well, we don't have an oil
reserve. This is something I want to change. I want to have an oil reserve, but
I also want to keep the
maple syrup reserve because we're Canadians after all. There's nothing more
Canadian than that.
Well, it's so delicious. I can't believe it's good for you. Make sure that's
true.
I mean, in what way is it true?
Uh, are there nutrients? Let's put it into perplexity. No, I did. Our sponsor.
I compared it versus honey. I'll give you what it showed. I'm not saying it's
like better.
Maple syrup and honey are both sugary, but maple syrup is slightly lower in
calories.
glycemic index has more minerals like mag, mag-nase, mag-nase, and calcium,
while honey is a bit higher in
calories, has a slightly stronger impact on blood sugar. Well, this guy on
Instagram was very convincing.
I wish I saved it. I think it's convincing. I think you should go with it. I'm
in it.
Yeah. I'm done.
Stick with it.
Tastes better, too.
Yeah, it's the best.
Yeah.
It's fantastic. Put that with a little bit of Greek yogurt, your protein.
Oh, yeah.
There you go.
That's what I do. Greek yogurt.
And maple syrup. Maybe we'll start a trend. Absolutely.
Because everybody uses honey on their yogurt.
No, maple syrup from Canada.
All right.
Because if it's not from Canada, it's not the real deal.
Well, there's a lot of fake syrup, right?
There's a lot of junk out there. Yeah.
When you go to a pancake house and they have that stuff in the little plastic
cups, that's garbage.
Corn syrup crap.
Yeah, you don't want to have that manufactured crap.
Well, that's the case with honey as well. I had a woman in here once that was a
beekeeper,
and she was explaining to us that a lot of honey is not actually honey. They
water it down with corn syrup.
There's so much shed in our food these days.
Yes.
I believe in eating clean.
A hundred percent. Well, I mean, that was one of the primary factors for me
supporting this
administration was RFK Jr. and this Make America Healthy Again initiative.
Because I think,
you know, I had my friend Brigham Bueller yesterday from Ways to Well on and,
you know,
we hammered this many times over and over again, but people need to hear it. We
spend more money on
healthcare and we're sicker than we've ever been before. And we have more
chronic illness and we have
more money. None of it makes any sense. It's completely ridiculous. And it's
obvious that people
are eating the wrong things. And there was so much outrage of him implementing
all these healthy choices
and trying to get rid of dyes that are illegal in Canada. Like the same cereals
that the same
factory sells in Canada, they sell with natural dyes. And in America, we demand
them to be more
colorful. So we put poison in them.
Really? Yeah. Is that no, you know, what, what are the, uh, what do you think
are the
dietary habits that are making people in the Western world sick right now? Like,
is it the dyes? Is it the sugars? Is it the carbs? Like what, what's getting
people?
There's a lot of things. First of all, it's processed foods. Processed foods is
a, an enormous
percentage of a lot of Americans diets, things with massive amounts of preservatives
in them. And that's,
that's like, if you want like a general guideline, eat real food, eat real eggs,
real vegetables,
real meat, real fish, you'll be healthier. As soon as you start having things
that can sit on a shelf
forever, except things like rice and, you know, normal beans, like things that
are dry, that makes sense,
they could sit there. But if something can just sit on a shelf for a long
period of time and you consume it,
how is it just not rotting? Exactly. I'm sure you've seen where they've taken a
McDonald's Big Mac
and they've just let it sit, taken a cheeseburger in a box and the guy pulls it
out like 10 years
later. It looks exactly the same. That's not food. The bacteria didn't want to
eat it. They looked at
it and they were like, I'm not eating that. If bacteria doesn't eat it, mold
doesn't eat it,
that's crazy. Why are you eating it? Like there's something in it preventing
the mold from growing.
What is that? Well, that stuff fucks with your gut bacteria. It's, it's
terrible for your body.
And empty calories. And we, we consume an enormous amount of processed food in
this country.
And if you want to be a healthier person, eat real fruit, eat real food, eat
real vegetables,
eat real meat. It's that simple. Just that, that would fix 90% of our problems
when it comes to
people's diets. And we, when my, my wife once looked at some of the baby
formula we had and she said,
she looked on it, she said, there's no expiry date on this. This never goes bad.
That's crazy. That can't be, that can't be a good thing.
Right. It means while breast milk, you have to freeze, right?
Exactly. Yeah.
So, uh, and then what about on the, like the fitness side, what do you think we
can do?
I mean, beyond you, you've done a lot just talking about it and with your, the
size of your audience,
you've probably got a lot of people off the couch, but what policies do you
think we could
push that would get people physically active, working out, moving again?
Well, the real important thing is community. The easiest way to get fit is to,
to get around a
bunch of other people that are also involved in the same endeavor, right? If
you have a bunch of
friends that are unhappy with the way their life is like, just go walk together,
say, Hey guys,
let's all go for a walk after dinner together. Let's all decide like as a
neighborhood to go walk,
just walk for a half an hour after your meals. It'll lower your glycemic index.
It'll change your
body. It'll make you healthier. You'll feel better. It just does so much for
you, just movement and
activity. And if you're involved with a group of people that are also inclined
in the same direction,
they're also trying to get better, trying to get fit, then you kind of, you're,
you know,
you feed off of your atmosphere, right? People imitate the people that are
around them and you
get support from the people that are around them, you know, make it a little
healthy competition,
you know, who can, you know, do the most exercise and who can do the most, you
know, whatever it is,
like whether it's a sport or whether it's a game or whether it's just something
that you enjoy
doing that's physically, physically taxing slightly. It doesn't have to be a
crazy kettlebell workout or
a jujitsu class. Just take a, just take a walk. Just, just if the world, if the
United States or Canada
or anybody that's got problems with their health, just decided to start walking
every day for 20
minutes, it'll change your life. And then add things to it. Add some bodyweight
squats, add some pushups,
skip a little rope, do something, take a yoga class. It'll change your life.
Right. Absolutely.
You need activity. The human body has needs and when it doesn't, those needs
are not met and you don't,
your biological requirements aren't met, you get, develop anxiety, you get
overweight, your,
your muscles atrophy, your bone density decreases, you can't open up a jar
anymore. There's all these
problems that could be solved with just simple movement and activity. You don't
have to become a fitness
nut. You have to become a gym rat. You just do something and that alone and
then change what
you eat. Drink more water. Stop drinking soda. Stop, stop drinking so much
alcohol. You know,
stop eating processed food. If we just slowly but surely get this in people's
heads. For the longest
time, people didn't think there was anything wrong with eating processed food.
They didn't think there
was anything wrong with, they thought sugar just gave you extra calories. That's
it. They didn't realize the
catastrophic health consequences of consuming all this sugar, the increase in
type two diabetes,
all these problems that people are having, that people are having because of
poor diet.
So what's your, what's your theory though, on how that, why did that happen?
Why did,
what caused millions of people to shift their diets away from good, wholesome,
real food towards the
processed garbage? Well, first of all, marketing, right? Um, and availability,
right? The, the, the,
they always say the center of the grocery store is what you should avoid
because the center is all the
stuff that does need to be refrigerated, right? Everything on the outskirts,
all the vegetables
and the fruit, the meats, the milk, that's all the stuff that's healthy because
it has to be refrigerated
because if it's not, it goes bad. Things that can just sit on a shelf, but
things that sit on a shelf
forever, those are the things that are the easiest to profit from because you
don't have to worry about
storage. You don't have to worry about refrigeration when you're processing or
when you're moving them and
transporting them. You know, just education is the most important thing because
there's a lot of people
that don't know how much their diet impacts them. And then there's also the
problems that happen in
this country where the sugar industry literally bribed scientists to pass the
blame on saturated fat
and pretend that this was the cause of all these heart issues that people were
having and all the obesity,
that it was just fat. So then people started eating all these seed oil rich
foods like mayonnaise, or excuse
me, like margarine and, you know, and corn oil and canola oil, all this. When
it's better just to have
tallow or butter. Yes. It's like natural food. Your body knows what to do with
it. Beef is like a superfood,
a nice fatty piece of beef. Best thing you can eat. It's so good for you. You've
got iron, you've got fat,
you've got protein and creatine. It's all packed in that one superfood. It is.
And people, there's a lot
of people that live very healthily off a carnivore diet and that astounds
people. They don't understand
it because they've been pushed into this idea. Well, one of the things they did
in America that's great
is they reversed the food pyramid. Our food pyramid was all grains at the
bottom, was all wheat and grains,
which is like, there's nothing wrong with eating that as long as you're being
smart about it. You
don't eat too much of it. But if that's your primary diet, like guess what?
Your insulin's going to spike.
You're going to be hungry all the time. You're going to get fat. This is not
good. It's not good to eat.
