Juno News - Biden's out; Trudeau's in Tofino

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

00:01:19.180 by true north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here this

00:01:28.900 is the andrew lawton show on true north on this monday july 22nd 2024 hope you're having a fantastic

00:01:36.600 summer so far i'm having an all right summer it got off to a busy start i had the release of my

00:01:42.940 new book at the end of may i was on a book tour for much of june and then i think i just exhausted

00:01:48.380 myself i had way too much activity early on and i was thinking okay maybe we can just coast through

00:01:54.240 the summer and there won't be too much in the news division and then I see okay of course Trump

00:02:00.080 subject to an attempted assassination then you fast forward a couple of days Joe Biden

00:02:04.460 resigned over the weekend not as president but from the presidential race so he is no longer

00:02:10.020 going to be seeking re-election he's thrown his support behind Kamala Harris just a couple of

00:02:15.420 weeks before the Democrats meet for their big convention in Chicago so it's of course made me

00:02:22.180 canadianize it just a little bit we try not to focus too much on just the american news and

00:02:27.380 politics here because there are no shortage of shows that obviously dwell on that because they're

00:02:32.280 in the united states but sometimes there's a canadian tie-in there's a canadian connection

00:02:36.860 to it and i find that you can make a lot of similarities between justin trudeau and joe

00:02:42.600 biden now obviously one has you know the beautiful wavy hair the other has a little bit less hair

00:02:47.760 than he used to. But both of them are known to make just completely incomprehensible sentences.

00:02:53.400 I mean, when Justin Trudeau talked about what a drink, water, water, water, drink bottle,

00:02:57.780 bottle, water box is, that was basically just as sensible, if not less than compared to anything

00:03:03.460 Joe Biden said in that debate with CNN and Donald Trump a couple of weeks back. And they're both in

00:03:09.600 the midst of having faced massive and mounting calls for their resignation. Now, Joe Biden was

00:03:16.860 just as indignant about this as Justin Trudeau was for much of the last several weeks, saying

00:03:21.840 I'm not going anywhere. And then one day, one day yesterday, he comes out with a statement and says

00:03:28.280 he is gone. He announces his resignation. He says it's been the greatest honor of his life to serve

00:03:34.560 as president. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best

00:03:40.320 interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my

00:03:45.920 duties as president for the remainder of my term. Oh, I'm already falling a little bit of sleep

00:03:51.040 reading Joe Biden's words. Now, interestingly enough, I don't have too, too much regard for

00:03:56.860 Joe Biden as a president. I think that he has a long career of public service. And when people

00:04:01.660 cap that off in an unceremonious way, it's unfortunate to them. Had he just not run for

00:04:06.780 reelection in the first place, he would have gone out with a lot more dignity than he ended up going

00:04:11.620 out with by choosing it this way. Nonetheless, he's being honored and lauded by people on social

00:04:17.140 media for his contribution to statesmanship, for being a man who decided to, at this one critical

00:04:23.500 point, do the honorable thing and get the heck out of Dodge. Now, whatever you think of Kamala

00:04:29.300 Harris, whatever you think of Donald Trump, that's kind of my read on the Joe Biden situation, is

00:04:33.800 that whatever his foibles have been and whatever the capacity issues have been, of which there are

00:04:39.440 a great many concerns that we should be discussing. He did an honorable thing here by announcing he

00:04:44.720 was going to stand down. It would have been great if he reached it earlier as a conclusion, but

00:04:49.180 better late than never, as they say. But it's a great contrast to Justin Trudeau, a guy who does

00:04:54.660 not want to put the good of his country or his party forward. He doesn't want to put it ahead

00:04:59.200 of his own ambition. A guy who seems all too happy to just go down with the ship. I don't have the

00:05:04.200 Dido clip that we played a couple of weeks ago but you may recall we had Dido white flag and

00:05:09.620 there's that great line in the chorus I will go down with this ship that is basically Justin

00:05:14.520 Trudeau's anthem right now and I think the attitude that he has about the Liberal Party

00:05:18.860 and its health and vitality and fortune moving forward so why am I bringing this up now well

00:05:23.980 it was just a few weeks ago that Justin Trudeau and the Liberals lost that critical by-election

00:05:28.720 in Toronto St. Paul's Don Stewart will be going to Toronto or going to Ottawa as a member of

00:05:34.180 Parliament. Absolutely embarrassing to the Liberals who had expected to just coast to victory

00:05:40.580 like they always do in Toronto St. Paul's, but instead they have lost a seat they had held for

00:05:46.260 30 years, for three decades. Justin Trudeau has been facing calls from his members of Parliament

00:05:54.380 to have an in-person caucus meeting. MPs that want to get together in person under one roof

00:05:59.700 to say, how the heck do we fix this? How do we turn this around? How do we prevent ourselves

00:06:04.700 from all being St. Paul'd by the time of the next election? And Justin Trudeau said, well,

00:06:10.680 you know, we can't get everyone in the same room. It's going to be difficult logistically to do it.

00:06:14.900 He's had some one-on-one calls, but Justin Trudeau did find time to leave on a jet plane.

00:06:20.820 Doesn't know when he'll be back again. We had the eagle-eyed flight trackers on the weekend

00:06:27.120 tracking Canforce 1, the Government of Canada's plane that they use when the Prime Minister is

00:06:32.320 traveling. And oh, what do you know, Ottawa departed at 1356. That's 1.56pm Eastern Daylight

00:06:40.280 Time, landed in Tofino, British Columbia at 1547 Pacific Daylight Time. So that is a flight from

00:06:50.820 Yao to Yaz, Y-O-W to Y-A-Z. Justin Trudeau ended up going to Tofino on vacation. Now,

00:06:57.880 I wouldn't begrudge the man a vacation, a summer vacation with his family in July. I do not

00:07:03.540 actually take an issue with it. I know Justin Trudeau often faces criticism for deciding to

00:07:08.780 go on vacation. He loves vacations. I actually don't criticize him for it. I think we would be

00:07:13.020 better off as a country if he were to take more vacations, if he were to just treat most of his

00:07:20.140 entire time in office as vacation, I think we would be better. Now, interestingly, I took a

00:07:25.220 look at Trudeau's itineraries because even though I'm banned from their events, I actually still get

00:07:30.280 the media releases that have the itineraries because I think they're public. Anyone can get

00:07:33.940 them. But here's what he has for Monday, July 22nd. British Columbia, Canada. No city, no town,

00:07:42.060 no village, just British Columbia and no public events scheduled. Doesn't say personal. It says

00:07:48.520 no public events scheduled. Now, very similar to the itinerary for July 22nd, no public events

00:07:55.640 scheduled. The 19th, it was there, the 20th, it was the same. He started in Ottawa, ended up going

00:08:01.120 to Tofino. So they're not even doing what they used to do on these when he was going on vacation

00:08:05.640 and saying it was personal. Trudeau is on vacation right now. He's on vacation with his family. He's

00:08:11.620 allowed to go there. He's spending it in Tofino, one of his favorite destinations. The media reports

00:08:16.740 about this have acknowledged that he's on vacation but he's still pretending he's working

00:08:21.760 he's still pretending he's working he's still saying no prop no public meetings as though

00:08:27.740 he's having all of these private meetings that we're all supposed to know about instead of just

00:08:31.680 sitting on the beach so if i'm a liberal caucus member and i've been demanding an in-person

00:08:36.180 meeting with justin trudeau because i want to figure out what his plan is to save us from

00:08:40.340 calamity as a party i'd be pretty upset right now that he found time for a vacation in tofino but

00:08:46.560 didn't find time for a caucus meeting. I mean, look, he could have just said, we'll have our

00:08:50.560 caucus meeting in Tofino. He could have just rolled out of the beachfront pad, just kind of

00:08:56.200 sauntered down to the beach, have like, you know, the hundred and some odd beach chairs set up there,

00:09:01.800 set up the Shavari chairs. They're probably leftover from the wedding that was held there

00:09:04.960 on Friday. And they could have had their caucus meeting there. And then at the end, he goes and

00:09:08.500 grabs a surfboard and, you know, hangs 10 or whatever. And basically hanging 10 is the liberal

00:09:13.480 poll numbers right now, because all they're going to be left with is 10. Or hanging 10 is just how

00:09:17.580 many MPs they're going to be left with at the last election, or the next election. But the whole

00:09:21.480 point of this is that Trudeau has found time to start picking all these fights with the

00:09:27.660 Conservatives. He's found time to go surfing. He has not found time to deal with the MPs in his

00:09:33.380 caucus who have some very serious concerns about the state of the party. And the Liberals have

00:09:38.380 decided to go negative. They launched this big, huge campaign today that was criticizing Pierre

00:09:44.040 Polyev's record. And there's a website for this. And I can't remember the, the, the Pierre's

00:09:49.280 record.ca. There it is. And if you look on the website, they just have like all these things

00:09:53.640 that they're supposedly, uh, like exposing from Polyev and the last 20 years that he's been in

00:09:59.600 office now hilariously. Uh, so the number one, uh, one there is work to bring American style

00:10:05.460 anti-union laws to Canada. But the second one, which was in the lead for a while, is committed

00:10:12.740 to free votes, allowing his MPs to bring forward anti-abortion legislation. And the little, do you

00:10:19.000 see the, put that up there again, Sean, do you see underneath that there's the number with the

00:10:23.420 clown emoji? So like you can go to this website and you can vote for which one you think is more

00:10:28.160 embarrassing. And right now that anti-union one is in the leaderboard at 1680, or right now it's

00:10:33.520 1,686 clown votes. By the way, 155 clown votes is what the Liberal caucus is whenever they vote

00:10:40.160 on something. But the number two one is committing to free votes. And I was finding it hilarious that

00:10:44.740 the Liberals are so hellbent on exposing that. When if you were to canvas Canadians, I think

00:10:49.400 most of them would hope that MPs did have free votes. So it's not really a scandal that Pierre

00:10:54.500 Polyev has said Conservative MPs will have free votes on matters of conscience. But here is the

00:10:59.780 sizzle reel that the Liberals put together exposing Pierre Polyev and his record.

00:11:29.780 one man and one woman we will fight tooth and nail to put a permanent end to vaccine mandates

00:11:36.660 i was out an overpass as the truckers went by and what i saw were cheerful patriotic

00:11:43.100 optimistic canadians we're conservatives so we don't believe in them

00:11:47.080 so this this is the big gotcha he said he's against vaccine mandates he says he doesn't

00:11:58.460 care if the chief electoral officer of Canada is against party policy for what was at the time the

00:12:04.620 conservative government. He stood up against gay marriage when that was the majority position

00:12:09.080 in the country. And by the way, even many liberal members of parliament in 2005 voted against

00:12:14.580 legalizing gay marriage at the time. And then he, what were some of the other scandals? I'll go

00:12:20.020 down the list here. He apparently went to an overpass and cheered on the convoy as it went

00:12:26.260 to Ottawa. Oh my goodness, shocking, shocking. The fact that he is against mandates, they find

00:12:32.420 to be some big scandal, which just reminds Canadians that the Liberals were very much

00:12:36.760 pro-mandate. So it's weird that this is where they're going so early, because remember,

00:12:42.720 we're going to be talking about guns later on the show. The Liberals have always done abortion and

00:12:46.920 guns. Those are the two things. Abortion assault rifle, abortion assault rifle, abortion assault

00:12:50.560 rifle. Those haven't been sticking with Polyev. They have not found a way to make it stick. And

00:12:56.840 Jean-Yves Duclos, the cabinet manager, he put out this tweet, which I have to share with you

00:13:02.860 because it's funny. I've never actually smoked pot, but I imagine this is the type of thing I

00:13:09.120 would say or someone would say if they were stoned out of their mind. He says, fun fact,

00:13:13.900 a nickel is only five cents and five is only one less than six, which is the amount of affordable

00:13:20.420 housing units that Pierre Polyev billed sick when he was minister of housing. So you have to sit,

00:13:27.540 you have to like do it in like a stoner boy, put that up there. Cause I've forgotten what's on it

00:13:31.140 again. Be like, okay. So like nickel is only five cents. Uh, but five is one less than six

00:13:40.140 and six. That's the number of affordable housing. Oh, far out, man. That's my, uh, my slang by the

00:13:47.540 far out man is is what i don't know people still say far out man but i like i said i've been accused

00:13:52.300 of many things in my life never once has being cool or hip been one of them but that's basically

00:13:58.040 it breaking news liberal to be honest the liberal minister knowing that a nickel is worth five cents

00:14:02.920 actually is breaking news but uh some weird attempts at math there from the uh from the

00:14:08.520 liberal government so polyev when he was exposed in that reel and on that liberal website what was

00:14:16.240 interesting is that most of those things were things that he's quite proud about. Like I have

00:14:20.140 never seen a conservative leader in Canada so self-assured as Pierre Polyev is about what he

00:14:26.540 is and what he stands for. This was an interview that Polyev did and he was asked about a bill,

00:14:32.600 Bill C381. Now just to give it a bit of context here, this is a private member's bill. It's a

00:14:38.720 private member's bill from a conservative member of parliament that aims to beef up the law on

00:14:43.920 extortion, which is a big thing in organized crime right now. Maybe not top of mind for most

00:14:48.900 Canadians, but it's a real issue and there are real communities, notably I think Surrey, BC and

00:14:53.920 Quebec where this is happening. So Conservative Member of Parliament puts this bill forward,

00:14:58.620 getting really a rough go from the Liberals in getting through, even though it's nothing

00:15:02.940 particularly controversial. Polyev has asked about that. Now he is often known for wanting to use the

00:15:08.400 simplest clearest language possible doesn't get more exemplary of that than in this clip

00:15:14.040 that is only your party which is saying that they voted against the bill and they don't want to

00:15:20.680 support this bill c381 what is the reason why they are not supporting it because justin trudeau is a

00:15:26.200 wacko yes that's it okay that's the answer we have a wacko for a prime minister

00:15:35.040 i just love it the guy assumes there's so much more to come

00:15:40.840 and pier poliev just goes there because justin trudeau is a wacko

00:15:44.460 that's it that's the answer i love it i love it he has leaned into the wacko thing so the context

00:15:54.080 of this he mentioned it i think it was just off the cuff he mentioned it in the house of commons

00:15:59.340 and then was told it was unparliamentary and i looked at that let me look it up how many times

00:16:03.600 he's used the word wacko. Like you, you look up, uh, Pierre Paulie Evan wacko on Twitter and he's

00:16:08.360 using it like every fricking day, going back to April 30th when it happens. Uh, so it's now like

00:16:14.020 the number one insult that he loves with Justin Trudeau is just calling him wacko, calling the

00:16:19.740 government wacko. And I think there's something just hilarious about that. Cause it's not even

00:16:23.600 like a word that we use all that commonly. So I think it's going to be like gatekeepers where

00:16:28.500 wacko just enters the political lexicon. Uh, do you remember when Obama was running and he had

00:16:33.420 those like colored posters that said hope we should someone should do one with Trudeau that

00:16:38.740 just says wacko if they haven't already so maybe maybe I'll do that that'll be like my little

00:16:42.820 photoshop practice session after the show today I'll do like a an inspirational Obama-esque

00:16:47.680 picture of Trudeau and I'll just put the word wacko under it but uh it'll take me far longer

00:16:52.720 so if anyone else is quicker with photoshop and you want to get on this on social media tag me in

00:16:56.660 it and I'll share it I there was something last week where I said I was going to do it and then

00:17:00.700 someone else beat me to the punch on X, as they now call it. So anyway, I wanted to shift gears

00:17:07.600 here a little bit, still keeping in the theme of what's going on in the federal government here.

00:17:12.660 But the bureaucracy is about the only industry in Canada that is doing really, really well.

00:17:18.540 Since Justin Trudeau took office, the bureaucracy has grown by 108,000 people. That's 108,000 more

00:17:24.760 federal bureaucrats. That is a 42% increase in the size of the federal civil service. Well,

00:17:31.840 there has only been a population increase in the same time of 14%. 14%. Now that means that

00:17:40.340 we have a disproportionate rise in the public sector. Now this is not, by the way, with industry

00:17:45.960 being nationalized in this time period. This is literally just the federal government ballooning

00:17:51.280 Well, people in the private sector, a.k.a. the real world, are having to cut back and businesses are shutting down.

00:17:57.140 Remember, this is covering the COVID era as well.

00:17:59.820 Wanted to bring in Chris Sims, our regular Monday maven.

00:18:03.580 She is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins us now.

00:18:08.120 Chris, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

00:18:10.340 Thanks for having us.

00:18:11.660 You have not seen in any businesses around you, I suspect, except for maybe a company that started

00:18:17.360 up in 2015, 2016, a rise of 42% in its staffing with no discernible reason why. The federal

00:18:26.140 government has not scaled up its services. The federal government has not added a new service.

00:18:31.100 The federal government has, if anything, just tried to maintain. But this increase, massively so.

00:18:38.060 Yes, big time.

00:18:39.240 For folks who are already mad about this, sorry to add to it,

00:18:42.700 but just picture yourself using the federal government service,

00:18:46.340 whatever it happens to be.

00:18:47.620 A passport office, for example.

00:18:50.540 Think back to 2014 and then think to now.

00:18:54.040 Is your service 42% better?

00:18:57.240 Are you 42% faster and more efficient and friendly and on the ball and more accurate?

00:19:02.100 Did your passport come 42% more quickly?

00:19:04.900 Exactly.

00:19:05.540 Exactly. And so this is where things really get frustrating. And the folks at the CTF team there

00:19:11.600 in Ottawa are the ones who dug up these numbers. So like you said, that is an addition of more than

00:19:17.160 108,000 full-time positions. To give you an idea, that's the entire population of red deer

00:19:24.260 has been added to the government employee list. It is just an astonishing number of people.

00:19:30.740 And you're right, a 42% increase. People could say, okay, well, they've got more demand, more people are coming into Canada, our population is increasing. Dude, that's only a 14% increase in population.

00:19:44.620 So the Trudeau government should be answering these questions as to why are you bloating the ranks of government employee rosters?

00:19:54.320 And keep in mind, it isn't just the numbers here.

00:19:56.640 The numbers are a big factor.

00:19:58.480 But it's also the fact that a lot of these federal government employees, especially in the Ottawa Gatineau area in the capital, as Franco likes to call it from Hunger Games,

00:20:06.960 um they're complaining about having to go into work like to put on pants and go into the office

00:20:14.340 and work instead of working from home now lots of people do work from home and that's totally fine

00:20:21.080 right but the thing is is that this all started during the lockdowns this all started during you

00:20:26.760 know the measures that were taken by the federal government and they're still hanging on to not

00:20:32.440 having to go into the office and just kind of working from their phones. And so folks really

00:20:37.240 need to pick up the phone and call their members of parliament on this. Well, yeah. And so there's

00:20:42.960 the raw numbers of this, which are concerning enough. And there's also, and I don't know how

00:20:47.400 granular the details are right now, the question of what these jobs are and what people are getting

00:20:52.700 paid. We know generally speaking that pay in the public sector is not proportionate or commensurate

00:20:58.820 to what the private sector pay is there have been various studies done on this and you know it's

00:21:03.060 anywhere from 10 to like 30 percent more for the same job in the private sector on average and then

00:21:09.620 there's also the pension aspect of this as well and that you know a lot of the bureaucrats have

00:21:13.780 access to pensions that their colleagues in the private sector don't have so a massive increase

00:21:17.860 like this is incredibly incredibly harmful to the to the government's books oh big time uh they're

00:21:24.100 there pretty much permanently uh the idea of actually getting fired from your job even for

00:21:28.980 wrongdoing as a federal government employee um is almost incomprehensible so i spent a lot of time

00:21:36.660 working in ottawa living in ottawa a lot of it was actually at news talk radio i think i booked you

00:21:42.100 there as a guest many times they're their cfra radio station and so i got to know some of these

00:21:48.180 federal government employees quite well and those who cater to them literally some of the caterers

00:21:53.860 who bring in their lunches. And it became a term called the golden handcuff. So it goes something

00:22:00.620 like this. Oh, I've got this office job. I have this cubicle job. It's super boring. I water house

00:22:06.780 plants for most of the day and play Candy Crush on my phone, but I don't want to leave because like

00:22:12.000 you just pointed out, I have job security, big pension, all that great stuff. And I'm paid more

00:22:17.460 than the average person. Now I've got to be clear. There are some people who work within the federal

00:22:22.500 government employee ranks i have met them who do work hard they do a very good job they're efficient

00:22:28.180 they do keep the things running on time as best as they possibly can but there's so much extra i

00:22:35.220 call them office furniture there's so much bloat and that was even 10 years ago i can't imagine

00:22:41.860 what it's like inside the ranks of the public service as they call it right now yeah it's always

00:22:46.500 great i i end up in ottawa a lot just for interviews and events and whatnot and any

00:22:50.660 literally without fail every time i walk by walk down spark street or albert street or whatever

00:22:55.460 some federal bureaucrat will like come up to me and they'll like say in a really low voice

00:22:59.220 hey andrew i like your show i love i like your show and i'm like why are you whispering they're

00:23:03.460 like you know so so they are there and i know there are many of you and i i am not trying to

00:23:08.500 take aim at you as individuals it's about the institution as a whole i mean i wrote uh many

00:23:13.620 years ago about how i worked at the lcbo and i said you know this is an absolute racket but

00:23:17.700 you know what in university i was happy to profit from that racket because it was an opportunity

00:23:22.100 there we need to have a government i would say far doing far fewer things than uh most times uh

00:23:28.420 you know the government wants the government to be doing but interestingly enough i i would just

00:23:33.460 to point out the numbers here 42 increase in the size of the bureaucracy 14 increase in population

00:23:41.460 Now, that means that the tax base has not increased with the size of government.

00:23:47.980 Now, GDP has increased, wealth and wages and whatever has increased.

00:23:52.120 But that means that the onus of paying for that workforce falls on a smaller and smaller

00:23:59.280 share of the population proportionally, which means higher taxes.

00:24:03.000 Am I missing something?

00:24:04.200 No, you nailed it.

00:24:05.540 And to further illustrate what exactly you just said, more bodies, right?

00:24:10.140 more people, okay, usually means more revenue for government because they're paying income taxes in

00:24:17.520 their salaries. They're starting businesses and paying business taxes. Alberta is a perfect

00:24:22.360 example, okay? We've been having the biggest population boom here since the oil patch boom

00:24:28.720 of the late 70s, early 80s, before the first Trudeau wrecked everything. So that was a huge

00:24:34.360 population in migration, okay, is what they call it. A big population boom. Our government revenues

00:24:40.600 have gone up. So it's kind of fascinating. This is why we try to argue lower taxes, okay? Lower

00:24:47.660 your taxes, your income taxes, lower your business taxes because it increases your population. More

00:24:55.100 human beings move to your geographical area and start paying taxes and almost always that winds

00:25:01.800 up with more money actually in government coffers because you're attracting that sort of industrious

00:25:07.620 person. And you're exactly right, Andrew. We're not having that here. We've seen a more than 40%

00:25:13.360 increase in the ranks of government employees, but a 14% increase in our population. So the

00:25:19.720 burden is much higher for us as the payers. Now on the other side of this, I'll say everything

00:25:24.680 is not completely sunshine and roses for federal bureaucrats. The government has historically had

00:25:29.800 issues paying them now you know there's a part of you know those listening that may say good we'll

00:25:34.520 save a few bucks but at the end of the day if people are working for the government they should

00:25:38.080 be able to get paid and this has been how many years have we been talking about the phoenix pace

00:25:43.200 it like this has been the story the phoenix is supposed to rise from the ashes but i feel this

00:25:48.440 one has just been smoldering for the last like decade uh that we've learned uh that the federal

00:25:54.040 a payroll system launched in 2016 to save $70 million has actually cost $3.7 billion almost.

00:26:02.560 This is insane. Yeah, it's totally nuts. So I'm going to tell you a little story. So I was,

00:26:07.680 I was at Sun News Network from a startup until shutdown. And then after that, I was with the

00:26:12.560 Veterans Affairs Minister for a brief period of time. So I've seen, you know, both sides of that

00:26:17.160 rope in communications and journalism back and forth several times in my career. After I was

00:26:22.180 the Veterans Affairs Minister after 2015, I was back at 580 CFRA, helping to host and produce a

00:26:28.740 show. The big story that started percolating around four months after the election changeover

00:26:34.820 there, Andrew, was the Phoenix Pay System. Now, for folks who don't know what this is,

00:26:39.700 very quickly, the Phoenix Pay System is a software program that manages the payroll for the mass of

00:26:47.620 bureaucracy okay so it doesn't matter if you're out there trying to help save

00:26:52.420 whales with scientists and the coast guard okay and you're paid by the

00:26:56.260 federal government or if you're a paper pusher in ottawa somewhere you're all

00:27:01.540 paid under the phoenix pay system now this is how the story goes okay I think

00:27:07.000 it was two or three separate times under Prime Minister Stephen Harper before

00:27:11.560 2015 they tried to implement this new form of software so that every two

00:27:16.600 weeks or every month or wherever they get paid, bing, there's your money. It winds up in your

00:27:20.620 bank account. But three separate times, the story goes, the senior bureaucrats warned the government,

00:27:26.640 whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a lot of bugs in this thing. Okay, we can't do this yet. Okay. So they

00:27:32.280 didn't do it. They kept the old system and people kept on getting paid as normal. Chapter change,

00:27:38.740 the Trudeau government comes in. The story goes, they said, whoa, we've been sitting on this for

00:27:44.000 three years. Why isn't this thing ready yet? We're going to do it. Let's push the button.

00:27:48.220 I don't know if those same bureaucrats warned the Trudeau government in the same way. I don't have

00:27:54.520 that smoking gun. The rumor is that they did. Okay. But they pushed the button anyway. So in

00:28:00.900 some cases, Andrew, these bureaucrats, these public, these federal employees would go months

00:28:07.520 and months, and in some cases a year without getting paid. So some of them had to leave their

00:28:13.340 homes they had to move back into their parents some of them were also drastically overpaid so

00:28:18.280 they have this crazy amount of money coming into their bank account and they're having to account

00:28:22.660 for it and save every nickel of it and they don't know how much they're allowed to spend like it

00:28:26.320 totally messed up their budgeting fast forward to now that was a great piece by jen hodgson by the

00:28:31.400 way and then western standard almost four billion dollars has been wasted trying to fix this software

00:28:40.060 program again with a b four billion dollars so far on trying to fix and implement the phoenix pay

00:28:47.660 system to give you an idea we could pay around 2 000 carpenters and 2 000 police officers full

00:28:55.820 salary for 10 years what we've spent on this wow yeah it's poor cbcs i don't give them i don't

00:29:07.500 recommend spending it on that but it's three cbcs i guess three and a bit plus yeah all right uh

00:29:13.580 chris sims alberta director from the canadian taxpayers federation always a pleasure we will

00:29:17.500 talk to you next monday you betcha all right thanks a lot chris yeah and speaking of boondoggles

00:29:23.580 like anytime the government gives you a price tag you have to assume it's just a complete

00:29:28.220 lie it's a complete fabrication now to be fair sometimes they may believe it

00:29:33.820 sometimes they may believe it like when the liberal government said the long gun registry

00:29:40.180 was going to cost like you know three and a half bucks or whatever and then it costs a billion i

00:29:44.440 don't think they believe that when the government says that center block let me look up the center

00:29:49.560 block renovation i forget this one the center block renovation is supposed to cost uh i'm

00:29:55.320 missing the i don't can't find the price immediately uh center block renovation price

00:30:00.260 They say it's going to cost between $4.5 and $5 billion.

00:30:04.940 Now, this is actually pretty recent numbers, and they say they've spent $896 million.

00:30:09.000 It's going to be $10 billion, and it's going to take three times as long.

00:30:12.020 Now, I want to believe that some people that give these forecasts are genuinely,

00:30:18.120 they believe it, and they want to believe it.

00:30:21.340 But most of the time, I think they're just making it up.

00:30:23.860 It's like, well, we've got to put a price tag to get a budget down,

00:30:26.760 so we'll just say something, and then by the time everyone realizes

00:30:30.200 as it's costing so much more. We'll be so into it and it'll be so path dependent. We'll have to do

00:30:34.500 it anyway. By the way, the gun buyback, the quote unquote gun buyback that the liberals had promised

00:30:39.640 that was supposed to cost between 400 and 600 million, now projected to be over 2 billion.

00:30:46.120 And they have spent, I forget exactly how much, but they've spent millions of this without even

00:30:51.060 getting a single firearm yet. So the liberal government on its gun buyback has managed to

00:30:56.500 spend millions and millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, and not actually got any

00:31:00.400 guns. Now, I don't mind this. I've said this, like, I don't support government waste, but I'm happy

00:31:06.440 that the gun buyback does not exist, because the gun buyback is not a buyback. It's a confiscation

00:31:10.840 scheme that the government is trying to pretend is just this, like, administrative priority. Now,

00:31:16.340 because the government has been so bad at doing this, because they've been so incompetent,

00:31:21.060 they're now getting pressure put on them from the gun control groups and advocates that were

00:31:25.780 pushing this in the first place, who think that the Liberals are basically, as the word from

00:31:31.060 Polly Susuvia, abandoning, abandoning efforts on this. Now, I think gun owners would probably

00:31:37.460 love it if that were the case. It's not. Tracy Wilson joins us on the line. Tracy,

00:31:42.620 it's always good to talk to you. She is with the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

00:31:46.200 Thanks for coming on today. Hey, Andrew, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:31:50.620 So there are a few different moving parts on this. I mean, one is that, I mean, you,

00:31:54.600 I know are obviously tied into the firearms issue, but you're a taxpayer as well. And I'm

00:31:59.500 sure on one hand, you don't like government wasting money, but as a gun owner, you're probably

00:32:02.440 thrilled that they haven't managed to make this gun grab happen on their part. But why is it that

00:32:08.300 they're now getting pressure from the gun control advocates? Why are they unhappy when, from my

00:32:13.820 perspective, the liberals have basically given them everything they want? Well, they actually

00:32:18.400 won't be happy until the you know doors of gun owners like me across the country um are kicked

00:32:24.960 in by law enforcement and our our stuff is forcibly confiscated um i i've said right from the

00:32:30.960 beginning it doesn't matter how far the liberals or any other government goes to appease them

00:32:36.080 they'll never be satisfied so we saw with c21 and the amendments g4 and uh and g46 that they had to

00:32:44.960 withdraw they they went right after uh hunting rifles and they're going to do it again so um

00:32:50.880 you know the anti-gun lobby also professes that there are all kinds of assault style firearms

00:32:57.680 um that have evaded this ban you know and escaped it um well at the same time i think most canadians

00:33:05.200 know that uh real assault rifles were banned back in the 70s and this is just a further assault on

00:33:12.000 legal gun owners you have this attitude among some gun advocates that they will not give an inch they

00:33:20.000 will not give an inch and i think that there's some merit to that because people like us and

00:33:24.720 certainly people like you have seen what happens when the inch is given and the one trend certainly

00:33:30.160 with this liberal government that's become clear is that wherever they say the line is drawn between

00:33:35.360 an acceptable and an unacceptable gun will change the second they ban that the second they implement

00:33:40.800 that line, it moves. And I think the so-called assault rifle thing conundrum is an example of

00:33:46.860 that, where they say the line is here and then, okay, and then handguns now. And then at a certain

00:33:51.980 point, I think you're right, that I don't believe the gun control advocates would be happy until

00:33:56.180 grandpa's musket, the last musket from, you know, 1787 is being pried out of some old farmer's hands

00:34:03.580 in Saskatchewan, will they? Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you look at it,

00:34:08.520 It's not even just the last nine years of liberal regime, but for over 30 years now, Pauly Susouvien has been calling the shots.

00:34:17.420 They've gotten everything they've wanted. The increase in gun control just in the last 30 years is substantial.

00:34:24.420 We've got some of the strictest regimes in the world, and yet that's still not enough.

00:34:29.120 They won't be satisfied until our doors are kicked in and until they can basically abolish civilian gun ownership.

00:34:36.140 And I know they profess on social media that that isn't true, but they haven't been very definitive about where their line is.

00:34:43.900 Every time they get what they want, they move that goalpost a little bit more to include even more firearms.

00:34:49.520 So, you know, and at the end of the day, whether I'm a gun owner or a taxpayer, I'm also a mom and a grandma.

00:34:55.420 And I see the increase in violence.

00:34:57.260 And I think what could those resources do for our communities if they were better invested in real public safety measures?

00:35:05.140 You know, we're getting a little bit off topic here, but there was a big seizure in Peel region,

00:35:10.320 which is in the greater Toronto area last week. And police see 71 guns. And, you know, all of the

00:35:16.580 liberals were jumping up and down saying, oh, great, this is Justin Trudeau, you know, in his

00:35:20.680 gun control in action. 69 of the 71 guns were smuggled in from the United States. So zero

00:35:27.080 connection whatsoever to any restrictions that any government would put in on lawful gun ownership

00:35:32.240 and licensing. And the remaining two may have been smuggled in as well. The origins just couldn't

00:35:37.340 be traced. So it's possible that every single one of them, but certainly the majority were.

00:35:41.620 But at the end of the day, gun owners are a minority in Canada. There are maybe 2 million

00:35:46.400 of us in a country of 36 million or so. How do you communicate this to a lot of people who just

00:35:52.340 in their quiet, peaceful, suburban existence don't think of guns and are really susceptible

00:35:57.600 to the first bit of propaganda that comes across their news.

00:36:01.420 Well, I mean, I would like to think that we live in a country

00:36:04.180 where we don't attack somebody just because they're a minority,

00:36:08.400 just because that's not how most Canadians live.

00:36:11.200 I mean, I don't know.

00:36:12.920 That's a whole different rabbit hole we could go down.

00:36:14.980 But at the same time, I think this does touch every Canadian,

00:36:18.880 whether you own a firearm or not,

00:36:20.640 because number one, there's the property rights issue.

00:36:23.340 So if the government, if I followed every rule and regulation,

00:36:25.880 regardless of how ridiculous they are complied with everything and at the end of the day it

00:36:31.340 doesn't matter they're going to come and take my stuff then that should sound big red flags for all

00:36:36.720 Canadians and secondly when nobody thinks about violence happening to them and of course we the

00:36:43.620 majority of us will never experience it at that kind of lethal level but I'm sure that everybody

00:36:50.520 who's been a victim of violence thought that too so as we see crime rates rise in communities all

00:36:56.440 across the country i think everyday canadians are going to start saying like hey what is going on

00:37:01.500 here the focus has been on the wrong people uh for at least for the last nine years if not the

00:37:07.060 last 30 and i think it's time to sort of recenter that balance and get back to being serious about

00:37:12.880 making safer communities to go back to the assault rifle ban the so-called assault rifle ban

00:37:19.120 One of the claims that the group has made in its criticism here is that tens of thousands of quote-unquote assault-style guns prohibited in 2020 remain in the hands of their owners.

00:37:31.060 Now, this is referring to, of course, the fact that, you know, my AR-15 has not been able to leave my gun safe since they were banned.

00:37:37.960 I still mime, but I'm not allowed to legally do anything with it, so it's remained there collecting dust.

