Juno News - Banned from covering Liberal caucus retreat

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.440 i was just watching justin trudeau's press conference in the city of london ontario on

00:01:32.780 housing which is like probably five minutes from here but i can't go there because the liberals

00:01:38.560 have decided they do not want independent media asking justin trudeau questions that may be more

00:01:43.740 challenging than what he's used to welcome to the andrew lawton show uh before we begin i think it

00:01:49.880 is important for us to share this little public service announcement from Canada's top doctor.

00:01:55.500 Just as a follow-up, I'm sorry to cut you off, but I just wanted to take note. You're all masking,

00:02:00.380 which is lovely to see, of course, but most government ministers are not now. Most MPs are

00:02:05.200 not. Most people on the street are not masking. Is there any specific guidance on that going forward

00:02:10.760 at this point? Yes, Theresa Tam. So it is a layer of protection. We hope people have developed the

00:02:19.000 habit to be able to use masks as needed during the respiratory virus season, not just for COVID,

00:02:24.020 but for all the other respiratory pathogens that will be transmitted around this time. So

00:02:30.740 I do think now is the time to get your masks ready if you don't already have them.

00:02:37.120 In our own particular context, we certainly in our area, there's been an uptick in some of the

00:02:43.880 COVID-19 indicators. For me personally, there have been cases around, you know, even my work

00:02:52.560 colleagues. So that's one of the reasons why we are wearing masks today.

00:02:59.640 Ooh, get your masks ready. I found this old Air Canada one that was like buried at the bottom of

00:03:05.720 my desk. So I'm going to get it ready for how I'm going to use it for the foreseeable future.

00:03:10.700 there ready take that this is I think hilarious and by the way the emperor's new clothes we talk

00:03:18.780 about all the time when the world leaders are just expecting everyone to go along with this

00:03:23.720 thing and not speak out to the obvious but in this case no one's even pretending to go along

00:03:28.320 with it like you see the top doctor and her colleagues up there with their masks doing like

00:03:33.940 the press conference thing of like we will leave the mask because you can't like understand anyone

00:03:38.360 And then, like, you go to this press conference I'm watching that Justin Trudeau is doing right now.

00:03:42.960 Now, admittedly, they're outside, but no one's even bothering.

00:03:46.540 So maybe David Menzies from Rebel should, like, just run around the Liberal caucus retreat in London, Ontario,

00:03:52.140 and say, oh, why aren't you following the advice of Canada's top doctor?

00:03:56.520 Why aren't you trusting the science? Why aren't you trusting the experts?

00:03:59.860 But a little bit of a deviation from what I really have to talk about today,

00:04:04.300 which is the fact that I am here and not just not far away from here where the Liberals are convening for their caucus retreat.

00:04:13.400 Now, you may not have known this. The Liberals had their cabinet retreat in Prince Edward Island or on Prince Edward.

00:04:18.780 I always want to say in referring to a province, but people in PEI prefer you to say you're on PEI.

00:04:24.100 So the Liberals were on PEI for their cabinet retreat a couple of weeks back.

00:04:28.460 And now the entire Liberal caucus is convening in London, Ontario, which is supposed to be ahead of the return of members of Parliament to the House of Commons next week.

00:04:39.300 Now, the Liberals have had a caucus retreat in London before.

00:04:42.040 The last time was in 2015 when I was graced with an interview with Justin Trudeau in which I asked him some questions that ended up making headlines when he effectively said that he didn't think the Canadian Armed Forces could do much good overseas in Afghanistan.

00:04:57.720 but in the end what was interesting about this particular caucus retreat is that there was no

00:05:02.880 place for independent media in fact I did what I was supposed to do I reached out to the prime

00:05:08.820 minister's office for accreditation ahead of time and it's a three-day retreat they never heard back

00:05:13.980 I thought okay maybe they're just a little bit too busy to preoccupied with all of their plain

00:05:19.240 woes in India so I had a little bit of skepticism as you may have heard in the show yesterday but

00:05:25.260 After I finished, I went right to the convention center where the Liberal Caucus retreat is being held,

00:05:32.220 and I showed up dutifully.

00:05:34.040 I had my ID.

00:05:35.260 I had my trusty microphone, and I said, I'm here to register.

00:05:39.840 They had a media registration table I went to,

00:05:42.620 and I got the most ridiculously benign answer to my query,

00:05:47.880 which was, well, you're not on the list.

00:05:49.660 I said, well, I registered, and the guy there called up someone,

00:05:53.120 And they said, oh, no, I'm told registration is closed.

00:05:56.460 I said, well, who did you speak to?

00:05:57.720 He said, I don't even know their name.

00:05:58.780 They just give me the number and I call the number.

00:06:01.300 So I hung around for a little bit.

00:06:03.380 Someone else from the Liberals came up and this guy looked all official and he was with

00:06:08.060 the whip's office.

00:06:08.980 I made my case with him.

00:06:10.920 He said, well, you're not on the list.

00:06:12.640 And he called someone else and was on hold for however long and came back and said, it's

00:06:17.960 not your lucky day.

00:06:19.580 As though there was just some random lottery that took place.

00:06:22.880 And the lottery happened to turn up CBC and CTV and the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.

