Juno News - October 13, 2025


Canadians are paying more — and getting less


Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

198.85654

Word count

4,881

Sentence count

8

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Fighter with Chris Simons, Chris talks about the role government plays in our daily lives and how they get in the way of our economic growth. He also talks about how government often gets in our way and costs us a lot of money.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 welcome to the fighter with chris sims thank you so much for making us a part of your thanksgiving
00:00:12.400 long weekend if you're working thank you so much for the work that you do if you've been able to
00:00:17.920 take some time off to spend it with loved ones over the long weekend again thank you for what
00:00:22.400 you do and a special thank you to folks who are volunteering out at food banks and places where
00:00:27.920 you are needed to help folks who really need the help because at the end of the day we have to fight
00:00:33.520 for each other to be able to afford life okay and one of the big reasons why a lot of people do
00:00:40.000 struggle is because the government takes around half of our paychecks if you do kind of a little
00:00:46.800 bit of mental math and you imagine say that you work for salary and you get a paycheck every two
00:00:52.080 weeks it arrives in your bank account imagine it being almost double that's what various levels
00:00:58.800 of government okay municipal provincial federal that's about what various levels of government
00:01:04.240 take from you it's about half your paycheck so if you imagine that your paycheck is almost doubled
00:01:10.640 instead of what it is right now what could you do with that money yourself could you afford more
00:01:15.600 nutritious food could you maybe afford to get a tutor for your kid could you pay off some of your bills
00:01:21.280 these are all really important questions and government unfortunately gets in its own way and
00:01:27.200 it gets in your way and it winds up costing you a lot of money through taxes and on lost out prosperity
00:01:34.800 and that's what i wanted to talk with you about this to devote today because right now we're in this
00:01:40.400 kind of holding pattern we're kind of in a chess match right now when it comes to natural resources
00:01:46.160 things like pipelines getting approved in canada the federal government under new prime minister
00:01:51.520 mark carney has said verbally that it wants to change things that it wants to approve things that
00:01:58.080 it wants to build stuff but we haven't seen it happen yet so the question is when is this actually going
00:02:06.480 to happen because keep in mind folks when we're actually getting pipelines built and we're getting our
00:02:11.120 product out to market things like oil and gas we get tax revenue out of it we get royalties out of it
00:02:18.960 so there's more money flowing into government to be able to perhaps cut your income taxes reduce sales
00:02:25.760 taxes okay provide more services all the folks that keep on talking about wanting more hospitals and schools
00:02:32.080 guess what those are built using tax dollars and one of the ways that governments do get tax revenue
00:02:38.160 is from getting things like pipelines approved so where are we going with this what's going to happen
00:02:45.200 with this new office that prime minister mark carney has set up apparently he's sitting there waiting
00:02:51.360 for an applicant somebody's got to come along and say hey i want to build a pipeline i want to build
00:02:57.280 something that will actually generate wealth and not cost taxpayers money that will put money into the pot
00:03:03.600 but after a 10 years of no no no and tons of red stoplights private companies are leery to start
00:03:13.840 building big things here in canada again so interestingly alberta premier daniel smith has said
00:03:21.120 okay alberta will be the applicant we're going to put our papers into this magical office of approvals
00:03:27.040 here at the federal government level and say all right your move so she's going to make it so that
00:03:33.200 the province itself is the applicant to build a pipeline similar to what northern gateway was
00:03:39.280 supposed to be so that's running from alberta out to the british columbia coast two huge things one
00:03:45.920 she has stated emphatically taxpayers will not pay for this pipeline which is good we do not want
00:03:51.600 taxpayers paying for a pipeline we want government getting out of the way so that companies can build
00:03:56.480 pipelines with their own money so that's one and the second element is she is now basically putting 0.68
00:04:04.240 the ball back in mark carney's court because now it's up to him to say yes or no to alberta what's
00:04:13.360 going to happen when it comes to things like the future of pipelines in this country what's happening
