Juno News - September 20, 2024A carbon tax REVOLT？
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Summary
In this episode of Off The Record, the Taxpayers federation's Canadian Taxpayers Federation's Chris Sims and True North's Kazim Chaudhuri talk all things carbon tax. They talk about the carbon tax, Jagmeet Singh's carbon tax flip-flip, and the orange earthquake off the west coast of BC.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I'm really looking forward to going to Strong and Free. It's an event that has held every year.
00:00:04.880
I'm so old that I was at the first Manning event, as they called it. And it was kind of a rubber
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chicken thing in Ottawa with a bunch of staffers and a bunch of writers. And that was back in the
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day that Ralph Klein was there. So I got my picture with the premier of Alberta. And it's
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funny because I'm helping to host Strong and Free this year. And I'm teasing Andrew Lawton,
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who isn't here because he's out busy, you know, kissing babies and stuff, trying to get elected.
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Andrew always has this joke. You guys have probably heard it a few times. It's when he says,
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you know what, I always filled in for Danielle Smith on the radio. So now I'm deputy premier of
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Alberta. So if I'm filling in for Andrew in Red Deer, I think I'm like third in command or something
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now for Alberta. So I'm looking forward to that. You're coming as well?
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Yeah, I'm going for the first time. So I'm really excited. I'm not really sure what to expect,
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I suppose, but it should be fun. I'm definitely excited to like, you know, just see everyone
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there and talk to them and get the face to face, you know, better than just sitting behind the
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Yeah, for sure. Actually talking with people in groups is an awesome thing to do.
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Kazim, are you making the trip over across the Rockies or are you staying home?
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I'm not. I've actually never been, but I would love to go. Perhaps one day it's going to be held in BC,
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maybe. Okay. Let's see if we can get out to the promised land, maybe somewhere like Abbotsford,
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right? Could get you out that way. Yeah. So it's going to be really cool. We're going to be
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talking about a lot of, you know, smaller government pro-freedom type issues. So we're
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really looking forward to it. All right, guys, let's get this thing started.
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Hey there, welcome to Off the Record. My name is Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the
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Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm joined now by my friends from True North. Thanks for letting me
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sit in on this. We have so much to talk about. It's been a crazy couple of weeks the last little
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while. We want to get started on the carbon tax. This is probably my favorite moment with the carbon
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tax of watching the NDP flee the ship of the carbon tax. Did we want to start with Jagmeet Singh?
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Awesome. Okay, good. So guys, for the longest time, people probably remember Jagmeet Singh has been
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propping up the Trudeau government on many issues, including the carbon tax. All this time, he's had
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his wheels locked on that big orange bus. He's refused to budge. But all of a sudden, the angels
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sang after their caucus retreat in Montreal. And Jagmeet went and spoke to the reporters. And I'm
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paraphrasing, here you go, said something along the lines of, you know what, we shouldn't be putting
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the carbon tax burden on the backs of working people. That's huge. That is a huge reversal of
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direction. And so while he didn't come right out and say, I'm going to scrap it and blah, blah, blah,
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I'm going to bring the government down. Even having that bit of daylight in that armor now is a really
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big deal. And the bigger deal, in my opinion, is that what it caused, it caused an orange earthquake
00:03:05.340
off the west coast in British Columbia. And there, Cosman, where you're sitting,
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Premier David Eby, NDP Premier David Eby, said, you know what? I'm going to read the headline here.
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David Eby opens door to ditching carbon tax, comma, blames Trudeau's politicization. Okay,
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guys, this is really big, because that's where the carbon tax started. That's its origin story in 2008
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in BC. So to see David Eby suddenly go, oh, wait a minute, the carbon tax is super unpopular. And
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maybe I will be too in the looming election. Maybe I should reverse direction. What was your take on
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it? Cosman, did you want to run with this first? Yeah, I just wanted to mention with BC, it was
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actually the first carbon tax in all of North America, not just Canada. Across North America,
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BC was the first to introduce this policy in, I think, 2008. So it's been around for quite some time.
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So for the NDP Premier of British Columbia to come out one year after, he told the NDP caucus at the
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BC NDP convention that he would never falter. That's his words. He would never falter on the
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carbon tax as his peers in other provinces were abandoning it by droves. And now here he is passing
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on the buck to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, because technically, he hasn't fully abandoned it. He said he
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would only abandon it if the federal government removed the requirement from the provinces to keep
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a provincial carbon tax because the federal carbon levy doesn't apply to BC. They have their own policy.
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And it doesn't make sense because if they have their own policy, they can remove it whenever they
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want. So they don't really rely on the federal requirement. And if they wanted to remove it,
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who knows how long it would take for the federal government to force the federal levy onto them.
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So I think he's just washing his hands clean of this thing. And he's putting the blame on Prime
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Minister Justin Trudeau. This is a really big deal. If I can go back into ancient history for just a
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second. I was there in 2008 when British Columbia brought in the carbon tax. Back then, it was the BC
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Liberal Premier, Gordon Campbell, that brought in the first, you're absolutely right, Cosman,
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carbon tax in all of North America. And back then, it was all the rage. It was so popular that at the
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time, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was all over this thing. And at the time, the BC
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Liberals tried starting the carbon tax by saying, oh, it's going to be revenue neutral. So number one,
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that revenue neutrality, that only lasted for a very brief time. It only took them a couple of years
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before they started playing funny business with the budget books. And it was not revenue neutral
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right around 2010. Around then is when it started. But what's super weird is what goes around comes
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around. Back then in 2008, if you can believe it, the provincial NDP in British Columbia campaigned
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against the carbon tax. They called the revenue neutral label lipstick on a pig. They just get this,
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Isaac. I don't know if you knew this. Their campaign slogan in their 2008-2009 election,
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axe the tax. No way. Yeah. Pretty wild, eh? Yeah. And this reminds me of something we saw recently
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here in Alberta, Chris, which I'm sure you'll know, was when the NDP leadership race was occurring just
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recently. A lot of the candidates were running against the carbon tax. So it seems like whenever
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an election comes to fruition, these people want to axe the tax until they're elected. And then it's
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the complete opposite. So I don't really know what that's all about. But maybe John Rustad,
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he put it better. He said, quote, David Eby has lied to British Columbians before, and he'll do it
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again. He's flip-flopped on this because he's losing ground. And if reelected, he'll waste no time
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reversing his position on the tax. British Columbians deserve real leadership, not a premier
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who changes his stance whenever it suits his political needs. So I mean, yeah, that's really
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what's going on here, I think, as well. The election's coming up. People hate the carbon tax.