00:06:28.320 Basically, the lottery turned up everyone but True North.

00:06:31.260 And it just was a matter of luck that I wasn't there.

00:06:33.520 But nevertheless, I wasn't being dissuaded and no police were throwing me out yet.

00:06:38.000 So I said, hang on, let me speak to someone else.

00:06:40.760 So he brought over the guy who, for all intents and purposes, was in charge yesterday.

00:06:45.560 A gentleman I won't yet name.

00:06:46.940 I had a very nice conversation with him.

00:06:49.080 and he didn't seem to know who I was, which was probably working in my favor, and he had asked me

00:06:55.620 what happened. I said, I registered. No one responded. Normally, if you're denied accreditation

00:07:01.060 to something, you will have the courtesy of a rejection that will tell you why you were

00:07:05.800 accredited. In this case, the Prime Minister's office gave us no information, no communication

00:07:10.840 whatsoever. I sent numerous emails. I called their media relations hotline. I emailed Justin

00:07:16.780 Trudeau's senior press secretary directly. No response whatsoever. And all of these people

00:07:22.500 that were being phoned at the media registration table, no one would give a name and no one would

00:07:28.200 give a reason. They just said, you are not allowed. You're not on the list. You're not

00:07:32.680 accredited. So as it stands, I have been banned from covering not only the Liberal caucus retreat

00:07:39.000 run and funded by taxpayer dollars by the government of Canada, but I have been banned

00:07:45.140 from covering a retreat in my own city. Now, this also means I was not permitted to attend a press

00:07:51.320 conference that Justin Trudeau is holding right now on housing. He's speaking at great length

00:07:56.520 about how great the mayor of London is and all the great things that Justin Trudeau and the

00:08:00.300 Liberals are doing in London, Ontario. But a journalist who happens to live in London that

00:08:05.260 isn't one of their chosen folks is not permitted to go. Now, I had to tune out at the beginning

00:08:11.240 of this show here, my colleague who's watching that just sent me a message to say that a student

00:08:16.140 journalist got a question. Now I'm all for student journalism and people being able to cut their

00:08:21.260 teeth, but it is a little suspect when, not to toot my own horn, well I guess I am tooting my

00:08:26.240 horn a little bit, but someone who has over, well if I'm really being technical, 13 years experience

00:08:31.720 in media, who has interviewed Justin Trudeau before, who has attended Justin Trudeau press

00:08:37.540 conferences before and the sky has not fallen. I'm not allowed to be there. It is not a question

00:08:44.060 of, oh, you missed the registration cutoff. This is the Liberal government making a very clear and

00:08:49.860 determined and very concerted effort to exclude a certain type of media from their events. Now,

00:08:58.040 people are saying on Twitter, are you surprised? Truth be told, yes and no. This is not the first

00:09:03.200 time this has happened, you may recall in the 2019 election, we had a heck of a time getting

00:09:08.340 access to the Liberals events. We went to one of theirs, and by we, I mean I, I showed up with a

00:09:14.100 bag hoping we could go on the Liberal plane and we'd pay our way like every other outlet who has

00:09:19.000 to be on the plane or chooses to be on the plane does. And they just said, you are not coming. And

00:09:24.480 at one point they had police remove me from what was a public event. I wasn't even there at that

00:09:29.060 point in the media line. I was just there as a member of the public, and I was removed. They

00:09:34.120 apologized for that, but never reversed course on their standing decision to not accredit True North

00:09:39.800 to liberal campaign events. That was the Liberal Party of Canada. Now, you may say it sends a very

00:09:46.680 bad message, and it's very problematic, but the Liberal Party of Canada is a private organization

00:09:52.920 in terms of what the law requires of it. It can decide what to do with its own events. It is an

00:09:58.660 organization that has the prerogative like, you know, Joe's Chicken Shack does to decide who gets

00:10:04.000 in and who doesn't. The Liberal Caucus retreat is a partisan event, yes, but it is a government

00:10:11.220 event. It is the Prime Minister's office, an organ of the executive branch of government in Canada

00:10:16.220 that is running this, which means there is a legal obligation to respect charter rights, of which

00:10:22.380 freedom of the press is a very important one, falling under freedom of expression.

00:10:27.780 And if you look at government obligations on press freedom, they're very different than private obligations, which really don't exist in that sense.

00:10:35.700 Government obligations have to comply with the Charter.

00:10:38.620 And in 2019, True North was also banned from covering the leaders' debates that were taking place, which were run by a national consortium, a national council, a bureaucracy that had been established that denied True North and denied rebel accreditation.

00:10:53.800 Now, we took that to federal court and we won an injunction, which gave us accreditation to cover the debate. And we asked Justin Trudeau questions, we asked Jagmeet Singh questions, and it was very important that we were there.

00:11:07.920 And in 2021, we were prepared to do it again.

00:11:10.540 But in this particular case, the Leaders Debates Commission folded preemptively, accredited

00:11:15.240 us.

00:11:15.600 We didn't have to go to court.

00:11:17.380 Now, Rebel was a bit of a different case.

00:11:19.100 Rebel did have to go to court again, and they won again.