00:04:18.960 right now within the halls of power and the federal government because we just saw on black locks reporter
00:04:24.720 that they've even done an internal study there's an internal report within the federal government
00:04:30.400 saying hey this mandate trying to force people to stop buying gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles
00:04:37.680 and to mandate people to only buy battery-powered cars it's not economically feasible who knew we know
00:04:46.080 somebody who knows let's find out look folks it is time to modernize canada's rules on nicotine
00:04:51.680 alternatives to cigarettes like heated tobacco vaping products and oral smokeless products
00:04:55.680 don't burn tobacco or produce smoke they aren't risk-free but the growing body of scientific
00:04:59.920 evidence shows that they have the potential to be substantially less harmful than actually smoking
00:05:04.080 cigarettes despite this canadians are banned from accessing critical information and in some cases
00:05:08.320 even banned from these products nicotine pouches remain banned in convenience stores and current laws
00:05:12.720 ban communication about the risks of these products compared to cigarettes the evidence is here
00:05:17.120 tools exist canadians should have the freedom to know about them to be able to learn about them
00:05:21.200 please learn more by visiting unsmoke.ca joining me now is dan mctaig he is a good friend of the show
00:05:29.440 and he is with canadians for affordable energy dan i saw this headline in the outstanding black locks
00:05:35.920 reporter i encourage everybody to go get a membership there and if i were to summarize what it was is hey it
00:05:42.640 actually looks like the federal government had their own internal report showing shocker apparently forcing
00:05:49.600 everybody to only buy battery-powered cars and banning gasoline-powered vehicles isn't economical were
00:05:57.360 you surprised to read this headline dan i had a homer simpson moment i know right i mean seriously come on
00:06:06.720 uh you know these people live in this some kind of parallel world where uh things are just fine and you
00:06:12.400 know uh money grows off trees and uh it's a land of milk and honey but the reality is and you speak
00:06:18.960 to anyone even those who own it is that they find their complications is expensive unreliable a lot of
00:06:24.480 anxiety we're not ready for that and we won't be anytime soon certainly not and i may may say this in
00:06:30.160 my generation i have to ask you this every now and then so i'm from bc originally spent a lot of time
00:06:36.720 on parliament hill but i find sometimes politicians get inside their own heads so much that they start
00:06:43.200 imagining this little kind of it's almost like a sim city like computer program or a little utopia
00:06:49.360 that if only we all live together like on a little collective and we could all drive little battery
00:06:54.880 powered vehicles or golf carts and we could all grow our own vegetables and trade with each other it'd be
00:06:59.440 fine now if you want to go do that in some mountain village in the kootenays on your own time like
00:07:05.120 that's your thing but what gets me dan is that adults who work in the federal government still
00:07:11.920 think that they can do this on a macro scale but they can impose their little beliefs or daydreams
00:07:18.960 on millions of people like do you find that there's kind of a disconnect going on here
00:07:23.360 yeah it's almost uh anti-civil it's anti uh certainly uh anti-civilization i mean it's like living
00:07:29.040 in the state of nature eating acorns wearing animal skins but no fires because you're worried about your
00:07:33.440 carbon footprint it's hobbesian in the worst sense of the word but i don't want to get into the
00:07:37.440 technical or into the uh literal part of it but it does show a significant detachment from around us
00:07:43.680 it comes down to fundamental ignorance couched in this idea that you're somehow being intelligent by
00:07:48.320 doing this but you always have the comfort of having that government paycheck so you really don't
00:07:52.480 care uh that changes by the way november 4th uh when we get a deficit reading that is going to shock
00:07:59.040 an alarm and i'm pretty damn sure uh bond rating agencies unlike what they've done over the past
00:08:03.520 little while thinking that the cpp is fungible that it can be used as collateral are going to wake a lot
00:08:09.440 of people up because they're not going to put up with the nonsense one or another i mean at the end
00:08:12.720 of the day i think uh we've seen 10 years of drift now reality is starting to hit and it's hitting very
00:08:18.400 hard everywhere no one is escaping this whether it's a devaluation of their assets or their inability to
00:08:24.080 make ends meet or keep a job much less uh worry about how to put food on the table at the end of