When I cut the carbs out and I went basically, uh, into ketosis, um, I felt
great because instead of
having all the ups and downs, when my blood sugar was down, when you're in ketosis,
you, um, you basically
live off your fat stores. Yes. You have like a consistent flow of energy
whenever you need it.
Cause I've obviously, I've got some here and, and so, uh, I, I feel lighter. I
have to sleep less now.
I don't have to sleep as much because I don't, I don't eat the big, heavy carbs.
I cheat once in a
while, but, but the big, heavy carbs that your body breaks down, you gotta, you
gotta sleep more to
work through all those heavy carbs. So you feel it when you eat them. I love
carbs. Don't get me wrong.
Like I love, I'm Italian. I love spaghetti. I love pizza. I love Italian subs.
I love them,
but I eat them sparingly. And when I eat them, I feel it. I feel it. Like it's
amazing why you're
eating it. And then you're like, oh, you got hit with a tranquilizer dart. It's
just not good. It's not
good for you. If I eat a steak, I feel great. If I eat a steak, I don't feel,
uh, I don't feel in any
way tired after I'm done. I don't feel exhausted, like completely full. Also,
they have a high satiety
rate. Like if you eat just steak, you're only going to eat what you need. Like
this, your body knows
when to stop. But if there's mashed potatoes next to the steak and spaghetti
next to the steak and
bread and all these other things, you're just going to keep eating and then
cake and butter and ice,
or not butter, but like cake and ice cream and all this other, you're going to
keep eating and you're
going to consume excess calories. But beef is really expensive now. Like it's
really hard to put a steak on your plate. Uh, these for the average guy, it's,
it's insane. It's twice
as expensive as a pork in Canada right now. Well, there's also this dumb
narrative that cows are
responsible for climate change, which is just absolutely insane. And whoever
started promoting
that needs to go to jail because it's, you've done a terrible disservice to
people, especially regenerative
farming that's, uh, you know, actually sequesters carbon. Absolutely. And it's,
it's healthy for
you. No, the farming, uh, the ranchers in my area are fantastic. They produce
an incredible product.
We've got this, the, the North America has the smallest cattle herd since 1951
this year.
That's not very small herd. And that's why it's so hard to get beef. Why is
that?
Um, I think, uh, I think there's been a demand spike in the last couple of
years. Um, beef prices
were low for long. So a lot of ranchers got out of it. I just said, we can't, I
can't stay in this
business losing money every year. And then all of a sudden prices started to go
up and, uh, and moods
have changed a lot on beef even in the last three, four years. So now they're
trying to keep up with the
demand. But, um, I'm like, I'm happy to see the ranchers doing well, but I'd
sure like to see
middle-class families to be able to afford to have beef again. Um, but you know,
my theory on one of
the reasons why the marketing has shifted towards all this processed crap. And
this goes back to my
obsession, which is inflation because instead of just raising the prices, they
downgrade the quality of
the food, they strip out the nutrients and they inject garbage into our food.
Uh, the, the companies
do that is ultimately less nutritious, but it, the price tag doesn't
necessarily look like it's changing.
So it's one of the more insidious ways that the system is able to charge you to,
to, to pass
inflationary costs on without you seeing it in that, the price tag that that's
underneath the product.
They also engineer food to be compulsive. Like you're more compulsively.
Is that right?
Yeah, sure. Especially like chips and stuff like that in America.
What country do you think does nutrition the best around the world?
Well, that's a good question. Um, well, Japan has one of the lowest obesity
rates, right?
And when you look at Japanese food, like, what is it? It's like fish and rice
and vegetables. And it's,
it's, they don't use glyphosate. I don't think, I think, I think the way they
process their wheat
is very different than ours. You know, we have a higher glycemia. We, we have
higher gluten
in our wheat because of like, we have more complex glutens in our wheat. So we
have higher yield.
And then on top of that, they dry all the wheat out with glyphosate at the end,
which is fucking terrible for you. And they were trying to ban that in America,
but then
Trump passed an executive order, uh, stopping it. So this is one of the things
that Kennedy kind of ran on
is that he wanted to stop the ubiquitous use of glyphosate. Okay. And
especially glyphosate,
you know, used with wheat to dry it out. So it's not used, uh, as an herbicide,
it's used to dry out the wheat at the end so that it doesn't get moldy, which
is crazy. You're spraying
poison on wheat. And most Americans, if you test them, have glyphosate in their
blood,
you know, and the apologist will say, Oh, but it's at safe levels. Well, we don't
even really
know what that means. You were talking about decades and decades of consuming
this stuff.
That can't be good. I mean, it literally kills plants. It destroys gut bacteria.
It can't be good.
It would, would be better when you eat overseas. Like if I eat pasta or bread
in, in Italy, it,
you feel better. It doesn't kill you like it does in America. It doesn't like,
Oh, you don't get that
same feeling. Interesting. I didn't know. I don't want to think about glyphosate,
but, um, one of the
things that do you guys use glyphosate in Canada, I don't know anything about
it. I feel bad saying
that, but I should do my homework on that one. Well, we have corn that's
engineered to survive
glyphosate. We have roundup ready corn. So, so that you could spray glyphosate
on the corn that kills
all the other things that you don't want growing. Okay. But how is that? How
can that be good? Like
most, like they, they did a test of, uh, California wines and what was the
number? It was like,
some preposterous number of California wines tested positive for glyphosate.
Like in the high 90s,
I think. Okay. Which is just nuts. Yeah. I don't know anything about glyphosate.
I have to admit,
you've piqued my curiosity. The problem is in America, our food system is
entirely dependent on
it at this point, you know, they want to change it. And so there's a lot of
strategies. One of them is
they're, they, they have these machines that use lasers and these lasers go
over a field that actually
target the weeds. So instead of spraying poison on them, they just zap these
weeds and they can
identify the difference between the weed and the crop. Really? Yeah. That's
incredible. Yeah. The
wine was 10 out of 10 tested, but this is- 10 out of 10. I was looking at the
Japanese obesity thing.
They have an interesting law that they put in place in 2008 where I believe it
says workplaces have to
measure people's wastes of adults over 40 to find out if they're potentially
overweight. Wow.
Those people don't get fined. The companies get fined. So they have to then
provide them counseling,
diet advice, exercise guidance, et cetera. Wow.
And they also use a lower BMI than we do. There's, it starts at 25. It says it's
because they have a
higher risk in Asian populations for, uh, obesity. Interesting. I wonder why
that is.
I wonder if that's because of a lot of rice consumption. Way lower, four per
six, four point,
four to six percent compared to 42%. Wow. That's crazy. Their obesity rates are
four to six percent
and we're 42. 42 is nuts. 42 is so crazy. I find out what the Japanese are
doing.
My next stop has got to be Tokyo. Yeah. Well, they eat healthy food, you know,
and that,
but that does make sense. I mean, implementing something like that, it sounds
very restrictive,
you know? I mean, I don't want to tell a guy he can't have a gut. Like I have a
lot of friends that are
fat and I love them to death. I'd like them to be healthy, but I wouldn't, you
know, I don't
believe you should have that kind of control over people. No. I think you
should encourage healthy
behavior. I don't think you should mandate it. Yeah. We need, we need carrots,
not sticks. Yeah.
Carrots, literally. Literally. But the, the system is like, um, you know,
I think of the opioid thing. That's an incredible story, really. That's a
horrible story. Um, that's a
horrible story. And you know, the fact that no one's going to jail for that is
infuriating.
They should. What they did and what the, the deception that they use to pretend
that that stuff
is not addictive, that it's not the same as heroin is just absolutely atrocious.
And the fact that
they got away with it and that the Sackler family, just that one family, I don't
know if you've ever seen
the Netflix docudrama series. Yeah. Painkill or what was it? Was it called painkiller?
They're the guys from Purdue, right? Purdue pharma. Yeah. I think they were
Purdue pharma if I'm not
mistaken. I mean, how many lives were destroyed by that? Well, a half a million
ended in the US.
Yeah. At least 50,000 in Canada. We lost, we lost more people in the last 10
years to opioid overdoses
than we lost fighting in the second world war. Oh my God. That's so crazy. And
we, you know,
these companies, I mean, it started in the States with Purdue and, uh, a number
of others where they
basically started lying to the system and paying, they actually paid bonuses to
distributors for every
overdose they caused. They tracked the overdoses and then paid bonuses to
distributors because that was
an indicator of how successfully they were pushing the drugs onto doctors and
pharmacists and the
system. It all came out in the, in the court, uh, because there was a huge
lawsuit and they, the
companies had to pay $50 billion because of an American government lawsuit
against them, but they
actually paid bonuses for overdose rates. That's true. It's wild. And they,
they basically, they were
very, very strategic. They said, we're going to go to working class
neighborhoods where there's huge
unemployment. So, you know, in the rust belt of America where people were out
of work and they
obviously had some minor industrial injuries and said, you know, this will
solve every ache and pain,
take Oxycontin and it felt great when they first started taking it. And then it
spread into Canada
as well. And then it mutated in from Oxycontin into fentanyl, which is a
hundred times more powerful
than heroin. It can stop your, your lungs in 15 seconds, just absolutely deadly.