00:11:21.780 But both of those court decisions tell us something very important here, which is that

00:11:26.300 government offices, government agencies, government commissions, government itself should and

00:11:32.180 must respect press freedom.

00:11:34.640 So when the liberals say, well, we don't want you,

00:11:37.380 you're not on the list, registration's closed,

00:11:39.340 for whatever reason, they're actually,

00:11:41.820 I would argue, breaking the law.

00:11:44.160 And even if you don't go that far,

00:11:45.860 they're doing something that is fundamentally wrong

00:11:47.840 in a democratic and pluralist society,

00:11:50.380 which is to say, we are picking and choosing

00:11:53.360 who we believe is legitimate media,

00:11:55.980 which has been the core frustration

00:11:57.920 that people like me have been raising

00:11:59.460 about the liberal government's internet regulation bills.

00:12:02.440 This idea that government is picking and choosing winners.

00:12:05.500 They're picking and choosing who gets to be a content creator, who gets to be a publisher,

00:12:09.940 who gets to be a broadcaster, who gets to be a podcaster.

00:12:13.260 These are all questions that are inevitably baked in.

00:12:17.800 So here we have the complete and utter test case, which is an independent journalist

00:12:21.580 with an outlet that perhaps you disagree with our editorial position, but an outlet that

00:12:26.660 has been around for several years in Canada, has credibly covered and reported on events

00:12:31.600 around the world has been accredited by government bodies. We were accredited by the Leaders Debates

00:12:37.040 Commission. We were accredited by the Public Order Emergency Commission. We were accredited by the

00:12:42.420 Canada-UK Media Freedom Council. We have been accredited by the World Economic Forum, even if

00:12:48.140 you want to go that far. We have been accredited by places that are far more discerning, one might

00:12:54.400 think, than the government of Canada. And what is fascinating here is that there has so far been

00:13:00.720 very little to no engagement on this from outlets who are accredited. Now, again, I've tweeted on

00:13:07.920 this. I haven't reached out to individually journalists that are at this press conference

00:13:11.900 yet. So they're busy. They're on the road. Maybe they haven't seen it. But I would love to see

00:13:16.980 some of the folks from the Toronto Star and the National Post, perhaps, and CBC to say, well,

00:13:23.200 hang on, maybe I don't like the idea of these outlets picking and choosing or these governments

00:13:28.580 picking and choosing which outlets are legit and which ones are not, because that is the decision

00:13:33.240 that's being made by the government. And just to give you a bit of context here, it was just a few

00:13:38.320 days ago that both Stephen Gilboa and Pablo Rodriguez were raising a stink about how exclusionary they

00:13:44.300 felt the Conservative Convention was, because they didn't let Nora Lurito, who was that left-wing 0.99

00:13:49.960 commentator who I believe had a right to be at the Conservative Convention, and Tasha Carradine,

00:13:54.820 and to not let the Liberal ministers themselves in

00:13:57.620 because Pablo Rodriguez wanted to be hanging out

00:13:59.980 with the Conservatives, evidently.

00:14:02.700 But this was where they raised a stink

00:14:04.820 and I think they were right to.

00:14:06.240 I think the Conservative Party

00:14:07.320 may not have had a legal obligation

00:14:08.960 because it is a private organization,

00:14:11.740 but I think morally they probably should have.

00:14:14.340 In this case, the government is losing

00:14:16.540 both morally and legally.

00:14:18.620 The government has decided

00:14:19.880 that it does not want to respect press freedom.

00:14:23.360 And to be fair, I've had some engagement with the Canadian Association of Journalists on this.

00:14:28.100 I've had people that have preemptively reached out to me and said, hey, if you sue the government,

00:14:31.920 we're going to help you. And I certainly don't think we're at that stage yet. What I would love

00:14:36.240 here is for the Liberal government to say, we made a mistake. We will accredit you like other

00:14:40.960 journalists. And if there is a behavioral issue, if I go in and I start having a hissy fit at the

00:14:46.660 microphone and being disruptive, then throw me out. But they're not making a claim based on that.

00:14:51.040 they're not saying right now anything at all. They are fundamentally denying me even the right

00:14:56.280 to review whatever criteria it is by which they are making this decision, which is why it is so

00:15:05.500 particularly concerning. And press freedom is not in a special category. It is part of freedom of

00:15:11.320 expression. My press freedom is the same as yours. And I think it's very important that we talk about

00:15:16.240 this and that the Liberals are unafraid to perhaps have someone that's going to ask them a question

00:15:22.060 that they might not like. That is part of what press freedom is. And, you know, you know, if the

00:15:25.780 roles were reversed and Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives were to be in government and they

00:15:29.520 say, oh, you know, we don't like that CBC. We're not going to let them do our press conferences.

00:15:34.560 There would be like Amnesty International would be descending on Ottawa to protest that. So I'm

00:15:40.120 not saying I need Amnesty International to take up my case, but I am saying that anyone who values

00:15:44.820 press freedom needs to do so continuously, and the Liberals are clearly failing this test. We'll

00:15:50.200 have more to say on this a little bit later on in the show. The real substance of the announcement,

00:15:55.220 which I was actually eager to talk to Justin Trudeau and his Liberal members of Parliament

00:16:00.160 about, is housing. And I actually would have raised at this press conference, had I been allowed there,

00:16:05.520 a question based on the report done by Professor Ross McKittrick, who we've had on the show before.

