Juno News - Canada’s debt nightmare is getting worse…

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Fighter. I am your host, Chris Sims, here on Juno News. I'm the Alberta Director

00:00:10.180 and BC Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and I've got a very special guest

00:00:14.800 for you, Franco Terrazzano, our Federal Director and my dear friend. Franco, we now have a budget

00:00:21.520 date. It is going to happen. What's the budget date? And give me the Coles Notes first. What

00:00:27.480 do you want to see happen in the budget? Yeah, November 5th, folks, mark your calendar, okay?

00:00:32.380 Mark your calendar, November 5th, the federal government tabling its budget. And look,

00:00:36.700 what do we want to see? I can really come down to this sentence, make the government more

00:00:41.940 affordable for taxpayers. That's what we're pushing for, okay? How do you do that? I'll

00:00:47.320 give you three quick ways. Cut taxes. Cut taxes, number one, okay? The fastest, the simplest,

00:00:53.600 the easiest way to help make life more affordable help make the economy more competitive is just for

00:00:59.680 these politicians to stop taking so much money from people in the first place number two reduce

00:01:06.080 borrowing costs okay uh the federal government wastes money like crazy but the single biggest

00:01:11.040 waste of taxpayers money is the one billion dollars a week wasted paying interest on the

00:01:16.640 the federal debt. And number three, the first thing to do, the first little step towards fiscal

00:01:22.960 sanity is just to stop overspending your own budget, right? Stop blowing your own budget

00:01:28.840 targets. Yeah, huge. I got to say, from what I can tell, the Ottawa narrative is continuing with

00:01:36.660 this line that Prime Minister Mark Carney is fiscally responsible or, you know, fiscally

00:01:41.940 disciplined or basically dad's back at home now after a 10-year drunken frat party with the budget

00:01:47.140 numbers. But that actually isn't the case when you're looking at the actual math, right?

00:01:52.380 No, I mean, look, Carney is essentially on track over the next handful of years

00:01:57.940 to borrow about twice as much as what even Trudeau was planning to borrow over those same years.

00:02:06.460 Okay, so Carney, look, he's borrowing tens of billions of dollars every single year,

00:02:11.120 right he's borrowing about 60 to 65 billion dollars this year he's borrowing tens of billions

00:02:17.260 of dollars every other year he's got no plan to balance the budget and stop borrowing money

00:02:22.100 and look the one of the there's many reasons why that matters um but one of the huge reasons

00:02:27.020 is that taxpayers pay interest on every single dollar the government borrows big time now this

00:02:35.960 isn't just us saying this uh we've got a recent parliamentary budget office report um and we have

00:02:41.260 a new pbo i just wanted to highlight it's annette ryan and full disclosure uh i do know her um we

00:02:47.680 had a late common mutual friend there in ottawa so our kids played together when they were little

00:02:52.300 not super in close contact but did want to just say that i do know her from what i can tell she's

00:02:58.520 doing a very thorough job i took a look at the pbo's report and the math is all there the money's

00:03:03.640 all there the numbers are all there and am i correct in saying that she did highlight how

00:03:08.320 much interest is being paid on the debt or was that something that you pulled out of the report

00:03:11.740 i mean no in the report this sentence is bolded in fact i think this sentence in the report is

00:03:18.480 bolded twice honestly okay here direct quote from the parliamentary budget officer you ready folks

00:03:23.780 public debt charges are the fastest growing expense

00:03:29.020 gross. Did you catch that? Yeah. Okay. The biggest cost, the fastest growing cost of the federal

00:03:37.140 budget is the credit card bill. Okay. And not paying down the credit card. No, just paying

00:03:44.280 the interest on the government credit card. Okay. Chris, I'm going to give you some numbers to show

00:03:49.700 you just how staggering this is. Okay. In 2021, five years ago, interest on the debt cost taxpayers

00:03:58.280 25 billion dollars today 2026 interest on the debt cost taxpayers 59 billion dollars to catch

00:04:07.800 that folks in like five years interest on the debt has more than doubled more than doubled

00:04:16.600 okay that reminds me of a quote from the former liberal finance minister and prime minister paul

00:04:24.600 martin who said paraphrasing here uh debt and deficit are not inventions of ideology they are

00:04:32.320 facts of arithmetic the compounds uh the compound effect or the quicksand of compound interest sorry

00:04:40.080 is real right to paraphrase a former liberal finance minister and prime minister uh paul

00:04:46.500 martin it feels like quicksand when you just described doubling that cost within around a