And, uh, we,
you know, these companies, these dirt bag companies should be paying hundreds
of billions of dollars to
cover the treatment and recovery of the people whose lives have been ruined by
this.
Well, it's just insane that they only had to pay a percentage of the amount of
money that they
profited. It is insane. They should have gone to jail. They should have, they
should have had to pay,
first of all, give all the money back. Yeah. I mean, what you did was
unbelievably evil.
Absolutely. And you were allowed to profit from it, which is crazy.
For years. Even the Sackler family,
the amount that they got fined was a small percentage of what they actually
made.
I don't know how people live with themselves when they do that. They're sociopaths.
They have to be,
they basically got into the entire system, the healthcare system, the medical
acumen community,
and they pushed these over prescriptions. Um, and then they got this crazy idea
that they pushed in
places like Portland and Seattle and San Francisco, that the government should
start giving out opioids
that are safer than the ones that are on the street as an alternative to keep
people from having
contaminated drugs, which made the problem even worse because those, the, the
addicts would sell those
to kids so that they could buy the harder stuff off the street and it expanded
it even more.
And, um, so one of the things we're focused on, my plan is, is massive
treatment to recovery programs
to get people off drugs. Abstinence-based treatment is incredible. Like it's
very successful
and, uh, we're saving lives now in Canada. You get them in, you get them
counseling, group therapy,
treatment, uh, sweat lodges for first nations, uh, people's, um, physical
exercise is a big part of
it. I went to one treatment center in Saskatchewan and they actually bought
these rusted out weights
and they had, they had the guys like lifting weights and the bureaucrats are
saying, well,
why are you spending money on weights? What does that have to do with it? And
he says,
well, it's been the best thing we had. These guys started to see their biceps
grow
and they're like, I want to look like this. And if I take drugs, I'm not going
to look like this.
So it was one of the best things they did. Um, then you get them into jobs and
treatment. And, uh,
there's one guy that, uh, I met in BC, he, he was going to kill himself. He
drove his car into a brick
wall because he was so ruined by his addiction, but he didn't die. He couldn't
even pull it off.
So he actually went into treatment, turned his life around, started a business.
He's got six employees
and now he's going out on the street and like helping, you know, pulling guys
off the street
and bringing them in and saving their lives. So, uh, it's actually a really
hopeful ending to the story.
If we can get to shift all our resources over to treatment and recovery
services, which is one of my big
objectives. Are you aware of Ibogaine? No. So former Republican governor of
Texas,
Rick Perry is involved in this Ibogaine initiative here in Texas. And one of
the things that they found,
you know, he works very closely with veterans and, uh, you know, obviously a
lot of these guys,
they come back from the war, they have PTSD, they have a lot of pain, they get
addicted to pills,
and then they have an incredibly difficult time getting off of it. And there's
a treatment
called Ibogaine and Ibogaine comes from the Iboga tree. It's, uh, like a
natural psychedelic that has
no recreational use whatsoever. It's not fun. And it's, it's apparently a
brutal 24 hour experience,
but it rewires the brain, stops the pathways of addiction. And just one Ibogaine
treatment, one
session, the amount of people that never go back to using those drugs is in the
80%. Really? When they do two sessions, it's in the nineties. Wow. It's
incredible. So they're
implementing it here. And Rick Perry, who was like a staunch anti-drug hardline
Republican guy,
great guy, but realized from talking to these veterans, maybe you have to have
an open mind
and look at this. We have this blanket term that we use for drugs and we say,
oh, Ibogaine's a drug.
You don't want to take drugs, but this psychedelic, this Ibogaine, apparently
it, it's like
a 24 hour review of your life that in some way, some chemical way rewires your
system and stops
the pathways of addiction. It's like a factory reset. Yes. Wow. Yes. That's
crazy. And so they're
starting to implement it here in Texas and they're going to use it for veterans.
So have they studied
this? Yes. And they've done, is it approved like as a treatment or what? Well,
it's being approved
here in Texas and they're trying to do it in other places. And I know a friend
of mine, my friend,
Ed Clay, he started a center down in Mexico. And the reason why he did it was
because he got hooked on
pills. He hurt his back. He got hooked on pills. He had to figure out how to
get off of it. And he did
one Ibogaine session, got clean. Really? And it was like, I need to educate
people and help people
with this. And we start this system and you know, and it's very successful. I
know multiple people
that have done it and especially veterans that have done it and had profound
changes in their life
because of this. That's amazing. Yeah. And again, there's no recreational use
for this. There's no
chance of abusing it. Okay. It's not fun. Like to get people to do it twice is
very hard. Okay. But
even doing it once, but if you do it, it's incredibly effective, much more
effective than any other form
of therapy. Really? Yes. Okay. Well, I'll have to look out for that one because
we need it. We still
have a challenge up in Canada. I can connect you with Rick Perry. Okay. And he's,
he's, him and Brian
Hubbard are incredible with their, the advocacy and the promotion of this. What
they've done is really
amazing. We got to, we got to get, uh, get people off these drugs and, uh, you
know, we're, we're doing,
we're making some good progress in Canada. Um, our biggest challenges are, are
just the long-term
aftermath of the opioid, uh, problem like you have had down here, but, um, but
like, I think, uh,
I think we can overcome it and, uh, we have to try some new things in order to
get people off these
things. Cause they're, cause it's when you're doing fentanyl, it's, it's
Russian roulette. It could be,
you might not have more than a day to live if you're still taking that stuff.
So it's so dangerous.
And it's in everything. It's in so many different, um, street versions of pills
that people think are
safe. Right. Like Xanax. There's like illegal Xanax, like street Xanax and
there's fentanyl in
them. People take it and they die. Right. Absolutely. I've met so many mothers.
They just come up to me
at my rallies and things and they tell me the story and they show me a picture
and you say, man,
it's a beautiful child. That child looks healthy and smart. And she went to a
party and they were
handing the shit out and there's a high school kid here in town that took a
street Adderall and had
fentanyl in it and he died. Is that right? Yeah. Somebody sold them what he
thought was Adderall.
Look, that's what killed Prince. That's what killed Tom Petty. Adderall?
No, no. Fentanyl. They got street drugs from someone. Like they're both in pain
and they,
they become addicted to the pills. And then they got like a pill from a roadie.
I didn't know that. And took it and died. I didn't know that. Petty, did he
sing, uh,
Last Dance with Mary Jane? Oh, Last Dance for Mary Jane. Right. That's really
sad.
Oh, he's sung a bunch of amazing songs. American Girl. I mean, Tom Petty was a
legend
and died because of fentanyl. Prince is one of the great musical genius of, of
human history.
And fentanyl got him too. Died from fentanyl. Unbelievable.
He had hip pain. He needed a hip replacement. His hip was blown out and he was
in agony all the
time. So he started taking pills and then next thing you know, you're hooked.
And I've had family
members that got hooked on it. Is that right? Yeah. Did they get through it?
One of them didn't. Yeah. I mean, he, he hurt his back doing construction and
started taking pills and
now he's a waste. That's the sad thing. That's the sad thing is it's, they're
good people
and they're not law-breaking people. They're often, it's folks who work in
physically demanding jobs.
They get an injury. Exactly.
And, uh, it's easy to judge, but when you're in excruciating pain and you find
something that makes
it go away, it's understandable.
Also, if you're not educated in these subjects and you just trust the doctor,
you go to a doctor and
the doctor says you need pain medication and then all of a sudden you're on it.
You know, it's a, it's easy to see how people get locked into that and, and
then they can't break
loose. So the pathway to physical addiction is it's so well known and studied.
It's very,
very addictive, which is why it's so horrific that they actually promoted the
fact that these
things are not addictive when they were promoting them.
No, they knew exactly what they were doing. They were absolute crooks. And I'm
hoping we get big
settlements out of them the way you did down here. And I want to put all that
money into treatment
and recovery, get people off these drugs and rescue them. I think we can save
these lives. The
treatment, it works. It's tough. Like the people who go through it, they say it's,
it was the worst
experience of my life to go through that withdrawal, but it can be done and you
come out stronger on the
other side. It can be done. And I think the most important thing is prevention
and education and
letting kids know like, Hey, this is not what you want to get involved with.