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Eby knows if he is going into the election supporting the carbon tax, he will likely have
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no chance. So this both pleases and annoys me at the same time for many reasons.
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It pleases me because this is when politicians are their most vulnerable. So I'm speaking to
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everybody here who wants things like the carbon tax scrapped in British Columbia. Push now. Get
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all of your friends and family out. Make sure that they're registered to vote. Make sure that they
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vote. Make sure they tell those candidates at the door when they're knocking and trying to sing for
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their supper exactly what you think of the carbon tax, because they do answer to us. Unfortunately,
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the only answer to us every four-ish years, although we do have recall legislation both in
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Alberta and British Columbia, which is a good thing. It's a hard hill to climb. These elections
00:08:07.800
are crucial because all of a sudden, exactly to your point, Isaac, oh my gosh, look around. Look at
00:08:13.260
all this flaming wreckage. Nothing is affordable. All the theory seems to evaporate from these
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politicians' minds, and all the sanctimony seems to just go out the window. And all of a sudden,
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they care about things like affordability or not being able to fill up your car with gas. And all
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of a sudden, someone like David Eby is saying, you know what, I could scrap the carbon tax.
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To your point here in Alberta, and this is what's also really interesting, is when you see people
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like Jagmeet Singh, the federal leader of the NDP, and David Eby, the provincial BC leader of the NDP,
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it's the same party, by the way. They have the same constitution, same organizational structure,
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everything. You start seeing dominoes fall, and then other NDP politicians kind of have to
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speak their truth on this issue. We haven't heard from Nahid Nenshi.
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So, Nahid Nenshi is the newly elected within their party leader of Alberta's NDP. He has not given a
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straight answer, yes or no, on a provincial carbon tax here in Alberta. Because it's happened before,
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what happens if there's no federal backstop anymore? Say that Pierre Polyev becomes prime
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minister, and he keeps his promise, which he has to, to scrap the carbon tax. What's to prevent
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an Alberta carbon tax from happening here again? Every time a journalist tries nailing Nahid Nenshi
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down on this issue, yes or no, he evaporates into a cloud of orange smoke. So, he's the last one
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prominently that I know of, guys, I don't know if you guys have heard, who has not yet said yes or no
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on the carbon tax. Yeah, and it was actually Manitoba Premier Wab Kinu, who first really came
00:09:53.960
out strongly against the carbon tax. And you're right, it is a domino effect, because it's extended
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to the federal, to BC, and I think it's going to spread, and the pressure is mounting. But the other
00:10:06.600
angle to this is that I feel like it's a gamble for the NDP, because there's a lot of people in
00:10:12.780
that party, progressives, environmentalists, who see this as a betrayal of one of the fundamental
00:10:19.940
principles that the NDP ran on in the last decade or so. And that group of people has sort of caused
00:10:27.460
the NDP to stray. As you mentioned, from the past, they had this working class, you know,
00:10:32.140
unionist background that actually was opposed to increasing taxes on ordinary people. But this
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group that has sort of come to the forefront of the NDP, these progressive environmentalists
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are definitely shaking their heads, thinking, is this the party that we we've helped to transform?
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And I do think a lot of them think this is a betrayal.
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Great point. Two things. A lot of them are freaking out. I forgot to mention this off the
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top, but I don't know if you guys saw, I can't remember his name. But he's I think he's a professor
00:11:07.040
in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was freaking out when we saw Jagmeet Singh and then David Eby in succession
00:11:14.420
say, you know what, no more carbon tax, it's punishing people, blah, blah, blah. He actually
00:11:18.800
brought up, if I recall correctly, David Suzuki, who mused out loud many years ago about what
00:11:25.020
kind of punishments people should have for saying they're opposed that they opposed carbon taxes
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and things like that. This professor actually kind of mused out loud, oh, politicians who
00:11:36.240
don't take action on this using that kind of language, but it was in reaction to scrapping
00:11:40.460
carbon taxes. Politicians who do take action on these sort of things, maybe they should
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stand for crimes against humanity. Like, bro, back away from your phone, go outside, as they
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say and touch grass. Like, no. And the reason why I'm saying this earnestly, it isn't just
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because I'm with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and we know that the carbon tax costs people
00:12:03.440
hundreds and hundreds of extra dollars every single year per year, even with the rebates
00:12:07.860
factored in. That's all clear. But if I can just reach out to these folks who truly think
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that it's the carbon tax in Canada that is going to save the emissions problem, it's
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not. It's just not. Even if you took the idea that, say, global emissions are the most critical
00:12:27.400
issue you're facing, keeps you up at night, gets you up in the morning, you're always working
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on it. The math isn't there, okay? Even if Canada ceased to exist, God forbid, and we stopped
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eating and growing food and heating our homes, it wouldn't make a dent in global emissions,
0.87
00:12:44.460
guys. So this is where I really don't quite understand who they would describe themselves,
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I think, as hardcore environmentalists. They're missing this big part of the arithmetic problem
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here. So if we did something big like selling natural gas to places like India, which want
00:13:00.900
to buy it, that should have a big dent, a dampening effect on their very heavy emissions. So why
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don't we do that instead of mindlessly punishing people financially for filling up their minivan?
