Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:05 Good morning for McMurry. Thank you. Once again for tuning in my name is Elliot Pierre. This is the Mac city morning show, and we're going to start it off the same way we always do with a little bit of gratitude. I want to thank everybody for tuning in may it be live, or if you're watching the show afterwards, uh, it was blowing my mind how many people are tuning in and how many people are getting engaged. I know you could be doing so many other things with your time. So the fact that you're sharing with us, it means the world to me. Now on that note, Tanner hit them with the intro.
Speaker 1 00:00:38 Welcome to the max any morning show.
Speaker 0 00:00:46 All right. And we're back. So as per usual, I'm not going to introduce our guests, but I am excited to talk to this gentleman that is for sure. So without further ado, sir, how are you doing today? Excellent. Great. Please introduce yourself to the people at home who you are, kind of what you're about, and then you and I can get talking about some, uh, I think some really great topics.
Speaker 2 00:01:05 Perfect. Uh, my name's Rob <inaudible>. Uh, I would consider myself to be a, uh, mostly a political commentator at this point in time. Um, do some writing for a news outlet called the Buffalo Tribune, things like that produce a lot of video and just run my own blog. We actually just dropped in my website yesterday as well. So I'm going to be starting to publish on there as well. So just in the, in the political sphere, I like to talk about it and, uh, I just find it super interesting. And it's just, it's kind of the hobby that I've chosen. Right.
Speaker 0 00:01:35 That's awesome. Now in regards to the website, what's the website,
Speaker 2 00:01:39 Rob bootlegger.ca. Okay. So all it is right now is it's just a place for me to put articles, things like that. We're going to, we're going to expand on it as we just, we, I just put a test article up yesterday to see how it would perform and, and how it looked and felt and played around with it. So it's still a work in progress, but we're, we're moving forward.
Speaker 0 00:01:56 Okay. Very cool. Now for the people at home that haven't seen or heard of you before, like you were saying, your, you talk about politics basically. Um, and you've been doing it on social media for probably three years. Give or take a little more,
Speaker 2 00:02:11 It was actually August 11th, 2017 when I started, uh, operating on these platforms, separate from my personal profiles.
Speaker 0 00:02:19 Right. That's right. And I remember when we met, uh, you had, I think over a hundred thousand people that had started to follow you on your, your Facebook, like business platform at that point.
Speaker 2 00:02:29 Yeah. We've got, we've got quite the reach going on right now. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:31 That's amazing. So yeah, you see, uh, like that's what I love about the internet in regards to like, we're informed with Murray up North. I think most people would say the middle of nowhere. However, like certain individuals like yourself have been able to create a voice that is heard, not just locally, but globally for the most.
Speaker 2 00:02:50 It, it it's, it's incredible too, because Elliot, when you, when you look at, and you and I spoken about this before low tech, uh, high reach, right. So, you know, for three years I've built this whole platform that I'm operating on right now on my cell phone. And, you know, last month I had 12 million people worth of reach right on my cell phone. Yeah. That's it. And I haven't, I haven't sat down with a laptop on anything since day one. It's all been cell phone work and, you know, and, and, you know, you get into some of the, some of the commentary is it's just, I kind of operate in the sense where something just ticks me off and then I'll do it. If I sit down and try to plan it, it doesn't work very well. But if something's really getting at me, then, then I'll do it. And it works really well. So it's been,
Speaker 0 00:03:42 Yeah, man, no, I think you nailed it on the head in regards to even the show people ask when they're coming on, Hey, can I have a list of questions? I'm like, no. And then they think, and then they call them like, Hey, listen, no, I really need a list of questions. I'm like, I don't have a list of questions for you. I'm just going to ask you some questions. What organically comes up, comes up. And then they get a little bit nervous, like, Oh, okay. And then I'm like, Oh, it's just a conversation. Don't be nervous. But I truly believe more like you were saying in regards to the technology is great. If you can afford it, you go for it, buy it. Um, but it's more about getting the message out when you need to get it out. I truly believe content trumps your equipment nine out nine out of a 10 out of 10 times for that matter.
Speaker 2 00:04:22 Yeah. Well, and, and timing is everything, right. You know, I can release something now that happened 10 minutes ago and get a million views. Right. I can release something tomorrow that happened yesterday and get a thousand views. It's a world of difference, right?
Speaker 0 00:04:36 Yeah. That's it. So, uh, I've got a bunch of different questions for you. Some people at home will agree with what you have to say. Some won't, I don't know what you're going to say. This is live. So, um, I want to hear your insight on, um, the pipeline please. And thank you, which pipeline the Keystone pipeline.