You want to have a happy,
successful life. This is going to stop that. This is going to keep you from
having it. This might kill
you and it's definitely going to ruin you. Yeah. But you're right about fitness
though. Cause when I was
young, I hung around with a lot of people who got into a lot of trouble and I
could have ended up there.
The reason I didn't frankly is sports. So I had something else to drive me. So
it's one of the
reasons why we need to get our young people's active in sporting activities
when they're in that age
group, because if you're not giving them an outlet, then they'll end up down
that scary path.
Oh, 100%. And also you realize that if you want to be effective in sports, like
you can't party.
Exactly. It's like, it'll rob you of your vitality. It'll rob you of your
performance.
No, I, when I played hockey and I, I showed up a few times hungover and I was
just
shit like terrible, but, uh, you learn pretty quick that you gotta be on your
game.
So we've got to promote more of the fitness at the, at the, at the youth level
as well.
And, um, and is that happening here is funny. I remember when I came down here,
um, as a 16 year
old, I haven't been here in 30 years. Um, I, uh, we w we got into town and the
people who were hosting
us, uh, we were driving us to their home and we saw the stadium and there's
like 20,000 people.
And it was in Houston. And I said, is that the Cowboys playing? And they said,
no, no,
that's a, that's a high school league. It's like, okay, in Canada, we don't
have high school leagues
with 20,000 people coming out. But, um, but the sports are so massive here.
Oh, football is gigantic here. It's a religion.
Yeah. It's incredible.
It's crazy.
And who do you cheer for by the way?
In, in Texas?
Yeah. For you, you personally?
Well, I, I've got into UT football.
Okay.
I really love, uh, going to the UT games. It's, uh, it's so fun and it's so,
they're so enthusiastic
and they're, they, they just love it. It's like when you're a part of it, when
the touchdowns
get scored and everybody's cheering, it's like, it's, it's so contagious.
Right.
It's really amazing.
And it's just like the enthusiasm they have for it. It's like, you're like, wow,
like,
this is a great, these people love this here. But I've, I've been to high
school football games
and it's the same thing, like packed stadiums for high school football games.
And you're like,
this is nuts, man. These people love their sports.
We're like that for hockey in Canada.
Oh yeah.
It's serious, serious. Like parents are very fixated. And I think, I think it's
actually a
good thing. Some people say, oh, it's terrible. I think it's great to have
parents that are
competitive because they're pushing their kids to be better and more excellent.
And even if they don't
end up as NHL hockey players, it gives them the consp, competitive ed. And I
want us to be a
more competitive society.
Well, when I was a kid, I worked at the Boston Athletic Club. And one of the
people that I,
I was a fitness instructor when I was 19. And one of the people that I worked
with was Bobby Orr.
Oh really?
Yeah. Bobby Orr used to come there and train him. We used to have to help him
get on the VersaClimber machine because his body was so wrecked.
Really?
He had so many surgeries. His knees were so destroyed. He had scars all up and
down. He had
knee surgery back when they were just experimenting.
Right.
You know, they didn't really know how to fix knees. They just cut you open,
screw things back together again, and then it would blow apart again. And then
you'd wind
up having another surgery. So he had many, many knee surgeries and he could
barely walk.
But he was still doing some kind of physical activity?
Oh yeah. He was playing racquetball.
He was, how old was he at the time?
Oh, this was 1986. So, I mean, geez, that's like what, 40 years ago.
Uh huh. Yeah. So he was, you know, he was probably in his fifties, forties or fifties.
He was, but he was, he could barely walk. I mean, he, his knees didn't
straighten out.
Really?
They, they were always like slightly bent and they only bent that much. His
range of motion
was very small. So you had to help him get on machines. But the nicest guy.
Right.
Like you couldn't believe he was really there. Like he would walk into the gym
and you're like,
oh my God, that's really. Yeah. As I was 19, I never met a famous person. And I
was like,
that's Bobby Orr.
Absolutely.
This is nuts. But it also made me realize like, boy, knee surgery is no joke.
Like this guy was
like an incredible athlete and now he can't even straighten his leg out.
Yeah. It's all temporary. You got to take care of yourself.
Yes.
Do you, do you have like residual injuries from fighting back in the day?
Yeah. Yeah. I've had three knee surgeries, two reconstructions.
Was that from Taekwondo?
Yeah. And Jiu Jitsu. One of, one of my ACL injuries was from Jiu Jitsu.
And what, like what injuries are the most common in Jiu Jitsu?
Knees, backs, necks, shoulders. Those are the big ones. Elbows.
Is that because of the, the, the, the arm bars and all that stuff?
Yeah. Not tapping. That's a big one. A lot of,
a lot of guys get hurt just because their ego, because they don't want to tap.
And you don't, you don't strike me as the type
of guy who taps very quickly.
Well, when I was younger, I was really stupid and I wasn't into tapping.
Right.
But, uh, as I got older, I got a lot smart.
Unfortunately, I got a lot better. So I wasn't like in a situation where I had
to tap a lot.
Right.
But if I did, I did, I just tapped. And that's the smart thing to do.
And I would tell people, treat it like you're playing basketball.
Don't treat it like it's your life or death.
Right.
The game is life or death. The game is if a guy gets you in an arm bar, he's
essentially breaking
your arm. If he breaks your arm, he can kill you. Right?
Right.
That's the game. But don't treat it like that. Treat it like you can tap and
keep going.
Or you can not tap and your arm's going to be destroyed maybe for the rest of
your life.
Right.
And I've seen that happen with people where their forearm snaps and they have
to have plates in it.
And then it's a chronic injury for the rest of their life.
Right. Yeah. No, I can imagine that. And what about in Taekwondo? Like you told
the story once
about how you really clocked a guy. I think it was a real kick or something.
Yeah.
And that like freaked you out.
That changed my whole outlook on fighting because I realized that could happen
to me.
And I had knocked people out before, but I'd never knocked anybody out where
they didn't get up.
Like usually they get up and they're wobbly and, you know, they get sat down
and, you know,
medics take care of them. And, you know, after a while they're walking around.
And this guy had never got up and I never really got over that. I never had the
same
lust for hurting people because it was just, I was young, you know, I was 19.
And when you're 19,
you think you're invincible or you don't, you don't think about the consequence.
I knew I could get hurt.
I've been hurt before. I've been kicked really hard and punched really hard
before. I knew I was vulnerable,
but I didn't think there was going to be anything permanent.
Did the guy ever get out of the hospital?
I don't know. Really?
I don't know what happened to him.
Well, maybe I don't know what happened to him.
Maybe he'll hear this show and give you a call and say that he's all right.
Oh, no, no. He probably don't want to talk to me.
Well, your spinning back kick is incredible. I saw you and
GSP doing that video where you were showing him how to do the back kick.
Yeah.
Did he ever use that in a fight?
Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did.
He landed it?
Yeah, he used it a lot. It's a thing that like it, you have to almost grow up
doing it.
Right.
You know, unless you're dealing, like John Jones developed it later in his
career.
I saw that.
He's a wizard.
But he kind of like started implementing it like sort of three, two thirds
through his career.
Did you teach him how to do that?
No, no, I did not. He worked with a Taekwondo coach in Albuquerque.
Okay.
And he just really worked on that one technique, specifically when he went up
to heavyweight,
because the guys would be, first of all, less agile and mobile.
And also, it was the kind of technique where you could stop a guy with one shot.
Right.
And when your guy's smaller than most heavyweights, which John is, because he
was a light heavyweight,
so he was fighting at 205 most of his career, and just as a challenge decided
to go up to heavyweight.
But he's so intelligent, he realized, like, I need a one shot that I could put
people away.
So he spent hours and hours every week just going over the spinning back kick.
Really? To the body or the head?
Yeah, the body.
The body.
Yeah.
It's like getting hit by a car.
Right.
There's so much power in that.
You get hit with that.
Like a wheel kick to the head is really difficult to develop.
That's, it's like a fast twitch thing that, it's almost like your body has to
evolve and grow
doing that to really develop the kind of speed that you could pull it off on a
skilled opponent in a fight.
And the accuracy.
Yeah.
Like to try and time that all, that must be incredible.
I mean, there's, there's freak athletes that could pick it up later in life.
There's some people that are just really good at everything.
They just have amazing dexterity and coordination.
And, but for most people you, like I learned it when I was a kid.
So like my body matured doing those things.
Right.
My body matured kicking.
And it became a part of like just my average, like normal movement of life.
Right.
You know, that's amazing.
Yeah.
And, uh, the, the spinning back kick though, uh, is it typically a body kick?
Yeah.
You throw with that?
When you throw it, I've thrown it to the face too, especially a jump spinning
back kick to the face.
Wow.
But, um, Taekwondo, wasn't it really the Koreans that developed so they could
actually kick a man off a horse in war?
