John Bolton - March 17, 2026


The BIGGER the government, the SMALLER the citizen - More Liberal Failure & spin


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

177.89055

Word Count

1,776

Sentence Count

119


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John, and welcome to the channel. Great to have you along today, Tuesday, March
00:00:07.600 the 17th. It is 5.20 a.m. with the Big Blue Mug of Coffee. I appreciate you being here
00:00:13.680 today. Getting going a little bit later today than normal. You know, I woke up this morning,
00:00:19.220 maybe you feel the same way as I do at this time of year. You know, we've gone through
00:00:23.740 more darkness. Days are getting longer now, but a lot of darkness through the wintertime,
00:00:28.760 cold, snow, everything that comes along with winter in this country. And I start to feel,
00:00:34.720 maybe not depressed, but I have a certain amount of malaise. Maybe you feel the same way. It's
00:00:38.840 known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, which is an appropriate acronym for the way
00:00:44.420 I kind of feel right now. And over the last several days, at least, I haven't felt much
00:00:50.500 like reading the news or really interacting with what's going on right now. But I have a routine.
00:00:56.080 I get up in the morning and I come downstairs and I like to do these videos. It really makes me
00:01:01.960 happy. It does. So that's why I'm doing a video today, because I saw something that
00:01:06.020 I really wanted to comment on. I did a video the other day that had this.
00:01:12.420 And basically, this was about how liberals see failures as success, as do liberal voters. You
00:01:20.120 know, we have more and more people unemployed because of liberal incompetence. We have more
00:01:25.480 and more people who can't afford food because of liberal incompetence. We have more and more
00:01:29.440 parents who can't afford to feed their kids because of liberal incompetence. And the answer
00:01:33.720 for the liberals is more taxpayer dollars. And instead of solving these problems,
00:01:39.480 they're throwing money at it. And the liberals in their voters celebrate this failure. And that's
00:01:44.540 the video I did the other day. Now I have compassion. I want to help people who are out
00:01:48.640 of work. I want to help people who can't afford food. I want to help people who can't afford
00:01:51.820 to feed their kids. But I believe in hand-ups, not hand-outs. And I believe in a safety net and
00:01:58.700 not a hammock. And that's what the liberals do. They create these programs and they never go away
00:02:03.000 and people depend on them. And that's pretty sad. This is failure. This is not success. People
00:02:08.680 should be able to afford their food and keep their jobs. And Alexis de Tocqueville said this,
00:02:16.360 the american republic will endure until the day congress discovers that it can bribe the public
00:02:23.080 with the public's money replace this with canadian and parliament and you've got the same thing
00:02:28.200 but something popped up today i wanted to talk about that shows you how the liberals
00:02:33.340 they they seem to think there's a success but it isn't it's a failure of government and it's
00:02:40.180 this story right here i'm trying to keep this video short i don't want it to be very long
00:02:44.720 But here it is right here.
00:02:46.380 Carney's planned Privy Council office budget higher than Trudeau's despite vow to spend less.
00:02:50.740 Now, you'll think that's a huge failure, but they're going to spin this into success
00:02:54.600 because, folks, they're going to cut the number of people in this office.
00:02:59.120 But the devil's in the details, as the old saying says.
00:03:03.660 Newly released documents show $252 million in total planned spending
00:03:07.340 with 1,246 full-time equivalent staff, though both numbers are projected to fall in the future.
00:03:13.180 So let's find out what all of these people are doing, because I don't know what they're doing.
00:03:17.560 Let's find out what the PCO does, the Privy Council Office.
00:03:20.040 Let's run through this story, just a little bit of it, not a lot.
00:03:22.720 Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to spend less on government operations and reduce waste,
00:03:27.160 but newly released federal records show he's also on track to spend more on the Privy Council Office, PCO, than his predecessor.
00:03:35.720 According to the Privy Council Office's 2026-27 Departmental Plan, for those two years, PCO's total plan spending $252 million, $265,293, with 1,246 plan full-time equivalent staff.
00:03:53.160 Now, keep in mind, you are paying this out of your tax dollars.
00:03:57.980 This is your money. This is not the Privy Council Office's money. This is not the Prime Minister's money. This is your money.
00:04:03.860 As a matter of fact, let's do a little math here.
00:04:07.020 I haven't done this.
00:04:08.580 Let's go up here, grab a calculator, and let's find out what the average salary is of somebody who works in the Privy Council office.
00:04:16.340 So let's just round this down to $252 million, just to make it easy.
00:04:23.100 And let's round it up to, by four, just to $1,250.
00:04:27.980 And if you've got a drum roll, I can see what the number is going to be pretty close anyway.
00:04:33.860 if you want, if you have a drum roll, let's drum roll it. We'll hit the equal sign and
00:04:39.540 the average salary of somebody working in this office, working for you, you're paying their
00:04:44.700 salary is $201,600. That's insane. Surely you're making that much money, right?
00:04:56.480 I'm going to leave it up there so you can keep an eye on that. So staffing in the PCO was on
00:05:00.400 the rise for several years from 1,180 full-time equivalent staff in 2020 to 1,333 in 2024. It fell
00:05:07.460 down in 2025 to 1,249. The newest report says the plan is to lower those numbers further to 1,145
00:05:14.420 by 2028. So this is where the liberals are going to spin this failure into a success because,
00:05:20.640 folks, we go back to 1,333 in 2020, but you need to look at the numbers back just a few years
00:05:26.520 earlier, around 2015 when Justin Trudeau got in. Because this is insane. And what's going to
00:05:36.240 happen here is it's going to drop from 1249 to 1145. That's 104 people. And Carney will say,
00:05:42.900 look, we're cutting the number of people in this office. But we'll go back to 2015 in just a
00:05:47.540 moment. We're going to look at that number. Now the budget's going to drop, which is good,
00:05:51.120 but it probably could be about half this. So what does the PBO do? Well, let's find out.
00:05:56.340 The function of the PCO, rather, the PCO is to provide nonpartisan advice to the Prime Minister.
00:06:02.340 You know, I read that earlier, but there's no way the people in the Prime Minister's Privy Council office are going to be nonpartisan.
00:06:10.220 They're going to be liberals.
00:06:11.660 So they provide nonpartisan advice to the Prime Minister, portfolio ministers, cabinet and cabinet committees on matters of national and international importance,
00:06:20.380 as well as to ensure Canada is safe and secure and promote a fair, transparent, and democratic
00:06:25.660 government and foster an effective, here you go folks, diverse, inclusive, and innovative public
00:06:31.680 service per the report. But do you need 1,250 people to actually do this? No, you don't. Because
00:06:39.320 just 10 years ago, we didn't need nearly this many people. And this is what Carney had to say,
00:06:43.960 quote, this plan reflects, and this is the same boilerplate crap that we've had since he became,
00:06:47.860 well, since he started running for the Liberal Party back in January last year.
00:06:51.660 This plan reflects the government's commitment to building our strength at home,
00:06:55.740 bolstering Canada's security, building one Canadian economy,
00:06:59.760 advancing major national building projects,
00:07:02.140 and bringing down costs for Canadians, Carney wrote in the document.
00:07:06.300 B.S.
00:07:07.420 So let's take a look at the numbers of people who work for the government.
00:07:11.240 And this is available at the Government of Canada website.
00:07:14.780 And if you look here, this is the population of federal public service by department or agencies.
00:07:19.500 And this is 2015 on the left, 2025 on the right.
00:07:23.220 Now, keep in mind, more than 1,200, almost 1,250 people are working in the Privy Council office
00:07:28.500 because these people are desperately needed, folks.
00:07:32.380 They've got to give advice to the prime minister and all the committees and blah, blah, blah that we just read about.
00:07:38.780 Let's go down and find out how many people were working in the Privy Council office back in 2015
00:07:44.600 when Justin Trudeau started, and it was 727. Now, the far right has it at 1208, but they've gained
00:07:52.080 500 employees over the last 10 years. What do all these people do? And why are they making over
00:07:58.900 $200,000 a year? And you know, the number that we seem to forget here is this very important
00:08:04.380 number down here. Remember, this column is 2015. This column way over here is 2025. We've gained
00:08:11.440 100,000 employees in the Canadian government over the last 10 years. What the hell are all
00:08:17.940 these people doing? But Carney's going to spin this Privy Council office, 100 jobs being cut
00:08:24.680 into something that is a positive, that is a success, and it's more indicative of liberal
00:08:30.240 failure. And liberal voters will just play along with the spin. Now, here's the thing. And if you
00:08:36.380 look here, you have to look back at numbers when it comes to people who work in the private sector
00:08:41.320 versus the public sector. And if we can go back to this graph right here,
00:08:45.860 you can see that this blue line is private jobs and the orange line is public jobs.
00:08:50.660 And way back in 1985, or 1985 rather, the private jobs were way up here and government jobs were
00:08:57.500 down here. But as you can see, we met up right around here, met up a couple of times here.
00:09:01.760 But over the last several years, we've got a lot more people in the private sector
00:09:06.160 paying for all of these people working in the public sector. And this is a recipe for disaster.
00:09:13.800 But it's just indicative of how the Liberals spin this failure into success. And no doubt,
00:09:22.120 Carney's going to be asked about this, but we're cutting the jobs in the Privy Council office. But
00:09:26.740 if you look back to 2015, you realize they've added over 500 employees and God knows what these
00:09:32.760 people do. And it's your money. This is what really pisses me off about government. And of
00:09:39.080 course, Carney's going to cut costs, but deficits and debt are rising in the country. As you become
00:09:44.200 poorer, we pay more and more people working in the public sector and there's fewer people working
00:09:49.840 in the private sector. Thanks for watching. If you liked the video, please give it a thumbs up,
00:09:54.340 subscribe to the channel, ring the bell for notifications. I will see you in the next one.