00:04:53.180 five-year period. Holy smokes, Franco. If you break that down, okay, that's more than a billion

00:05:01.240 dollars a week. And as we often say here on the show, building a brand new hospital costs around

00:05:07.860 a billion dollars a week. So imagine building a brand new hospital every week, but instead of

00:05:15.580 moving in the doctors and nurses and patients and stuff, no, everybody stand back, tear it down,

00:05:20.060 tear it down rip it apart every week folks that's what we're spending on the interest and i want to

00:05:26.840 get nerdy here for a second um this interest payment on the debt it's a line item in the

00:05:32.820 budget right this isn't just some magical thing that they can economize away into the far off

00:05:37.440 future that we don't need to pay isn't this a line item like a like an invoice that taxpayers

00:05:42.620 are paying you have to pay it you have to pay it every year right so when we say interest charges

00:05:47.340 are costing us 59 billion dollars that's this year right that isn't like oh 59 billion dollars over

00:05:53.300 10 years no and folks not only has it more than doubled not only has interest charges on the debt

00:05:58.700 more than doubled in like five years insane but it's still going up in 2030 it's it's it's expect

00:06:06.680 us to cost more than 80 billion dollars interest charges blow a more than 80 billion dollar hole

00:06:12.740 in the federal budget. Okay. And here's another thing I like to say. The biggest threat to a

00:06:19.680 government bureaucrat or a government scheme or a government program, it's not ideology. It's not

00:06:26.880 even the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. It's the interest on the federal debt. And if you don't

00:06:32.280 believe me, talk to the folks in the Saskatchewan NDP from the 1990s. Okay. They'll tell you what

00:06:39.420 happens when you kick that debt can down the road and you just keep kicking it okay uh look they had

00:06:44.800 to close down dozens of hospitals across that prairie province because the situation just got

00:06:50.260 just completely uh got out of hand and now look you and now people might say hey okay things are

00:06:56.020 bad fair enough they're not as bad as they were in the 90s you know what i say to that uh when do

00:07:00.920 you want to when you want to put water on the fire not after the house is already burnt to the ground

00:07:05.820 you want to put some water on it when you see the smoke yes there's a whole lot of smoke chris

00:07:10.920 yeah yeah big time um i'm i don't like to use the word glad but it's good to see that the pbo 0.95

00:07:20.800 parliamentary budget officer is highlighting things like debt interest because for a while there it

00:07:27.140 felt like there weren't very many of us that were talking about in debt interest um hey man credit

00:07:32.100 to our boss, Todd McKay, a couple of years ago when things were getting pretty gnarly, when we

00:07:36.400 were doubling the debt, this was flagged within our team of we have to start really focusing on

00:07:42.100 this and highlighting this as the kitchen fire that it truly is, to continue with your metaphor.

00:07:47.500 Franco, how, now the million, billion, multi-billion dollar question is how do they cut this spending?

00:07:56.320 Like, I think sometimes people think of government, especially a big octopus like the federal

00:08:01.100 government and they start thinking it's just too big. It's too big to handle. It's too big to rein

00:08:06.580 in too big to get under control. If you had those scissors that you talk about picking up and putting

00:08:12.240 down the credit card, where do you start cutting? Hey, before we do that, I just, I do want to get

00:08:17.500 into this, Chris, but before we do that, I just want to give you three more ways to think about

00:08:22.280 the interest. Cause I think people need to know this. We've talked about it before. People need

00:08:25.580 to know number one what does this mean to you it's costing just the interest just paying the

00:08:32.000 interest on the federal debt is costing each canadians this year 1400 bucks each canadian

00:08:38.720 you got a couple kids a couple kids at a spouse times it by four okay but 1400 bucks take it out

00:08:46.580 of your pocket going to pay interest on the federal debt this year annual cost okay the

00:08:52.200 second way to think about, and this one really hits me when I'm in that checkout line, okay,

00:08:56.380 with how expensive everything is. Every single dollar you pay in federal sales tax is going to

00:09:01.660 pay interest on the debt. Think about how hard you work, right, for your money and how expensive

00:09:09.480 everything is and how sales taxes make it even more expensive. Every dollar you pay in federal

00:09:14.300 sales tax, poof, gone, going to pay interest on the debt, going to the bond fund managers on

00:09:19.180 bay street okay last way to think about this okay um health care the federal government is wasting

00:09:25.980 more money paying interest on the debt than what is sent to the provinces in health care transfers

00:09:31.580 so what could we do here without the debt just you know nice little thought experiment we could