Is that why the kicks are so high?
I don't think so.
I think it was just because they were, they're smaller in stature and they
realized that you had to have more powerful kicks.
Okay.
You know, like, cause your legs are always carrying your body around.
There's a lot more mass to your muscles and your legs.
And there's a lot more force you can generate with your kicks.
Did you ever see the fight between Rick Rufus and that Muay Thai guy?
Oh yeah.
Wasn't that incredible?
Yeah, that changed kickboxing.
We've, we've showed that fight a hundred times on this podcast.
It's amazing because it was like Americans versus Thai and-
Well, we didn't really understand leg kicks.
Right.
Because PKA karate, and I found this out later because of Benny Urquidez, who
came in the podcast,
he told me that the reason why they didn't allow leg kicks in PKA karate was
because of Bill Wallace.
So Bill Superfoot Wallace famously had one leg that he kicked with.
It was because his other leg, he had a bad knee.
Right.
And he didn't want anybody kicking his legs.
Interesting.
So he promoted this idea that only have above the waist kicks.
Right.
And that's what we had in America.
Like that's what Jean-Yves Theria fought most of his career.
That's right.
He did.
He fought Rufus himself, actually.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that, that, that was incredible because if you looked at the, the art form,
Rufus was
so much more beautiful to watch than the Thai guy.
He came in, he, he broke the guy's jaw in the first round.
I think.
Hey, he knocked him down a few times.
Yeah.
Once or twice.
He knocked him down a couple of times, I believe, but it was, Rick was amazing.
And the guy just kept chopping his leg.
And then I think he, he went out in a, in a stretcher because his leg was
busted in like
nine places or something.
He didn't know what to do.
He didn't understand it.
What was really interesting is his brother, Duke became a Muay Thai world,
world champion
after that fight.
Was that the, was that the, the guy who was at the fight commenting after the
fight?
Yes.
Yes.
I remember that.
He was saying it doesn't take any skill.
There's no skill.
Yes.
I remember that.
He was embarrassed by that later in his life because he became one of the top
MMA trainers.
Really?
Yeah.
And he, and he took on Muay Thai.
Yes.
Well, he became a Muay Thai world champion and he developed Rufus sport, which
is a great
gym in Milwaukee, a top gym developed world champions like Anthony Pettis.
So he was, uh, you know, he was a pioneer.
It was one of the guys that had to figure it out.
And, you know, he spent time in Thailand.
They all, they all learned it.
They had to learn because it was the best place in Thailand to go.
Is it Phuket?
Is it Bangkok?
Like where do you go?
Oh, there's so many good places.
Thailand's the real motherland of Muay Thai, obviously.
And it's like, you know, Phuket's amazing.
Bangkok's amazing.
I mean, there's so many amazing gyms that are in, uh, in Thailand.
They're tough guys.
There's whole strips in Phuket.
My wife and I were there on vacation once and we just stumbled on this whole
street.
And, uh, you could do, there was sort of American style boxing.
There was, there was a CrossFit type thing.
Then there was that tiger Muay Thai and a bunch of other Muay Thai facilities.
And then there's, there's like street vendors that would, were, were cooking
meals specifically
for people who are there training.
Um, like you could buy a beautiful, you know, hard boiled eggs and, and avocado
and, uh,
chicken strips.
And this is like high protein just catered to the people who come from around
the world
to train for like five, six weeks in a, in a clinic.
And there's people that do it just recreationally.
My friend, Mark, he's a, he's a businessman.
He's in his sixties.
And he did it.
He went over to Thailand.
Did he survive?
Yeah, he trained, he spars all the time.
I saw him the other day.
He had a black eye.
He's in his sixties.
I'm like, what are you doing, man?
So if you were starting from scratch and you wanted to be a MMA, would you do
like,
you go to, uh, Thailand and do a, do like a two months there and then go to Dagestan
to learn how to wrestle?
Is that, would that be the best combo?
If you were starting out, if you're a kid, I would say wrestling.
Wrestling is number one.
Yeah.
That's the most important thing to learn because if a guy can take you down, he
could do whatever
he wants to.
If he could take you down and hold you down and beat you up.
If you don't know how to wrestle, you can't fight.
Right.
You need it at least to learn wrestling, just to understand wrestling, take
down defense.
That's the foundation.
But you did jujitsu later in life, didn't you?
Yes.
Right.
I didn't start jujitsu until I was 29, I think.
Yeah.
And who are you, who do you like right now?
Who do you think is the most interesting fighter to watch these days?
Oh, there's so many.
It's impossible to say the most interesting.
There's a guy, uh, from Spain, Ilya Tupuria.
Yeah.
Yeah, I really like Tupuria.
He's what David Goggins calls uncommon amongst uncommon men.
You want some more coffee?
No, no, thank you.
I'm good.
Thank you.
He's a freak.
I mean, he's just incredibly talented, like weird, weirdly talented.
Like his last three fights, he knocked out three all time greats.
Holloway?
Yeah, Holloway, Alexander, um, uh, and, um, uh, Charles Oliveira.
Right.
So that's crazy.
Volkanovski, who's like one of the greatest featherweights of all time, knocked
him out.
Knocked out Max Holloway, another one of the greatest featherweights of all
time.
Right.
And then Charles Oliveira, one of the greatest lightweights of all time.
Amazing.
He knocks out three guys in three fights.
And there's no one has a resume like that.
And he's not like, as I understand, he was a Greco-Roman guy.
Right.
And he became a boxer later on.
Yeah.
He's just talented.
How do you describe, how do you describe, like, so I'm not, I'm not
knowledgeable in this
area, but the way he, he almost looks like he has a Philly shell.
Mm-hmm.
Is that a Philly shell, what he does with one arm down?
It's a little bit of that.
Well, he has amazing defense.
It's just amazing awareness and he, uh, pattern recognition, technique.
It's, he's like, he's a combination of all things, right?
Incredible confidence, incredible intelligence, insane discipline, work ethic,
but just, uh,
great training methods.
Like, he does everything right.
And then insane confidence.
Like, his confidence is insane.
He, when he fought Charles Oliveira for the lightweight title, he celebrated
his victory
the night before.
He had a party to celebrate the night before the fight and then went out and
knocked Charles
out in the first round and said he was going to knock Charles out in the first
round.
That's incredible.
One punch.
Boom.
But you know what impresses me most about him is how he got up after that kick
to the head
he took.
I know.
That was incredible.
Jai Herbert, yeah.
And you know who else did that was GSP.
Remember when GSP took that head kick and he went down, but he recovered
quickly.
Yep.
And he was talking to me about how, cause I said to him, like in politics, you
get hit,
you get hit.
Right.
And not, not physically if you're lucky, but, but you have to be able to get up
quickly and
react to it.
I asked him, how did you do it?
How did you, like, how does your brain go from taking that kind of hit to
getting back
in the fight and turning it around?
And he said, he like gets two very deep breaths through the nose and then out
through the mouth
and get some oxygen back into your system and focus your mind.
I thought that was an incredible lesson.
Well, I mean, it's all in how you get kicked.
Cause you could just get knocked out.
And then it's over.
It is nothing you could do.
If you get shut off, you get shut off.
Right.
Certain people get shut off.
It just, you just get kicked.
You can get kicked and it kind of glances off of you or you can get kicked and
it just slams
right into the side of your neck and the lights go dark.
Right.
But if you're, if you're still able to recover and think quickly, it's
incredible to have that kind
of pre-programming to read you for a moment like that.
Well, I mean, that's a big part of his, what I was talking about, the, the camp
that he comes from.
I mean, Farah Sahabi is like one of the most intelligent and one of the most
brilliant trainers
in the sport.
Who's this?
Farah Sahabi.
He's the guy from Montreal, TriStar.
So he's the guy who trains his.
Yes.
Trains GSP.
Oh, GSP.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
And I mean, I think that is, that's a big part of why GSP was able to recover.
Like they prepare for everything.
Right.
You know, it's like, there's nothing left to chance.
Like he, he hires people to try to knock George out in training.
That was one of the things he did.
He would give them more money if they could knock him out.
So they would just, so he would be like fully prepared.
Right.
When he was fighting, like they leave no stone uncovered.
Don't you have to like budget though, the number of head shots you take?
Yeah, 100%, but he was pretty confident that George, I mean, it wasn't like he
was doing
this with a beginner.
Right.
He was doing this with a world champion, one of the greatest of all time.
Okay.
He, he, you know, he wanted George to be in danger, you know?
So George had to fight like he was going to fight inside the octagon.
Right.
In danger.
Cause John Jones said somewhere that he had, like every time he gets hit hard
in, in camp,
he's, he said like, I just, that that's part of my brain budget.
That's been taken away.
Well, that's why John's so smart.