00:08:29.040 the week i had to ask you because you did mention the deficit and i wasn't going to go there but um
00:08:34.400 things i'm in ottawa right now things are feeling nervous right now like you can sense it because
00:08:40.480 we're coming down to the wire for the deadline for the budget to be released and i'm hearing all sorts of
00:08:46.320 wackadoodle stuff like they're going to start trying to call corporate welfare capital investment
00:08:53.440 um that's not great and we're hearing the parliamentary budget officers say things like
00:08:58.160 yeah you're being way too expansive in what you guys are calling capital or what you guys are calling
00:09:05.520 assets basically what it sounds like is they're playing funny tricks with the books and they're
00:09:10.800 trying to hide the fact that they're blowing a lot of money are are you really concerned about this
00:09:15.360 budget coming up are you feeling the same sense i am because the word comes back creative accounting this
00:09:20.080 is enron 2.0 and if they try that stunt no one's going to believe them and that you know whether
00:09:24.720 it's fitz or moody's or dbrs morningstar or standard and course if they go along with that well and it
00:09:30.880 says something about the companies maybe they should get the hell out of the business of rating but this
00:09:34.640 is going to hurt it's going to impact and uh mark carney's going to become a conservative much quicker
00:09:39.840 than we've seen already uh he's going to have to take these measures because we've been through this
00:09:44.640 this before remember i was a member of parliament from 1993 until 2011 and i was there when paul martin
00:09:50.560 was very concerned and the imf was prepared to take us over and we had no growth and things did not
00:09:56.000 look very promising ironically one of the things that got us out of this rut wasn't just uh fiscal
00:10:00.880 discipline we were able to sell a lot more to the united states and built a few pipelines in the meantime
00:10:05.440 which is why uh we're back you know 30 years later to the same problems we've created before
00:10:10.640 uh we've gone away from this idea that uh you know balancing budgets will balance themselves or
00:10:15.200 modern monetary theory and all sorts of wackadoodle ideas that were out there um but this is uh the
00:10:20.560 liberal part is going to change because frankly it's not just about the liberal part losing seats
00:10:25.280 it's about losing kidneys losing their shirts i can't help it i got to bring it back to this too
00:10:29.760 because i was there at the same time you were um and i remember booking you way back then for
00:10:34.720 mainstream media political shows the five o'clock daily shows right from the foyer the house of commons
00:10:39.600 and you're right uh prime minister jean chretchen and the finance minister paul martin and all you
00:10:45.680 guys over there on on the liberal benches it was a different government and i'm not just talking the
00:10:51.280 individual mps i'm talking about the analysis the fiscal responsibility there were some there were some
00:10:58.240 heavyweights that were working behind the scenes there too and you know it's not easy to balance a
00:11:04.000 budget right that must not have been easy we saw hospitals shutting down across the prairies right
00:11:08.480 they had to make some serious cuts because eventually the the lenders start saying no more
00:11:14.640 money and so they did make some serious changes and i guess i wanted to pick your brain on the stand
00:11:20.080 because you and i were talking all through the trudeau years about just how unserious these folks
00:11:24.800 were like saying flippantly stupid things like you said if the budget will balance itself and there's no
00:11:29.280 fiscal uh there's no financial case for natural gas like there's just nonsense non-grown-up things to say
00:11:36.560 you mentioned mark carney's going to have to become a conservative faster do you see an opportunity
00:11:43.920 for this current liberal government the people who are there now to start bringing on some more of
00:11:49.280 the adults in the room again do you see a chance of them shifting back to more fiscal responsibility
00:11:55.680 after i guess it all weighs on this budget right we're going to get these indicators aren't we
00:12:00.080 we are we're also going to have to hear from mark carney that he's walking away from net zero
00:12:03.360 the stupidity of it all of trying to strangulate the uh uh the the economy by shutting down and
00:12:08.960 by imposing hardship on manufacturing on business and then ultimately on consumers and uh the effect
00:12:15.840 is is real i mean a canadian dollar takes 140 pennies to buy a us dollar that's adding 24 cents to
00:12:21.440 lead to the price of gasoline imagine what's doing for food and every other commodity matter what is