00:16:10.740 He's an economics professor at the University of Guelph and also does great work with the

00:16:15.340 Fraser Institute.

00:16:16.760 He has come out with a new study called Wrong Move at the Wrong Time, talking about in the

00:16:21.720 midst of a housing crisis, why government regulations on energy efficiency are making

00:16:27.580 the cost of homes much, much worse.

00:16:30.780 Ross McKittrick joins me now.

00:16:32.280 Always good to talk to you, Ross.

00:16:33.380 Thanks for coming on today.

00:16:34.980 Hi, Andrew.

00:16:35.420 My pleasure.

00:16:35.860 So let's first off talk about what it is you were setting out to analyze here, because we know that home values just based on any number of criteria are going up in cost.

00:16:47.480 We know that people, especially young people, are being essentially priced out of the market here.

00:16:52.440 You've touched on an aspect that I don't hear discussed in the housing context as much as it is here.

00:16:57.320 what I'm looking at is a detail that's buried in the federal government's emission reduction plan

00:17:04.100 which was published last year I got some attention the plan got some attention at the time but a

00:17:10.160 little detail is buried in it which is a requirement for new homes as of 2025 to be 61 percent more

00:17:19.220 energy efficient and by 2030 65 percent more energy efficient and commercial buildings have

00:17:24.640 to be 59% more energy efficient. And I just couldn't believe that that is in the report

00:17:31.980 and that there was no discussion around it. Is it even possible? And this is more energy

00:17:37.740 efficient compared to 2019. So if you looked at houses built in 1919, I don't think we're 65%

00:17:45.340 more energy efficient than houses built in 1919, but maybe we could get there. But 2019 houses in

00:17:51.960 Canada are already very energy efficient where they're insulated, double glazed windows, all

00:17:56.640 that stuff. So we're already very energy efficient. And they're now saying, basically, you have to

00:18:01.800 build houses that don't use any energy and how on earth people are supposed to heat their house

00:18:06.680 and light their house and all the rest of it. So I did some looking into potential cost estimates

00:18:14.560 here. I looked at information from the Canadian Home Builders Association. They put some numbers

00:18:18.800 out and my estimate is and i think it's probably a bit optimistic but it'll raise the cost of

00:18:25.760 building a new home in canada by about 8.3 percent and so that on a national average basis is over

00:18:33.680 fifty thousand per uh per house and that in turn is going to have some negative economic impacts

00:18:39.920 reduce gdp but it'll also really hit the construction industry hard i think we'll see

00:18:46.080 output and employment falling in the construction sector, which is the opposite of what we need.

00:18:51.260 We need a lot more people working in the home building sector. I think it's important to note

00:18:57.460 for the audience, just to be absolutely clear, we're talking about new houses here. So that is

00:19:02.100 particularly interesting when I look at, you know, in a new house, if you're going to make something

00:19:06.020 even more energy efficient, like, are we talking about a different grade of windows? Are we talking

00:19:10.520 about a different grade of insulation. I mean, where is that money going to meet this very

00:19:16.480 aggressive efficiency target? Yeah. And unfortunately, a lot of people who are

00:19:21.920 real advocates for an aggressive energy efficiency agenda, they always assume that

00:19:27.480 no matter how rigid you set these targets, people always benefit from them because you save money

00:19:33.260 on the energy down the road. People already have the option of increasing the energy efficiency of

00:19:39.060 their homes and people do but only up to a point after that it's not worth it you don't really get

00:19:45.840 the payoff from it or you might just rather spend your money on something else this kind of

00:19:50.660 regulation it's going to if it even again if it's even possible and there's nothing in there about

00:19:57.120 how this could even be done but if it's possible to build new homes that are 65 percent more energy

00:20:03.580 efficient than they were in 2019 it means you have to throw a lot of money at this one aspect

00:20:10.060 of a house and people it's a waste of money for most people i should add one other thing and that

00:20:17.100 is right now it's on new houses but there is discussion in the the building codes circle

00:20:25.820 about adding these requirements on existing houses so anytime you go to do a renovation now

00:20:32.060 you may be required if the new rules come in you may be required to hit even more ambitious targets

00:20:38.220 so um just because you own a house now doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be safe from

00:20:43.740 this crazy agenda is that is that a wood stove i i see in the background uh on yours because i

00:20:49.820 mean that's very energy efficient but that raises other issues from the government so i mean that's

00:20:54.060 the that is the irony if people are using these alternative sources that makes other problems the

00:20:59.420 the regulators would say that's a natural gas powered stove and uh you know those are in the

00:21:05.100 crosshairs of regulators as well um i think you may have to have a wood stove in your house because

00:21:12.780 i don't know how else you're going to heat it if uh if these rules come through um but in in the

00:21:18.940 case you mentioned that um you hadn't heard any discussion of this aspect of the issue and i agree

00:21:23.980 this is something it's there in the report it's not prominent but it's such a crazy number like