00:09:37.500 eliminate the federal sales tax i love that or we could double federal health care spending

00:09:45.740 wow guys this is what we're blowing just on interest and sorry i just want to slow that roll

00:09:52.520 so 1400 bucks per person that's not per taxpayer that's per person in canada so say you're a two

00:10:01.780 person working family and you have two kids so two workers plus two kids so each of those workers

00:10:08.760 then that's 2800 bucks a year if we're counting it if you if it's a family of four it's like

00:10:14.920 5600 bucks holy right more than five grand for a family of four right did i do the math right i

00:10:22.240 think so no you did that is insane okay that is just disgusting because as an individual

00:10:29.360 if it's 1400 a year that's that's over 100 bucks per individual per month that's crazy okay interest

00:10:39.660 yeah just and not even your own credit card that's just federal governments okay that's not

00:10:44.720 even the line of credit it's another credit card guys we have got to get this under control

00:10:48.420 and that stat about the sales tax every nickel of the sales tax going on to this dumpster fire

00:10:55.380 that is the debt interest cost bringing it back to the 90s we always seem to do a retro reference

00:11:00.120 here uh prime minister paul martin one of the reasons why uh the liberals were first elected

00:11:05.080 after former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney

00:11:07.360 was the hatred of the sales tax.

00:11:11.060 They promised to scrap it.

00:11:12.680 They didn't keep that promise,

00:11:14.020 but they promised to scrap it.

00:11:15.640 And that was one of the reasons

00:11:16.580 why they got elected big time.

00:11:18.880 So that sales tax, folks,

00:11:21.020 that GST, which is now at 5%,

00:11:23.360 not the 7%, but it's at 5%,

00:11:25.360 that sales tax,

00:11:27.040 that's how much we're spending

00:11:28.560 on the debt interest.

00:11:30.820 That is mind-bending.

00:11:32.780 Okay, Franco,

00:11:33.920 you're going to be running into Shelob's web of mess when you start trying to push this government

00:11:41.060 to cut spending because you're right there in a terrarium you're in the belly of the beast in

00:11:45.320 Ottawa the capital city everybody and their dog is going to be lining up and saying pay more pay

00:11:50.720 more spend more spend more can I get into where we need to cut now yeah I mean look uh what I would

00:11:58.000 say, how about you just stick to your own big bloated budget, right? Now, you'll remember last

00:12:04.260 year when Carney released the budget, I was screaming about how crazy of spending it was,

00:12:08.800 right? Where Carney was spending more than Trudeau, right? Where the guy who said he was

00:12:14.880 going to be good with the numbers ended up spending more than the guy who was famous for

00:12:18.800 spending far too much. Okay, so last, you know, go back a year when Carney released his first

00:12:24.120 budget, it was crazy how much of a big spending budget it was. Chock full of borrowing, chock

00:12:29.600 full of debt, chock full of way too much spending. Now, that was a crazy spending. In that budget,

00:12:36.800 the government said it would spend $588.5 billion. Now, the government is on track to spend $602

00:12:46.640 billion dollars. Beep, boop, beep, boop. That means the government is spending 13 and a half

00:12:52.780 billion dollars over its own budget. Okay. Blowing their own budget by spending billions of dollars

00:13:00.900 over budget to see what's going on here, folks. They write this big spending budget. We were

00:13:07.320 spending way too much. And then they even outspend that by billions of dollars. It's not like they're

00:13:11.980 overspending a budget from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. They are overspending their own

00:13:17.680 budget that they wrote, or maybe who knows, a consultant might have wrote it for them, right?

00:13:22.340 A little throwback there, but that's the number one thing. Just stop spending over your own budget.

00:13:28.060 This Saturday, British Columbians have a chance to vote for safer neighborhoods,

00:13:33.100 to vote for healthcare that works, to vote for repealing DRIPA, to vote for sanity in our

00:13:39.360 classrooms, to vote for jobs, to vote for tax relief, to vote out David Eby and the NDP.

00:13:47.420 It's time for strong, serious leadership. This Saturday, vote conservative.

00:13:59.340 Why is it getting this out of hand? Like, why is it? I'm honestly asking. Why is it that they

00:14:05.540 write their own terrible budget, I will point out, like way overspending, adding way too much

00:14:10.820 to the debt. Like, it's not like they were writing one that had balanced books. They were writing a

00:14:16.100 terrible budget and they can't even stick to their own terrible budget. Like, are we just

00:14:22.020 shoveling too much money overseas? Is it the inflation that's costing it? Are they hiring

00:14:27.980 too many bureaucrats? Like, are they expanding where they shouldn't be? Like, where are these

00:14:33.340 unexpected, you know, trees falling into houses happening here when it comes to the budget.