00:12:25.760 made whether it is made here or not so i think mark carney's got to find new religion and he's got to
00:12:29.920 find it very quickly uh or he will be uh not just quick he'll be dead i'm trying to be hopeful um
00:12:38.560 he did kick the can one year by one year on this ev mandate thing do you think he's going to climb
00:12:44.720 down from it because we started off the conversation about the electric vehicle mandate we call it the
00:12:48.800 gas and diesel vehicle ban i think you guys call it something similar i see your petitions all the time
00:12:53.040 on facebook it's outstanding you guys are fighting this thing um so for folks who don't realize right
00:12:59.680 as of right now they're going to start uh restricting the sale of normal gasoline and
00:13:05.200 diesel powered vehicles at the dealership level in just over one year's time right dan you've you've
00:13:11.680 worked in the industry directly you know this file has this given any breathing room to any of the
00:13:18.480 dealers like what are the dealers saying now none whatsoever there are people not lining up to their
00:13:24.320 uh their dealerships to look for vehicles we know of course the announcement this morning a
00:13:28.320 government internal study there's not enough uh availability of charging ports there's no money
00:13:33.040 for subsidies uh we've had several of these companies either walk away or go bankrupt altogether
00:13:37.840 and i'm not just talking north vault and lion there's a bevy of others that have simply simply
00:13:42.960 packed up and said it's time to go but you are imposing on people something which doesn't exist we
00:13:47.520 don't have those met that many electric vehicles in canada uh available for purchase in 2027 even if
00:13:54.320 we wanted to and now of course the real concern isn't just that consumers are going to be forced
00:13:59.200 to do something that they don't want to do in a country which by the way today is getting a little
00:14:02.880 colder at least certainly here in southern ontario um we're actually uh now at a point where who's
00:14:07.920 going to buy these things beyond the canadian border the americans have said no ev mandates the
00:14:12.800 bush the uh trump administration made it very clear long before tariffs came out no more ev mandates
00:14:18.640 therefore if americans are going to be forced to buy them who's who's going to build them if there's no
00:14:23.040 market for that so we are facing significant uh you know tidal wave opposition to what's going on
00:14:31.120 and where the government has been for the past several years is part of that larger net zero
00:14:35.280 framework carbon taxes one two and three that's of course the one that's suspended for now the second
00:14:40.160 one the clean fuel center which chris you and i've done a lot of work on in the past in bc where it's
00:14:44.320 20 cents a liter and the third one the industrial carbon tax the obp uh the uh put based pricing system
00:14:50.880 uh and then you have you know a number of other you know layers of regulation that is placed on
00:14:57.360 industry and on on investment and on consumers the totality of which is making us poorer making
00:15:03.600 this country less of a great place to live we've gone in the world index from third most livable
00:15:08.560 most enjoyable place to live to 33 that's a pretty significant drop in 10 years and it isn't by accident
00:15:13.360 this is self-inflicted and so because these are canadian policies made by canadian politicians it's time
00:15:19.120 for them to change or we're we're simply all going to go over the cliff at the same time i didn't
00:15:23.440 realize we're at 33. we are in living standards yeah we in 2024 uh canada fell to the 33rd level
00:15:30.800 uh in terms of uh you know quality of life uh metric and i mean there are people going to say
00:15:35.920 well there's all sorts of metrics that are out there but you won't hear about that because mainstream
00:15:39.360 media doesn't want to tell you that uh confident safe that they as long as they don't mention it
00:15:43.760 they'll continue to get access to you know dollars of federal funding which i'm sure has to be cut
00:15:48.640 all of it has to be cut there isn't anything that can be saved now and salvaged least of all the ev
00:15:54.000 mandates because it costs so much it can't be attained it can't be realized maybe just better
00:15:58.720 for us if you want evs then we'll get them from china but uh you watch out don't bring them anywhere 1.00
00:16:03.840 because they might explode on it oh that's always the factor too right uh before i let you go dan and
00:16:08.560 i really appreciate you giving us a time after this thanksgiving long weekend uh so we really appreciate
00:16:13.280 it i wanted to quickly shift gears here because i heard an old word that i hadn't heard in a little
00:16:18.160 a while when uh canadian prime minister mark carney went down and visited us president donald trump