00:21:29.580 a 65 improvement in energy efficiency with no guidance about how that's going to happen and no

00:21:35.500 calculation of how much it will cost or whether it's worth it to put it in perspective the like

00:21:41.020 it doesn't reduce greenhouse gas emissions very much but per ton of emission reductions it's 50

00:21:47.820 times more expensive than the carbon tax. So if you think the carbon tax is taking a chunk out of

00:21:54.140 people's living standards, this kind of regulation is even more expensive. It really accomplishes

00:22:00.240 very little, and it does so at an incredibly high cost. Well, and I would also point out here,

00:22:07.220 and you have a section in the report that talks about deadweight losses, which is to say when

00:22:11.760 firms are essentially passing on to consumers, these increase in construction costs. And the

00:22:17.460 one thing here is that if we're baking this in, it's not even where a lot of consumers have the

00:22:23.140 option to do this. You know, because a lot of the energy efficiency proposals that we've seen in the

00:22:28.220 past, you could make some sort of a business case for it. Admittedly, often those rely on tax credits

00:22:33.420 and subsidies. But, you know, if something's going to save you money, you'll do it. At this point,

00:22:36.940 we're talking about installations in homes that go well above what you could ever hope to gain

00:22:43.260 from these efficiencies supposedly yeah there's a large literature in the economics field

00:22:50.060 looking at these kinds of energy efficiency regulations and in economics people have tended to

00:22:57.100 be fairly pessimistic that these are worth it that governments typically way overestimate the value

00:23:03.340 of these energy efficiency mandates but when people have gone afterwards and looked at okay

00:23:09.980 how much did this house actually save from having to redo all its windows the answer is it's a

00:23:15.900 negative rate of return oftentimes people never recover the upfront investment which means the

00:23:21.660 homeowners were justified in not doing it voluntarily so then if you force them to do it

00:23:28.060 you haven't made them better off you make them worse off and in this case it's a i think we

00:23:32.460 can guarantee a hundred percent this kind of regulation will make people much worse off

00:23:36.460 and and i'm it's written in the title of the report wrong move but it's also at the wrong time

00:23:42.180 i mean of all the terrible times to add eight percent to the cost of building a home

00:23:50.420 now when we already have a crisis of affordability and housing it's absolutely baffling to me

00:23:57.700 now looking at the regional breakdown here you say it's a national average of just shy of 55 000

00:24:04.020 In BC, 78,000 is the average cost increase in Ontario, where you and I are 71,800. On the low

00:24:12.740 end, you've got New Brunswick, 22,000, Newfoundland, 22,000. Is that disparity just because of the

00:24:21.400 general average cost of homes, or are there other regional specific factors that are making things

00:24:27.180 a little bit less aggressive in the prairies in Atlantic Canada here and more in BC and Ontario?

00:24:33.300 um so that particular calculation is just based on the regional variation in the

00:24:37.380 in the cost of building homes uh the estimated cost of building homes uh there are also regional

00:24:43.220 disparities in in terms of the macroeconomic impact um but uh in the case of ontario and bc

00:24:52.100 just because of the way the market's gone this is the most expensive place to build

00:24:56.020 new homes and um so that's why since it's a cost percentage estimate that's why that number comes

00:25:03.700 out over 70 000 here and in other places it's under 25 000. what we hear i mean even about

00:25:10.340 oh i don't know when was it 30 minutes ago justin trudeau in london ontario speaking about housing

00:25:14.980 uses the line which is not entirely inaccurate which is that there is not just one lever that

00:25:20.820 government can pull that's going to solve the housing crisis but i'm struck by what you pointed

00:25:26.340 out about how wildly disproportionate this increase in cost is compared to even the carbon tax alone

00:25:33.220 if you were to pull one this would be a pretty good one to pull well i think if if they were

00:25:40.660 serious about wanting to get the cost of housing down what they should do is say uh forget that

00:25:48.020 part of the emission reduction plan like just scratch it out we're not going to go ahead with

00:25:52.180 it and the other uh rumored changes to building codes on the energy efficiency front they're all

00:25:59.380 on pause that's easy it's no cost to them doesn't really have any emission consequences but it does

00:26:07.460 mean that those cost increases won't happen the fact that this government is not able to

00:26:14.740 walk away from any of its climate policies, because that's their top priority, I think

00:26:21.600 gives you an idea more generally of whether they're going to be successful in addressing

00:26:26.100 the housing crisis generally. I just don't think it's yet a priority for them.

