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

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

A video I did the other day about how liberals see failures as success and how they celebrate it. Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to spend less on government operations and reduce waste, but newly released federal records show he's also on track to spend more on the Privy Council Office than his predecessor.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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, 0.94
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.