00:16:23.280 recently and that was keystone so we know that trump is in favor of keystone and i've heard
00:16:30.080 carney being asked about this now again do you think there's a chance to just revive this thing so
00:16:36.160 for folks who don't know this was a pipeline that had been approved by the trump administration
00:16:41.600 and it was supposed to go down from alberta through to the states it's the keystone excel pipeline
00:16:47.440 but the biden administration killed it and the trudeau administration didn't seem to care so
00:16:53.760 do you think there's a chance now with this whole let's build canada thing that that carney's talking
00:16:58.800 about is there a chance to put that deal back on the table well i certainly pricked my ears when i heard
00:17:03.760 the statement possibility uh last week this might be back on the table i had asked pete sessions who came
00:17:10.000 to uh catherine swift's uh jocelyn benford's uh coalition of concerned manufacturers and business
00:17:15.680 of canada uh had a session and uh we talked about this at great length and uh because the the the
00:17:21.440 pipeline is already in place right to the us border within inches of it it really takes the american the 0.98
00:17:26.560 trump administration to come around and say yeah we're going to try to do in two and a half years
00:17:30.240 we're trying to finish this off even though joe biden sold all the pipes out and whatever but the
00:17:34.640 rights of where there and u.s refiners are begging canada for its heavy oil why you can't make diesel
00:17:40.960 with light type shade shell oil and you can't get it from as well it's a basket case that in mexico
00:17:46.560 salt in their in their uh in their well so no one else has got heavy oil except canada and that's
00:17:51.600 the solution i think it truly is our trump card if we could put another way because it gives the americans
00:17:58.400 something that gives them energy reliability and it gives canada something it desperately needs
00:18:03.520 selling 1.2 million barrels a day will add probably three quarters of a percent to the gdp to our
00:18:09.280 economy thousands of jobs and prosperity for years to come something we haven't heard in a very long
00:18:14.480 time but all it takes is one one man saying the name mark carney coming out saying i give up this was
00:18:20.160 a bad idea i don't think you can get rid of the oil and gas sector i don't want to get rid of them i
00:18:24.960 want them to prosper because every other country in the world wants our oil and our natural gas and
00:18:29.920 our lng i find when you're in a problem and you're in a pickle it's important to to do the easy stuff
00:18:35.760 first now nobody's saying that building a pipeline is actually physically easy to do but in the realm
00:18:41.440 of politics if it's already built right within an inch of the u.s border and all it would take is you
00:18:47.280 know president trump u.s president trump to say yeah let's let's give her isn't that kind of high on
00:18:52.880 the list of easier things to do when it comes to international infrastructure i have a feeling
00:18:58.640 that's why danielle smith was smiling a couple weeks ago it may already be there but uh mark
00:19:02.800 carney's got a problem with having to uh swallow his own pride knowing he was wrong and uh recognizing
00:19:07.840 that uh the way of the past is certainly the way of the future and as i said earlier when i took on
00:19:12.880 the oil and gas sector uh certainly the downstream the biggest concern jacques fredsen and paul martin
00:19:17.920 happens i was going to go after the upstream and paul martin made it very clear to me you can't go
00:19:22.480 after them because they're going to save our bacon they're the ones creating revenue creating
00:19:26.320 opportunities by building pipelines and selling to a customer let's just get our energy to the
00:19:30.240 rest of the world every other country is demanding it every other country saying canada first i don't
00:19:35.600 see why we would say no and if a couple of people on the side want to you know sit around and protest
00:19:40.400 and think that's fine but the good of the many comes before the interests uh and the
00:19:44.640 obstruction of a few we've heard that the past 10 years you've harmed the canadian economy step aside
00:19:49.040 clide uh lastly two more quick questions here i wanted to get your take on because i haven't had
00:19:54.640 a chance to talk to you about it yet on premier daniel smith's move when she said okay you guys have
00:20:00.320 this special office that you all have set up about building canada and you know we're sitting here
00:20:04.640 waiting to do speedy approval and to rubber stamp things as long as they pass all the tests but shocker
00:20:10.720 dan there's no applicants there's no comers some private company doesn't want to leave their wallet