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Yeah, you kind of took the words right out of my mouth, Chris, because I was going to say that,
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is that Canada could have a much larger effect than reducing their own emissions by providing
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these other countries like India and China who are burning coal with our clean energy. I mean,
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you could actually bring the emissions down globally in a notable way, which Canada could in no way,
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shape or form do on its own being such a minuscule portion of that percentage. And then just a few
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points I wanted to touch on here before we get off this story was that this for March 26 from a
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Leger poll said that 73% of British Columbians opposed the carbon tax. This was right before the
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increase on April 1. And you can imagine that numbers since grown, given opposition to the carbon tax
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in general has been growing. And then the last thing I'll say was, yeah, conservative leader,
00:14:01.980
Pierre Poilievre, he previously sent David Eby a letter asking for his assistance in halting that
00:14:08.460
carbon tax increase. And Eby said that this was a quote, baloney factory campaign tactic. So now with
00:14:14.800
Eby's recent news, Poilievre did not forget. And he tweeted at him on X and said, quote,
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who is full of baloney now? I mean, as soon as I saw it, I was laughing.
00:14:25.920
Okay. I missed that. I might have to clue that in an op-ed and I'm already thinking of a stunt
00:14:31.820
handing out baloney sandwiches in front of somebody's lattes. That's pretty good. It's related. Did we
00:14:38.020
want to, so a lot of people are really upset. The right people, frankly, are pretty upset about this
00:14:43.760
reversal coming from the NDP, which by the way, is a wonderful thing, right? Hey, you know, better late
00:14:48.860
than never. I'm super happy earnestly to see politicians saying, you know what? I've had this
00:14:53.860
moment. I've had an awakening. I'm now going to back off. Good. You know why it's good? Because
00:14:58.300
it'll save people a ton of money at the end of the day. So I really hope that this happens.
00:15:03.280
Everybody pick up the phone, call your local MLA, call your local MP, especially if they're NDP
00:15:08.560
and say, you know what? Good job. Back off this carbon tax, full reverse. Don't, you know, don't do it.
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Scrap the carbon tax. It's a good thing to see, but it's upsetting some people, including
00:15:18.660
the environment minister, Stefan Guibo. Did we want to move on to that fun one?
00:15:23.900
Yeah, fun. Yeah. Okay. So I, I was busy writing an awful lot of columns and letters to our supporters
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and stuff, because of course the carbon tax story was a huge one for the Taxpayers Federation.
00:15:33.520
And I saw this stuff online. Apparently, Guibo, he's got this video where he's doing the whole,
00:15:39.820
wasn't that a rom-com? I don't watch rom-coms, but apparently there was some rom-com where he's,
00:15:45.140
some dude is standing on a doorstep, sad in the rain, and he's holding up his messaging on these
00:15:50.120
like white pieces of paper. I can't remember. My favorite rom-com is Terminator. So I didn't see
00:15:56.360
it. So, but it's this thing that politicians started doing for a while. It was a trend where
00:16:00.580
they hold up their message on a little piece of white paper. Are we ready to roll that clip?
00:16:05.380
Peter Poliev has been the leader of the Conservative Party for two years, but did you know that he
00:16:10.980
voted 400 times against protecting the environment and Canadians? All he has to offer are empty slogans.
00:16:19.460
He talks about technology as a solution to climate change, but voted against every measure we've put
00:16:25.380
in place to support technological development. What he wants to do is eliminate investments in a cleaner
00:16:31.940
future for Canadians, clean air and clean water. What is his plan? Cut, cut, cut.
00:16:38.100
Okay. Cut. Indeed. Let's answer him and say cut. Okay. Did, apparently that music was part of the
00:16:45.460
original video, just so people know. We did not add that as far as I understand. That was in
00:16:50.180
Gibbo's actual video. A couple of really quick things from a taxpayer's perspective. Every time a
00:16:56.500
politician says investment, he means he's spending your money. The government doesn't have any money.
00:17:02.980
It's all taxpayers money. So the moment a government says investment, he means spend your money. Also,
00:17:09.860
again, if I could just convince him, if he really cares about global emissions, his carbon tax thing
00:17:16.500
ain't cutting it. So you might as well let it go and focus on other things. Isaac and Cosman, who wants to
00:17:21.860
take this one first? Sure. Just on the format of the video, I think it's a gimmick. I'm sure there
00:17:27.540
was some liberal staff or some younger millennial who was like, hey, this would be a great idea. I
00:17:32.420
saw this on TikTok. This might speak to people in a new way, but it comes across as inauthentic.
00:17:39.060
It comes across as forced and it's been, I guess we'll get into this later, but it's a perfect
00:17:45.140
opportunity to meme the entire thing. Yeah. Steven Guibault, I guess he's doing these fads
00:17:52.020
now because he recently did the brat summer too, whatever that was. And kind of thinking along the
00:17:57.060
same lines as you, Chris, the first thing that came to mind when I saw this video and he said that
00:18:02.740
voted 400 times against protecting the environment. I was thinking, how so? Can you show me the data
00:18:08.180
that proves the carbon tax does anything to protect the environment, Steven Guibault? My guess is you
00:18:12.820
can't or you would. We know for a fact that it makes Canadians poorer, despite the Liberals
00:18:18.340
consistently saying that it makes eight out of 10 Canadians richer somehow, which we know to be
00:18:22.420
false. Any Canadian with common sense knows that to be false, along with every document ever released
00:18:27.780
on the carbon tax proving it to be false. So the carbon tax makes us poor and it somehow helps the
00:18:34.260
climate when we know the number one way to improve any large populace's carbon footprint is by making
00:18:40.100
them richer. How come our emissions have skyrocketed during the carbon taxes tenure? Well, when people
00:18:46.820
are poor, their only concern is putting food on the table and keeping the lights on by any means necessary.
00:18:52.580
So they're not at the luxury of making decisions that might be more eco-friendly.
00:18:58.740
No, I totally agree. And I think they're backed into a corner. They're trying to throw everything
00:19:06.100
against the wall that they can and hoping it sticks. They've tried to rebrand the carbon tax. You guys
00:19:12.020
have described it as fairly as putting lipstick on a pig, which is true. I heard recently they're also
00:19:18.660
looking in more ways to try to advertise the carbon tax to Canadians, but we're past that point.
00:19:24.260
Canadians hear about the carbon tax every single day and it's not in a positive light. A marketing
00:19:30.820
campaign where you're going to spend who knows what amount of taxpayer money on consultants and
00:19:37.540
marketers and PR officials is not going to help you get out of this mess. We're past that point.
00:19:43.700
The carbon tax as a policy is dead in Canada, but the liberals need to stop waving that corpse around.
00:19:52.340
It's like weekend at Bernie's, right? You know, they're walking around with the corpse of the carbon
00:19:56.340
tax and hoping nobody notices that this thing is, has passed away.
00:20:00.420
It's still good. It's still good. I think it's, I think it's $7 million that they're spending
00:20:06.500
advertising the carbon tax as if, you know, people are just too stupid to understand how awesome the
00:20:12.500
carbon tax is. Let's spend their money convincing them about it. Like, no, no, just put a fork in it.
00:20:19.300
It's done to your issue on the emissions. Yeah. Even the government's own data on emissions is a
00:20:26.260
disaster because emissions keep on going up. Not every single year, year over year, but quite steadily
00:20:32.580
in Canada, even since we first got carbon taxes back in 2008. And if I recall correctly in British
00:20:39.540
Columbia, for example, again, the origin story of the carbon tax, I think they were supposed to bring
00:20:45.700
down emissions by 30% below 2007 levels by 2020. I think they were up like 2.5%, like huge fail, huge.
00:20:57.860
And if I can get into this a little bit more, it isn't because people don't care about the environment,
00:21:04.260
as some of these politicians seem to think like it's all about them and you failed me. No, it's because
00:21:10.980
normal working people do not have an affordable, abundant alternative energy source to switch to.
00:21:19.700
You have not ticked all those boxes, politicians. So if somebody needs to drive their kid to work
00:21:25.380
or keep their chicken barn heated, which by the way, farmers pay carbon tax on that. It's going to cost
00:21:29.940
them a billion dollars by 2030. PBO did that number. People need to keep their homes heated. They need to
00:21:36.980
get to work. If they don't have something they can switch to that is reliable and affordable and there,
00:21:44.340
they can't. They're just backed into a corner. And so I'll put a fork in it this way, when it comes to
00:21:50.420
the hypocrisy of politicians pushing this carbon tax. Back in 2008, when it started in BC, and I hope to see
00:21:57.060
that thing gone, they said it was going to stop at $30 a ton, that it was going to be revenue neutral, that it was going
00:22:04.580
to create a plethora of affordable alternative energy sources, and that it was going to make emissions
00:22:10.420
go down. None of those things is true. None. Which is why you see so many people against the carbon tax.
00:22:17.940
You guys were saying that it's created memes. Now I'm showing my age. Does this mean that they have
00:22:24.180
to freeze the video and then white out what he said and then put their own messaging in there? Can you
00:22:31.780
explain this to me? Yeah, that's pretty much it. People just Photoshop out the messages on the cards.
00:22:38.260
But some people left the cards on, like the empty slogans one, and they just took a screenshot of that,
00:22:43.860
which is perfect because that's all the liberals have been about with the carbon tax and the environment.
00:22:49.300
That one's pretty good. Oh, that's going to upset him though. He's going to say that that's
00:22:55.700
misinformation that he loves you too. Brenda, taxes make the weather good. Oh goodness. So again,
00:23:02.180
that's pretty good. And again, it's one of those comms things, right? Like if you're getting, if you're
00:23:06.660
the staff and you're the director of communications and you're getting your boss to do that, you should
00:23:11.540
see that coming. Don't hold up a blank piece of paper. Same thing with ladies. Don't wear a green dress.
1.00
00:23:19.300
Cause that'll make you like the, they can apparently like make you wear whatever after
00:23:23.300
that, or just have your head floating there. So those are always really fun inside tips.
00:23:27.940
Um, so that's a lot of fun. Did we want to get to a much more serious situation here actually
00:23:32.740
with the NDP leader on Parliament Hill? Okay. So as far as I understand, this is a couple of days ago.
00:23:40.020
This is, I worked on Parliament Hill for 20 years. Um, this is on Parliament Hill. This looks like it's
00:23:45.860
right outside of West block, which by the way, is where the house of commons is right now,
00:23:51.060
because center block, the peace tower one that everybody's used to thinking of with Parliament
00:23:54.820
Hill, that's been under renovation construction forever. No, I don't know how much it's costing us.
00:24:00.260
I'm scared to look. So that's under construction. So the house of commons that you see on question
00:24:05.060
period is actually over in kind of a side building, which is still up on the hill called West block.
00:24:10.260
And as far as I understand, this is a confrontation between some person, like an average person on
00:24:16.900
the street and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, where they get into a pretty stern verbal confrontation.
00:24:30.740
When you vote a non-confident tonight, if it came out, corrupted bastard.
00:25:08.420
If I said something like that to you, I'd admit it.
00:25:11.380
Now, I asked you if a confidence vote came up to you.
00:25:18.340
So that was looking like it was getting pretty tense.
00:25:20.580
That is Parliament Hill security that you could see there kind of standing ready.
00:25:25.620
So in law enforcement, they were within like a lunge reach of getting in between those guys,
00:25:33.540
I will say as a long time advocate for political activism, everybody's got to be careful.
00:25:42.820
Don't get into a physical confrontation with people.
00:25:54.180
It doesn't matter if you are like the most left wing person who wants to only eat organic
00:25:58.420
soy for the rest of your life or the most right wing person who wants, you know, concealed carry.
0.95
00:26:05.380
Be really careful getting into physical type situations.
00:26:10.740
Because if you do, you're going to damage your own message.
00:26:14.740
We have got so much power politically here in Canada that is firm but peaceful
00:26:21.220
that we got to keep our P's and Q's crossed here.
00:26:30.500
Did we want to watch that second Charlie Angus clip as well?
00:26:36.260
So this is Charlie Angus, a long time member of Parliament with the New Democrats.
00:26:41.380
And he's being asked by a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
00:26:44.020
I can't quite hear her voice, so I can't tell who it is.
00:26:49.060
Charlie, can you just talk to us about what happened to Mr. Singh and what your concerns are?
00:26:53.140
Well, we have the leader of a national party stepping out in a parking lot on Parliament
00:26:58.100
Hill and facing a confrontation and having to be there by himself while security stands and watches him.
00:27:04.740
We're dealing right now with an increasingly dangerous and toxic mix for politicians of all stripes.
00:27:11.860
I've had to run many gauntlets where I just have not felt safe at all.
00:27:19.060
I think what we've seen is a ramping up of the politics of intimidation from the Conservatives.
00:27:27.780
The last threat that I just dealt with that I'm dealing with police,
00:27:31.060
the person who came at me was basically quoting Pierre Pauliev and Daniel Smith.
00:27:35.860
You know, Liberal voters aren't threatening me to kill me.
00:27:43.540
I've interviewed Mr. Angus many times, long time member of Parliament.
00:27:50.740
I have personally witnessed people getting too far into other people's faces,
00:27:56.580
for real, on any side of the political spectrum.
00:27:59.700
I was actually, when I was a Sun News Network reporter out in New Brunswick,
00:28:03.780
I actually had to give a deposition in court, which led to a conviction.
00:28:08.740
Because what many would describe as a left-wing group were threatening to lock me in my car,
00:28:18.900
So, nobody has the monopoly on going too far and crossing lines when it comes to politics,
00:28:29.140
We have got so much power as Canadians in Canada.
00:28:32.580
Make sure we keep it on this side of the good line.
00:28:35.300
Because otherwise, it gets misconstrued, and then people get a bad rep.
00:28:46.820
Firstly, I mean, you know Angus better than me, obviously, Chris.
00:28:50.340
But I was surprised how critical he was of the security there.
00:28:54.580
Because he was just basically, he spent half the clip, maybe portions we didn't see,
00:29:00.660
but just critiquing the security for letting that even happen,
00:29:03.860
and not just getting in between them immediately, I suppose.
00:29:06.980
But maybe they were less concerned because of the way Singh turned around.
00:29:13.300
And I was reading online that I guess he's a pretty high-level jiu-jitsu practicer, let's call it.
00:29:20.020
So I do think if the pedestrian were more aggressive, they all seemed pretty passive.
00:29:26.580
But I definitely took that as a surprise with Angus there.
00:29:31.140
Although that may be coming from, obviously, we've seen some pretty scary things happening
00:29:36.340
with politicians recently, especially in the States with Donald Trump.
00:29:40.020
Obviously, he recently survived two assassination attempts.
00:29:43.300
So you'd think that security, given what was happening down there,
00:29:47.700
would be more prudent with these kind of things and probably wouldn't have let it get to this level.
00:29:55.540
And then just touching briefly on what Singh said, I was surprised because he said,
00:30:00.740
And I'm surprised the man didn't respond and say, well, have you looked in the mirror, Jagmeet?
00:30:05.540
You're the one propping up the Liberal government, who you claim to hate,
00:30:12.500
I think, yeah, I think it's important to note that this wasn't a physical confrontation.
00:30:20.020
It was an unbecoming comment from somebody there, but we don't know who.
00:30:26.260
And it was Jagmeet Singh that turned around and approached this individual,
00:30:43.380
And Charlie Angus, one of the most divisive MPs of the NDP caucus,
00:30:50.580
he's talking about, oh, look, the conservatives are doing this and that.
00:30:54.020
They're trying to raise the temperature on things and immediately goes into a divisive
00:31:00.500
I actually looked on his YouTube page about a week ago.
00:31:03.380
He was in Colombia in Bogota at the Pan American Conference.
00:31:07.700
This is a video he posted, and he used that opportunity with a delegation of MPs, including
00:31:13.540
liberal MPs, to blast conservative politicians.
00:31:16.740
He says there's a threat of the far right enveloping the world and all this stuff.
00:31:21.540
So this is a guy who I think has an element of hypocrisy, and he's using this incident
00:31:33.620
And Jagmeet Singh was right to be offended by somebody calling him those words and putting
00:31:42.580
It wasn't a true threat to the safety of Jagmeet Singh.
00:31:47.300
And I think there's a lot of falsities in what Charlie Angus said.
00:31:50.740
He said that the security was just watching by.
00:31:53.700
As you mentioned, Chris, they were within arm's reach.
00:32:01.620
It's one of those situations, again, just to clarify for people who haven't been to Ottawa,
00:32:08.420
So you as a peaceful citizen have a right to stand there and speak your mind, to protest,
00:32:16.900
to put up a sign, as long as it isn't, you know, trying to incite violence or something.
00:32:21.300
You have a right to be there as part of free expression.
00:32:26.340
Again, though, I will caution people, make sure you keep it on the right side of the line,
00:32:30.980
on the correct side of the line, because otherwise things will escalate.
00:32:35.940
And then your entire purpose, whatever it is, like I said, organic food or gun rights,
00:32:42.900
whatever it is, will then get kind of colored in that same light based on what happens.
00:32:51.380
It's literally on Parliament Hill with the Parliamentary Press Gallery right there,
00:32:58.100
So again, getting back actually to our original topic really briefly with the carbon tax,
00:33:04.660
Okay, so you can peacefully send emails and phone calls and letters and go to rallies for years.
00:33:12.740
And then all of a sudden, an election comes up, you achieve your goal.
00:33:16.980
Okay, no pushes or shoves happened, you achieve your goal.
00:33:21.700
That is really one of the most beautiful things about Canada's participation in politics.
00:33:26.260
And that's what we mean by get off the bench, get in the arena, make sure you're active.
00:33:30.420
And so again, I just wanted to put a caution flag down on this free communications advice,
00:33:35.300
folks, free activism advice, make sure you keep your powder dry on this stuff.
00:33:40.980
Or did we still want to chat about what happened on Parliament Hill?
00:33:44.500
Yeah, no, I think we can move on to debt, which I can discuss here if we want.
00:33:48.660
Really briefly, I understand why people are mad.
00:33:54.020
I understand why the common person is ticked off.
00:33:56.820
And I think it would benefit political leaders to really listen to people.
00:34:02.580
Don't dismiss them when they're saying things like I can barely pay my rent.
00:34:08.020
Half of Canadians are within 200 bucks of not being able to make their minimum payments,
00:34:18.980
And if you keep dismissing people, saying that doesn't matter, people are going to get mad.
00:34:35.140
I wanted to add there's no self awareness, no self reflection from the NDP who propped up the
00:34:41.380
liberal government, they point fingers at everybody else, except for themselves, never any single
00:34:52.500
Until an election comes around, and then hopefully we can get them singing from the right hymn book.
00:34:58.980
Yeah, so this actually came from calculations done by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,
00:35:04.660
that the national debt officially reached $1.232 trillion on August 30th.
00:35:12.340
There's something about the word, or the number, let's say a trillion dollars.
00:35:16.340
It's hard to even conceptualize that amount of money.
00:35:20.180
So, yeah, when Justin Trudeau first took office in November 2015, Canada's federal debt was $616
00:35:29.700
And as debt has doubled, so too has food insecurity.
00:35:34.100
Housing costs have increased about 63%, and crime had increased too.
00:35:39.380
So by 2023-24, the federal debt had reached $1.215 trillion, so we're getting very close.
00:35:46.020
But then the CTF who provided me with their calculations show that the debt has been
00:35:50.100
increasing $39.8 billion a year, which is $109 million a day.
00:35:55.140
So this was the way that this was calculated, that the debt officially doubled on the 30th of August.
00:36:01.540
And according to your organization, Chris's federal debt clock, the debt costs each Canadian $31,000.
00:36:09.860
And more importantly, perhaps interest charges on that debt will cost $54 billion this year.
00:36:16.020
The PBO, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, he actually revealed that the Liberals won't
00:36:21.860
And in that interim, the debt interest charges will cost Canadians almost $850 billion.
00:36:32.660
However, some provinces have seen good news recently with their most recent fiscal updates,
00:36:40.740
most recently coming from New Brunswick, who saw their surplus reach over double the initial
00:36:45.700
projections for this fiscal year. So now they're at $500 million.
00:36:51.460
That followed shortly after Alberta's fiscal update, where their surplus
00:36:56.420
rose almost sevenfold by $2.5 billion from their initial projections.
00:37:01.540
And just a quick converse, now going back to BC, their deficit rose, which is not good,
00:37:08.580
$1.1 billion to $9 billion. So we see all these provinces excelling, and then BC doing the exact
00:37:17.300
opposite. So I don't know what's going on in BC, but things are definitely going from bad to worse
00:37:27.060
Well, with the BC stuff, it's, it's outstanding because like they, they spend all of this money
00:37:32.580
and federally, right? And we're getting worse outcomes. What are we spending money for when
00:37:39.060
opioid addiction is high? All the deaths are going up. When you have homelessness going up,
00:37:45.060
people can't afford homes. The outcomes are not matching the amount of money we're dumping into
00:37:51.140
programs that have been proven ineffective. And it's astounding. And just to jump back to
00:37:56.980
the carbon tax, I think a reason that premier David Eby doesn't want to
00:38:02.660
wholly write off the carbon tax and shut it down is because he knows he needs to collect that money
00:38:08.500
to pay for all of these programs that he's introducing before the election to get reelected.
00:38:13.380
He wants to keep it around because it's a nice cash cow for his government to keep spending money.
00:38:18.660
And we're not only in a deficit, we're getting into debt for all spending, which is even worse.
00:38:25.220
Yeah. Big time to give you some, uh, parameters on the amount. Cause like you said, it's hard to
00:38:31.300
imagine a trillion. So Scrooge McDuck style, if you had a big vat full of loonies, okay. And you're
00:38:38.980
swimming around in the loonies and you started counting them for the debt, it would take you 30,000
00:38:45.620
years to count to 1 trillion. That is how much federal debt we're in. I know my skin's crawling.
00:38:52.420
It's really bad. Um, as far as, uh, nine, $9 billion, uh, deficit we're looking at in BC.
00:39:01.380
Quick calculation. That would pay the annual salary of 45,000 paramedics and 45,000 cops.
00:39:09.220
Not kidding. Or if you don't want to do that, say 45,000 carpenters, whatever makes $3,000 a year,
00:39:17.540
really easy way to do that math. That is brutal. Um, as far as the federal debt goes again,
00:39:24.180
doubling the debt. So just kind of visualize that like picture all the previous prime ministers,
00:39:30.580
like Harper, Mulroney, the first Trudeau, even Diefenbaker, Pearson, all the way back down the
00:39:37.460
railroad to Sir Johnny McDonald. Okay. Picture all of their governments and their debts through
00:39:44.100
times of world wars and depressions, you name it, bad stuff happening. Picture all that debt,
00:39:50.660
double it. That's what this current incarnation of the Trudeau government has done in less than a
00:39:56.180
decade. It's astonishing. And just touching briefly on what you mentioned there, um,
00:40:02.740
Cosman, I saw that the BC government was expected to collect $2.6 billion in revenue from the carbon
00:40:08.820
tax this fiscal year. Uh, so I don't know what they're going to do losing that key source of income
00:40:16.180
and their deficit is climbing. Uh, yeah, Chris, how, how are they going to supplement $2.6 billion in
00:40:20.980
revenue? I mean, you can't just pull that out of thin air. They can stop wasting money
00:40:25.940
and they can lower their taxes so that more people can afford to live there.
00:40:30.340
And so then they move there and then their income taxes increases their pot. It's amazing what happens
00:40:36.740
when politicians actually clue in and realize that if they get, if they lower, reduce regulations and cut
00:40:42.980
taxes, people come there. It's like a beacon. People come there and with them, they bring their jobs,
00:40:49.060
they bring their small businesses, they pay their income taxes and all boats rise. It really,
00:40:54.020
I'm a born British Columbia and born and raised there. I worked out in Mordor for a long time
00:40:58.260
in Ottawa, but now here I am in Alberta. Um, BC has no business running a $9 billion deficit. They
00:41:05.460
don't, they are literally sitting on gold mines. Like they have got all of the natural resources.
00:41:12.420
Like it should embarrass them how much riches they have beneath their feet. It is,
00:41:16.980
and they've got a young, hardworking population, lots of families there ready to roll up their
00:41:22.100
sleeves and do stuff. Like it is just offensive that the BC government has run a $9 billion deficit.
00:41:29.460
They've got no excuses. Um, did we want to get onto, um, mortally embarrassing me or do we want to wait?
00:41:37.460
So the department of national defense, um, I can't even, so they're apparently buying supplies for
00:41:45.380
certain rooms that may or may not need them. My entire point in this is that, okay, just briefly,
00:41:52.020
I'm very rodeo girl, but I've got a strong Marilla Cuthbert streak in me. So this segment might kill
00:41:58.260
me. So if I die, um, this YouTube video will probably go viral and it's all for the greater
00:42:03.780
good. Who wants to take this away? Gentlemen. Sure. I can, I can, uh, brief it pretty quickly.
00:42:10.740
Okay. Uh, so essentially in December, the federal government introduced changes,
00:42:16.340
a directive essentially under the labor code that required all federally regulated workplaces,
00:42:22.180
including crown corporations, et cetera, to supply, uh, all washrooms, including men's rooms with
00:42:28.820
feminine hygiene products. And the big attention was on the military. So we have military bases across
00:42:38.100
Canada where the men's rooms have tampon and pad dispensers. And we had an a tip we received
00:42:45.140
recently that showed, well, first of all, there was, as soon as this directive went into place,
00:42:50.580
there was incidents of vandalism. People were removing the, the receptacles from the wall. They
00:42:56.020
were, you know, putting question marks on it, drawing like little things on onto these things,
00:43:01.300
showing their protest against this government decision. But the department of national defense,
00:43:07.540
a tip showed that they actually wanted to investigate this as a hate crime. So they prompted the
00:43:14.820
military police, uh, particularly the hate crime and extremism unit and send several complaints about
00:43:21.860
this act. What I think is essentially an act of protest against the government directive.
00:43:26.820
And fortunately the military police said, this is nonsense. There's no evidence that this is actually
00:43:33.140
constitutes any sort of hate crime rather than just vandalisms and petty, you know, theft, if you want
00:43:39.460
to call it that because they were disappearing. But the funniest part of the story was that military
00:43:44.340
officials actually misinterpreted these tampons disappearing as, uh, indicative of high demand
00:43:51.380
and high use. So one janitor was refilling the tampon dispensers in the men's room twice a day
00:43:58.020
because he was so stunned that they were, you know, flying off the shelf. All the male soldiers and cadets were
00:44:04.980
taking these home with them or, or, or presumably using them. I hope that what happened to these
00:44:11.300
products that went missing was that they were, you know, taken home to their spouses or even better
00:44:17.460
donated to women's shelters. I think that's the, would be the, uh, fairytale ending of this, this story.