00:37:43.000 But the whole point here is that if you are minded to follow the law, like I am and like you are, that gun is providing no safety hazard to anyone, whether I'm legally allowed to take it to the range or not.

00:37:54.960 And as we've talked about in the case of Peel Region, the police that are seizing these guns have said time and time again, these guns are unregistered, they're unlicensed owners.

00:38:04.220 But this word assault rifle does so much heavy lifting for the liberals here.

00:38:08.460 And I know I've talked about this, but for people listening that are not as in this, what does that word mean or what does it not mean?

00:38:14.940 Well, it's it's globally understood that the term assault rifle refers to a fire that has a firearm that has select fire capability.

00:38:24.500 In other words, it's able to go full auto in Canada.

00:38:27.500 Those have been banned since 1978.

00:38:29.820 So those are unavailable to civilians and nobody's asking for anything different.

00:38:36.220 What they're targeting with this May 2020 OIC and what Polly Susuvian keeps referring to as assault style firearms, by definition, is something is styled after something else.

00:38:48.700 It is not that thing which it is styled after.

00:38:51.100 So what they're talking about is more modern sporting arms.

00:38:54.840 So I know as a female, a young, well, not a young, an older female of small stature, I know for me, it's really important to have a firearm that is compatible to my size and shape.

00:39:05.920 And, you know, a lot of these modern firearms have all kinds of adjustable stocks and a pistol grip and things like this.

00:39:13.020 So anything that looks scary is now, you know, on that ban list and, of course, in the in the target of Pauly-Susuvier, so to speak.

00:39:22.060 But at the same time, you know, this is technology advancing.

00:39:26.220 I mean, my my truck sitting in my laneway right now doesn't look anything like my grandfather's truck that we used to drive on the farm with.

00:39:33.620 Right. So it stands to reason that a lot of my guns don't look like my grandfather's either.

00:39:39.420 Yeah. And the reality is, and again, I don't want to give them any ideas here, but if you were to

00:39:43.500 want to have an intellectually consistent and honest position, it would be that all guns are

00:39:48.460 capable of killing and all guns therefore should be banned. This idea of drawing an arbitrary line

00:39:54.080 that is ultimately based on appearance is just so insanely ridiculous. And again, I don't want

00:40:00.360 push that argument too far because i know there's going to be some liberal member of parliament

00:40:04.280 they'll say yes you're right let's ban all of them and i think certainly if they thought they could

00:40:07.560 they would but the reality is when they draw these lines they they do not make any sense

00:40:13.800 no they don't and that's how you know it's just political theater i mean when you start you know

00:40:18.360 you've got this big basket of firearms and of course there's just all kinds it's a very unique

00:40:23.880 item right there's all kinds of them all shapes and sizes and colors and and functionalities but

00:40:29.640 But when you're looking at the aesthetics of a firearm, the problem is, is that it'll never be enough for them.

00:40:37.640 No matter what they they stick in that bandbasket, it'll never be enough for them.

00:40:42.440 And they want to keep adding more into there. And they actually complain about new firearms on the market as well.

00:40:47.600 And this is a big problem, because as the rules and the laws change with this ever changing liberal gun control,

00:40:54.620 uh what what manufacturers do is they you know they get uh inventive and creative and they start

00:41:01.160 creating new firearms to comply with those new rules and Paulie Susouvier says well what they're

00:41:07.200 doing is circumventing the law and making new assault style firearms no they're complying with

00:41:13.960 the law like it's it's absolutely breathtaking to see the desperation they've got but I mean here

00:41:21.780 we are i'm not going to ramble on too long about this but we are four years down the road from

00:41:25.960 when they first banned them every single firearm is still exactly where it was before safely locked

00:41:31.400 away in the gun rooms and safes of legal licensed gun owners and yet crime is still raging out of

00:41:37.140 control so you know canadians need to ask themselves um maybe maybe we took a wrong turn

00:41:42.580 here and focused on the wrong demographic tracy wilson vp of public relations for the canadian

00:41:48.420 Coalition for Firearm Rights. Always good to talk to you, Tracy. Thanks for coming on today.

00:41:53.340 Thanks for the opportunity, Andrew. Have a great day.

00:41:55.700 You too. And I will say that the CCFR, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, was a very

00:42:00.460 generous sponsor of a documentary that we produced here at True North about three years ago called

00:42:06.240 Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners, talking mainly about the order in council that

00:42:11.640 Tracy was alluding to there, the so-called assault-style weapon ban. And of course, a lot

00:42:16.800 of the themes we talked about there still very much unresolved a few years later so do take a

00:42:21.720 look at that it's about 40 minutes from start to finish that is at I let me just make sure the

00:42:25.400 website is still up because we had like a dedicated domain name for it it's still up you can get that

00:42:29.080 at assaulted.ca and it's for four episodes four parts but I would encourage you to take a look

00:42:33.880 in the meantime that does it for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's

00:42:38.560 most irreverent talk show thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to

00:42:43.980 The Andrew Vaughn Show.

00:42:45.440 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:43:13.980 We'll be right back.

00:43:43.980 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 22, 2024

Biden's out; Trudeau's in Tofino

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