He, he, he recognized that.
Yeah.
There's a lot of people that don't think that way.
John also famously won't take a fight on short notice.
Is that right?
He wants to be fully prepared for a fighter.
Even a guy like when he fought Chael Sonnen, um, they offered him a Chael Sonnen
fight on
short notice.
And he said, no, like there is not a time on no disrespect to Chael.
He's a great fighter.
No, there's not a time on this life in this earth where Chael Sonnen is going
to beat John
Jones.
It's just not going to happen.
He could have taken that fight on one day's notice and still beat Chael Sonnen.
He's that much better than him, but he still wouldn't take it.
He's like, no, I'm going to be fully 100% prepared.
That's smart though.
Yeah.
Also he hated Chael.
And so he wanted to make sure that there was not a chance that Chael could do
anything
to him that he would have been able to, wouldn't have been able to do if he was
trained.
Do these guys hate each other?
Sometimes.
Is it, but most of them, do they respect or is it, it depends on the fight?
It really depends.
Like when Ilya Tepuria fought, um, Charles Oliveira, he actually apologized to
him before
the fight.
He said, I'm sorry.
It has to be you.
I really like you.
Kind of crazy.
He's got to be careful.
But he's hated people too.
He's hated people he fought too.
I mean, there's some people that just rub you the wrong way.
There's some people, there's strategies to get inside your head and
with you and for you to fight with emotion.
Well, he had been with, um, Conor McGregor, McGregor.
He really hated McGregor.
He wasn't going to almost didn't let go when the tap happened.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was, that was something else.
Is Conor ever going to come back?
Do you think?
Only Conor knows.
I mean, if he's going to, he has to do it soon.
I mean, I think he's 30.
How old is he now?
37?
He's jacked now, eh?
Yeah.
He's put on some meat.
Well, not anymore.
Oh, he came back down?
He was on the Mexican supplements for a while.
Okay.
Because he was trying to recover from his leg break.
Right.
So when he fought Dustin Poirier.
I remember that.
He got on some stuff to try to recover for that.
I don't know what he got on, but clearly it helped.
He got huge.
He got super jacked.
The problem with getting super jacked like that is then you get addicted to
what got you super jacked.
Because if you're on steroids, you feel like Superman.
You know, you, you feel like you could just run through walls and then you get
off of it.
And now your endocrine system has to kind of catch up to the fact that you've
been giving it
exogenous testosterone for all these months.
And so that takes a long time for you to get back to a normal, healthy level.
So you feel like shit.
It's hard for these guys to get off of steroids.
Right.
I can imagine you get addicted to being, that's right.
I've never done it.
I don't plan on it.
How old is he?
37, almost 38.
That's getting up there.
Who's the oldest fighter that's ever been in the octagon?
Like who's a serious competitor?
Probably Randy Couture.
I think Randy won the world title, the world heavyweight title in his forties.
Wow.
Yeah.
But Randy didn't even start his mixed martial arts career.
I think I was there at his first fight in 1997.
And I think he was 34 or 35 before he ever had an MMA fight.
He was just an elite wrestler who made his way into MMA because there's no real
professional
outlet for actual amateur wrestling.
Did you ever interact with the Gracies?
Because I remember way back in like, I remember MMA or UFC two.
It was the second one.
That was when it really kicked.
Because the first one was a little bit strange.
It was that big fat guy whose tooth went flying out.
Yeah.
But number two was the one with Shamrock and Gracie and Dan Severn.
Was he in number two?
Dan Severn, the wrestler?
I think he was later.
It might've been three or four.
Yeah.
But that was kind of the first generation of big names.
Oh, Hoist Gracie changed the world.
Yeah.
With his, he was a slow style though, man.
Like you had to have patience to watch him because he'd just lie on his back
and wait,
wait, wait and then choke.
Well, with Dan Severn he did because he had to catch him in a triangle.
Right.
And he eventually tapped him and no one even understand what was going on.
Like, why is he, he's got his legs wrapped around him?
What the hell is going on?
Exactly.
And then all of a sudden Dan Severn's tapping out.
You're like, this is crazy.
So a man who weighed literally a hundred pounds more than him or close to it.
Right.
On top of him and Hoist beat him.
Well, Dan Severn didn't appear to have any finishing moves.
Like he's thinking, I got you on your back.
I've pinned you.
I've won the wrestling match.
He would kind of give you a little noogies, knuckle sandwiches.
But then of course, eventually that anaconda comes in and either chokes you out
or takes your arm.
Well, no one understood jujitsu until Hoist came around, you know, other than
the Brazilians.
And he was his dad, wasn't it?
His dad that introduced it to the family?
His dad and his uncle.
So it was Carlos Gracie and Elio Gracie who were the real founders of Brazilian
Jiu Jitsu.
And then Carlson Gracie.
Okay.
And those guys were the pioneers and they were having no rules fights in the
1930s and 40s.
Wow.
Yeah.
And did they bring it over from Japan?
Um, Maeda brought it over from Japan and they taught the Gracies and then, um,
you know,
Elio Gracie famously had a match with Kimura who was a Japanese judoka who
broke Elio's arm with a
Kimura.
And that's how that, that technique, that's why it's called a Kimura.
Really?
Yeah.
In catch wrestling, they call it a double wrist lock.
Okay.
But we call it a Kimura because Kimura broke Elio Gracie's arm with this.
Right.
Elio just refused to tap and it's like, and eventually it snapped his arm.
Wow.
That's incredible.
They're having these long, no rules fights in Brazil long before anybody had
any idea what
MMA was in America.
And then Hoyce's brother, Hickson, who was the best out of all of them.
Hickson was fighting people when he was 18 in like these big arenas.
Really?
In Brazil.
Yeah.
Unbelievable.
And then they, then I guess Dana White brought it in with UFC.
No, it wasn't Dana.
It was, uh, there, there was another organization before, uh, Zufa owned the
UFC
and this other organization, they started it with Horian Gracie.
So Horian Gracie was the guy who founded the UFC.
Okay.
And originally they were talking about putting like a moat around the cage and
having crocodiles
in it and shit.
They wanted it to be like completely insane because what it was for Horian,
Horian's a brilliant man.
And what, what for him, what he wanted was to promote jujitsu.
And he's like, this is going to be the best way to open up schools all over the
country
and to show this art that my father had created.
Right.
So they had really taken some of the ground techniques of judo and really
refined them
to a razor sharp edge.
And, and also one of the things that helped a lot was that Elio was a small man.
He was only like 145 pounds.
And so he had to use only technique and leverage.
He couldn't rely on brute strength.
And so it was one of the best sort of advertisements is to have Hoist,
who was also fairly small.
He was only 175 pounds, beat all these big giant muscle bound guys with pure
technique
because they didn't understand what he was doing.
And he was like, this is going to be brilliant.
This is going to, and it worked.
I mean, the, the, the name Gracie and jujitsu are synonymous.
It's everywhere now.
Like we even have them in Canada where these, these schools will have the Gracie
name.
And obviously they have no attachment to Gracie's, uh, you're the Brazilian
Gracie's,
but everybody wants to learn the Gracie style.
Well, they probably do have a, like Gracie Baja, which is a huge, uh, affiliate
of gyms.
They're all over the country, the world.
They're everywhere.
Are they good?
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Oh, there's like, it's very difficult to have a bad jujitsu gym today.
Why is that?
Because they're so competitive?
It's too competitive.
Okay.
There's too many good people.
There's too many good gyms.
Like in Austin alone, Austin alone has like 10 amazing jujitsu schools.
Is that right?
Oh yeah.
Do you go, do you go enroll quite often still?
There's a place right up the street, 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu,
which is the school that I started with in California.
Well, I started with the Machop.
Well, I actually started with Hicks and Gracie.
I started, I started with Hicks and Gracie and then I went to Carlson Gracie.
And then I, and that was just because I didn't know there was any difference in
the Gracies.
And then Carlson Gracie was closer to my house.
I was like, Oh, I'll go to this Gracie place.
It's closer.
This is when I was a white belt.
I didn't know anything.
And then when they closed, when that gym closed, then I went to Jean-Jacques
Machado's.
And so I started training there in 1998.
And that was, um, that was in, uh, the Valley in California.
Uh, but then, um, one of Jean-Jacques black belts, my best friend, Eddie Bravo,
he started 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu.
And then I, I trained there as well.
Okay.
And in Canada, we see a lot of places where they do Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu.
So you get your striking and your grappling all in one studio.
10th Planet here has a Muay Thai program.
Oh, is that right?
So that's a lot of those, a lot of those gyms have that.
And you went to your first, as a commentator, you did it like for free, didn't
you?
No, no, I, I got paid in the early days, in the nineties, in 1997, but it wasn't
much.
I was losing money.
But when the UFC was purchased by Zufa in 2001, that was when I was on Fear Factor.
And I met Dana White and I became friends with him.
And he asked me as a favor to do commentary on this one show that they had UFC
37 and a half.
It was on Fox sports, whatever it was, the, there was a cable channel.
So it was best damn sports show period had this UFC show.
And he said, would you do me a favor and just do commentary on this one event?
Right.
And I said, okay, I'll do it for this one.
And he's like, I want you to do it again.
And then I was like, okay.
So I, I was like, I just wanted to do it for fun.
Like for me, it's like, I like going to the fights and I like going with my
friends and having a good time.
And I did like the first 15 of them for free.
I just, they, I knew they were hemorrhaging money and I didn't need any money.
But you loved it.
You loved being there.
Oh yeah.
It was like a kid in a candy store.
Well, I also was very happy to try to promote this thing because for me, it was
the ultimate
expression of martial arts.
Like we need to find out what's the best style.
And I'd kind of, I had been so engrossed in that world in Japan with pride and
all these other
organizations that they had over there.
It's like, what happens if an alligator fights with a tiger?
What happens if a lion fights with a bear?
We've got to match them up and find out.
Well, it's humans versus humans.
Right.
So it's just style.
Right.
It's like we needed to know.
Muay Thai versus karate.
Because you didn't want to waste your time doing something that didn't work.
Right.
And there was a lot of people that wasted their time doing stuff that didn't
work.
And we didn't really know what that was until the UFC came along.
And then we're like, oh, and now the evolution of martial arts from 1993, when
the UFC started to
2026, in those years, martial arts have evolved more than they have in the last
30,000 years.
Right.
Well, it's like the gap between theory and practice.
Yes.
And like Bruce Lee, when he, when he started with Wing Chun, but he said that a
lot of it
was just ornamental and he called it dry land swimming.
It's like, you know, you wouldn't actually do that in a fight.
And then he got into a lot of contention with the scholars of the art form.
It's a very beautiful art form, Wing Chun.
But I don't know if it, I can't imagine it works that well.
Well, it is, Wing Chun is effective.
There's a lot of techniques in Wing Chun.
If you got into a fist fight between like a Muay Thai guy and a Wing Chun guy,
who would come out?
The Muay Thai guy.
Yeah.
But it doesn't mean that Wing Chun's not effective.
And you could use Wing Chun in Muay Thai or in an MMA fight.
But you have to know everything.
Right.
That's the reality of it.
It's like Taekwondo.
Right.
Like Taekwondo is not effective by itself in an MMA fight.
But if you know MMA and you know Taekwondo, then you could do like what Edson
Barboza did
to Terry Edom and knock him out with a wheel kick in spectacular fashion.
Right.
Like it's learning all the techniques.
Because Jones has like a big blend, right?
Yes.
Like he has some Muay Thai, some karate, some-
Yes.
That's what MMA is, mixed martial arts.
I mean, it's like you take all- and that's Bruce Lee's philosophy.
Absorb what's useful.
Right.
I mean, he was the real first mixed martial artist.
And when it was very dangerous to do that, because people hated him.
I mean, they would attack him.
He would have to have fights with people because they thought that he was
disrespecting their art.
Right.
You know, and he combined Western boxing and wrestling.
He learned judo from Jean LaBelle.
He learned things from everybody.
He learned karate, savate.
He learned all these different martial arts and was absorbing what's useful and
putting his own.
So Jeet Kune Do, his style, was really the first mixed martial arts style.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Do people use it anymore?
Well, yeah, there's Jeet Kune Do schools.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, in a lot of what Krav Maga is, the Israeli martial art is like kind of
a combination
of things along the same lines of the way Bruce Lee did it.
Is Krav Maga a good, effective martial arts system?
Every martial arts system is effective if you have a great instructor.
Okay.
Right.
But on their own, like the best styles are the really strong styles,
like jujitsu, Muay Thai, wrestling.
Those are the best styles, Western boxing.
Those are the best styles on their own.
Okay.
But what Krav Maga is, is a combination of all those styles.
And so if you have a great instructor in Krav Maga, yeah, you'll learn great Muay
Thai,
you'll learn great jujitsu.
It's essentially mixed martial arts, but with a lot of emphasis on real world
applications,
street fights, you know, dirty stuff like eye gouging, you know, poking people
in the eye,
kicking them in the nuts.
Yikes.
Stuff that works.
But that's what you, like, you see it in an MMA fight all the time.
A guy gets poked in the eyes like, "Hey, hang on."
And he has to stop.
Isn't that against the rules?
It's against the rules.
So this guy's getting punched and kicked.
And look, Tom Aspinall, he was in the heavyweight title fight and he got eye poked
in the first round.
He's had to have two surgeries since then on his eyes and he hasn't been able
to fight.
They had to stop the fight in the first round from an eye poke.
Oh my God.
It's very effective.
But in Krav Maga, they're like, "Go for the eye."
Bang.
Because in a real world fight for your life scenario, it's a good technique.
If you're in a war, it's for the Israeli military, I think.
Exactly.
So they have to prepare for, you know, unusual situations where you're trying
to survive
in a, you know, a situation where your arm has been, your weapon has been
removed
and you're just trying to fight for your life.
Exactly.
Well, just in your, in a situation with hand-to-hand combat, you need to learn
how,
you need to know every, you need, if a guy takes you down, you can't be lost.
Oh, we have to get back up so I can fight.
No, you have to be able to fight on the ground.
And that's the idea of it.
Like incorporate jujitsu, incorporate leg kicks, Muay Thai, Western boxing,
even Jeet Kune Do techniques, even Wing Chun techniques.
Really?
There's a lot of hand trapping and things in Wing Chun that can be very
effective.
It looks really cool what they do with that wooden, uh, that wooden, uh, dummy.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
It looks, exactly.
I've never really got into that, but if you do get into that, you'll learn
blocking techniques
and you'll learn.
That actually work?
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
But you, they'll work if you know the other stuff.
They won't work if a guy just shoots a double on you and takes you down
and starts pounding and you don't know what to do when you're on the bottom.
Right.
You have to know how to, and this is what really MMA has taught the world.
It's like, you have to be able to defend yourself everywhere.
Standing up on the ground, you have to be effective in all the realms.
Right.
But still we have a lot of people that are pure specialists that do really well
in mixed martial arts
because they're so good in one area.
Like Alex Pereira, who is the middleweight champion, light heavyweight champion,
and now he's going up to heavyweight
and he's going to be fighting at the White House card.
Alex Pereira is one of the greatest kickboxers of all time.
He's a two-division world champion and kickboxer.
But his style is all kickboxing, but he just developed takedown defense.
He can do it all.
He can do it all.
But he doesn't submit anybody.
If you're fighting him, you're going to get, you're going to get, it's going to
be a stand-up fight.
Unless you could take him down, he's not going to try to take you down.
He's going to try to fuck you up.
He's going to try to knock you into another dimension.
Thanks for the warning.
I'll try to avoid the guy if I see him on the street.
The funniest thing I ever saw was there's this video of John Jones on the
street somewhere.
And he bumped into, he was talking and he leaned on some guy's motorcycle.
I think he might have been in Asia or something.
The guy had no idea who he was and he started screaming at him.
Oh no.
And John said, I'm very, very sorry.
And he turned around, he ran away like he was terrified.
And it was obviously, he wasn't in any danger, but it was so hilarious that
this guy had no idea
who he was picking a fight with.
That's hilarious.
The guy has no idea, his life flashed before his eyes.
But he took it well, because he was like, you know, I don't have anything to
prove.
Yeah, John's not the type of guy that would do anything to, I mean, also, what
a lawsuit, you know?
Oh yeah, your hands are weapons.
I mean, his whole body's a weapon.
But most of those guys are really nice guys in real life.
Is that right?
Yeah, because they get all their aggression out.
They don't have anything to prove.
They're not the type of person, they know what they can do.
They don't have to prove it to anybody.
Well, you should come to Winnipeg.
They have a fight coming up.
I think it's in, I think it's in April.
It's in April.
A UFC in Winnipeg?
Yeah.
I've avoided UFCs in Canada.
Well, come on up.
I've avoided it just because of the government,
just because of what was going on as a protest.
I was like, this is so fucked.
Well, we'll come back up and-
Well, if you win, I'll go up there.
How about that?
We should get you up before then.
You become prime minister, I promise.
I'll do all the UFC events that they have in Canada.
We need you up in Canada to come do one of your comedy shows,
and it would be great for Canadian tourism.
I still love going up there.
I used to love going to Massey Hall.
Yeah.
I used to-
Toronto?
Yeah.
I love performing there.
I did-
You used to do Montreal, and how old were you when you were in Montreal?
