Juno News - Andrew Lawton： Carney’s budget makes Trudeau look responsible

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Fighter with Chris Sims. I am Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the

00:00:09.800 Canadian Taxpayers Federation, where we are always fighting for lower taxes, less waste,

00:00:14.760 and more accountable government. Okay, this week is going to be a super busy week, so we really

00:00:19.140 appreciate you guys making us a part of your day and a way to start the week. If you haven't done

00:00:24.360 so yet, be sure to like this video, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and better yet, head on over

00:00:30.600 to Juno News, take out a subscription there, head on over to Taxpayer.com, sign a petition that's

00:00:35.820 making you the most mad, and that way you join the fight and you're getting some work done this week.

00:00:39.960 Okay, big show for you today. We're going to be speaking with Andrew Lawton. Yeah, remember him?

00:00:45.840 He's from such shows as kind of this one. He had his own show, of course, on True North for years,

00:00:51.420 and then that became Juno. Now he's this big, fancy member of Parliament out of London, Ontario.

00:00:56.780 We're going to get the latest from him in Ottawa on what is going on on Parliament Hill.

00:01:01.820 What the heck was that budget? Why can't we get a trade deal with our biggest trading partner?

00:01:07.020 What is going on there? And then we're going to shift gears slightly because I want to know what's

00:01:11.000 happening here on the ground in Alberta because we have this deadline, remember? We have an ultimatum

00:01:16.400 coming from Premier Daniel Smith with a deadline of Grey Cup. So Carney's got until Grey Cup kickoff

00:01:23.140 to be able to actually reach all of those ultimatum deals that Premier Daniel Smith gave the Prime

00:01:29.820 Minister. That includes things like pipelines, getting rid of the tanker ban, and getting rid of

00:01:35.980 the energy cap, our production cap here in Alberta. So lots to talk about. Okay, the budget was a

00:01:42.240 disaster, like flaming wreckage everywhere. It was nearly $80 billion in deficit. Sean, if you want

00:01:50.060 to pull those numbers back up, I don't know if you have them. There we go. Oh, that's just disgusting.

00:01:54.240 Take a look there. So the deficit, of course, is the annual debt. Okay, so it is close to $80 billion

00:02:00.700 with a B. Spoiler alert, that is more than what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was planning to blow his

00:02:08.940 budget by. Carney's doing it worse, okay? The debt, the national debt, is going to hit $1.3 trillion

00:02:17.320 this year with a T. That is terrifying because we pay the interest on that thing every single year. It is

00:02:24.860 a line item in the budget, folks. It's something we all have to pay. Debt interest, more than $55 billion.

00:02:31.560 dollars. That's just this year. Put another way, it costs about a billion dollars to build a new

00:02:38.540 hospital, okay? So do that visualization. Build a brand new hospital, all the fresh paint and all

00:02:44.580 the stuff. Instead of moving people into it, burn it down. Burn it down every single week, okay?

00:02:51.040 Saturday night, gather around, kids. Burn down a hospital. That's what we're wasting on that debt 0.99

00:02:55.460 interest. The problem here is twofold. One, the adults are noticing now, okay? Remember how we

00:03:04.060 were warning that if we keep blowing our budgets like this, if we keep pretending that money isn't

00:03:09.600 real and it's just some social construct that has no consequences, that we were going to get a warning

00:03:15.440 coming from international credit rating agencies? It's happening. Here, let's pull up this headline.

00:03:21.420 It is so scary. Fitch, okay? For those of you that don't know, that is an international credit

00:03:27.300 rating agency, okay? Big money. Fitch warns Canada of credit downgrade. That is bad news for mortgages.

00:03:36.900 Of course, that's bad news for mortgages because that affects our lending rates, okay? It's also bad

00:03:43.520 news just for taxpayers writ large because if we... I don't want to say it out loud. If what was said

00:03:51.020 in that headline actually happens, that means our borrowing rate as a country goes up, okay? That

00:03:58.140 means that debt interest that we showed you there on a line item, it goes up and we all have to pay

00:04:03.880 it. Now, one of the reasons why we're in such trouble is because we don't have serious people running

00:04:11.060 the show, apparently. We don't have people in the finance department. I'm talking to you, bureaucrats.

00:04:17.180 What the heck are you doing? Scream at that political staff who's coming to you with their 0.98

00:04:22.740 stupid binders saying, we can go into deeper debt. It's all fine. No, stand up to them. Tell them that 1.00

00:04:29.700 your charts and all your formulas are showing that this is a bad thing. I know that's what they're

00:04:34.340 showing. So you tell them. Stand up to them. Say no. Say no to this ridiculous deficit spending,

00:04:40.140 okay? The reason why we're in such trouble is twofold. A, because we've got unserious people

00:04:46.060 who are printing off 500-page budgets that are full of fluff and nonsense and full of bad math

00:04:53.760 like that. And on the other side of things, that same government is strangling our revenue side.

00:05:02.100 So in the budget, okay, there's basically two columns, okay? There's spending, okay? So expenditure,

00:05:11.280 doesn't matter if they call it operating or capital, by the way, it's all spending. So money going out,

00:05:16.500 that's one column. Money coming in is the other column. The government gets money from tax dollars.

00:05:23.980 How do we generate more tax dollars? We generate more wealth in Canada with good jobs, especially in

00:05:31.140 things like the resource industry, which is why Premier Daniel Smith gave Carney that deadline of

00:05:36.800 Grey Cup, saying, we have got to get our resources out to market. Take your foot off of our neck,

00:05:43.380 approve our pipelines, get rid of the West Coast tanker ban so we can get more wealth coming back

00:05:48.160 into this country and try to save that dumpster fire of a budget. Let's fix things. Let's write the

00:05:54.100 ship. But I don't know, man. I don't know about writing this ship because now the captain

00:06:01.120 the captain's cracking jokes about pipelines. I'm going to tee up this clip because I couldn't

00:06:07.120 believe it when I saw it late last week. This is Prime Minister Mark Carney, a dude who has a PhD

00:06:14.200 in economics from Oxford, I will point out, knows how to do the math, okay? Knows where money comes

00:06:19.000 from. This is Prime Minister Mark Carney on stage being interviewed by a young lady who rightly is 0.99

00:06:26.580 asking him about how do we get pipelines approved? Is it happening soon? Because it matters to our

00:06:32.660 prosperity. She asks him this. Listen to his answer. One of my questions was, is this pipeline going to

00:06:39.440 come? So boring. It's not actually for the big part of the country. It is because it's, look, it's,

00:06:46.580 don't worry, we're on it. We're on it. Like we're on it. But there is this whole world. Okay, hands up.

00:06:52.160 Who's working on the pipeline in this room? In case you didn't hear that little muttered thing

00:06:57.520 that he just said, he said, so boring. Okay. Um, even I, in my most optimistic, a white pill mood

00:07:07.740 cannot say, oh, he's just trying to make pipelines boring again because there's so many of them getting

00:07:13.960 approved that it becomes ho-hum and just a thing. It just happens all the time. You know, water is wet,

00:07:19.260 fork found in kitchen. Um, we're getting pipelines approved. So therefore it's boring.

00:07:24.820 That is not how I'm reading that clip at all, at all. Um, because he goes on to say it's going to

00:07:32.020 happen. And then he corrects himself. He says, well, something will happen. Okay. The prime minister,

00:07:38.760 this current prime minister, not the last guy who kept on pointing to his socks and said that the

00:07:43.960 budget will balance itself and clearly had a hate on for Alberta's energy sector. Not that guy.

00:07:50.020 This guy, the current guy just called pipelines. So boring. Do you think this is going to work for

00:07:57.060 him? Just from a pure comms perspective, do you think that this cute surfer dude thing is going to

00:08:04.140 fit for Carney? I don't think he's pulling it off. I don't. Um, and financially speaking,

00:08:10.440 we can't afford this. We can't afford grown men sitting there on stage, by the way, being super

00:08:17.980 rude to that interviewer who was rightly asking about prosperity, saying pipelines are so boring.

00:08:25.180 Boy, oh boy, we're in trouble. Where are we going to go from here? Okay. I, I think we need to find out

00:08:32.160 from Parliament Hill on what the temperature is like in downtown Ottawa. Are they taking this seriously?

00:08:39.120 What's happening with our money? We're going to get to that in a second, but first let's check in with

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00:09:17.740 to know. You can learn more by visiting unsmoke.ca. Okay. So we're in a serious situation here,

00:09:24.780 folks. We're headed to a $1.3 trillion national debt. We're wasting money hand over fist. Just Google

00:09:34.920 any of these silly government procurements. It's everything from a gender neutral race in Vietnam 0.99

00:09:40.180 to a hundred thousand dollars for a grocery cart documentary. I'm not making any of that up. We

00:09:46.180 spent money. It was over a thousand dollars. We spent money on a lesbian pirate musical last year.

00:09:52.300 It's the craziest thing. Hey, if that is what you want to go watch, you go fill your peg leg, but you do it 0.99

00:09:58.580 on your own dime. Don't make taxpayers pay for it. So we've got a serious situation with the budget.

00:10:03.680 We don't have a renegotiated trade deal with our biggest trading partner. And we don't clearly have

00:10:13.760 someone who sounds earnest about getting our natural resources to market because he's calling that

00:10:20.600 boring. How do we fix this? Let's find out. Joining me now is Andrew Lawton. Yes, you must remember him

00:10:29.780 from shows just like this one, in fact, on True North and Juneau. Now, Andrew, you are a member of parliament

00:10:35.660 for, let's get the title correct here, Elgin, St. Thomas, London, South, also known as London, Ontario.

00:10:42.480 Thank you so much, sir. Welcome. Thank you. Good to be with. This is actually, I believe my first time

00:10:48.560 on Juneau since I was sworn in. I did an interview with Candace right after the election, but I was

00:10:54.660 not yet a member of parliament. So what's been taking you guys so long? I'm sorry. It's one of

00:10:59.940 those things where I just watch you and then I think about you and then it didn't make the connection

00:11:04.520 of, oh, right. He should come on the actual program and talk with his face so that, you know, viewers can

00:11:10.160 actually know what's going on with him instead of me just texting you. Okay, so just generally, how are

00:11:15.540 you doing? What is the latest thing being like? What's it like being a member of parliament? Did

00:11:19.580 they tell you where the alien spacecraft is buried yet or do you need to form government for that?

00:11:25.460 Yeah, that might be in government. I haven't got many memos on that one, although I'm a little bit

00:11:29.800 behind on the unmarked manila envelopes in the office, so we'll see. Look, it's been so exciting.

00:11:35.900 I mean, I used to be an observer of politics for so long and I used to, on my show often with you,

00:11:41.440 talk about all the things that I wish the people in Ottawa were doing and I got tired of waiting for

00:11:46.800 them to do it. I figured I had to show up and do it myself and we're part of a fantastic team and

00:11:52.380 obviously, look, we're in opposition, not government. We expected a different result and hoped for a

00:11:57.020 different result, but there's still so much to do and we're seeing on, you know, a lot of the issues

00:12:01.420 that I've been really, really driving hard on my shows over the years, whether it's, you know,

00:12:06.000 reckless government spending, liberal government censorship, regulation and control of media,

00:12:11.520 all of these things are still very much alive and well from the government. So I'm happy to be there

00:12:16.260 in the chamber pushing back against this. It's neat. Like, do you, I have to ask you just

00:12:20.380 personally, do you like it? Like, do you like being a member of parliament and like talking to people?

00:12:24.240 I think you're in your constituency this week, right? Yeah, yeah. For Remembrance Day,

00:12:28.860 we have a lot of events going on. I love it. I mean, what did I do if I weren't in politics right

00:12:33.860 now? I'd still be doing the same thing, which is talking about politics and, you know, meeting

00:12:38.740 with people and trying to move the needle on some of these big picture issues. So I'm happy to be

00:12:43.760 doing it in the House of Commons, but I love being back in the constituency. It's the people there who

00:12:47.840 are, you got to get the Ottawa off every now and then and talk to real people. So I really like weeks

00:12:52.320 like this. Yeah. Getting Ottawa washed is a bane of federal politics. I know that you represent

00:12:58.060 my uncle Brad actually is right in your riding there, there in London South. So thank you for

00:13:02.500 joining us as your role as a member of parliament. Okay, let's get into the, I don't want to call it

00:13:07.240 a budget. It seems like a violation of the English language that was released last week. But my

00:13:12.280 goodness, Andrew, like we've got more close to an $80 billion deficit. And some of the language in

00:13:19.080 there was just unserious. The way they're talking about maybe sort of having a meeting someday about

00:13:23.840 lifting the energy cap on Alberta. There's no plans to ever balance the budget. And this is

00:13:28.580 coming from a guy with a PhD in economics. Like, what is the mood in Ottawa when you guys saw this

00:13:34.780 budget? What was your reaction? Well, I look, I wanted nothing more than for all of the fears that

00:13:42.620 we had to be disproven. I wanted a fiscally responsible budget. I wanted a government that

00:13:47.560 would listen to opposition parties. And I'll just say, you know, I've seen minority parliaments

00:13:52.920 before. And the obligation, the onus has always been on the government to find a way to get a

00:13:59.060 budget passed, to find a way to get support from opposition parties. And in this particular case,

00:14:03.560 there's been basically no desire by the Liberal government to try to meet us in the middle even

00:14:09.940 and talk about the affordability crisis, talk about how Canadians are being just driven into

00:14:15.440 personal household debt, because of runaway inflation, which is directly tied to reckless

00:14:21.020 government spending and deficit. So I was really hoping that we would get something that was trying

00:14:27.680 to address some of these key issues. And instead, we have a debt, a deficit and a debt load that is

00:14:34.480 making Justin Trudeau look fiscally responsible. And that is terrifying. Mark Carney's budget makes Justin

00:14:41.120 Trudeau's financial plans look like they are responsible. I can't believe we're even saying

00:14:46.540 this. Seriously, like think back years ago, even back when Mark Carney was the governor of the Bank of

00:14:51.740 Canada. Like, can you imagine saying, oh, he's he's fiscally more reckless than Justin Trudeau? Like, what?

00:14:58.820 Yeah, yeah, he is set to rack up about double in debt what Justin Trudeau was going to we're looking at over

00:15:04.980 the next several years, $320 billion in debt. Now, just to put this in context, this year alone,

00:15:10.740 we're going to be spending $55 billion, I think 55.6 on debt interest. And you and I used to talk about

00:15:17.960 this when I was doing my show. That is money we are literally lighting on fire. That is money we are

00:15:24.080 throwing into the paper shredder. That is money we are doing nothing with. That is more than the federal

00:15:29.300 government spends in health transfers to provinces. That's more than Canada collects in GST revenue.

00:15:34.940 That is debt interest. And that number gets larger and larger, the larger the debt gets.

00:15:40.160 And it also gets larger when interest rates go up, which is another consideration we have to keep

00:15:45.060 in mind here. So this is something that is going to I mean, Mark Carney liked to tell young Canadians

00:15:50.460 at that speech a couple of weeks ago, they're going to need to be making sacrifices. Well, yeah,

00:15:54.180 because he is mortgaging their fiscal future for his reckless spending right now.

00:15:59.640 Yeah, that sacrifices quote was horrible, because some people were trying to spin it saying,

00:16:05.520 Oh, he actually means he's going to reduce the size and the cost of the bureaucracy.

00:16:10.000 No, no, no, no. He was talking to young people saying you need to sacrifice more. I'll be blunt.

00:16:16.020 I've got Gen Z kids, they've sacrificed enough, thank you. In most places across Canada,

00:16:21.780 most of that generation, they've given up on ever owning a house. And I hate saying that out loud,

00:16:26.640 because it's a terrible thing to say. But this is the situation they're in right now.

00:16:30.480 They were the kids that were directly impacted the most by lockdowns when they were kicked out of

00:16:35.060 school for ages on end. Like they've had enough. Okay, like I think I can speak for Gen X and Gen Z,

00:16:41.120 they've had enough of this. And so the language come in the millennials, the language coming out

00:16:45.700 of Carney saying you're going to have to sacrifice more. Andrew, I think my nightmare kind of came true.

00:16:51.960 I was holding out hope that it would be the fiscal guy, the Bank Canada guy, that would actually be

00:16:58.620 able to be better than Trudeau with money. And not this guy, not the one who wrote the book

00:17:04.000 as the UN special envoy about all this carbon taxes, carbon tariffs, all these extra prices on

00:17:11.960 energy coming out of Canada, and just basically treating money as a social construct. But that

00:17:18.460 guy's the one that showed up. And that's the budget we have. I got to ask you, what was the mood

00:17:23.740 in the party? So you're there, you're with the Conservative Party, you're sitting in the House

00:17:27.840 of Commons. What was the mood that ran through there? When we saw that warning come from Fitch

00:17:32.360 about a possible, I don't even want to say it, the idea of our credit rating being adjusted,

00:17:37.580 putting it nicely?

00:17:39.680 Well, look, I think the mood was, I don't even want to say surprise, because we're seeing what

00:17:45.300 you've just identified, Chris, which is that during the campaign, Mark Carney's pitch to Canadians,

00:17:49.960 he was going to be this fiscally moderate, maybe even fiscally conservative guy. He had all of this

00:17:55.440 economic experience. He even called himself, I believe, the great economist. He said that

00:18:00.720 in a response to question period, in question period. And that's not what we're seeing. We're

00:18:06.060 not seeing this. And he also promised himself as the guy that could move quickly, he could move at

00:18:10.820 the speed of crisis. And we have not seen all of these promises. We haven't seen him get spending

00:18:15.560 under check. We haven't seen him get a deal with the US. We haven't seen him save the auto sector

00:18:21.500 like he promised. Instead, we've seen just a summer and fall of hemorrhaging auto jobs. And that one's

00:18:27.900 very near and dear to my riding. We lost the 1,200 jobs just down the road at the Cammie plant. We had

00:18:34.740 3,000 at Brampton, Stellantis. We had in the hundreds, I believe, at Packer in Santa Fe, Quebec.

00:18:41.480 We had GM in Oshawa. And this was literally just in the span of three to four weeks. So we now have

00:18:48.080 a situation where more and more Canadians are not producing because they are out of work,

00:18:54.220 because they are dealing with this. And now we have on the other side, a government that's not

00:18:58.420 living within its means. And why this is so important is because all of this is subject to

00:19:03.180 change if government spending goes up even further. This is just the roadmap. We have seen governments in

00:19:08.300 the past blow past these things, what Chrystia Freeland jokingly called the, well, she didn't 0.81

00:19:13.280 mean it as a joke, but the fiscal guardrail, which ended up just being like so small, you could barely

00:19:18.220 see it because they blew past it so far. And this is what we're going to be seeing a lot more of over

00:19:23.920 the next few years. So this is something that is very concerning. Deficits and debt, they may seem

00:19:29.260 like abstract numbers, but it is literally Mark Carney spending $5,400 more on behalf of every Canadian

00:19:36.120 household. So if you don't have that money lying around, you should ask why the liberal government

00:19:40.060 thinks that it should be able to spend that on your behalf. Two more things, because I know you're

00:19:44.360 very busy. You've got a very packed constituency week. Two more things. In the budget, they also

00:19:49.560 talked about more money for media. I got to point out, they'd announced the extra $150 million for the

00:19:55.700 CBC during the election campaign. And people were fine with that. No, we're not fine with that.

00:20:01.740 Journalists should never be paid by the government. But here it is in the budget in black and white.

00:20:05.840 Yep. An extra $150 million with an M for CBC and extra money for other forms of media.

00:20:12.380 Is this ringing through? Are you guys able to punch through this noise? Because I feel bad for you

00:20:18.240 guys sometimes in the opposition benches, actually, no matter which the party, if you're opposed to

00:20:22.860 things like government funded media, because you're surrounded by government funded media,

00:20:27.460 you're surrounded by the press gallery. Is this punching through this message that we need to

00:20:31.820 defund the media? Look, there is a grocery store outside my constituency office. And I've been in

00:20:39.880 there. Well, I go there all the time after work. And I've been in there several times. And you can

00:20:44.520 actually see people just really looking at the price tags, really not sure if they can afford this.

00:20:49.120 I've seen people put things back on shelves. I hear people come into my office all the time,

00:20:53.900 who don't know how they're going to fill up their car. They don't know how they're going to pay their

00:20:57.960 rent. They don't know how they're going to choose between whether they buy groceries this week, or

00:21:02.400 whether they buy a birthday present for their child. I've heard this. And then the government

00:21:06.920 comes and says, Okay, well, we can't do that, really. But we can bring Eurovision to Canada.

00:21:13.660 Like, that's, that's what the Liberals have done. That's part of the things they want to do with the

00:21:18.000 $140 million. They want to bring Eurovision to Canada. Now, I shouldn't be surprised. Mark Carney's a

00:21:22.760 guy who, you know, openly identifies as European, he kind of collects passports like trading cars.

00:21:28.460 But I'm sorry, when you're dealing with an affordability crisis, Canadians want to be able

00:21:32.380 to live, they want to be able to pay their bills on time, they don't want to be able to, you know,

00:21:38.080 suffer in a cold house with an empty fridge while enjoying Euro pop on CBC.

00:21:42.860 And folks, that's in the budget. I talked about that.

00:21:45.800 Yeah, no, I'm not making that literally that is in the budget. Yes, I'm not making that up. That is not

00:21:49.880 conjecture. That is literally what the government thought was so important. It had to be in black 1.00

00:21:54.200 and white on the budget. Yep. Eurovision. I kid you not. Okay, lastly, you mentioned the cozying up

00:22:00.120 to the European Union. Last I checked, they are not the economic manufacturing powerhouse that they

00:22:06.060 were, I don't know, in the 19th century. They're just not. And I hate to point this out. This is

00:22:12.760 sounding a lot like the first Trudeau back in the 70s when he was trying to realign ourselves over with

00:22:17.620 our cousins in Europe. Guys, we have the United States, okay? We do two-way trade every day.

00:22:24.600 Three billion dollars a day. A day. It's more than a trillion dollars a year. And they seem to be

00:22:30.540 completely thumbing their nose at this relationship with the states. I don't care if you don't like

00:22:35.700 the president as a person. Don't care. Our trading relationship is super important. And yet, all we're

00:22:41.040 hearing is that they're not actually talking. Last I saw, there was a committee that was just given

00:22:46.400 testimony this morning that they haven't met since August. So it sure doesn't sound like they're

00:22:51.880 taking this trade situation seriously. I have to stress, I was listening to Ben Shapiro over the

00:22:58.060 weekend, and he rightly pointed out, again, tariffs are trade taxes. They're just trade taxes. And they

00:23:05.120 cost people money on both sides of the border. What are you hearing? Are we going to get a renegotiated

00:23:11.100 trade deal with the United States, this super important economy? Or are we not?

00:23:16.160 Yeah, you're right to point out the tariffs hurt everyone. They hurt both sides in the long run.

00:23:21.500 Some may disproportionately feel the pain more in the short term. But over time, I do not like

00:23:26.440 tariffs. I do not support them. I want what Mark Carney promised, which was a deal by July. But just on

00:23:31.940 Europe for a moment, it's not even like we're trading with Europe all that well. Because we have a steady

00:23:36.940 stream of European heads of government and heads of state that say they would love nothing more than

00:23:41.280 to buy Canadian LNG. And Justin Trudeau's famous words on this, there's no business case. Well,

00:23:47.020 the Prime Minister of Greece wants Canadian LNG, the Chancellor of Germany wants Canadian LNG.

00:23:52.220 There was another one as well, I can't remember who, but Europeans want Canadian resources. And we say,

00:23:58.280 okay, well, we'll replace the US with Europe. But we aren't even giving the Europeans access to the

00:24:04.160 special commodity that we have that would help offset some of what we're losing with the US. So

00:24:08.960 no, I do not believe we can ever conjure 350 million people to trade with out of thin air. So

00:24:14.580 we do want to make a deal. Obviously, we have to decide as a country what our non-negotiables are.

00:24:20.520 But you know, at the very least, we have to negotiate and that has not been happening. And I

00:24:24.780 think again, you know, Mark Carney may not have been able to promise that he was going to get a deal,

00:24:30.580 but he did. He chose to make that promise. He chose to do that. He chose to say that he would

00:24:35.380 get it done. And he hasn't. And look, I live in a riding that has a lot of manufacturing. We are just

00:24:41.100 about an hour from the Canada US border, I guess, you know, an hour and a bit. So we are really

00:24:46.380 personally hit by this, as are so many of the people that I represent. And they want a deal. This

00:24:51.320 isn't just some abstract, you know, chess piece, some chess game. This is literally their livelihood.

00:24:56.620 It is. It is. I want to let you go here. But this is the fighter. That's the show. We always want to

00:25:02.920 fight for change. So I want to encourage people, all of our viewers, all of our listeners and your

00:25:08.360 constituents, that the fight isn't over. We can still fix stuff. We can still change stuff.

00:25:14.120 This is a minority parliament. Andrew, how do they best fight to get these changes that they want to

00:25:20.580 see? How do your constituents fight for this? Look, the one thing I have learned being a member of

00:25:26.160 parliament is that you do receive the messages and the calls that come in. I know sometimes

00:25:30.880 people might have really bad MPs that aren't responsive. And sure, maybe that's there. I

00:25:34.840 make a point of reading everything that comes in. I make a point of talking to as many constituents as

00:25:39.220 possible. And if there's a trend, if people are saying, hey, you got to do X on this, even if it

00:25:44.200 goes against what my party thinks, I'm going to bring that up. And I encourage people to, as fruitless as

00:25:50.040 it may seem, make sure you're contacting your member of parliament and don't give them form

00:25:54.040 emails, request a meeting, sit down, look them in the eye and say, you know, I think you need to do

00:25:58.460 this on this. And it doesn't mean you're going to get your way, but it means that we have to start

00:26:03.120 putting some pressure on so that they can bring that to Ottawa. Because if no one does that, if no

00:26:07.980 one reaches out, then no one is standing up for what you believe. And I can assure you the other

00:26:13.180 side is. The other side is. So if I get, you know, 100 emails telling me, you know, they want a budget

00:26:18.320 that has an even bigger deficit and no one emails me to say, hey, I'm worried about government

00:26:21.840 spending. That's going to give me a skewed imbalance of what people think. Andrew Lawton,

00:26:26.640 member of parliament for Elgin, St. Thomas, London South and a friend to this show. Thank you so much

00:26:32.120 for your time today, sir. Always a pleasure, Chris, and keep up the great work. Thank you. So that you

00:26:38.340 just heard was Andrew Lawton. He gave us the perspective from the federal perspective. What is

00:26:45.960 happening with the big stage? What is happening with the United States? Why on earth did Carney

00:26:53.060 deliver the budget? I can't even call it that. That budget that he delivered last week. What do

00:26:59.200 we need to do to actually fight back? And he's absolutely right, folks. Again, I have family in

00:27:04.400 that area of Ontario. I'm sure lots of our viewers are right there in that area right now, or they have

00:27:09.300 family there. Ontario right now is just getting a beating because of what is going on, A, with this

00:27:17.320 budget, and B, with this lack of accountability with the responsibility to get a new deal with the

00:27:22.820 United States. And if we continuously allow all of these bureaucrats and the prime minister to just

00:27:31.040 waste our money, keep in mind the prime minister's paid $400,000 a year. Yes, I just said that $400,000 a

00:27:37.300 year. Bureaucrats in some of these cases who never have to get elected, they're paid between $200,000

00:27:43.080 and $300,000 a year. This is their job to straighten out things like this trade negotiation, this trade

00:27:49.820 fight they're having with the United States in order to get tariffs gone on both sides of the border.

00:27:55.140 And very importantly, to get investment flowing back into Canada so that we can build stuff like

00:28:01.680 mines and pipelines so that we can have that business case for things like natural gas. Because of course,

00:28:09.620 if we have our natural resources firing on all cylinders, that lifts all boats, that makes sure that we

00:28:15.980 have better paying jobs. And guess what? Those better paying jobs come along with income taxes that we are

00:28:22.600 paying, which then goes into government. So it's a two-way street. Most of those natural resources, and we're

00:28:29.320 talking about things like oil and natural gas, come from right here. They come from Alberta. And we've

00:28:34.980 got a deadline happening on Grey Cup. Remember? Folks, Grey Cup, it's this Sunday. It's going to be the

00:28:42.060 Rough Riders versus the Alouettes. They're kicking off in Winnipeg this Sunday. So at the start of next

00:28:46.960 week, that was the deadline that Alberta Premier Daniel Smith gave to the Prime Minister of Canada

00:28:52.280 Canada to get moving on things like getting rid of the No More Pipelines law, getting rid of the West 1.00

00:28:57.780 Coast tanker ban, getting things moving again here. So where are we with that? Let's find out.

00:29:03.960 Joining me now is Martin Belanger. You probably know him online as Marty Up North. You can find him

00:29:10.820 everywhere on X, the artist formerly known as Twitter. Marty, you are on a plethora of what I would

00:29:18.360 describe as, say, small, C, conservative, independent, kind of freedom-oriented media.

00:29:26.500 You're super active on X. I'm trying to remember when I first connected with you. I think it might

00:29:30.900 have been when you did that thing that went viral, where you show your picture and you say,

00:29:36.200 this is my name and this is what I stand for. Yeah. Chris, I just got goosebumps thinking about that

00:29:41.620 because, to be honest, you're one of the first people who reached out to me in real life.

00:29:45.960 Yes. Like, I had existed on X and I had a lot of connections, but you were one of the first

00:29:50.460 live connection. You reached out to me. Remember, we had coffee in Calgary. We did. I drove down to

00:29:54.620 Calgary and we had coffee. So, yeah. Oh, by the way, and I just want to mention this to people,

00:29:58.340 I noticed you got your poppy. I don't have a poppy on right now. Sorry, folks. It's not a political

00:30:03.620 statement. They're just in the car. I don't wear a poppy typically around the house, right? Same. I know.

00:30:08.980 I have to keep a stack next to the camera because otherwise, like, I buy like 10 at the beginning

00:30:14.740 of, you know, the commemorative season, but they always fall off. So, and they get mad at you if

00:30:19.200 you stick a pin through them and stuff. Anyway, no, all good. It's there in spirit. Marty, I wanted

00:30:24.260 to get your thoughts on what is going on coming out of Ottawa. In particular, let's start with the

00:30:29.740 freshest thing. I just saw you posting about, we've got some Canadians now saying, hey, why don't we 0.75

00:30:36.840 have a trade deal with the United States yet? Where are the negotiations happening between Canada

00:30:42.440 and U.S. President Donald Trump? I got to say over the weekend, I was listening to Ben Shapiro and he

00:30:48.440 made the great point and he said, yeah, from the American perspective on tariffs, do we really want

00:30:53.740 to go down this route forever? Because then another president can declare like a climate emergency

00:30:59.840 and impose a huge tariff on every single gasoline and diesel powered everything coming into the United

00:31:05.380 States. Do we want to do that? And he makes the right point that tariffs are just trade taxes,

00:31:10.280 but it doesn't sound like Ottawa is taking this seriously.

00:31:15.540 I, you know, I mean, we're all, yes, we're all asking those questions. I mean, we're supposedly,

00:31:22.100 you know, the election was won on the fact that we were supposedly in an existential threat,

00:31:27.200 the largest threat we'd ever faced, right? Nevermind World War II, COVID, all the climate change,

00:31:32.620 they're all gone now. The newest threat was that Donald Trump was attacking us and we were in a

00:31:38.960 trade war. But what's happened since? We don't know. Canadians are finally, some Canadians are 0.57

00:31:44.480 waking up. I mean, you know, Parliament's been sitting, what? It's going to be the shortest session

00:31:48.080 of a Parliament since like the 1930s. Like they'll have set 70 days this year. They're blowing hot air.

00:31:54.920 We got, and people are exposing it. I mean, you know, you know, just today, Arlene Dickinson was

00:31:59.760 in committee saying that, you know, actually back to that trade war. I mean, in the days after the

00:32:05.680 election, you know, Carney did all these things, you know, set up this committee of, what was it

00:32:11.600 called? The Canada-US Relations Committee or whatever that was going to negotiate. And he recruited

00:32:18.000 experts to help him negotiate. Well, one of those experts, Arlene, she said today, there hasn't been a

00:32:23.740 meeting of the committee in months. Like, you know, and they're not doing anything. So yeah,

00:32:29.580 you know, we're in a trade war, but we're losing it. It just doesn't seem like there's adults in the

00:32:35.280 room. Marty, you've worked in natural resources for a long time. And again, it's one of the things

00:32:40.340 we were talking about over that coffee. It was great actually meeting you in person. So we don't

00:32:45.180 seem to be having the adults in the room. I got to tell you, I still had a little bit of naivete

00:32:50.020 with Carney. I was telling myself, well, you know, he does have a PhD in economics from Oxford.

00:32:56.980 He is a former central banker. He's got to be better with the budget than Trudeau.

00:33:02.400 Spoiler alert, he was not. He's worse. And then I heard him say that crazy clip that was on Friday.

00:33:09.620 He's being interviewed by a young lady. It looks like it's in Toronto. And frankly, as an interviewer,

00:33:15.680 he was super rude, like terribly rude to the young woman. And she asks him about pipelines.

00:33:22.420 And he goes on this kind of valley girl thing of, oh, boring. This is so boring. I'm bored now.

00:33:28.580 What is the message? I mean, he basically was, sorry, he's doing, I was doing what he was doing

00:33:33.900 to her, right? He was basically putting his hand in her face and saying, let's talk about something

00:33:37.340 else. And that's an, well, that's an interesting one. Yes, pipelines are near and dear to me. You know,

00:33:43.440 you're talking about adults in the room. There is an adult in the room, right? That Danielle Smith

00:33:48.260 here in Alberta is trying to be an adult and God bless her. But, but maybe naively, like you just

00:33:55.560 said, she had a lot of faith in, in Carney in the beginning. Remember back during the election,

00:34:01.860 she didn't know who was going to be the prime minister, but she's kind of set out an ultimatum

00:34:05.560 of like nine requests to the future prime minister, which turned out to be Carney. And in there,

00:34:11.020 she said, you know, I want a pipeline. I want a bill C 69 repealed. I want the type of the tanker

00:34:18.340 ban gone, the net zero talk. I don't want to hear that anymore. I want, you know, she, she,

00:34:23.800 and, and her ultimatum is due next week during the great cup. And again, it's one of those things.

00:34:30.160 I don't see anything. I think she's going to be disappointed. I don't see anything Carney. I don't

00:34:35.500 see Carney taking her seriously, taking anybody seriously in this country. In fact, I was in the

00:34:42.620 same boat as you, Chris. I, I, I thought, okay, I wasn't happy that Carney got elected, but I kind

00:34:47.440 of thought, well, maybe he will be a little bit different. He's not different. The team around him

00:34:51.920 is absolutely not different. It's the same ministers. It's the same bunch. And, and I'm convinced more

00:34:57.540 than ever that he's pushing an agenda. That's not ours. That's not his. Well, it's his, it is,

00:35:02.360 it is the UN agenda 2030 and 2050. They're pushing those agendas on us because he lets it slip out

00:35:08.620 all the time. He's constantly talking about social credits and, and, and, and digital ID. And he can't,

00:35:15.520 he can't let go of net zero. He's still talking net zero. You got to watch his language. Like he talks,

00:35:20.900 he's not talking pipelines. He's talking energy corridors. Like it's, it's, it's a language. And

00:35:25.760 then when he's talking energy corridors, he's talking electricity. I mean, they want to electrify

00:35:31.380 everything. There's a reason they want to electrify everything because once everything's

00:35:34.940 electric, it's way easier to control. You can't control the, the, the gas and the oil because

00:35:40.300 we can move it around with trucks and everything else, but boy, the electricity, they can control

00:35:44.640 that. So we're going all over the place, but no, I, I, I don't, um, I don't see Carney doing

00:35:50.940 anything specific to, to fight the, the, the economic, uh, the trade war. And I don't see him

00:35:57.720 doing anything specific to try and get Alberta back on board on team Canada. Um, and then his

00:36:04.040 budget last week was an absolute disaster. I, I, I don't even, like, I don't know where you want to

00:36:09.920 go. There's not a lot of good news. No, no, no. I just basically wanted to get a checkup from you

00:36:12.820 because we already spoke with Andrew Lawton, who of course was a former host right here on

00:36:16.620 True North. And then that became Juneau. Now he's a member of parliament, uh, representing London,

00:36:21.440 Ontario, which I would describe as a really big working class city. I know I've got family there.

00:36:26.400 Um, and so I w I wanted to get your perspective from a Western perspective on what's your hunch?

00:36:34.200 Like, do you think that they're being serious about this? Because I'll put it this way. I'm

00:36:39.640 hearing some hope coming from Edmonton. I'm hearing some hope of a, we're close to a deal

00:36:44.880 on a pipeline. All we need to do is to do more kind of carbon capture magic stuff and that they're

00:36:51.360 going to go for it. Um, and I don't want to crush those hopes coming from Edmonton because I hope

00:36:57.340 it's true, but I don't know if it's true, man. And I wanted to get your gut check on this because two

00:37:03.780 things happened. The budget language, that was really squishy. I don't know if you saw it when

00:37:10.320 it was talking about maybe sometime eventually having a meeting to get rid of the energy cap

00:37:14.760 in Alberta. And it was all based on, yeah, like carbon capture, dah, dah, dah, dah. I'm worried

00:37:21.260 that that comes along with too big a price, i.e. a really big industrial carbon tax. So, and that's

00:37:28.220 written right into his budget documents. And then we see right on the heels of that, we see that clip

00:37:33.900 from Carney basically saying flippantly, oh, well, you know, pipelines are boring. And you notice how

00:37:39.680 he corrected himself at the end of that? He's like, it'll happen. Something will happen. He corrected

00:37:45.200 something will happen. And that's where I think you're right. I think this is going to be more

00:37:50.460 solar panels and wind farm corridors. Uh, I'll answer it very pragmatically. We, we hurt ourselves

00:37:57.500 in the last decade, more than the last decade in the last 15 years. So the, the, the private sector

00:38:02.860 right now is, is like arms crossed and waiting, really waiting to see what happens. Capital from

00:38:08.840 the private sector will not flow into this economy at this point. Like companies are willing to drill

00:38:13.880 a few wells and do, you know, maintain kind of status quo, but no company in Alberta at this point

00:38:19.600 wants to commit to a 10 or $15 billion pipeline. They just don't. And so that's the reality. And some

00:38:27.120 people have picked up on that and they're saying, you know, and then they're saying, well, that's because

00:38:30.920 the industry, there's no, there's no economics in it. No, no, no, no, no. The industry is just,

00:38:35.820 you know, when you're building stuff, you need to manage risk. And unfortunately, our governments

00:38:40.620 have become a, a very hard to manage risk. And so some companies are just not waiting in. Are there,

00:38:47.160 are there companies that have pipelines on the shelf ready to go? Absolutely. Enbridge does,

00:38:51.600 TransCanada does, they all do, but they're all arms crossed right now, waiting to hear what,

00:38:56.680 so it's a, it's a chicken and egg thing right now. It's a pro it's problematic because nobody

00:39:00.520 even wants, no company even wants to talk about pipelines until we truly hear what Carney has

00:39:06.080 to say. And then Carney's saying, well, there's no appetite for pipelines. You know what I mean?

00:39:09.760 So we're, we're, there's an appetite, but the risk is just too high. I mean, I, I sat in on those

00:39:16.100 meetings. I sat in, in, you know, trying to get my bosses interested in building pipelines here in the

00:39:23.980 last five years. And, and that's, my boss has said, no, we're not doing this. It's too risky.

00:39:29.640 So we have to, so there's a, and, and we need a serious, serious statesman because this, this is

00:39:36.340 not just a problem to pipelines, right? Like I've said this many times, this, this, this is a problem

00:39:40.660 for one, even if your pet project is, is, you know, like we said, hospitals, wind farms, uh, solar farms,

00:39:47.880 whatever, a mine capital in this, a mine, anything apart, an electric dam. It's like, it's all, it's

00:39:55.300 all, it's all dried up right now. The Capitol is not coming to Canada. And that's evidenced in a lot

00:40:00.840 of stats. Like there's a lot of stats that shows the Capitol leaving the country. Big time because

00:40:05.580 we have, so, so Carney has to, so next week's an important week. We'll see how, uh, I'm looking

00:40:11.320 forward to seeing how Danielle Smith manages her ultimatum because ultimatums are nasty, right? When you 1.00

00:40:15.980 issue an ultimatum and the other party ignores your ultimatum. So we, we have an interesting week

00:40:22.180 ahead of us. Uh, based on the record, I can't see her tolerating her ultimatum being ignored. I just

00:40:28.900 can't, uh, look at what just happened with, uh, the long going teacher strike. They, they were demanding

00:40:34.080 an extra $2 billion and they said no with an exclamation mark. So I can't see them ignoring that

00:40:40.340 ultimatum from the Alberta side of things. Uh, I wanted to leave on this, on this point. I

00:40:45.740 often leading up to this budget. I, to me, speaking of ultimatums, to me, this budget was

00:40:50.580 the true test. So, you know, yes, we had the election and then there was kind of the phony

00:40:55.360 sitting that happened and then we had the summer. And so I was waiting until this budget to see

00:41:00.760 which Mark Carney we were actually going to get. So there was the little silly hope inside

00:41:06.320 of me that was still in there somewhere, not completely black-pilled, um, that was saying, 0.63

00:41:10.500 oh, well, he's got to be better with Trudeau than money. Um, and so will that guy stand up?

00:41:15.500 Will he be that guy? Or will we get this guy, the one from his book that you were just describing,

00:41:20.800 the UN guy. And of course I keep on preaching this folks. You have to read this book. Okay.

00:41:26.160 It's called values. It's written by Mark Carney. It's basically his blueprint. It's literally the

00:41:31.120 planet earth was scaffolding around it. Okay. Um, it was endorsed by Bono and, uh, he mentions

00:41:36.540 Greta Thunberg all the way through it. And so he wrote this while he was the UN special envoy on

00:41:41.700 this topic. Um, and so the language in that budget, and it is like 500 pages long, the language in

00:41:49.160 that budget is alarming because it talks a lot about really fluffy stuff that doesn't belong inside of

00:41:54.460 a budget. It dangles a carrot on things like lifting the energy production cap, but doesn't

00:42:00.100 actually commit to doing it. And the numbers are astonishing. We've got an $80 billion deficit.

00:42:08.020 That means we're adding that that's how much we're in the hole just for this year. Our debt is going

00:42:12.980 to hit 1.3 trillion with a T by the end of this fiscal. Did you, I don't know. I don't know how

00:42:19.940 follow how closely you follow the financial markets. Did you see that warning come through from Fitch

00:42:24.820 saying that we might be getting a credit downgrade that that's when things really hit the road.

00:42:30.980 That's incredible because the companies never downgrade credit companies rarely ever downgrade

00:42:35.940 because they like, it's a game they play as long as they, as long as they, they got to keep lending

00:42:40.260 you money. They'd rather lend money to somebody who's about to go bankrupt and get nothing. Right.

00:42:44.900 But, but, um, no, I, yeah, yeah. You know, your point on the budget. I mean, the budget is a content.

00:42:50.180 It's worse than a continuity budget. Like if you look at the trend, right. Uh, I mean, Trudeau's first

00:42:54.660 budget was like $280 billion and now Carney's at like almost $600 billion. So in 10 years, the, the,

00:43:01.460 the spending by Ottawa has gone up by like 90%. Right. And so it's, it's outpacing inflation.

00:43:07.780 It's outpacing population growth, everything. And then, and then, yes, the, the, even, even if you

00:43:13.700 get into the minutia of the budget, there's some fluff in there, but even at the highest level,

00:43:17.460 there's crazy fluff, right? Like at the highest level this year, they're, you know, they're

00:43:21.380 borrowing recklessly and they always justified their reckless borrowing by saying, oh, our debt

00:43:25.860 to GDP was okay. GDP is a false number, by the way, you know, they can manipulate that,

00:43:30.420 but they couldn't even manipulate their own numbers in the way that they wanted to. So they had to go to

00:43:35.140 playing with the GDP and then they're playing with the definition of, uh, capital spending and things

00:43:39.860 like that. So at the high level, they're, they're, they're, they're running out of ways to sell

00:43:43.780 this insane budget, but unfortunately Canadians are still buying into the, into the insanity.

00:43:49.540 Well, it's going to hit the road. Uh, lastly, I wanted to end on this. What's your call?

00:43:53.540 Uh, not about the great cup itself, but about the great cup deadline. What do you think is going

00:43:58.420 to happen here next week? Oh, well, I, I think, uh, in the last second, uh, Carney's going to throw

00:44:07.940 something to Danielle. I don't know what it's going to look like. He's going to try and, you know,

00:44:11.620 that she's got to find, he's got to find something so she can save face because, um, she's got a

00:44:17.540 problem right now. She issued an ultimatum and then behind the scenes, she has a growing separatist 0.82

00:44:22.580 movement in her. Like she's, I mean, she's being attacked on all sides. So she needs a win if she,

00:44:27.540 and so Carney's going to have to try and throw her a win of some sort. That's, and I don't know what

00:44:32.100 it's going to look like, but he's going to do something. Martin, thank you so much for your time

00:44:35.540 today. As always folks go check out, um, Martin Belanger. You know him as Marty up north online,

00:44:40.740 go find him on X and he is on all of the shows. Uh, thank you so much for your time today, sir.

00:44:46.980 My pleasure. Cheers everyone. Okay, folks, this is where you get conversations like this. So make

00:44:52.340 sure that you have liked this video and that you've headed on over to Juneau news and you have

00:44:57.140 subscribed to Juneau news. And I just wanted to point something out that tomorrow is November 11th.

00:45:03.380 It's Remembrance Day. Um, if I may, I just wanted to mention that as a Gen Xer, okay,

00:45:11.060 I was born in the seventies and raised in the eighties. I had a bird's eye view of being able

00:45:16.820 to speak directly to second world war veterans, even the couple, couple first world war veterans

00:45:23.140 when I was a little kid, but more importantly, being in touch with second world war veterans was

00:45:28.980 a commonplace thing for Gen Xers. In fact, my, my elementary school teacher was a second world war

00:45:36.100 vet. So to me, every day of that school year was a form of Remembrance Day because he was one of the

00:45:42.020 rare Canadians who was over in the Pacific theater. And so he would talk about what happened and how he

00:45:50.660 became a POW. And he last, he spent, you know, I think it was two years in a prison camp and it was a

00:45:56.980 real living history. It was a real living memory for so many of our seniors that we talked to as kids

00:46:05.620 all the time. And I've noticed that in younger generations, so my kids' generation, there is a huge

00:46:14.580 deficit of knowledge about history and that's not a good thing. So I would strongly recommend for those

00:46:23.860 of you watching, if you're Gen X and older, okay, don't take for granted what you know and understand,

00:46:30.900 especially about the wars, the first world war, and in particular, the second world war. Don't assume

00:46:36.820 your kid is learning this at school. Likely they're not. So I would just little dashboard light, ask them

00:46:44.500 what they know about the second world war. And if they don't know that much, pop on a good documentary

00:46:49.700 back from the 1980s when people did stuff thoroughly. And I'm going to be making sure to heading down to

00:46:55.060 the Cenotaph here in Lethbridge tomorrow. Once again, folks, we're Juno. That's why we're called

00:47:01.540 Juno, right? Is to honor that. So be sure to head on over to our website, Juno News, check out our articles

00:47:07.860 there, and especially share this video with friends who need to know.

Juno News - November 11, 2025

Andrew Lawton： Carney’s budget makes Trudeau look responsible

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