Juno News - Canadian Taxpayers Federation says Erin O'Toole has ＂credibility problem＂

00:00:00.000 During the election the Canadian Taxpayers Federation was a little bit

00:00:11.840 perturbed I think I can say with the conservative platform on finances there

00:00:17.100 was a promise to balance the budget within 10 years but not really a

00:00:20.720 specific method on how to get there and now Franco Terrazzano the federal

00:00:26.100 director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has a great op-ed in the

00:00:30.160 Financial Post talking about the credibility problem that O'Toole has

00:00:34.080 Franco Terrazzano joins me now Franco good to talk to you thanks for coming on

00:00:37.900 as always hey thanks Andrew for having me so let's start here where do you think

00:00:42.200 the credibility problem comes from well it comes from the fact that O'Toole

00:00:45.940 flip-flopped on some of the biggest issues when it comes to fiscal issues when it

00:00:50.920 comes to issues for taxpayers I mean he flip-flopped on the carbon tax he flip-flopped

00:00:55.360 on reigning in out-of-control government spending he flip-flopped on repealing

00:00:59.440 the Trudeau government's ineffective inexpensive gun ban and buyback you know

00:01:04.360 it almost seems like O'Toole was hoping that voters and Canadians wouldn't be 0.99

00:01:08.540 paying attention on these issues but unfortunately for O'Toole voters aren't

00:01:12.900 stupid they held them accountable and now O'Toole has a very very serious

00:01:18.200 credibility problem yeah and when you talk about these flip-flops I'm a firm

00:01:23.260 believer in the importance of a clear and concise and consistent message and I

00:01:27.900 feel that if you have a clarity in your message and you're consistent in your

00:01:31.380 message even if not everyone agrees with you they can at least respect you for

00:01:35.160 not or for knowing where you are by the end of the campaign it was unclear where

00:01:40.060 the conservatives would end up if they were in government on a lot of key

00:01:43.380 issues yeah it was about as clear as mud wasn't it but but I mean these were just

00:01:48.260 complete 180s on some of these let's start with the carbon tax you know for a

00:01:52.940 while O'Toole rightly railed against carbon taxes right he saw this as an

00:01:58.340 issue that reduces affordability he even signed the Canadian Taxpayers

00:02:02.540 Federation's pledge when he was running for Conservative Party leader and the

00:02:06.760 pledge was unequivocal it said that he would scrap Trudeau the Trudeau

00:02:10.160 government's carbon tax and then he would replace it with nothing so that he

00:02:14.000 would fight carbon taxes and then just months before the snap election was

00:02:17.780 called he did a complete 180 and announced that he would be hammering

00:02:21.260 families with a carbon tax of his own and Andrew it gets worse because he

00:02:25.460 also said that he would be bringing in what amounts to a second carbon tax

00:02:29.180 through fuel regulations so when it's all said and done O'Toole's carbon taxes

00:02:34.280 would have hammered a family for nearly $20 every time they fueled up their 0.96

00:02:39.800 minivan this was a big one because you're right and I remember that I

00:02:44.420 remember with your predecessor Aaron Woodrick Aaron O'Toole signing that no

00:02:48.140 carbon tax pledge very clear against the carbon tax and the Conservatives tried to

00:02:53.660 spin their plan as not being a carbon tax because they said that the government

00:02:57.080 wasn't keeping the money but I mean my view on this was that if you're forcing

00:03:00.360 consumers to pay more for something it's a tax through and through but I mean the

00:03:04.960 worst thing is that it didn't even work there's a gamble that okay if we put this

00:03:08.720 forward the Conservatives will ingratiate themselves in the hearts and minds of

00:03:12.600 Canadians and it's not even like they had a win to show for it oh you're

00:03:16.760 absolutely correct on so many issues there Andrew I mean where do we start

00:03:21.020 well the first part of course it's a carbon tax if the government is going to

00:03:25.340 force consumers to pay more at the pumps that is a tax now on that issue I mean

00:03:30.560 O'Toole was trying to pretend that this wasn't a tax well if you're going to do a

00:03:35.240 180 if you're going to hammer families with a carbon tax of your own at least

00:03:39.120 have the spine to admit it rather than play word games and insult Canadians

00:03:44.120 intelligence now the second issue is that of course this was going to raise

00:03:48.620 affordability for Canadians O'Toole's flip-flop and carbon tax now here's where

00:03:53.180 things really go wrong for O'Toole one of the key issues that all Canadians 0.90

00:03:57.500 coast-to-coast no matter what demographic we're concerned about affordability

00:04:01.240 well O'Toole completely lost a leg to stand on on affordability right because

00:04:05.740 how can you talk about improving affordability on the one hand and then

00:04:10.020 on the other hand hammer families with a carbon tax which would mean that they

00:04:13.880 would pay nearly $20 extra every time they fill up their minivan I mean you

00:04:18.220 can't and really that's where a tool missed the mark Sarah Goodman who is in

00:04:24.000 the Prime Minister's office one of the chief climate advisers for Justin Trudeau said

00:04:28.120 on Twitter after the election results that the re-elected Liberal government is

00:04:32.260 a sign that the government has a mandate to do more on climate and to do it

00:04:36.080 faster is there not an argument that by sending Justin Trudeau back to Ottawa by

00:04:40.840 re-electing a Trudeau government even in a minority Canadians are either tacitly or

00:04:45.440 explicitly on board with a carbon tax no I don't I don't think so I mean even

00:04:50.440 look at how the Trudeau government brought in its massively increasing carbon tax to

00:04:54.860 170 dollars per ton in the lead-up to the 2019 election then environment

00:04:59.780 minister for the Trudeau Liberals Catherine McKenna she she said that the

00:05:03.260 government had no intention to raise the carbon tax beyond 50 dollars per ton now

00:05:08.140 after that Liberal government was elected they waited until what two weeks before

00:05:11.960 Christmas of 2020 months before the next election to announce that they would be

00:05:16.880 raising the carbon tax all the way up to 40 cents per liter of gasoline by 2030 so so

00:05:21.980 even the Liberals of course have not been telling the truth when it comes to

00:05:25.280 carbon taxes and I think it's because they know that Canadians really have no 1.00

00:05:29.240 appetite to be seeing their cost of living going up now one thing I want to go

00:05:33.560 back on O'Toole's carbon tax because you kind of brought up a good point but I

00:05:37.280 didn't follow through on it and that's this whole idea of the O'Toole savings

00:05:42.080 account right the fact that you're gonna pay a higher price at the pump and then

00:05:46.700 somehow this money is gonna be put into a savings account which you can only be

00:05:50.180 using to buy some some green government approved swag now Andrew you know that

00:05:54.980 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been hammering the Trudeau government's

00:05:58.160 carbon tax we're gonna continue to hammer that carbon tax it's really just a

00:06:01.940 thinly veiled redistribution scheme but at least under the Trudeau government's

00:06:07.060 carbon tax some people will get some of their money back in actual cash the O'Toole

00:06:12.320 carbon tax was a complete disaster it was so paternalistic yeah I mean this is the

00:06:18.380 whole thing forget about the the lack of you know clarity on what you could spend

00:06:22.340 your money on this idea that you know you're gonna get this rewards account

00:06:26.360 this O'Toole bucks account that then you can use for green purchases so you can

00:06:31.280 buy a bicycle maybe you can buy some energy efficient windows but having this

00:06:36.200 money sitting in an account that you can't access I mean that's been like my

00:06:38.840 Petro points card basically where the it's all sitting there and I can't really do

00:06:43.100 anything with it unless I just want to buy gas that's the one thing that I can do

00:06:47.000 with that but at least I had a choice in enrolling in that program yeah O'Toole's

00:06:51.200 carbon tax flip-flop was really a disaster from beginning to end really

00:06:55.460 hey hey don't worry everyone out there in Calgary yeah you're gonna be facing

00:06:58.760 higher fuel bills but hey you'll be able to cart your groceries home in the middle

00:07:02.960 of January with your new e-scooter it was just a complete disaster I want to turn

00:07:08.180 to the other aspect here which was the balanced budget thing now I had asked Aaron

00:07:12.080 O'Toole about this I think it was the very first day of the campaign you say

00:07:14.900 that you're gonna balance the budget in ten years we've seen the economic

00:07:18.260 situation Canada's in how are you going to do that and throughout the campaign

00:07:22.760 we heard certainly specific promises but but I never saw what are you going to do

00:07:28.760 to in ten years balance the budget and the caveat here is that because of the

00:07:33.700 spending that we've seen in Canada not just over the last year and a half but

00:07:36.940 over the last six years of the Liberal government balancing the budget

00:07:40.560 belting belting the tight tightening the belt is going to be a challenge but but

00:07:44.940 I never really by the end of the campaign saw how that was gonna happen

00:07:47.940 yeah I mean it this was a tough one right this is very tough for Canadian

00:07:53.160 taxpayers it's really the the one trillion dollar elephant in the room is

00:07:56.880 the federal government's debt now maybe we give the Conservatives a little bit of

00:08:00.840 credit because they were the only major party that was at least talking about

00:08:04.800 balancing the budget but make no mistake about it the O'Toole so-called budget

00:08:09.240 balanced plan was not credible so we remember the data that came out of the

00:08:14.580 parliamentary budget officer right that under the current trajectory we wouldn't

00:08:19.260 see a balanced budget federally until 2070 well that was before all of the

00:08:23.560 massive spending promises in this election now somehow O'Toole wanted to

00:08:28.700 spend about 50 billion dollars more than that last Liberal government budget and he

00:08:33.780 thought that he could balance the budget decades sooner so he wanted to spend

00:08:37.980 tens of billions of dollars more and thought he could balance the budget decades

00:08:41.740 sooner well Andrew the math doesn't add up there and what's so unfortunate about

00:08:47.040 this Conservative Party platform is that for a long time they've rightly been

00:08:51.420 talking about the dangers of the of the Trudeau government's runaway spending we

00:08:57.060 have more than a trillion dollars in debt even before the pandemic the Trudeau

00:09:01.380 government brought per person spending to all-time highs and even under

00:09:05.940 those scenarios which we are living through the O'Toole platform still

00:09:10.740 couldn't find any meaningful savings yeah and the reality is you have to

00:09:16.380 either increase revenue or cut spending and both of those things are very

00:09:21.540 politically dangerous some might say but at the same time they're also

00:09:25.800 necessary you don't want to be the one running on cutting the budget you don't

00:09:29.680 want to be the one running on raising taxes and that's the thing so if you're

00:09:33.240 trying to say you're balancing the budget but you're not articulating which of

00:09:36.120 those two you're gonna do you're missing a key part of the arithmetic here

00:09:40.000 yeah there's there's a few things there and Andrew I'm just gonna push back

00:09:43.200 slightly yeah what's what's politically popular well I think it actually is

00:09:48.120 politically popular for for some governments to actually find some savings

00:09:52.860 and to actually stop with this crazy spending for example I think it would be

00:09:57.120 very politically popular if one of these parties O'Toole for example were to have

00:10:02.340 come out and said hey we are going to reverse the two pandemic pay raises that

00:10:07.740 all members of Parliament received I think that would have been very popular I

00:10:11.400 think it would have shown Canadians that you know what maybe these politicians do

00:10:15.660 kind of get what we're going through and there's other areas of the budget they

00:10:20.080 could have they've could have cut I think would have been popular for these

00:10:23.100 politicians to say we are going to put an end to corporate welfare we don't need to be

00:10:26.880 giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Ford Motor Company for example I

00:10:31.680 think it would also have been very popular to say hey we are going to force

00:10:35.320 all political parties to pay back the wage subsidy that was never meant for them so

00:10:39.780 so Andrew you know I agree with you to an extent but I think it would have been

00:10:43.500 very popular for parties to actually come out and be like look guys there is

00:10:48.640 definitely some fat up here in Ottawa and we're gonna do our best to trim that fat

00:10:53.000 no and I very much agree with that and I should qualify by saying the

00:10:56.840 the landmines that are being set by opposition whenever you talk about cuts

00:11:00.320 makes it politically risky but you're right if you are very clear about what

00:11:03.820 it is you want to do I don't think most Canadians would say yeah that's I think

00:11:07.520 they'd all they'd all agree with it just very briefly here Franco let's talk

00:11:10.580 about affordability you mentioned it before in the context of the carbon tax we've

00:11:14.360 seen skyrocketing inflation I didn't see a lot of discussion in general about

00:11:19.620 this about how to rein in inflation from any of the parties yeah it's it's really

00:11:24.440 quite unfortunate and and I think the reason is is because a politician cannot

00:11:29.620 credibly talk about improving affordability without taking a very hard look in the

00:11:34.500 mirror and looking at what the federal government is doing to reduce

00:11:38.680 affordability now we've already talked about taxes of course we've talked about

00:11:42.480 the carbon tax that is an obvious way that the federal government drives up the

00:11:46.000 cost of living but but of course there's a myriad of other different types of

00:11:49.140 taxes even during the pandemic the average Canadian family paid about 36% of

00:11:54.940 its budget to taxes which is more than what that average Canadian family paid for

00:12:00.120 things like housing food and food and clothing combined so certainly tax relief

00:12:04.440 which we didn't see any broad-based tax relief would improve affordability but

00:12:09.000 Andrew the second thing which some members of Parliament are talking about is the

00:12:14.000 inflation tax right when the government prints more dollars your dollars buy less now

00:12:19.040 some members of Parliament are talking about it but if we really want to have a

00:12:23.140 legitimate conversation about how to improve affordability on Canada we have to

00:12:27.700 talk about the government's printing press

00:12:30.020 yeah no very much agree with that and this is again something that if we are

00:12:36.100 talking about to go back to the Conservative leadership what the party does

00:12:39.300 moving forward or any party I'd like to see them take these things seriously I mean if

00:12:43.020 you're going to say that the Conservative Party is going to have this this one track

00:12:46.700 focus on the economy on taxes on affordability great do it and do it well

00:12:51.080 Franco Terrazano Federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation always a

00:12:55.400 pleasure good sir hey thanks for having me on thanks for listening to the Andrew

00:12:59.420 Lawton Show support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news

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Juno News - October 06, 2021

Canadian Taxpayers Federation says Erin O'Toole has ＂credibility problem＂

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