00:44:25.540
Yeah. Those are good things to hope for. I'd say, Cosmin, you know, just thinking about that,
00:44:30.500
someone arriving in that conclusion that, uh, the demand is so high that you have to refill it twice
00:44:35.300
a day in the men's bathroom of a military base, where historically these are very masculine men
00:44:41.460
as you'd want your army to be, uh, not whomever would be using tampons in a men's room. So it just
00:44:49.380
makes me think that they didn't even think, stop to think about it for a second, because if they had,
00:44:54.100
I I'd assume that they'd immediately arrive at the conclusion that any sane person would,
00:44:59.300
that these tampons are clearly being discarded. So, I mean, reading those quotes in your article,
00:45:05.220
when I was reading your exclusive there, Cosmin, I mean, I laughed out loud literally because I
00:45:09.140
couldn't believe that, that they had arrived at that conclusion. And Chris, just to get you involved,
00:45:15.300
uh, I think there is a spending element to this story. We don't know the exact cost of this, but
00:45:20.820
it just makes me wonder, like how many people does this affect? I'm sure there's
00:45:25.220
a few of like a, a small percentage of people who actually might be using these for legitimate
00:45:30.260
purposes, but all that money that, that goes to maintaining stock to, you know, install,
00:45:35.940
getting janitors to install these things and, and the maintenance, et cetera, the supplies,
00:45:42.420
how, like we could be spending that money on soldiers who, who have to buy their own equipment
00:45:47.940
while on military, uh, missions abroad, uh, on bettering the situation of military families who
00:45:55.300
can't find housing. These are like central problems that the military is facing. And I think it would
00:46:01.300
do more for recruitment to address things like, you know, treating our military families and veterans
00:46:07.300
with respect than this, you know, superficial ideologically inclined sort of woke equity initiative that,
00:46:15.380
like, it's like, what is this? Like, it seems to be a bandaid on a problem that is systemic and, and
00:46:21.780
really is at the foundation of what's going on with the Canadian armed forces.
00:46:26.100
I think we had a recent example. I can't remember the numbers on it where they weren't even able to
00:46:30.980
source proper sleeping bags for the armed forces, uh, guys and gals because they weren't temperature
00:46:36.820
appropriate. And somebody said just a beautiful line, which I want to use all the time at the CTF.
00:46:42.020
Why didn't they just go to Canadian tire? And it's exactly that sort of question. I'm serious.
00:46:47.780
That applies to all of this. The government is really bad at doing stuff like really bad.
00:46:54.980
They couldn't organize a two car parade as Milton Friedman put it. If you put them in charge of the
00:47:00.100
Sahara desert in about a year, they'd have a shortage of sand. So this is just the worst way,
00:47:06.020
obviously to go about something that they think is a problem. They can't find a proper solution that,
00:47:10.900
you know, helps everybody involved. And I'm just cringing for many reasons, but also cringing at
00:47:17.460
the price tag. Uh, Cosman, have you filed, or are you going to file a tips or FOIs to find out the,
00:47:22.820
the price tag on this thing? Yeah, I think that's the intention. We should definitely
00:47:28.500
look into that. And I suspect it'll, it'll be pretty pricey. I've heard also from people at these
00:47:35.300
bases that they're not even resupplying these anymore because of these incidents. They've kind
00:47:40.500
of given up, you know, the, they followed the directive, installed the actual dispenser there.
00:47:45.460
But by this point, some bases seem to have just given up on the entire thing, which I think would
00:47:51.140
probably be the best thing is just cut your losses by this point. It's not, uh, you know, there are other
00:47:56.900
ways to address an issue like that than, than just doing this wholesale. Every single base needs this.
00:48:03.220
To your point on that. Um, and again, I think this is where, uh, some folks get caught up in intention.
00:48:09.540
Um, so for example, with the whole school food program that the Trudeau government is trying to
00:48:14.100
push through, yes, it's going to be a colossal waste of money and a disaster. We know that because
00:48:18.580
the government's trying to do something. So everybody just, you know, take the retail price,
00:48:23.220
quadruple it and, you know, put in some shady deals there and you've got a government situation.
00:48:28.500
My point here though, is actual outcome without the government involved. So for example, with the
00:48:34.980
school food program, we've got this like parents who ever hear about a kid that is hungry at school.
00:48:43.140
Oh my gosh. Like the, the office is covered in sandwiches and milks and granola bars and
00:48:49.860
moms and dads pack extra sandwiches for their kid's buddy at school. Like church groups get involved.
00:48:55.380
Faith groups get involved, like local solutions that are earnest and heartfelt work, work. We do not
0.99
00:49:04.580
need the federal government from, you know, 30,000 feet up trying to solve a problem with taxpayers' money
00:49:13.380
and failing at it because it's obviously failing too. So it's failing and it's wasting taxpayers' money
00:49:20.260
and it's just upsetting a lot of people. So again, I think it's a good comparison between something
00:49:25.140
that could be arguably well-intentioned, which then goes way off the rails because they aren't
00:49:29.700
directly connected on the ground to the issue. Is that enough fun for today?
00:49:35.780
I think so. I had fun. I mostly did. I didn't die. I'm glad I'm still breathing and talking.
00:49:44.100
Okay guys, if anybody wants more information, of course, go to the True North website and you can
00:49:49.540
read all of these awesome articles. You saw all the screenshots up there. If you want to completely
00:49:54.500
nerd out on the carbon tax, head on over to taxpayer.com. We did like so many articles on this
00:50:00.420
over the last 10 years. Folks can read up on things like emissions and how much it's actually costing you.
00:50:05.540
And folks, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for all of your comments online. Be sure to keep
00:50:10.580
them coming. And until next time, remember all of this is off the record.
00:50:28.820
I thought I'd like kept it pretty family friendly.
00:50:31.380
You did. I've never said that word. So here we are.
00:50:37.460
I've managed to live 46 years and never said that word. Thank you both of you guys for talking about