00:14:39.460 Yeah. So what happened is they got an extra billions of dollars fall into their lap.

00:14:44.300 And then they just took that bucket of billions of dollars. They just fell in their lap

00:14:48.420 and they just immediately tossed it right out the window. Right. Money in, money out. Right. And

00:14:53.540 now would be a good time to dispel some myths because I hear this all the time. And there's

00:14:58.280 two ones that I hear. Franco, but what about the geopolitics, energy prices and all that? That's

00:15:04.560 why the government's spending more. Well, it's actually kind of the reverse, right? The higher

00:15:10.480 energy prices, the inflation would actually be good for the government's overall budget position

00:15:16.420 because it means the government's coffers fattened. The government increases revenue, which is what

00:15:21.420 we saw, right? So that's not a reason. The second reason I hear sometimes is like, oh, well, Trump.

00:15:26.380 uh okay well trump was in office last year when carney tabled his budget that is now overspending

00:15:35.260 right and it's not like and trump was you know tariffs then trump was you know doing what trump

00:15:40.520 is doing now right so it's not trump because carney released his budget when trump was the

00:15:45.740 president yes and then he spent billions of dollars more right so why why are they spending

00:15:50.400 billions of dollars more the answer is because they can and because they don't really have the

00:15:55.120 will the political will to really do what must be done when it comes to cutting spending right

00:16:01.280 they're kicking the can down the road because guess what cutting spending going toe-to-toe with

00:16:06.480 union bosses telling provinces no that's hard it's a lot easier to just spend other people's money

00:16:14.000 right and cut the ribbons it's much easier and when i say they can't they there's also not strict

00:16:20.880 laws or rules in place to constrain government right poliev was talking about this i don't know

00:16:26.080 if he still is but he was before the last election maybe he still is um he was talking for about a

00:16:31.200 dollar for dollar rule the canadian taxpayers federation has pushed for that for decades

00:16:36.000 where if a politician if they want to spend more money or some on something new here well then they

00:16:42.400 have to go in the budget and cut something somewhere else but there is none of that in

00:16:47.040 the government because that law isn't in place that just makes common sense like that just makes

00:16:52.720 perfect common sense um franco i hope that you're being listened to uh did you want to get into the

00:16:58.320 release that you put out on the income and business taxes uh or do you want to focus more

00:17:02.720 on the budget right now well look maybe we'll just end here hey and like one of the reasons

00:17:08.320 the government has to cut spending chris like one of the main reasons they have to cut spending is

00:17:12.480 like we need to cut taxes here big time without ballooning the debt further. Okay. Right. Look,

00:17:20.820 Canada is, is unaffordable. Yes. Breaking news. Like it's really hard. It's really bad out there.

00:17:27.220 And you know, if politicians want to make life more affordable, just stop taking so much money

00:17:32.260 from people in the first place. Number one. Okay. The easiest thing they can do, just stop grabbing

00:17:37.320 people's pockets and wallets all the time okay you need to cut income taxes right uh but also

00:17:44.520 gotta cut business taxes yes because look there's a lot of businesses trying to survive right now

00:17:51.080 yep and high business taxes make it harder um high business taxes push entrepreneurs out high

00:17:58.040 business taxes are a huge sign to the world to global investors saying now look somewhere else

00:18:04.680 okay yes and i want to talk about this report from the tax foundation they do this every year

00:18:09.880 it's the international tax competitiveness index it looks at 38 countries in the oecd so

00:18:15.960 industrialized countries our peers on income taxes canada ranked 28th out of 38. oh that's

00:18:26.040 Awful. What? On business taxes, we ranked 17th. Awful too. I should have started with business

00:18:34.880 taxes. You would have been like, that's brutal. I bet I would have taken taxes and you would have

00:18:38.360 lit your hair on fire. On both of these measures, Chris, on both of them, we're behind the US.

00:18:45.960 And that's not going to work. We're sitting right next to them. Guess where the money's

00:18:50.000 going to go, guys? And if I can, I'm usually flying the flag for Alberta here.

00:18:56.040 It's one of the reasons, frankly, this situation, because we're strangling our natural resources. 0.97

00:19:01.500 We have all of these dumb laws. We've had a megaphone set up for the last decade yelling, go away at all international business investors, especially with our natural resource development.

00:19:13.460 And it's one of the reasons why now we can't get private investors to pony up to the bar to come up and say, hey, man, here's my cash, because who's going to take that bet?

00:19:23.800 if they see government at the drop of a hat, strangling, strangling resource development,

00:19:30.640 are they going to invest billions of dollars of their own money in capital here? No, no. So I'm,

00:19:36.660 I want to just throw this in there too. We recently had a big win at the Alberta Court of

00:19:41.580 Appeal saying that for lack of a better term, the no more pipelines law, Bill C-69 was

00:19:47.520 unconstitutional. You can't do it because basically they said, hey, Ottawa, you're overstepping your

00:19:51.980 bounds by saying you can't build stuff. And it wasn't just pipelines, guys. It was offshore oil

00:19:57.180 and gas out of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was quarries. It was mines. It was gas fields, you name

00:20:01.880 it. And that's one of the reasons that's that chilling effect. It's one of the reasons why we

00:20:07.720 don't have private money banging our door down right now. And if we're worse tax wise, both

00:20:14.260 income and business wise, with what the report that Franco is mentioning there, if we're worse

00:20:18.920 than the next guy next door in the States, guess what? The money's going to go there. And here in

00:20:24.900 Canada, we're just going to keep on paying these higher taxes. So thank you, Franco, for diving

00:20:30.360 into both of those reports. Thank you for covering the budget. You've been banging this drum all

00:20:35.260 summer, telling the government they've got to cut spending, they've got to cut waste, and they have

00:20:40.260 got to save people money. Where can people follow most of our work, if you can, please, and follow

00:20:47.280 you for the budget yeah i would say folks so i mean you can follow me uh you know anywhere on

00:20:52.200 social media i mean twitter uh at franco underscore nomics we'll definitely be posting a lot more

00:20:57.020 on these budget stuff right uh but best place to go folks taxpayer.com okay and it's budget season

00:21:03.340 we have to fight back we really need all hands on deck join the fight sign the petition add your

00:21:09.080 name to that petition taxpayer.com stop racking up debt again folks add your name to the petition

00:21:14.960 it's fight season let's go let's gear up for this uh head over to taxpayer.com sign that petition

00:21:20.320 okay stop racking up debt awesome franco terrazzano federal director for the canadian taxpayers

00:21:27.100 federation thank you for your time sir thanks chris once again folks it is going to be november

00:21:33.100 5th is going to be the budget usually we used to have them in the springtime then things went a

00:21:38.520 little funny okay now it looks like it's going to be traditionally happening in the fall november

00:21:43.760 fifth, it's a super big deal because this is your money, okay? This is not government. They have

00:21:50.720 your wallet. I want you to do this thought experiment before we leave, okay? Quite often,

00:21:56.460 people will say that nearly half, nearly half of the money that you earn as a worker here in Canada

00:22:03.900 goes up in the tax smoke pipe there through various levels of government. Nearly half.

00:22:09.840 flip it around. Okay. Say you make a salary and you get paid every two weeks and you get direct

00:22:16.120 deposit into your bank account. Know that amount. Okay. You got it in your head. Almost double it.

00:22:24.540 I'm not kidding. Almost double that amount. Now ask yourself with that amount of money

00:22:30.840 in your bank account happening every two weeks, what could you use that money for?

00:22:36.360 Could you afford more nutritious food? Could you move to a nicer place? Could you start paying down your line of credit? Could you save up for a car or a house? Could you put your kid in soccer? All sorts of stuff. That's your money. The government takes it and it wastes it, which is why it is so important that we cover stuff like this.

00:23:01.480 and we don't just give the quick little headline of, oh, isn't Carney smart because he's got a

00:23:05.740 PhD in economics onto the next headline in the mainstream media. No. Here are the Taxpayers

00:23:10.920 Federation and on Juno News, which is independent journalism. They don't take a cent from the

00:23:16.600 government. So it's real journalism. You get into the real nitty gritty. You get to know that we're

00:23:22.140 blowing a billion dollars a week just on the interest payments. And you get up to the second

00:23:27.600 reporting from people like Franco Terrazzano. Folks, if you have not done so yet, please head

00:23:32.800 over to Juno News. Take out a subscription if you can, please, because this is real independent

00:23:38.860 journalism. It is a free press. It's where the actual action happens. And if you haven't done

00:23:45.700 so yet, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can do all this part for free. Please like this

00:23:51.860 video, subscribe to the channel, and share the show with people who need to know.

00:23:57.600 Thank you.

Juno News - October 22, 2026

Canada’s debt nightmare is getting worse…

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