Juno News - May 23, 2021


$3 million for luxury car dealership while the rest of Canadian businesses suffer


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

168.11179

Word count

782

Sentence count

39

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

A Porsche dealership in Ottawa has been given a grant of $2.9 million to build a new car dealership. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants to know why the government should be giving corporate welfare to a car dealer building a Porsche dealership.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:10.840 We still have millions of Canadians who are out of work,
00:00:14.820 people whose jobs have been put in jeopardy
00:00:17.120 because the government shut them down.
00:00:20.440 Various levels of government have put in many measures
00:00:23.620 that have harmed ordinary people over the last,
00:00:26.060 coming up on, what, 15, 16 months now.
00:00:28.000 But fear not, all is not lost
00:00:30.260 because a grant has been given in Ottawa
00:00:32.840 for $2.9 million to build a Porsche luxury car dealership.
00:00:39.920 Yes, the city of Ottawa has given $2.9 million
00:00:43.380 to build a world-class Porsche dealership.
00:00:47.200 I mean, is there any other kind, really?
00:00:48.940 And it was approved by the Finance and Economic Development Committee.
00:00:53.420 Now, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is saying
00:00:56.500 that Ottawa should not be spending taxpayer money
00:00:58.460 on any kind of corporate welfare.
00:01:00.380 He says Ottawa could use this money to fix potholes
00:01:02.720 or give families a bit of tax relief,
00:01:04.940 but no subsidy to a dealership selling cars
00:01:08.080 that cost more than most people make in a year.
00:01:11.100 And I do think that Jay Goldberg from the CTF
00:01:14.220 makes a good point when he talks about how
00:01:15.920 there shouldn't really be any corporate welfare of this kind,
00:01:19.200 but certainly not corporate welfare
00:01:20.920 that is basically subsidizing Porsches.
00:01:23.500 Porsches, because if Porsche the company
00:01:25.860 doesn't need to pay for its dealership,
00:01:27.700 that means that either it can make more profit
00:01:29.940 by selling Porsches or it can offer people cheaper Porsches.
00:01:33.240 Either way, not something that I would say
00:01:35.320 is passing the government infrastructure test,
00:01:38.460 even in Canada in 2021.
00:01:41.640 I go back to March when the Canadian Chamber of Commerce,
00:01:45.040 which did a survey of its businesses and stakeholders,
00:01:48.220 found that 51%, so half of Canadian businesses,
00:01:51.420 were uncertain if they could remain open.
00:01:55.740 51%.
00:01:56.180 If you do not have small business and medium-sized businesses
00:02:00.120 driving economic growth, you cease to have an economy.
00:02:04.420 So when half of the businesses in the country are saying
00:02:06.780 they don't think they can stay open,
00:02:08.600 this is before, by the way,
00:02:09.980 Ontario's latest stay-at-home order,
00:02:12.160 before Alberta put in more shutdowns, 0.59
00:02:14.320 before British Columbia put in more shutdowns,
00:02:16.620 you cease to have an economy.
00:02:18.480 And just this week, for example,
00:02:20.580 the Canadian Federation of Independent Business
00:02:22.660 released a projection that they shared
00:02:25.160 with the Senate Finance Committee
00:02:26.480 that says 58,000 businesses have already closed permanently
00:02:31.080 since the beginning of the pandemic,
00:02:32.520 with now around 180,000 near closure.
00:02:37.160 He says one in six businesses,
00:02:39.380 I mean, 51%, that was to do with confidence.
00:02:42.200 Do I think I can make it through?
00:02:43.980 These are harder numbers from the CFIB.
00:02:45.900 One in six businesses at risk of permanent closure,
00:02:49.640 180,000 businesses across Canada
00:02:51.880 will shut their doors forever
00:02:53.080 before the end of the pandemic,
00:02:55.160 bringing with them 2.4 million private sector jobs.
00:02:59.080 Now, if you're the Liberals
00:03:00.200 and you think everything should be a public sector job,
00:03:02.860 this may not bother you all that much.
00:03:04.380 The more people dependent on government,
00:03:06.380 the more control Justin Trudeau has
00:03:08.220 over the country's economy,
00:03:09.740 and by extensions, the workers in it.
00:03:12.640 But this is huge.
00:03:13.860 One in six businesses,
00:03:14.980 and I'm going to keep saying that number,
00:03:16.320 one in six,
00:03:17.640 because this is not just about a lack of jobs
00:03:20.900 for the people owning the businesses
00:03:22.820 and running them,
00:03:23.720 but all of the people they employ.
00:03:25.760 Fewer local goods for people to buy,
00:03:27.840 which means they're forced to buy imported goods
00:03:30.280 that are sold at the Walmarts or from Amazon.
00:03:33.060 And I'm a big believer in a free market,
00:03:35.200 which means you should make that choice.
00:03:37.220 But when government is the one telling businesses
00:03:40.120 they cannot open,
00:03:41.220 it's government that's signing the death warrant
00:03:43.900 for all of these businesses.
00:03:46.080 And that's why,
00:03:47.060 despite being a fiscal conservative,
00:03:48.940 I've always been in support
00:03:50.700 of the pandemic response measures
00:03:53.000 like CERB, like SEBA,
00:03:55.080 like all of these measures
00:03:56.220 that have been targeted to individuals and businesses,
00:03:58.580 because government does not have the right
00:04:00.620 to tell you you can't work and not compensate.
00:04:03.900 Although my preferred outcome
00:04:05.300 is that government doesn't tell people
00:04:07.160 they can't work.
00:04:08.380 But this is exactly what's happening.
00:04:10.640 So 238,000 businesses
00:04:12.600 could wind up permanently closed.
00:04:15.540 That's the restaurant you love
00:04:16.740 that you're never going to get to go to again.
00:04:18.440 That's the sporting goods store
00:04:19.820 around the corner that you like
00:04:21.100 that's going to be gone forever.
00:04:22.440 That is all of this stuff
00:04:24.100 that completely fuels the economy
00:04:25.840 that the federal government
00:04:27.160 and the provincial governments
00:04:28.320 simply do not care about.
00:04:30.520 If you liked watching this clip
00:04:32.240 of the Andrew Lawton Show,
00:04:33.500 True North has lots more for you
00:04:35.300 all over at www.tnc.news.