Oh, I started, I think the first time I was up there, I was like 25?
Such a beautiful city, eh?
Yeah, 26.
It's gorgeous there.
Oh, I love that.
Quebec is lovely.
It's amazing.
Beautiful province.
Amazing food.
Shout out to Joe Beef, one of my favorite restaurants in the world that's in
Montreal.
Yeah, Montreal's a great place, and you should come out to the prairies, too.
Go to the Calgary Stampede.
I've heard that's awesome.
Oh, it's amazing.
I've been to Edmonton.
I've been to Alberta.
Yeah, that's my home promise.
I've performed in Edmonton a few times, and I've hunted in Alberta.
Where?
Well, my friends John and Jen Rivet, they have a guide.
I mean, they guide people up in northern Alberta.
It's all like, you know, black bear hunting.
Yeah.
So it's like...
There's a lot of great hunting.
I don't hunt myself, but there's a ton of great hunting, a lot of hunters in
Alberta.
Oh, yeah.
Well, there's talk about Alberta separating.
That won't happen.
What was that about?
It won't happen.
Some people are frustrated, but they, you know, there's some legitimate frustrations.
But at the end of the day, Canada's going to be united, and Albertans, I'm born
and raised
Alberta, and Albertans are seriously patriotic Canadians.
Very patriotic.
Yeah.
They're great people, hardworking.
Some of the nicest people you've ever met across.
They are great people in Alberta.
Hardy.
They are hardy people.
It's cold up there.
It is cold.
They know how to survive.
Exactly.
You've got to be tough to survive the cold in Canada, carve a country like we
have out of
that cold weather on that big open land.
But people just keep on going.
And Alberta's got a real kind of rugged individualism.
Yes.
And people love their agriculture.
There's great ranches in Alberta, beautiful grasslands in Saskatchewan.
Doesn't Brock Lesnar have a place up there?
I didn't know that.
I think Brock Lesnar bought land in Alberta.
Really?
I think he owns a ranch up there.
Actually, I had heard that from somebody.
Yeah.
I've never seen him.
He fell in love with it.
Well, he's a big hunter as well.
Right.
I think he fell in love with it up there.
Cause it's just, it's so magnificent.
It's so gorgeous.
It's a great country.
It's a big country.
And the woods are so dense and beautiful.
And you've got wolves and bears and moose and everything up there.
It's amazing country.
The Canadian Rockies are spectacular as well.
They're, you know, a worldwide attraction.
You know, you go to Lake Louise, it looks like a tropical lake.
Cause it's all this runoff from the mountain melt.
And, uh, you'd think you were in the tropics cause it's this, this turquoise
green.
That's where I grew up.
I, I love, I love Calgary.
I love Southern Alberta.
That's really my home.
And so, uh, you got to come to the Stampede.
Greatest outdoor show on earth.
A lot of Texans go up for the, the Stampede.
Cause it's a rodeo.
It's a huge rodeo.
Yeah.
People don't think cowboy Canada.
They don't think of that, but yeah.
Yeah.
Calgary.
Yeah.
They, they've got some serious cowboys there.
No, they really do.
Yeah.
Look, I love Canada.
I just, uh.
If you did your comedy show in Calgary, you'd get a massive turnout.
Okay.
It would be great.
Think it over it.
Well, I see when you.
Well, I was supposed to be up there before COVID.
I was supposed to do a show up there, uh,
for 420 for April 20th.
I was going to do it in Vancouver.
That's another great city.
Every year I would do these, uh, 420 shows.
Like these, you know, 420 is the marijuana number.
And Canada, now you, you guys have legal marijuana too.
I've been legal for 10 years.
Which they should have in America.
It's so ridiculous.
They just, they just recently decided to make it schedule three.
Is it state by state?
Yes.
Okay.
It's legal in a lot of states, but it's still not legal federally.
It's goofy.
If alcohol is legal, marijuana is far safer.
It should be legal.
It's ridiculous.
It's also a personal freedom thing.
Leave people alone.
It's like, no one's robbing banks, smoking weed, and fucking killing neighbors.
It's crazy.
It's like.
That's a personal choice thing.
It's not, it's not heroin.
It's not opiates.
It's not like, maybe you shouldn't do it if you have mental health problems.
Right?
But there's a lot of people that just like take a pot gummy and go to bed and
it makes them
sleep better.
Like leave them alone.
Like leave people alone.
Let people have a glass of whiskey.
Let people have a glass of wine with dinner.
Leave them alone.
Like stop coming up with laws where you can impose your values and your morals
and your
judgments on other people.
Let them have, make their own personal.
Look, if you want to eat a fucking cheeseburger, eat a cheeseburger.
You know, if you want to go and have five Big Macs, you should be able to.
I don't think you should do it, but I don't think there should be a law
stopping you.
And I think that's, that should apply to a lot of things in life and we'd be a
lot better off.
Well, the, the bottom line is, is if you cannot trust a man to govern himself,
how can you trust him to govern for others?
Like if, if you think, if you think that human nature is so flawed that people
cannot make
decisions for themselves, then how could you possibly trust human nature to
make decisions
for other people to impose decisions on their lives?
Uh, and, uh, who watches the watchman?
You know, we're constantly told we need to be, we need to be kind of guided by
these people from ivory towers.
But who are these angels anyway?
They're just human beings like everyone else.
So when you give them more power and more, you give them the power to impose
their will on,
on people, then that ultimately gets abused.
Yes.
So even you're right.
Even when somebody is doing something that I don't agree with, and I would
think it would
be better for all of us if they didn't do it, the, the, the mal that is done by
giving me the power
to impose my decision-making on them is worse than the benefit of trying to
direct them towards
a better decision.
Well said that that's my philosophy.
That's why I like you.
Well, that's where I make a lot of sense.
It's pretty simple.
I think all the best things in life are simple.
You know, we overcomplicate things.
Government is way too complicated.
You know, uh, I think we need to get back to the simplicity.
The greatest speech in the English language was Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address, 271 words.
You know, Einstein compressed, uh, uh, uh, mass and energy into a five
character equation.
Um, Lee, you know, Bruce Lee was an advocate of simplicity.
Like simplicity is, is a virtue.
And I think we have to get back to simplicity, especially in government,
simpler, clearer,
easier to do, to manage.
That's the pro.
That's the kind of the, the philosophical take I, I, I pursue.
Well, I appreciate that.
And I think like that philosophy and that perspective from a leader
is what we need in this world, you know, and, uh,
Well, I think leaders have to have humility
because the problem is that if you are an egomaniac and you're in power,
anywhere in the world, then you're going to want to just continually
impose new rules and laws to make yourself bigger.
Whereas if you believe in freedom, then you have to take, you have to be able
to say to yourself,
I don't know better for this other person.
He knows better what's for him.
And, you know, it's, it's hard, but politicians have to think that they have to
trust the people,
but you know, nobody wants to have, he left people alone on their gravestone.
They want to think, oh, he built this.
He, he imposed that.
He made this grand, uh, initiative that he imposed on the people in order to
have a legacy.
My legacy is just to let other people build their legacies in their own lives.
I think the idea of forging a legacy based on controlling people and imposing
your will is
ludicrous.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And the problem is history is littered with people like that.
Absolutely.
Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan.
There's so many people that impose their will and left a legacy, but is that
good?
I don't think it is.
It's not.
And it's also, they're dead.
This is who it is.
They are, exactly.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Nobody walked by, walked by one of those magnificent tombs in, in Petra and
said,
boy, I'd really like to be inside there.
Exactly.
What, what is happening while you're alive is what's really significant and the
most,
the, the most impactful thing.
Like do well, do good for the people.
And I think, uh, your message resonates with me.
Thank you.
And if I was a Canadian, I would vote for you 100%.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Well, it's, uh, it's, um, you know, it's a privilege to do this work and I'm, I
consider
it very humbling and I'm very proud to be Canadian and, uh, to take the message
of Canada here
to our American friends.
Well, I'm glad you're here doing that.
Thank you.
And I think, uh, this is going to have a big impact.
Absolutely.
I really hope it moves the needle up in Canada.
Absolutely.
And down here, we got to get these tariffs gone.
Yeah.
Get the tariffs gone.
Well, let's work it out.
Right on.
Work it out.
And, uh, if you win, I'm coming up there.
I promise.
Well, we're going to try to get you up there earlier.
I'm going to keep working on you.
Okay.
And you look at that, that maple leaf on your new kettlebell every day.
Eventually we're going to, we're going to, uh, work subliminally into your
subconscious
and get you up.
Well, look, like I said, you don't have to sell me on Canada.
Right on.
I love Canada.
And, uh, I love that gift.
So thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
It was awesome.
Awesome.
All right, go.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye, buddy.
*music*