00:26:32.520 You mentioned in the report as well, as sort of a hint at perhaps some future research you

00:26:37.840 might do on this, or something that might be taken up elsewhere, that it furthers that

00:26:42.100 disparity in generation as well, because, you know, the older generation, they already have

00:26:47.240 their homes. They've not required necessarily a new home. And that's not to say they won't buy a

00:26:51.880 new home, but younger people that are entering the housing market that have to wait for new homes to

00:26:56.440 be built to enter and to have a house, they're the ones that bear this burden. So it really furthers

00:27:01.000 what has already been a pretty significant and I'd say very relevant gap in just, I don't like

00:27:07.380 using the word equity because of the political implications of it, but basically in the access

00:27:11.540 to the housing market i'll say yeah there um there are some disturbing um distributional aspects to

00:27:18.500 this kind of policy because you're right i mean someone like me i own my home um and so i'm not

00:27:25.940 really affected by this unless i i hope to sell this and buy a new build but um

00:27:34.260 this uh this just adds to the burden of the younger generation and also to the families

00:27:40.500 who are trying to support them in that first home purchase and it also negatively affects

00:27:47.060 it people are working in the construction sector but i i do think there's a distributional aspect

00:27:51.940 to this which is is really disturbing just that it's out of people at the lower end of their

00:27:58.340 income earning stage and people who are currently out of the housing market that want to get in

00:28:04.420 and they're the ones that will be most negatively affected the one thing about the carbon tax is you

00:28:10.180 you can sort of draw a line and say where that money is going and who benefits from it. And I'm

00:28:14.840 curious with this, who's benefiting from this? I mean, all this money that's being spent on these

00:28:20.460 houses, is it people that are in the green energy sector that are making the money off this?

00:28:26.540 Yep. It's the people that have home energy efficiency gadgets for sale, because they're

00:28:35.980 in a position now where they sell lots of stuff but they don't sell everything they'd like to

00:28:42.100 sell because customers look at it and say well that costs way too much and I'm not interested

00:28:46.520 in buying it I'd rather spend my money on something else thank you very much and now

00:28:50.720 the government's going to say you have to buy it so it um people in that sector uh will benefit

00:28:58.800 because all of a sudden they have a captive market and people have no choice they have to

00:29:03.500 spend the money on, whether it's insulation or heat pumps or window systems, lighting systems.

00:29:13.580 You have to buy certain types now that you might have preferred not to buy.

00:29:18.480 So that group benefits. Everybody else loses. I've never built a new house before, but I've

00:29:24.800 done renovations and fixed things. And there's nothing more infuriating than needing to spend

00:29:29.820 money on something that you don't want, but you need that will derive, you know, value. It's like,

00:29:34.460 you know, replacing a deck or replacing a concrete slab because it's like, you know, the money you're

00:29:38.900 going to invest in your house. I'd love to invest in expanding the kitchen, building an addition,

00:29:43.580 putting in something that I like. And that's the problem here is that these are either going to

00:29:47.780 completely price people out of having a new home altogether, or, you know, that $50,000 national

00:29:54.060 average that they have to spend on these energy things is going to come at the expense of square

00:29:59.100 footage say that they might have wanted or needed sure yeah it might be an extra bedroom that you

00:30:04.640 needed that you can't have or it can be an upgrade to the kitchen again it's it's the issue is

00:30:11.640 people have their own preferences of what they want to spend their money on and some of that

00:30:17.440 includes energy efficiency and the comfort of having a home that's not drafty and that sort

00:30:21.860 of thing so they already spend money on that but everybody's got a certain point where they say

00:30:26.360 okay, that's enough of that, but I also want a pool in the backyard.

00:30:31.620 And this is taking away all those options.

00:30:34.580 It's forcing people to spend a great deal of money on one particular thing

00:30:38.540 that is way past the point of marginal benefit for people.

00:30:43.600 Professor Ross McKittrick, the report is called

00:30:46.280 Wrong Move at the Wrong Time, Economic Impacts of the New Federal Building Energy Efficiency Mandates.

00:30:51.640 That came out this week from the Fraser Institute.

00:30:54.240 Ross, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

00:30:56.360 thanks andrew my pleasure thank you i speaking of housing i felt bad i have like this boring

00:31:00.920 gray background ross was like living in a place that i couldn't have designed a better set then

00:31:05.000 so uh this is the problem this is the housing market inequality in in effect there it is quite

00:31:10.760 baffling and you know justin trudeau was asked a question by one reporter this morning or i guess

00:31:15.400 it was this afternoon of you know do you want house prices to go down and even that which is

00:31:19.160 a simple question he's like well uh they they can't go up okay do you want them to freeze do

00:31:23.960 Do you want them to go down?

00:31:25.380 And this is where you get this sort of boomer, millennial, boomer, Gen Z fighting.

00:31:30.100 And I don't want to wade in.

00:31:31.640 I mean, I'm a millennial, but I hate the word.

00:31:33.280 So I self-identify as a boomer, I guess.

00:31:35.820 I'm just as crotchety.

00:31:37.380 But the thing about it is that you end up with these generational spats, because obviously,

00:31:41.760 you know, some folks who have had their house and they've invested in that, they don't want

00:31:44.540 to lose any value on that.

00:31:46.360 But the result of this is a complete crisis.

00:31:49.560 I've had a request to reignite the water heater debate.

00:31:51.820 No, I'm not reigniting the water heater debate, although I will say that I guess renting a water heater is one way of, you know, saving like a couple thousand dollars up front.

00:32:00.080 But in the end, you'll you'll lose money.

00:32:02.060 So why don't you just rent everything, rent the windows, rent the rent the whole house?

00:32:06.240 No, because then you don't own it.

00:32:07.880 That's the problem.

00:32:08.820 So but right now we have people that do not have the choice.

00:32:11.920 And, you know, the liberal government, they were committing to this line, legalize home construction, legalize housing.