00:20:16.240 on our park bench in canada frankly i'm not surprised based on what's happened the past 10
00:20:21.440 years and real quick from a taxpayer's perspective and how much money canada has lost out on here uh
00:20:26.960 since 2015 through all of the different uh strangled and cancelled and slowed down natural resources
00:20:33.040 projects canada has lost out on around 600 billion dollars with a b now that includes everything that
00:20:39.120 includes mines and everything else like that but that's a heck of a lot of chunk of change
00:20:43.600 put that into perspective that could cover the income tax bills the federal income tax bills for
00:20:49.040 the entire populations of alberta saskatchewan and manitoba for 10 years so it is a staggering amount
00:20:57.040 of money we lost out on so wanted to know what you thought i thought it was a chess move when daniel
00:21:02.240 smith came and said okay there's no private company that is willing to put the application in to the
00:21:07.280 federal government of speedy approval office we're gonna do it alberta is now the applicant now we
00:21:13.520 don't want taxpayers money building a pipeline but she's going to use taxpayers money and the 1.00
00:21:17.920 government to go through all the hoops to fill out all the paperwork to do all the consultations
00:21:22.880 i think she's calling his bluff what did you think of that move yeah i think it was a brilliant
00:21:27.760 move it was a smart tactic and it's actually a tactic that's going to save canada yes us folks
00:21:32.240 out here in eastern canada who think that we can uh you know get money in equalization money just
00:21:36.320 grows off trees if she does if she's not successful i it won't be alberta's disappointment uh continue
00:21:41.840 to line up with the food banks especially you know after we saw this stuff on the thanksgiving weekend
00:21:46.640 look we need to sell more of what the world wants and which we have plenty of having the third fourth
00:21:52.640 and fifth largest uh you know assets or or reserves uh it makes a lot of sense the united states is running
00:21:58.800 out of uh of energy it's not going to be you know able to continue it's fracking its wells forever
00:22:03.840 and the world uh you know through whether it be through british columbia or however you get it
00:22:07.920 there is going to want our brand versus others because there's no geopolitical risk but if we
00:22:13.360 don't do these things i mean the the road to economic perdition is pretty clear you are going
00:22:19.280 to fail as a nation economically and you are going to see social disintegration on a scale that we would
00:22:24.560 you know is going to curl our hair literally i've been through this and i've seen this happen before
00:22:29.360 um there is uh now a national purpose for getting oil and gas to markets and if provinces want to
00:22:36.080 stand in the way of doing that like british columbia you and i worked on this with john
00:22:39.520 horgan using every tool in the toolbox even though they have they don't have the constitutional
00:22:43.280 wherewithal well then maybe bc would like to give back the 50 billion dollars they cost the rest of
00:22:47.920 the country building the trans mountain pipeline expansion which would have been built by kinder
00:22:51.760 morgan for zero okay so i i get a little annoyed when people say well we have a deficit problem
00:22:57.440 but you allowed uh every tom dick and harry take pot shots of this use lawfare use all sorts of uh
00:23:05.120 weight means to drag this uh this project on if that's what the country's going to be it's not
00:23:09.520 open for business uh mr kearney will find his time in office nasty brutish and very short
00:23:15.440 dan i was going to ask you about david eby's comments but you just answered it anyway
00:23:19.760 dan mctig head of canadians for affordable energy i hope you have a wonderful thanksgiving long weekend
00:23:26.080 thank you so much for giving us your time today great to be here and thanks for having me once
00:23:30.320 again chris you bet once again that is dan mctaig he is the head of canadians for affordable energy
00:23:37.600 he was the guy then you can still ask him he was the guy that used to be able to predict the gas price
00:23:42.640 tomorrow remember that guy that was dan mctaig he also as he mentioned was a long time member of
00:23:48.160 parliament under liberal prime minister jean cretchen's government i strongly recommend you go sign up for his
00:23:55.360 newsletter and analysis because obviously pretty smart guy folks we hope that you're having a
00:24:01.040 peaceful and wonderful thanksgiving long weekend thank you so much for giving us part of your time
00:24:06.960 today as always be sure to like this video subscribe to this channel head on over to juno news sign up to
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00:24:22.720 thank you so much for watching