Speaker 2 00:04:54 So I, uh, I'm not as bothered as most with the shutdown of Keystone, because right now with the pipelines that are in play that are coming online, we're going to end up with more capacity than we could fill ultimately. So that's going to open things up for construction over a few years, some expansion and production, things like that. Like just off the top of my head, I would say Keystone, maybe five years from now becomes a problem for us. Um, I, so I'm, I'm not terribly fussed about it from a Canadian perspective, from a United States perspective. I think it's the worst decision they could possibly make. Um, that was going to run about 800,000 barrels a day worth of product into the U S refineries. Um, and what they've essentially done. So you've got the Biden administration in there now when they're in 10th on crushing shale.
Speaker 2 00:05:44 So you're gonna have way less production within the U S they're going to have the same demand instead of getting it from Canada, they're going to get it from the middle East. It's going to be more costly. It's going to be less environmentally friendly, um, and their, their, their security of the country depends on them being able to obtain these resources and keep a steady supply. So I think from, from a Canadian perspective, it always sucks when pipelines get canceled, this one here, I would love to see it happen. I mean, it definitely kills jobs, but I think it's going to have way more of an impact on the United States than what it's gonna
Speaker 0 00:06:20 Yeah, very interesting. Now this was one question that I normally don't give people a heads up on, but literally 10 seconds before we started filming, I, I told you I was going to ask this, so not too much of a lead up, but you had a video a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago that I saw that I just really gravitated to what you said. So you were talking about energy and not just, um, oil sands, energy, but energy and total and how the world is going to need more. So all production of energy is good. Can you, for the people at home who didn't see that video and I, I urge anybody at home who hasn't to go to Rob's page and check it out. Cause it was so good, but can you just kind of paraphrase what you said in that video? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:59 So essentially, you know, there's, this, there's this thought around oil right now that, um, the price is low because demand is low and that's really not the driver here. There's been no demand destruction for oil to date, except for COVID, but that's, you know, that's kind of human engineered to destruction of demand. It's not because something's replaced, right? So there's been no demand destruction. We're going, we're going to continue to need a million barrels of oil a day more every year. Not to mention, when you look at producing Wells worldwide, there was an HSPC report that I read. 80% of them are on the decline. They're estimating that by say 2040, we're going to have to turn on a boat for Saudi Arabia's worth of oil production, just to keep production flat because of the decline rates of these Wells. So I don't care what anybody says.
Speaker 2 00:07:49 I think there's a huge demand for oil. When you look at emerging markets, when you look at third world countries that are kind of coming into the fold, there's enough, there's going to be enough energy demand, uh, to satisfy all of the different types of energy industries that are emerging here right now. And that's assuming that they do all, I mean, a lot of them are super heavily. Subsidized. People say oil is subsidized. It's not heavily subsidized. Way more comes out of the oil industry then goes into it through subsidies. But when you look at like, uh, green energy in Ontario, 90% of it is subsidized at this point in time. So if they do a really good job with green energy, if they grow it, it's still going to, uh, not offset that the demand for oil that we're going to see coming forward. So what we're going to see, I would say by 2040, I'm confident in the 2100 that we're going to have big demand for oil. Um, we're going to see the pie grow. We're not going to see less of anything. We're gonna see more people need energy in the world. And all of these different resources are going to be able to meet that need. Cause, cause I'm not even sure oil is going to be able to.
Speaker 0 00:08:51 Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's what your video like, it was an eye opener for me to see it in regards to, I think most people that don't follow you often and just kind of catch some of what you say will have a certain perspective of who you are and what you have to say. Um, and that video for me was like, Oh listen, if you actually listen to this guy, he's not here or there, well, he's more over here than over here. But nonetheless, like it was a very objective point of view in regards to, yeah. That energy pie is only going to grow. So if you're backing green energy, great. If you're backing Wilson's energy, great. It's just going to grow across the circle, which I think you're nailing it honestly.
Speaker 2 00:09:34 Well, and not only so demand is going to increase with the existing population. Let's say we got a couple more billion people on the planet that we need to feed them by the energy too, as well. Right. Energy is going to be in huge demand for the rest of eternity, the rest of the human race.
Speaker 0 00:09:48 Yeah. And you are seeing, um, like you mentioned in the video, you're seeing, um, third world nations kind of starting to come out of that third world. And so developing nations like I'm in South America or in Africa or other, other countries are coming up and like, they're going to need energy. Like they never have for, to like get out of that economic state that they've been in for so many years. So there's this, here's the interesting thing about you is your engagement in politics? Like when we first met, I was like, Oh, like, how did you get in, um, did you go to school for this? Did you, uh, is this in your family? And you explained to me like, no, not even close. So which is, I think even better that it's just like a passion. So can you share how you really got into being so engaged in politics with the people at home?
Speaker 2 00:10:34 I, uh, I was never really politically engaged. And to be perfectly honest with you, like if you were to really measure my views against a political spectrum, say 15 years ago, I would actually surprise me. I would probably be a very liberal person, but the Overton window's shifted so much that now I'm considered to be a little bit further from the center on the conservative side than, than a lot of people are nowadays. Right. I, you know, we had, uh, and I know that there's going to be viewers who feel differently about politics. I'm just speaking from my perspective, not a big fan of the NBD, not a big fan of the liberal government. We had the NDP come in provincially and, uh, we had the liberal government come in federally. And what really sparked it in me was the, I hate to say intentional, but this destruction I started seeing of our industry and of our resource sector and this demonization of, of everything.
Speaker 2 00:11:30 That's kind of given us the lifestyle and like, I've got three kids in a what, like I'm here, I'm all in for Fort McMurray. And that really got to me. And as an outlet, um, I started just kinda, you know, I started up a Facebook page and I just started commenting and ranting a little bit and, and, you know, talking about different subjects and people got interested in it. And you know, we went from in 2017, we went from a couple of hundred followers to, you know, the whole network that I'm operating in right now was about 200,000 followers in total that we're distributing all of our content amongst at this point in time. Right. So it just, it just came from a place of, you know, as much as people might disagree with me, I really do care about these things that I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 00:12:18 And I really do feel strongly. It's not about being partisan. It's about here's my perspectives. And here's how I feel about all of these topics. Right. And you know, I've really shifted. I've, I've, I'm not happy with any political party at this point in time. Right. But I've really been shifting to constitutional rights and freedoms and things like that more in my commentary lately, where that's kind of where my advocacy was turning to come from is what, what should we, how should we be treated under the constitution? What types of rights should we be fighting to maintain? And yeah, that's, that's where I've come from Lee.
Speaker 0 00:12:52 Yeah. And that's, uh, that's what I like about your show a lot. Um, and I call it a show, but whatever you want to call it here, your platform that you're on is I find you just completely objective for the most part in regards to like what you just said, like it started off with some rants and it started off with you siding with a certain party. And now you've moved to like, Oh no, listen, I'm not happy with any of these parties necessarily. Let's talk about policy, which I think there's a lot of like, it's very genuine. Um, in regards to like anybody like you're growing, you're evolving and you're talking about like, what makes sense for you now? Um, and that's why I still follow the page. Um, quite often,
Speaker 2 00:13:32 It's really funny. There there's a lot of people that used to, uh, dislike how part of some I was on political parties. Right. And they're coming back to me now and saying, well, I'm really glad to see that you've woken up because ultimately I had no political engagement up to 2017. So I've had three years to kind of learn what some people have learned in an entire lifetime around policy.
Speaker 0 00:13:51 Right. And that's what I think people are gravitating to. What you're saying is because you are just a guy, you're a dude and you have an opinion and you're sharing it and it's your opinion, right. Or wrong disagree with me or not. Here it is. And I'm evolving in my thought process and I'm just willing and brave enough because it is brave to like what you and I do and our guys to get in front of these cameras and share our opinions and our face with the world to get up sometimes. Oh yeah. Like some of us don't have to share our faces, right. Voice.
Speaker 2 00:14:23 I've had a few news organizations, release articles where they had my content in them. And I've lost sleep over that because like a lot of these are left leaning news organizations, right? The Toronto star for example, did a piece. And you know, some of my stuff ended up on the front page of the Toronto star and they had reached out to me for comment. And, you know, I gave him comment and I was, I did not know what was going to come out, but it was pretty innocuous. It was nothing terrible. It was just right. This guy does. Here's what his following looks like and stuff like that. It can get a little bit, a little nerve wracking at times.
Speaker 0 00:14:54 No doubt. I'm so nervous about that. That's why they show his life in regards to, I don't want anybody to, like, I'm not nervous about what will come out of my mouth. I can deal with that. I don't want anybody to ever come back and say, Oh, you edited this. And you made me look like this. And you know what? The people like when you go on TV or somebody writes something about you, they can edit what they want and push their agenda. So that's kind of the thought process with filming this live and not touching the editing component is a, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to tell anybody else's story. They can tell their, their own story. Right.
Speaker 2 00:15:27 People will always hear what they want to hear out of anything. You have to say. I mean, I've got people, you know, I've got a guest coming on tonight. Uh, Alberta politician, Shane gets him and, uh, we released a poster for it. And you know, the comments were, you know, th they actually said that it was Q and on, and I'm very much not even on like totally against those views and the way that portrays right-wing politics. Right. And, uh, it's just, they just, they pick those little bits and pieces out and they just sum you up with just those few things, but they don't look at book. They don't look at all the progressive things that you're doing or, or your progressive views. Right.
Speaker 0 00:16:01 That's right. Okay. We are at the point of the show. This is Tanner's jam. It's called the Mac city minute. Tanner is going to ask you some questions, uh, do your best to answer them. Tanner hit him with the max 80 minute.
Speaker 3 00:16:14 First question. What is it like working with an indigenous owned news outlet?
Speaker 2 00:16:18 It's, it's phenomenal, actually. It's, uh, you know, in my time in Fort McMurray, I've worked with some indigenous companies, you know, um, on the oil sands and everything. And I just find getting engaged in that culture. We've got a number of indigenous writers with us. It just opens me up to that whole different perspective on the world that, you know, from our Western point of view, we don't, we don't necessarily tend to see right.
Speaker 3 00:16:42 Question number two. What is one liberal view? People might be surprised you have
Speaker 2 00:16:49 Liberal view. People might be surprised. I have, I'm actually a factory farming. So meat as grocery stores. I hate it. I hate it. I would much rather, which I'm, you know, in the firearms world right now, hunt for all my meat. I think that's the most humane way, but yeah, totally against factory farming and cruelty to animals.
Speaker 3 00:17:11 Question number three. What is it like living in Fort McMurray with such a large global following? It's
Speaker 2 00:17:18 Very interesting. It's, it's fun because I actually have a huge following from the States. Um, interestingly, I started Tik TOK a while back, just doing some ranting and commentary. I ended up with like 40,000 followers in like two weeks, mostly from the United States. So I get a lot of questions from those people, and it's just, it's super interesting hearing them and having them realize, wow, this stuff's going on in Canada. It's, it's really eyeopening for them. Right?
Speaker 3 00:17:43 Question number four with a Cabela's edition truck, you must be like the outdoors. What's your outdoor activity.
Speaker 2 00:17:50 We, uh, we camp through the summer. We've got a lot out of Lac LA Biche with the camper on it. And last summer we were there the entire summer boating, swimming, clotting, the whole nine yards. So that's, that's my favorite thing to do. And last question for you today, what is one thing you think connects all four Marines? I certainly hope it's our love of our industry and our support for it. Um, I see nothing budded and it's very rare. You see anybody who's really dead against it in town here, but I think that's the common denominator for everybody here is our industry. It was a vineyard five questions.
Speaker 0 00:18:30 There you go. Yeah. I don't care if, uh, your, what political party you kind of fall in. If you're living in Fort McMurray, you kind of like, you know what? Yeah. That's exactly it like you can't. Yeah. So I think that is like that, that definitely does bring us together. Now, this is unfortunate. Like we, uh, and it's not unfortunate. This is it's designed like this, that, uh, I only get to talk to somebody shortly so they can come back and talk to me more and more and more. We're actually gone over the amount of time that's allotted. So we're going to have to cut the show off now, but I want to thank you so much for coming in today. I want to invite you back again and again and again, anytime you want to come back, listen that chair's open for you, but before you leave, uh, let's do a, uh, uh, shout out for you and all your organizations. Please tell everybody at home where they can find you. What's the website, what's the Facebook page. Tick talk. How can we find you? How can people digest your content?
Speaker 2 00:19:22 Sure. Um, if you look us up, the Buffalo Tribune is the organization that I do a lot of writing for it. A lot of opinion pieces. Um, you can find us on Facebook. If you just Google the Buffalo Tribune, it'll, it'll come up in your Google search. Um, my, my website that we just launched, Rob <inaudible> dot CA um, that's the one piece. If you follow me on Facebook, it's at patriotic dad, or you can search me up as Rob bootlegger, pick talk on patriotic, down on Tik TOK, um, Instagram, same thing, Twitter, same thing. So you can find me pretty much anywhere is under the handle of patriotic debt.
Speaker 0 00:19:55 Awesome. All right, well, Rob, man, thank you very much for coming in today. Really do appreciate it, everybody at home. Once again, thank you so much for joining us today. It does mean the world to me. Um, it's mind blowing how many people are tuning in every day. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much on that note. Have a great day. We'll see you tomorrow. Peace.