00:32:19.080 Like as though they're like trying to do their own version of end the gatekeepers, but end the gatekeepers is a lot snappier slogan.

00:32:26.560 So they have legalized housing.

00:32:27.980 It's like, well, I don't know, like you legalize pot or whatever.

00:32:30.440 Like this is the whole point.

00:32:31.940 So as Sean reminds me, it's all the own nothing and be happy approach in real time.

00:32:36.640 You know, it's sort of a joke, but there's some truth to it.

00:32:38.800 Because right now you have generations of people that have been raised with the expectation that they just give up on housing ambitions and that they rent.

00:32:46.760 And the great thing about renting is that if you don't know what you want, if you are kind of at a transitional point in your life, you have an option that wouldn't be necessarily prudent to buy in.

00:32:57.100 But the downside is that your money is enriching someone else.

00:33:00.380 You are building up someone else's asset.

00:33:03.020 And this is the whole point here is that now people buying a new house, building a new house are enriching these green energy companies that have just put their finger in the wind and realized that this is the climate.

00:33:14.240 And, you know, be very, very interesting to see exactly what discussions went on between government and people in this sector when they were drafting these regulations.

00:33:23.760 I think that's a question that I should look into as well.

00:33:27.580 We are winding down our time together.

00:33:29.840 If you're just tuning in, we spoke earlier about how I've been summarily banned from covering the Liberal Party's caucus retreat in London.

00:33:37.240 But it's not actually a Liberal Party event.

00:33:40.040 It is a conservative conference that was a partisan thing in Quebec City.

00:33:44.740 It is a government thing in London.

00:33:47.240 It is a liberal government thing.

00:33:49.020 It is the taxpayers that are paying for this.

00:33:51.320 It is the prime minister's office running accreditation.

00:33:54.260 And what they have done is decided that yours truly, True North, are not permitted to attend.

00:34:00.240 Now, this is not about me.

00:34:02.720 I mean, it is about me, but it's not about me.

00:34:04.420 It's about me in this particular context.

00:34:06.140 but it is a story that could affect anyone and should be just as easily attracting ire of people

00:34:13.100 when it happens, because what the Liberals are doing right now is picking and choosing. We are

00:34:18.360 going to wrap things up very shortly, but this week I have been sharing with you some of my

00:34:23.720 footage from Quebec City. We sat down with a number of folks, including Andrew Scheer and

00:34:28.460 Roman Babber. We played those earlier this week. Also caught up with Melissa Lansman, who is the

00:34:33.600 deputy leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Sitting down at the Conservative Party of Canada

00:34:39.780 Quebec City Convention with the Conservatives deputy leader, Thornhill MP Melissa Lansman.

00:34:44.720 Melissa, good to talk to you. Nice to see you. Let's talk about the enthusiasm here because

00:34:49.380 oftentimes when a party's in opposition there can be a bit of a pall over things and in this

00:34:54.680 particular case it's a party that's lost the last three elections but that's not the vibe that

00:34:59.780 you're picking up in this room here certainly not the vibe and with you know with thousands of

00:35:03.800 delegates from across the country every single riding uh represented in beautiful uh quebec city

00:35:09.820 that doesn't hurt with uh with nice weather um the vibe here is electric uh people are excited

00:35:16.420 uh look i it's not lost on you the the the poll numbers look good and that has an effect on people

00:35:22.240 it means that all of the work that all of these folks do every single day on the ground in their

00:35:28.240 ridings is resonating and the message that we've been on track with for a number of years and

00:35:35.180 particularly in the last year is resonating with Canadians. Do you think it's that the

00:35:39.860 Conservative message under Pierre Polyev has kind of shifted to one that's resonating with more

00:35:45.140 Canadians or do you think it's that the climate in Canada and the circumstances in Canada have

00:35:49.460 changed to catch up with where Conservatives are? Look realistically I think it's both but we have

00:35:54.380 You know, we've got a leader who is nonstop every single day in a different corner of the country, oftentimes with with his wife, who is who is often talked about as the as the not so secret secret weapon.

00:36:08.420 But he's talking about what Canadians are actually talking about.

00:36:11.680 And what we see is a prime minister who isn't, a prime minister who is off at the G20, an environment minister who would raise the carbon tax here and then run off to China, a bloc leader who's fighting for sovereignty in Europe somewhere.

00:36:30.480 This is not where Canadians are at. 1.00

00:36:33.000 And we finally have a leader that after a year in power is speaking to the very chaos in this country.

00:36:40.420 you're obviously an mp in the gta and in thornhill and i'm curious where because you've obviously

00:36:46.200 been on campaigns before so you know the strategic aspect of this uh you've done it better than a lot

00:36:51.140 of mps have because you've been on both sides of this and i'm curious where you think the road to

00:36:55.140 victory is because in 2011 stephen harper won a majority by just cleaning house in the the gta but

00:37:01.580 not really breaking through in quebec and i know in 2021 we saw the conservatives try to do both

00:37:06.760 gta and quebec neither really were like where is that path and you can't say all 338 no i i i i

00:37:12.760 although that would be nice um look i i think the coalition um it looks a little bit the country

00:37:18.320 looks different than when stephen harper was a prime minister by the way a great prime minister

00:37:22.560 uh and that 2011 victory um was was like an outstanding uh uh victory for conservatives

00:37:29.660 one that we didn't probably see coming until into the campaign.

00:37:34.760 So the tide turned within the campaign.

00:37:37.820 I think this coalition looks different.

00:37:39.560 And I think that no matter who you are, no matter what walk of life you're from,

00:37:44.700 no matter if you came to this country five days ago, five years ago, 500 years ago,

00:37:50.840 there is a spot for you in the Conservative Party.

00:37:54.480 And because the country looks different, the coalition looks different.

00:37:56.980 So southwestern Ontario, the 905 certainly, the greater Vancouver area, all of these are targets.

00:38:06.100 What is it that you would like to champion personally under a conservative government?

00:38:10.040 And I'm not asking you to pick your cabinet spot if you had one, but going in there,

00:38:13.860 what are the issues that you really personally see yourself as being to bring outside of an opposition role

00:38:19.720 and in a government role if that's where the tide takes you?

00:38:22.000 Look, if the tide takes us there and we're lucky enough,

00:38:24.280 And we're going to do the work every single day to try to get there.

00:38:27.900 But there are so many things to fix in this country.

00:38:31.400 Attracting investment back to this country is certainly one of them.

00:38:34.960 Our role on the world stage, fixing our very broken bureaucracies, our services to Canadians,

00:38:43.300 and getting back on track, on a fiscal track, a path to balance, and making life more affordable for Canadians.

00:38:49.820 So there's no shortage of areas to fix and no shortage of areas that will really have an impact on people's everyday lives that I'm interested in.

00:38:58.780 Melissa Lansman, thank you.

00:38:59.860 Thanks for having me.

00:39:02.320 People were cheering at something there, and I'm trying to remember what was happening when that was being recorded.

00:39:07.620 That's the problem is that you're there and you want the excitement of the room and the ambient noise and the hum,

00:39:12.060 and then something happens behind you and you just want to look over your shoulder.

00:39:15.700 I remember when we were doing the live election night show in Alberta for the election.

00:39:20.580 Well, I guess the election was when we did the live election night show.

00:39:23.320 And every now and then people would just like cheer excitedly about something and you'd

00:39:27.080 like just forget about who you were talking to and want to see.

00:39:29.460 And then it was like they just saw some clip on the television that they liked or something.

00:39:33.440 But in any case, that was Melissa Lansman.

00:39:35.880 Good to chat with her.

00:39:37.180 I actually have known her a little bit when I ran for office many years ago.

00:39:41.160 she worked in the war room for the Ontario PC party at the time. And I was a candidate and she

00:39:48.360 was in the media relations. So she was the one that was like fielding all the calls from reporters

00:39:51.960 asking about how terrible I was. So it's good that she was still sitting down with me after having

00:39:57.200 lived through that. Listen, we are going to follow along with the housing file, of course. It's one

00:40:03.120 of the pressing issues of our era. And I think it's why the Conservatives have been picking it

00:40:07.920 up. It's why the NDP have been missing a huge opportunity to deal with this. I mean, there was

00:40:13.720 a Liberal MP who introduced Justin Trudeau today, Ariel Cayabaga from London, who is a young single

00:40:20.540 mother. She makes, as a member of Parliament, $170,000-some-odd-thousand dollars, and she's 0.99

00:40:25.880 talking about how she can't afford a home. Now, I do think that comments like that really come a

00:40:31.300 little rich when you're making us one person more than a lot of people are making in their entire

00:40:36.360 household. But at the same time, I don't think she's entirely wrong that now you can have a

00:40:41.560 salary that's in the high six figures. I guess not the high six figures, but the high hundreds

00:40:45.440 and still not be able to buy a home that meets your needs, whatever those needs are. And it's

00:40:51.880 not to say that, you know, there wouldn't be some option available to her. I mean,

00:40:55.280 Pierre Polyev got in trouble for pointing to a house and calling it a shack one. So I wouldn't

00:40:59.660 go down that road. But it is, I think, very concerning right now. And the liberals are just

00:41:04.600 waking up to this problem now. And, you know, I like to think that I might have been able to

00:41:08.740 offer something at that press conference, ask a question about how these energy regulations that

00:41:13.500 Ross McKittrick was talking about are driving up prices. But alas, the Liberals have decided that

00:41:18.140 might just be a little bit too tough for them to handle. Why else would they have turned down

00:41:22.960 yours truly? So hopefully when I get off air, I'll have an apologetic call from the Liberals saying

00:41:28.260 we're so sorry we've reconsidered. We now decide press freedom is a bit of an important thing.

00:41:32.500 come down, pick up your credentials, and then I'll be broadcasting a different story tomorrow.

00:41:37.040 But I am not optimistic. That does it for us. We will be back tomorrow to close out the week here

00:41:42.280 on The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show. Thank you, God bless, and good day to

00:41:47.740 you all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True

00:41:53.140 north at www.tnc.news.

00:42:23.140 We'll be right back.

00:42:53.140 We'll be right back.

Juno News - September 13, 2023

Banned from covering Liberal caucus retreat

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript