Juno News - Canadians reject Freeland’s capital gains tax hike

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:01:19.680 North. Hello and welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. Do not adjust your set. Yes,

00:01:30.780 I know it's a different TV show. I do not have an Outer Limits coffee mug. I have to have my

00:01:36.180 Twilight Zone coffee mug. I blame inflation. My name is Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for

00:01:41.660 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Andrew and the team at True North have been very kind to me,

00:01:47.140 asking me to fill in for Andrew this week, but don't worry, you will have him back from his

00:01:52.500 secret assignment in an undisclosed location very soon. So we have a really interesting show for you

00:01:57.700 today. We're going to touch a little bit on capital gains tax. What is that exactly? How is it going

00:02:03.380 to affect you? What on earth is the Trudeau government doing with it now to screw things up?

00:02:08.260 Then we're going to go to the role of government and media, particularly government in media.

00:02:16.020 So those of you who have watched the Canadian Taxpayers Federation or watched any of our

00:02:20.260 conversations with Andrew Lawton on True North, you know where we stand. We want to defund the CBC.

00:02:26.020 We don't think any taxpayers' money or government money, as they call it, should be going to media

00:02:31.220 organizations because, well, one, it's a huge waste of money, and two, it's an obvious conflict

00:02:37.620 of interest. So one of the fundamental roles of a journalist, doesn't matter if they're coming at

00:02:42.180 this from a right wing or left wing or whatever ideology, is to speak truth to power and to hold

00:02:48.400 government to account. Sorry, guys, you can't hold government to account if you're counting on

00:02:53.860 government for your paycheck. So we're going to do a nice deep dive into that murky territory

00:02:59.120 with Peter Menzies, a longtime journalist, longtime editor and publisher of the Calgary Herald,

00:03:05.180 and even did some time on the CRTC board. So he's got some really interesting takes there.

00:03:09.580 And every now and then, I think it's important to remind ourselves that we aren't alone,

00:03:15.440 taxpayers, Canadian citizens.

00:03:17.680 If you're getting screwed by the government here in Canada, at least take comfort in the

00:03:21.920 fact that you're not alone.

00:03:23.760 Across the pond, we actually have some cousins in the Taxpayer Alliance.

00:03:28.280 We're going to be joining them later on in the show, highlighting some of the wacky wastes

00:03:32.620 of money that's happening across the pond over there in the UK because, hey, they've

00:03:36.620 got an election coming up.

00:03:37.780 what better time to highlight stuff like that. 0.91

00:03:39.860 And we're going to leave you with an absolutely ridiculous story.

00:03:44.680 I'm just going to tease it like this. 0.78

00:03:47.080 If you were getting together with some buddies to go deer hunting,

00:03:50.980 what would you bring with you? What sort of a vehicle would you drive?

00:03:55.000 Keep that in mind because at the end of the show,

00:03:57.640 we're going to be joining my colleague, Carson Binda.

00:03:59.540 He's the BC director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation with the story that I

00:04:05.080 almost didn't believe. I thought that they were pulling my leg.

00:04:07.480 So really good show for you today, as Ed Sullivan would say.

00:04:10.880 So let's start with the capital gains tax.

00:04:13.780 So rewind, dear listener, rewind, dear viewer, to before the budget.

00:04:20.080 So before the budget, we were hearing all sorts of rumors.

00:04:23.680 So we were hearing, we were seeing trial balloons for a grocery store tax.

00:04:29.080 Okay.

00:04:29.780 There were so many trial balloons up there in Ottawa, they blotted out the sun.

00:04:34.780 like the media said it was an eclipse, but we know what those were. It was the trial balloons

00:04:40.100 for a grocery store tax. So hopefully and luckily that didn't happen. I say hopefully because you

00:04:45.940 never know with this government, just wait. The other element was a so-called wealth tax.

00:04:51.560 And this is where you get into this sort of, you know, let's go hang out in the quad with our

00:04:56.400 sociology class and chat about eating the rich, shall we, in university. It sounds fun

00:05:03.660 and it sounds like a good solution. So if we don't have any money, the average working people of

00:05:09.520 Canada, and we want some money, let's go to that rich guy. You know, he's got a top hat and a

00:05:15.920 monocle. He's carrying around a bag with a money symbol on it and let's go take his money. So it's

00:05:21.480 kind of a simplistic thing of let's just tax the rich to death and we'll have all of their money. 0.96

00:05:26.560 So there was all these rumors about a wealth tax happening then. Again, that doesn't work because

00:05:31.780 Number one, super duper wealthy rich people, they have teams of accountants and lawyers.

00:05:39.140 They already know how to move their money.

00:05:41.320 Two, physically, if you find the super duper wealthy rich person and you try taking all of their money, they're just going to leave.

00:05:51.260 They're going to pack up and leave the country.

00:05:54.160 Now, believe it or not, I actually had some commentators saying things like, oh, well, we'll have an exit tax for them then.

00:06:00.380 put that down folks like you're getting you know east germany level crazy there let's not start

00:06:08.920 just thinking of people as these tax vending machines okay so all of that was going around

00:06:14.260 before the budget after the budget and during the budget announcement they came up with a hike

00:06:19.960 on the capital gains tax so what that is and again it doesn't affect everybody but what it

00:06:27.080 generally is, is an increase to the capital gains tax that already exists. So say you've got a lot

00:06:33.320 of investments and you sell them and you make money on it. They're going to then increase the

00:06:38.520 amount that the Trudeau government takes from that, from the profit from it. But it doesn't

00:06:43.720 just affect people who have stocks, who have a lot of investments and stuff. It also affects people

00:06:48.800 if you have a secondary house. So say you're fortunate enough already to have the house that

00:06:53.960 you own and live in right now. Say you're older, okay? Say you're in the boomer generation, okay?

00:07:00.260 A lot of them, right? They would have gotten into the market early. They've paid off their

00:07:04.400 own house that they live in. Generally speaking, there's always exceptions, but they're paid off

00:07:08.860 the house they're living in. But quite often, they'll have a cottage or a cabin or even like

00:07:15.880 a small apartment or a condo in a downtown area. Quite often, they will have rented it out or

00:07:21.760 they've used it for their adult kid to go through university or trade school. And they're often

00:07:26.660 counting on the sale of that property to be a big part of their nest egg. Okay. They're either going

00:07:33.840 to move to it and live in it when they downsize when they're old and sell the house that they

00:07:38.420 currently had lived in, or they're going to sell the secondary property. The reason why I'm

00:07:43.040 explaining all of this is because the sale of a secondary property in Canada carries a capital

00:07:48.680 gains tax. That is what the Trudeau government is proposing to increase. And I use the term

00:07:55.240 proposing lightly, because most of the time, if you have a big tax hike, and you make the

00:08:00.540 announcement during the budget, it will be part of the budget. Apparently not. From what we can

00:08:09.280 tell, and she has not yet clarified whether or not she's going to do this. What we can tell is

00:08:14.880 that Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wants the bureaucrats at the finance department to just

00:08:21.680 make this tax hike happen without a vote in Parliament, without a vote in the House of

00:08:28.140 Commons. Okay, so number one, the capital gains tax hike is a dumb idea because it affects a lot

00:08:35.100 of people, including physicians and doctors. We're going to get to that in a second. But also,

00:08:40.200 if you're going to hike taxes, you better at least have a vote on this plan. Okay? So that's

00:08:47.480 totally undemocratic. You have to at least have a vote in the House of Commons on a big tax hike

00:08:51.240 like this. So let's get into a bit of the details here. Sean, if we could pull up some of the data

00:08:56.200 that we have here from Abacus Data. It looks like they asked quite a few questions of Canadians.

00:09:02.280 So let's take a look here. So Abacus Data, again, it's a major polling firm here in Canada. David

00:09:07.960 Coletto. I used to work with him back at Sun News Network. So he runs this shop here. So recall of

00:09:13.880 capital gains tax changes. So three in five Canadians are informed about the changes to

00:09:19.480 the capital gains in the budget. So that's pretty interesting. So sorry about that, Sean. I have to

00:09:25.480 move my microphone with me here. Thank you. So three in five Canadians are at least knowledgeable

00:09:31.160 about the capital gains tax changes that was in the budget. So that's pretty decent, right?

00:09:36.600 enough people know about it. So how, what did they think about it though? Okay. It's enough to know,

00:09:41.560 but let's think about what they actually think about it. A quarter are supportive. Okay. So

00:09:46.760 that's about 25 ish percent of people. This is interesting. A third oppose it and a remainder

00:09:54.680 remain uncommitted or unsure, meaning they don't quite know enough about it to usually answer.

00:09:59.160 But that, that number of a third of people saying they oppose it is really interesting.

00:10:05.320 Picture that as a percentage of the population or, you know, votes. All right, let's move along here.

00:10:11.320 So for their initial opinion, only one in five want the government to pass the capital gains tax

00:10:18.280 changes. So that's, you know, come on, guys, that's less than a quarter. So they're getting

00:10:23.480 into really low territory here. Now, this is where this is very interesting, okay? Because

00:10:29.000 now we're getting into the nitty gritty as to, hey, what does the capital gains tax actually

00:10:34.120 affect, namely who does it affect? Doctors. What do we have a shortage of in Canada? Doctors. So

00:10:41.460 the impact of tax changes on physicians and access to physicians. So even before more in-depth

00:10:47.760 information on the impact of doctors, most Canadians believe there will probably be impacts

00:10:55.040 on physicians and waiting lists for care. So those are some really interesting data points there

00:11:01.980 from abacus data and that also anecdotally speaking is true so just to give you just a

00:11:10.700 bit of personal background i'm fine but i was actually at foothills hospital around a month

00:11:15.660 or so ago with a friend and it was just after the budget was announced and just after the capital

00:11:21.180 gains tax was announced completely unprompted because like i think i had my taxpayers ball

00:11:26.300 cap on or something but i was not there for work i was just there with a friend uh two separate

00:11:30.860 doctors, spotted the ball cap, and they brought up the capital gains tax, saying something like

00:11:38.240 this, if I remember to paraphrase. Yeah. So back when we were first starting med school or thinking

00:11:44.860 about becoming doctors, we were told that because we do not have pensions, okay, the way say a nurse

00:11:52.060 would have a pension, or other folks within the medical system would have a pension. Doctors are

00:11:56.780 basically private enterprises in a way. They have to kind of run their own clinics and then they

00:12:01.240 get hospital privileges. It's a whole complicated thing. But they were told for now, I think more

00:12:07.040 than a generation by various types of government that capital gains is their way of saving for

00:12:14.800 that pension. So the way they structure their practice, the way they save their money, okay,

00:12:19.200 is specific to physicians. And now when they're changing the rules midway through the game and

00:12:25.320 they're increasing the capital gains tax, it looks like they're now feeling ripped off.

00:12:32.540 And these two separate doctors mentioned, yeah, I've got friends who are also doctors. Some of

00:12:37.820 them were in Alberta, some of them were in British Columbia, where they certainly can't spare them.

00:12:41.940 And they were saying, you know what, we're going to head out. We're going to move. And that was

00:12:47.740 actually shown. I was watching a recent interview on in mainstream media. And one of the cabinet

00:12:54.540 ministers in Trudeau's government was asked about this. Hey, what about the effect on physicians?

00:13:00.140 Okay, what are you going to do about that? And the answer was so flippant, it was jaw-dropping.

00:13:05.940 The minister essentially said, oh, well, we will go find doctors elsewhere and get them to move here.

00:13:12.600 As if there's some magical international doctor store that we can all just go shopping at and

00:13:19.220 just, sure, no problem, bring them over here to Canada where they're going to get screwed on their 0.99

00:13:23.880 taxes. So I know there's not a lot of sympathy for super rich people in Canada, but I do think

00:13:30.840 we probably need physicians, right? I have a feeling that we have a shortage of those.

00:13:34.860 Maybe not such a good idea to chase them out of Canada with increasingly higher taxes. And this

00:13:40.380 is the big catch here, okay? Even if you think that increasing the capital gains tax is an answer

00:13:47.240 to the woes of the Trudeau government's budget keeping or lack of budget keeping, that this is

00:13:52.000 the silver bullet. This is the answer. This is going to work. The amount of money that they're

00:13:57.960 going to collect from this increase in the capital gains tax is going to be spent in around five

00:14:05.420 days. I'm going to say that again real slow. This huge tax increase where they're going to be

00:14:12.660 screwing people on the sale of a secondary residence. Keep in mind this also affects

00:14:16.560 if things are passed down in a will to you and you have to sell a family home. Guess what? That's

00:14:21.080 not the house you're living in, you're going to get nailed for that. If you're selling a secondary

00:14:24.880 residence, like a condo or a cabin, if you happen to be a physician or some other job where you're

00:14:30.560 directly affected by capital gains, all that money, Trudeau at his current rate of spending,

00:14:36.560 he's going to blow through that in about five days. I have lunch meat in my refrigerator that

00:14:42.980 is going to last longer than that amount of money collected. So like the lack of balanced budgets

00:14:49.400 and the increase in deficit spending in Canada is just absolutely mind-boggling here. Folks,

00:14:55.920 if you have comments on capital gains, if you think this is going directly to directly affect

00:15:00.820 you, how you feel this is going to affect physicians, be sure to leave your comments

00:15:05.060 in the YouTube channel comment section. And if there's some pretty interesting and or spicy ones,

00:15:09.920 we'll try to include them in the show. So this is why I love this format is because it's live

00:15:16.000 and we can be interactive. And we are currently, knock wood, not being controlled much by the

00:15:21.980 government. But that might change. Joining me now to talk about the role of government,

00:15:28.460 the role of taxpayer dollars and censorship here in Canada is Peter Menzies. Mr. Menzies,

00:15:35.340 thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for your work on this. I just finished reading

00:15:39.840 your piece. I think if I'm paraphrasing it, the CRTC is coming to help newspapers. Can you tell

00:15:47.660 us a little bit about that? As I understand it as a former broadcaster myself, CRTC deals with

00:15:53.360 radio and television. They so far haven't gotten their hands on print. How are they now possibly

00:15:59.980 getting their foot in the door when it comes to what we would typically describe as print,

00:16:04.900 even though it's printed on the internet? Okay, well, the CRTC did deal only with radio and

00:16:11.640 television until the introduction of the Online Streaming Act and passage about a year ago.

00:16:17.860 Bill C-11, it's known as, in its previous incarceration, it was notorious as Bill C-10.

00:16:23.560 And that gave the CRTC authority over the global internet, with the one restriction being that

00:16:31.440 it would only deal with uh video and audio and so that would keep it within its normal realm

00:16:39.400 one would think because the the bill envisions that that uh the internet is broadcasting

00:16:46.160 essentially so what's happened is they got lobbied heavily in the fall at their hearing

00:16:51.720 their first introductory hearing on bill c11 uh by bell media and other big companies who want

00:16:57.880 funding for their news. They say their news is in crisis, which it probably is. It's in crisis

00:17:04.140 sort of everywhere at the moment under the old structures. So the CRTC announced a couple of

00:17:11.060 weeks ago that it's going to have a consultation followed by a public hearing. And it said it will

00:17:17.900 get into talking about what it wants to talk about is the delivery of quality,

00:17:24.360 trusted news in Canada, including online. So that's what caught my attention because,

00:17:34.800 hey, guess what? Just about everybody's online now, right? That I believe is the primary means

00:17:41.900 of communication. People still watch television. People still listen to the radio. And some people,

00:17:46.720 not many, about 5%, still buy a printed newspaper. But now, because everybody's

00:17:54.280 online and the CRTC is online and because just about everything you get online now comes with

00:18:01.360 this little tool that will read the story to you that's audio and that I suspect is the door that

00:18:10.820 has been kicked open and that the CRTC will walk through I gotta ask you because I don't I read

00:18:17.660 most of your pieces and I really appreciate them and what I as a nod to your objectivity sir

00:18:23.700 I don't quite know exactly where you stand on some of this and feel free to not directly answer if you don't feel comfortable.

00:18:30.240 But you worked for a long time with the Calgary Herald as both editor and publisher, I believe, worked in sports journalism.

00:18:38.860 You did a stint on the CRTC board yourself.

00:18:42.440 How how do you what role do you see government playing in media?

00:18:46.560 If you could wave a wand and you could make everything exactly as it should be for objective, independent journalism to occur.

00:18:53.700 What role do you think government should play in newsrooms, if any?

00:18:59.800 The way the communication world is set up today, I believe they should play absolutely none.

00:19:06.860 I think it's absolutely none of their business.

00:19:10.260 I'm very much in agreement with the sort of Jeffersonian view of the world that governments should only do what only governments can do.

00:19:18.320 and they should focus on doing that well and leaving the rest of the world to that.

00:19:25.040 There was recently a clip of the manager of the Spectator in Britain speaking to the Scottish Parliament

00:19:36.500 and I agree with what he said is that at its core the relationship between media and government should always be bad.

00:19:42.980 yes yes it should be adversarial in a way um even if the if the journalists themselves because we're

00:19:49.840 not robots and i worked in journalism for 20 something years um you're raised a certain way

00:19:54.460 you have certain opinions but you can work hard to be balanced and objective in your delivery

00:19:59.540 of your story despite where they happen to come from if it's from a right or left angle

00:20:04.700 i always thought that it was my job to ask tough questions of the government in power

00:20:10.300 To speak truth to power

00:20:11.800 To comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable

00:20:13.740 And now that we're seeing so many journalists

00:20:17.280 Outside of the CBC

00:20:18.780 Outside of the CBC

00:20:20.380 So many journalists in Canada

00:20:21.740 Essentially being on a form of government payroll

00:20:25.100 It's mind-boggling to think

00:20:27.600 That they could possibly hold government to account

00:20:29.980 I don't know, Sean, if we have a quote board of Andrew Coyne

00:20:33.960 I think he said something to the effect of

00:20:35.980 By 2030, the vast majority of journalists

00:20:38.660 Here, yeah, pull it up, go ahead

00:20:40.300 It's slowly loading here. So if the trends of the past five years continue by 2030, almost 100% of legacy newsroom salaries will be paid, as Coyne put it, by the people we write about, and almost no one will be bothering to buy what is written.

00:20:59.600 And I thought that your inclusion of that quote was very apt. And it was years ago that Coyne also had pointed out that this is just an obvious conflict of interest.

00:21:10.160 I got to ask you, Peter, how did we get here?

00:21:13.300 Like, if so many journalists feel this way of like, you know, government back off.

00:21:17.560 I don't want to do this here.

00:21:18.680 I'll just shamelessly promote this.

00:21:21.040 This is our magazine.

00:21:22.280 OK, that says Let It Burn.

00:21:24.400 That's written by a dear friend of mine, Ryan Thorpe.

00:21:27.080 He's our investigative journalist now who spent years in the newspaper industry, an industry he loves.

00:21:33.620 How did we get here?

00:21:34.960 How did we wind up on government payroll as journalists?

00:21:37.640 Well, I mean, it's a pretty long story, but I mean, to try to make it reasonably tight, I mean, the internet got invented, the World Wide Web got invented, and social media invented better ways to reach people for advertisers.

00:21:54.660 Much more targeted advertising, much more efficient, much better.

00:21:59.260 Kijiji and Craigslist took away all the classified revenue from newspapers.

00:22:03.180 newspapers had been actually it was very easy to make money in newspapers for a very long time

00:22:09.200 because of their dominance of the market and because they managed not just news but a lot

00:22:14.600 of stuff like i said classified advertising that sort of stuff if you wanted you know to buy a car

00:22:19.580 you wanted to buy a house you wanted to rent something that's where you had to go and then

00:22:23.620 it all just disappeared newspapers had no response and now they find themselves they cut back and cut

00:22:30.280 back and cut back. And now they find themselves nearing the end of that path of, I guess what

00:22:37.960 you'd say is inability to adjust to technological change. I mean, it's the same as why don't we have

00:22:43.920 a horse and buggy industry anymore? Somebody invented the automobile. But the fact of the

00:22:49.100 matter is people still move around. So my view is, is that just because the horse that journalism

00:22:55.160 was riding is dying, that doesn't mean journalism has to die. It just needs to find a new horse.

00:23:01.320 And what they've decided in the meantime, what a lot of the proprietors who were fading away

00:23:07.720 decided in the mean hunt time was that that new horse would be the government as opposed to

00:23:13.620 serving readers. So you now have a situation, Rudyard Griffiths of the Hub pointed out

00:23:17.920 recently that, I mean, more than 50% of newsroom salaries are now being subsidized either through

00:23:24.240 a tax credit, or in some cases directly through Canada. In Quebec, the percentage is even higher

00:23:30.320 because the Quebec government gets into that. And I would also make the point which I don't think

00:23:36.560 that journalists themselves have to be, you know, are going to be worse because of this.

00:23:44.440 But what people think of them will definitely be worse. And no matter what you, no matter

00:23:51.780 how pristine you you believe yourself to be and no matter how pristine you are in the conduct of

00:23:59.100 your work if people don't trust that that setup you're done you're cooked it's over right so as

00:24:07.780 andrew was pointing out um eventually i mean if you don't need to serve your readers right if

00:24:14.080 you've got enough money right if you don't need to sell subscriptions if you don't need to care

00:24:19.200 about how many people watch your show if you don't need to care about any of that stuff why

00:24:23.760 will you right you'll just become self-serving and and just government funded i mean just

00:24:29.320 build a building right make them all public servants and have them move in right the pensions

00:24:34.720 are better right so um yeah this is not a this is not a solution it's it's it's really quite

00:24:41.420 pathetic um some sort of temporary transitional thing and there are there are things government

00:24:47.840 can do. That there are public policies that could be in place that would allow for 0.97

00:24:53.680 the CBC being central to this, for journalism to be sustainable. I don't think it's ever going to

00:25:02.820 be as profitable as it once was, but it can be sustainable if government does the right things

00:25:09.780 and stops doing the wrong things. You really nailed it there when it comes to truth and

00:25:14.080 perception as a journalist you're not you know you're not selling widgets you

00:25:19.600 know you're not selling shoes or toothbrushes you are conveying

00:25:22.840 information usually information hopefully that you as a journalist or

00:25:27.840 reporter has heard firsthand so if you're covering a court case or city

00:25:32.380 hall something like that I know I'm speaking like a dinosaur here because

00:25:35.620 there's so few beat reporters actually out on the street anymore with a mic in

00:25:38.740 hand but for a viewer or a reader or a listener consuming that news you have to trust the person's

00:25:47.460 perception and trust that they have written down the answers as best as they can as accurately as

00:25:53.700 they can and if suddenly you no longer trust that conveyor of information that's it like you said

00:26:01.380 you're done i saw a recent a recent poll they put out a it's a i forget what it's called but it's an

00:26:06.980 annual survey on trust that they've put out for 30 something years. And it was a shocking number.

00:26:12.740 I think it was 54% of Canadians now believe that journalists are purposefully saying things they

00:26:21.060 know to be untrue. Not flubbing, not accidentally making a typo, not getting a name wrong,

00:26:27.620 saying they are purposefully misleading people with statements they know to be false.

00:26:32.580 And once you get past that huge mark of 50% in the journalism industry, I don't really see a way

00:26:39.060 back for it here. I wanted to, before I let you go, and I really appreciate your work on this,

00:26:44.820 where do you see censorship coming into this? I'm not sure if you wanted to go there with me,

00:26:50.900 but apart from, I kind of see it as a vice, okay? And it's got two sides. For me, one side of it is

00:26:57.140 government funding of journalists, government involvement in newsrooms, right? Crank, crank,

00:27:01.300 On the other side of it, though, are things like Bill C-11, Bill C-63, which many have said is a form of government censorship.

00:27:10.720 Yes, in the case of Bill C-63, they're trying to couch it in child protection.

00:27:15.000 They should split that bill, OK, and only let that happen on its own.

00:27:19.780 Where do you see government censorship of stifling information, of downgrading people's algorithms to the point where they don't see shows like this anymore?

00:27:28.860 Do you see government playing a role there, too?

00:27:31.300 I think that could happen. I think there's two types of censorship that you'll see. One is self-censorship. And for people who argue that, no, no, no, government funding won't affect our news judgment. I mean, some of the publishers that were pushing for the government funding nakedly used their platforms to campaign for this legislation and stifled dissenting point of views on their pages.

00:27:57.520 So that was self-censorship. I believe in freedom of the press so they can do whatever they want with their press, but you also have to be accountable for it, right? So if you do that, people will trust you less. That's the outcome of that. And trust is a commodity, as we all know from other parts of our lives, whether at work or personally, trust, once it is degraded, is very, very difficult to rebuild.

00:28:21.700 It's not something that you can just snap your fingers and get back.

00:28:27.940 So the numbers you quote are alarming.

00:28:30.220 In terms of the government's role, if the CRTC,

00:28:33.120 the CRTC already has control of television and radio in terms of that.

00:28:39.400 And part of the Broadcasting Act says that the CRTC's job

00:28:43.680 is to ensure that the system that they are governing is of high standard.

00:28:49.320 now that's about as subjective a statement as you can make right i mean it basically

00:28:55.880 i mean right now i mean they they they uh they allow a lot of things they allow like uh pornography

00:29:03.320 channels and and and and that sort of stuff that that that are available to people and that i

00:29:09.000 assume that they then believe that that is of high standard or they make sure that it's high standard

00:29:13.320 porn in terms of that, right? Not the cheap stuff, the good stuff. Yeah, yeah. Don't give them ideas,

00:29:19.380 they'll assign a panel. That's right. But once you get into that, you know, so they've not got

00:29:26.840 carried away with that, but they do have the ability that with that subjective high standard

00:29:32.320 to put things into place, like the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council was sort of created,

00:29:38.140 the CRTC wanted it to be arm's length, but its decisions can still be appealed to the CRTC.

00:29:43.320 And it sort of sets the guidelines for radio and television, which in my view is one of the reasons why they all kind of seem the same.

00:29:51.400 Like you don't have, there's not the sort of dynamic diversity of points of view that you see on the Internet because everybody's trying to stay within those set rules.

00:30:01.560 And then you self-censor within those sorts of things.

00:30:04.600 So the CBSC, for instance, said years ago that the Dire Straits song, Money for Nothing, should be banned.

00:30:13.960 I remember because they had that F word in it.

00:30:15.940 Yep.

00:30:16.180 That's right.

00:30:16.940 That's right.

00:30:17.380 And I mean, the artists themselves did an alternative version and that sort of stuff.

00:30:22.860 But that was based on the complaint of one woman in Newfoundland, one, about a radio station.

00:30:29.460 And she had complained to the radio station.

00:30:31.560 and the radio station had said okay in the future we'll play the other version or something like

00:30:35.640 that but it wasn't enough and so there's there once you open that door what i'm trying to get

00:30:41.560 at is there's no shortage of people out there who will be banging on doors asking for you to be

00:30:49.160 shut down yep right um for all kinds of reasons there's right now the crtc still has before it

00:30:56.360 and appealed by a group to have Fox News taken off cable in Canada.

00:31:06.440 Two years ago, they took RT, the Russian state television, off.

00:31:12.140 It took them about two weeks to do that because the government basically,

00:31:15.600 the government isn't allowed to direct them to do something,

00:31:19.700 but the government asked them, nudge, nudge, wink, wink,

00:31:23.420 could you review the status please of rt right and they got rid of it there's also complaints

00:31:29.520 before it to get rid of chinese state television which have i think have been before it for about

00:31:35.640 four years now and they've done absolutely nothing about that so they deal with what they want to

00:31:40.360 deal with they don't deal with what they don't want to deal with and that's the world you're in

00:31:45.120 where somebody and the big point is somebody other than your publisher or your owner is looking over

00:31:53.040 your shoulder yep and that's exactly the world we're in right now uh mr menzies i can't thank 0.76

00:31:58.560 you enough for your work on this folks if you care about independent journalism if you care

00:32:03.520 about government creeping into the newsrooms of the nation and censorship do pick up mr menzies

00:32:09.200 work you can find it all over the place including the mcdonald laurier institute and several sources

00:32:14.000 online sir thank you so much for your time thanks so much for your interest great to chat with you

00:32:17.920 thanks thank you so once again folks uh it shows like this okay that are going to be coming under

00:32:24.560 the eye of the crtc that mr menzies just described and if you want shows like this to continue with

00:32:32.080 the free flow of information if you wish you know tv channels like sun news network was still around

00:32:38.240 things like that we really need to push back on government censorship and government funding of

00:32:43.920 newsrooms, okay? So, I do encourage you that if you care about this stuff, read independent

00:32:49.840 journalism, okay, that is not government funded like Mr. Menzies. Also, pick up the phone,

00:32:54.720 send an email, and make a phone call to your member of parliament. Tell them that independent 0.88

00:32:59.440 journalism and a lack of government censorship, a free press in Canada, is a voting issue for you.

00:33:06.640 Hey, speaking of votes, I hear the motherland calling. The United Kingdom is going to be going

00:33:13.760 into an election campaign really soon. And as always, of course, taxpayers are going to be

00:33:21.440 getting screwed again. It sounds like they're not really going to be campaigning on lowering taxes,

00:33:27.900 especially for working people over there in Great Britain. So who's fighting this sort of stuff?

00:33:33.480 Well, you may not know this, but the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we have kind of distant

00:33:38.760 cousins in different parts of the world. New Zealand is one of them. And over in the UK,

00:33:44.580 there's something called the Taxpayers Alliance. And I wanted to check in right now with a friend

00:33:50.820 of ours. His name is Elliot Keck, and he is with the Taxpayers Alliance. And we're going to chat

00:33:55.860 about government waste and the upcoming election. Elliot, thanks for joining us.

00:34:01.860 Great to be here.

00:34:02.900 Now, we always deal with the serious nature of taxpayers getting ripped off on both sides

00:34:09.220 of the pond. Here in Canada, we often talk about things like the carbon tax. We now have a new

00:34:14.680 increase in our capital gains tax. So whenever anybody sells a secondary home, or if you happen

00:34:19.180 to be a physician, you're going to get screwed with higher taxes. But we also get to have a

00:34:23.620 little bit of fun. We hand out our little golden pig statues here to our politicians who waste

00:34:28.080 money and i saw you guys were having a bit of fun recently what's going on you guys have a

00:34:32.960 university that was getting money to decolonize treasure island can you explain this to us

00:34:39.520 yeah so i mean listen i think the first thing to say is wherever government exists taxpayers are

00:34:44.600 going to be getting screwed and it's really just about the degree to which they're being screwed

00:34:49.440 and some places have it better than others but yeah you're right to point to a little bit of

00:34:54.200 research that we did, we regularly go through the grants that universities in the United Kingdom

00:34:58.800 receive. There's a range of different research councils that fund projects in universities. Some

00:35:05.860 of those research councils fund incredibly important work on science and technology and

00:35:10.420 all the sort of stuff that actually really everybody agrees with. But some of these research

00:35:14.960 councils give money to, frankly, the ridiculous and the absurd. And in one case, £800,000 was given

00:35:22.960 to a university to decolonise the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, of course, the great

00:35:28.600 19th century Scottish author responsible for Treasure Island, as mentioned there, but also

00:35:33.960 the curious case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And the view of Treasure Island is that, you know,

00:35:39.360 it's about the Caribbean and about a different culture and that it uses colonial language and

00:35:45.440 colonial terms and a colonial mindset to portray that culture. And it's about time that we decolonise

00:35:51.440 those terms and now it's one thing to make that argument but if if you're going to do that i think

00:35:56.160 you can do that on your own dime and not the taxpayers yes exactly we have very similar uh

00:36:01.280 silly nonsense happening over here we just finished recently having our awards where

00:36:06.000 a lady was paid thirty thousand dollars to fly around the world and at one point she's she's an 1.00

00:36:11.120 artist she flopped around on a lawn chair for eight minutes like this was her art and we all 1.00

00:36:18.720 paid $15,000 for that. Same sort of thing where if you want to research something like this on

00:36:24.480 decolonizing Treasure Island, why don't they just pay for it themselves? If they think that this is

00:36:30.280 so vital, why do they hit up the taxpayers for it? Well, I think because they know that they can get

00:36:36.040 various government bodies to fund it. So why fund it yourself if you know that you can trick some

00:36:39.920 unsuspecting bureaucrat or potentially some supportive bureaucrat to pay for it for you.

00:36:44.740 But the problem that we have in the United Kingdom, and I'm sure this is happening to some extent in

00:36:48.520 Canada is we're finding that these attitudes are spreading from the bits where you'd expect to

00:36:54.340 find those attitudes into the areas where actually you'd think would be cordoned off from them. So

00:36:59.600 just take a recent example, our Engineering Research Council, a research council that you'd

00:37:04.080 think would be funding very important work, has recently granted one and a half million pounds

00:37:08.660 to study how men are represented in politics, something completely unrelated to engineering.

00:37:14.800 but yet for some reason that council is funding it to the tune of a million and a half pounds so

00:37:19.040 what's really concerning is not just that there is the you know parts of the state that let's

00:37:23.120 be honest you expect to fund this sort of stuff actually that sort of attitude is starting to

00:37:27.040 creep into the bits of the state which you'd expect would be funding serious stuff so just

00:37:31.360 to be very clear you mean engineering engineering like bridge building and aerospace exactly yeah

00:37:37.360 engineering engineering is a good way to put it now you guys do have an election process that is

00:37:43.760 slowly going to be rolling out unless the prime minister decides to change his mind uh what sort

00:37:48.640 of things are you looking for in the uk election from taxpayers are there big tax issues going into

00:37:53.680 this vote i think there's unlikely to be um the conservative party claim that they'll cut taxes

00:37:59.120 in the next election the reality is that over the last five years they've done very little in the way

00:38:03.600 of tax cuts in fact they've done far more in the way of uh tax rises so tpa research has found for

00:38:09.120 for example, that the tax burden is heading for an 80-year high at its current trajectory and

00:38:14.480 it's already sitting at a 70-year high. So listen, again, as the Conservative Party often does, they

00:38:19.660 talk the talk very well, but it's highly unlikely that if they win the election, they would walk

00:38:23.800 the walk given the previous record. As for the Labour Party, they're trying to say as little as

00:38:28.280 possible on tax. They don't want to scare the median voter that they feel alike in which the

00:38:33.400 poll suggests that they have won over. A couple of things they have announced are pretty disastrous

00:38:38.080 policies but unfortunately they do appeal to certain voters and the main one that they're

00:38:42.240 going with at the moment is vat on private schools wow okay i saw i know we only have a few minutes

00:38:48.000 with you and i really appreciate your time i saw you did a brilliant interview a little while ago

00:38:52.400 on axing the tv tax now as far as i understand that is a special sort of tax that the bbc

00:38:59.040 so your version of the cbc imposes on people who have television sets and they're now spending

00:39:04.800 taxpayers money going after folks who they think haven't paid their tv fees is that right

00:39:10.160 yeah so that's absolutely right so this is a pretty outdated system that only exists in a

00:39:14.560 handful of countries now so the reason why it exists is in the 1920s when uh the bbc was set

00:39:19.760 up that was the only channel you could get you know there wasn't the bandwidth to create other

00:39:23.280 channels and nor could you block people from getting the bbc so basically if you bought a tv

00:39:28.400 you'd have access to the bbc you couldn't be precluded from access to the bbc and therefore

00:39:32.720 a tv license was an appropriate uh fee to charge uh for people to own a tv but you can now stop

00:39:38.800 people from getting the bbc we have that ability you can stop people from getting any channel that

00:39:44.080 you want to uh and um unfortunately we haven't moved on from this funding model so anybody that

00:39:49.280 watches live television and that's any form of live television on any channel has to pay the

00:39:54.960 license fee it's about 169 pounds which is somewhere in in the region of about 250 to 300

00:40:01.200 canadian dollars and whether you watch the pbc whether you support its content and even if you

00:40:05.520 load this content you are legally required to pay it wow that sounds so similar to what we're

00:40:10.480 dealing with over here the cbc takes 1.4 billion dollars from us every single year it's astonishing

00:40:17.760 it's the equivalent of about 7 000 police officers and 7 000 paramedic salaries every single year

00:40:24.320 we just at the taxpayers federation we want to completely defund it we want if people love

00:40:28.480 watching cbc we think they should pay through a subscription i just find it really interesting

00:40:32.880 how many similarities and parallels there are across the pond lastly if you don't mind me

00:40:36.960 asking you where are you guys in the uk when it comes to the government interfering with uh online

00:40:43.840 expression with things like podcasts things like the show we're having right now so here in canada

00:40:49.520 we've got a few different laws that are really starting to clamp down on how people can express

00:40:54.240 themselves uh where are you guys with that are you guys having any government interference when

00:40:58.640 it comes to censorship and free expression well recently we uh saw the online safety bill passed

00:41:05.120 and this was a bill that was uh designed or at least so its um advocates claim to protect children

00:41:10.240 from accessing uh potentially harmful content on the internet it also strengthened protection

00:41:15.520 strengthened um restrictions on illegal content and and those bits of the bill were broadly

00:41:21.120 supported but it also created a requirement for companies such as social media companies

00:41:27.040 to restrict legal but harmful content to adults and ensure that adults were not seeing harmful

00:41:33.120 content even if it was legal now there's been a lot of very very serious warnings from many

00:41:38.720 organizations about the potential ramifications for this we've only just seen the bill passed and

00:41:43.360 so we're yet to see what its actual impacts are but i mean certainly those that have far more

00:41:47.360 expertise than me are warning that it could be very chilling for free speech.

00:41:51.520 Wow, that's uncanny really because we now have Bill C-63. It's not yet passed. It's literally

00:41:57.840 referred to as the Online Harms Act and the same sort of thing. There's a whole bunch in there that

00:42:04.640 is perfectly fine for people to pass. Any decent person would want it passed because it's to

00:42:09.120 protect children from images of child sexual abuse. All heinous things that any decent person would

00:42:15.120 want in our criminal code which by the way it's already illegal it's already in the criminal code

00:42:20.480 but couched in that is of course what certainly looks like a clamp down on what should be legal

00:42:26.560 free expression and so it's a little uncanny to see so many parallels Elliot we really appreciate

00:42:32.320 your work over there on the other side of the pond thank you so much for standing up and fighting for

00:42:36.240 taxpayers in the UK thank you and back here on this side of the pond in Canada we're continuing

00:42:45.040 to fight for taxpayers and this is something that Andrew would have talked to Carson about I'm sure

00:42:50.320 because it's a ridiculous waste of money and it's also hilarious so remember at the beginning of

00:42:55.600 the show when I said hey imagine it's fall and you were gearing up with your buddies and you

00:43:00.320 guys were going to go deer hunting what sort of stuff would you bring along with you what sort

00:43:04.480 of vehicle would you take well what about gigantic sniper rifles and a helicopter yeah just add

00:43:11.840 government joining us now is the british columbia director for the canadian taxpayers federation

00:43:17.040 my good friend carson binda uh carson you've got i remember when we were first talking about the

00:43:23.520 story at work i thought that this was like must have been a misunderstanding uh can you please

00:43:29.200 explain to our listeners and our viewers here on the andrew lawton show how much money did taxpayers

00:43:35.520 spend hunting deer out of a helicopter? And how did this happen?

00:43:41.040 Yeah, you're absolutely right, Chris. They are spending a mind-boggling amount of money

00:43:46.720 culling deer from this tiny little island, Sydney Island, just off the coast of Victoria.

00:43:53.200 Now, Parks Canada, instead of, you know, working with the local community culling these deer,

00:43:59.360 they decided to fly in snipers from new zealand in the united states to circle this island in a

00:44:06.000 helicopter shooting down on the deer below um during phase one of the project they spent about

00:44:13.840 eight hundred thousand dollars to kill 80 deer that works out to about 10 grand per deer but

00:44:20.800 hold on folks because that's just the tip of the iceberg we dug up through access information

00:44:26.160 requests that the true cost of this project 12 million dollars they are spending 12 million

00:44:33.600 dollars Chris doing something that the local community has been doing for a decade for free

00:44:39.920 okay so for folks who just woke up from a coma here in Canada hunting especially things like

00:44:47.760 hunting deer is a pretty standard operating procedure especially in parts of rural Canada

00:44:53.280 lots of people, hello, were raised on venison or moose meat. Bambi's not my favorite show. But

00:44:59.820 come on, shooting deer out of a helicopter? Like, I think even seasoned hunters have a problem with

00:45:07.260 that. Absolutely. And look, the proof's in the pudding. We flew in these expert marksmen. We

00:45:13.560 spent hundreds of thousands of dollars getting them trained on using the weapons, the assault

00:45:19.020 rifles they were shooting from the helicopters, but they missed about 20% of the time. 20% of the

00:45:25.860 deer they killed were the wrong species. Now, if you talk to any hunter here in British Columbia,

00:45:31.200 which we've been doing, if they shoot the wrong species of deer, the park ranger comes and takes

00:45:36.600 their rifle and their truck. But Parks Canada managed to shoot the wrong type of deer from

00:45:42.380 these helicopters 20% of the time. So these so-called expert marksmen that we spent hundreds

00:45:49.260 of thousands of dollars bringing in, renting a helicopter for them, getting them trained up,

00:45:54.240 they are clearly the worst option than just working with the local community. And like I said,

00:46:00.160 local hunters on Sydney Island have been doing deer culls for a decade. Just last fall, they killed

00:46:06.760 54 of the right kind of deer at no cost to the taxpayer so this is one of those bizarre stories

00:46:14.120 where if you ever want to waste money just sprinkle in a few bureaucrats and they will dream up the 1.00

00:46:19.320 most absurdly expensive ways of doing anything wow and you know why the local hunters shot the

00:46:26.680 right deer because they can see them and they know what they are and they live in the area and when

00:46:33.240 when they look through their scope, they're like, oh, that's the right kind of deer. Bang. Like,

00:46:38.200 it's really mind-blowing. And to your point on, you know, fish and game, there's fish cops in

00:46:44.300 Canada. If you catch the wrong fish, if it's like a centimeter too small, like I can't even imagine

00:46:50.520 the punishment that will be rained down upon you from the government. But when it's the government

00:46:55.500 actually using our money, that's just fine. They can shoot the wrong deer from a helicopter.

00:47:01.620 Have we gotten any response from Parks Canada about this?

00:47:05.940 Absolutely nothing.

00:47:07.660 I held a press conference here in Victoria yesterday,

00:47:11.860 and just about every media outlet in the province reached out to Parks Canada and said,

00:47:16.520 hey, guys, how'd you manage to spend $12 million hunting a few deer?

00:47:22.360 Why'd you fly in foreign sharpshooters instead of working with the local community at no cost to the taxpayer?

00:47:28.620 So far, we haven't heard a word from Parks Canada.

00:47:32.620 So the bureaucrats are struggling to come up with any explanation for how they managed to waste so much of your money.

00:47:40.620 Now, lastly, years ago, back in my Vancouver Island days, I remember there was a controversy.

00:47:48.620 I think it was up north in B.C. of shooting wolves from a helicopter.

00:47:52.620 helicopter. Like that's bad enough because then maybe you're not harvesting the pelts, but people

00:47:57.220 don't technically, you know, really eat wolf meat. I've been getting a lot of questions and I'm sorry

00:48:01.440 I haven't asked you this yet off air. Do we know what happened with the meat that was shot by the

00:48:07.260 dudes in the helicopter? Like not on the ground, the dudes from what is it, the States and New

00:48:12.880 Zealand who shot the wrong deer. What happened to that meat? Yeah, so they harvested some of the

00:48:19.840 meat. I think it's about 800 kilograms of meat that they were able to harvest. But let's do some

00:48:26.240 math here. They spent $100,000 to harvest 800 kilograms of meat. That's a thousand bucks per

00:48:33.680 kilogram. I mean, I know grocery prices are through the roof right now, but I've never seen a steak or

00:48:39.620 some venison sausages at my local butcher that cost $1,000 per kilogram. It's incredible how much

00:48:48.680 money they managed to waste culling these deer i mean it is truly parks canada bureaucrats role

00:48:55.960 playing as rambo working with americans and new zealanders to shoot deers from helicopters chris

00:49:02.120 it is mind-boggling and i think more than that it just speaks to the culture of waste that will

00:49:07.400 pull out to fester in our federal bureaucracy it's unacceptable and taxpayers like you and i 1.00

00:49:13.560 who are struggling to make our rent and mortgage payments, who are struggling to feed our families,

00:49:19.320 I think Parks Canada owes us an explanation.

00:49:22.120 Yeah, they should.

00:49:23.160 To fly in foreign snipers instead of working with the local community for free.

00:49:28.280 They sure do. Carson and to the entire team that worked on this, thank you so much for bringing

00:49:33.080 us this story. And hey folks, if this bothers you, phone up your Member of Parliament,

00:49:37.800 tell them to get on the horn with Parks Canada. Thanks, Carson.

00:49:40.520 Thanks so much, Chris. It's always a pleasure.

00:49:42.120 So as we were just saying, you know, hunting is an essential element of Canadian culture for so many people. Like we were speaking with Tracy Wilson earlier this week on the Andrew Lawton Show, I think we are the seventh, seventh highest level of legal law abiding gun ownership in the entire world.

00:50:01.220 Okay, those tools are usually used for things like deer hunting. Frankly, there's no shortage of people on Vancouver Island or on the mainland who would have been willing to go over there if they'd just been given the permission to go harvest those deer much more humanely, frankly, than shooting them out of a helicopter and hiring foreigners to come over and do it. 0.99

00:50:23.220 So again, this just speaks to the culture of waste coming from the federal government and a lack of understanding of true Canadian culture.

00:50:31.460 So today is May 23rd, and I wanted to leave you with this element of Canadian culture.

00:50:37.600 And I'm sorry that it's a sad one, but I think it's really important to mark this date.

00:50:41.880 So on this date, May 23rd, 25 years ago, Canadian wrestling legend Owen Hart died.

00:50:49.360 so a lot of you might remember where you were if you're a wrestling fan here in Canada when you

00:50:54.900 heard the news uh I actually was on the air uh in the radio station funny in Vancouver Island

00:51:01.040 uh when we heard about this and so there's a lot of controversy about what happened but it was of

00:51:07.040 course one night in Kansas City and he was supposed to be coming down about eight stories

00:51:12.380 from the rafters of this coliseum for a big uh big live event there with a bunch of wrestling 0.86

00:51:18.160 fans surrounding him and he was supposed to be coming down on rigging something happened with

00:51:23.280 that rigging and owen hart sadly fell to his death and i just wanted to mark it because

00:51:29.200 wrestling professional wrestling is a huge part of canadian culture and he would have been 59 years

00:51:36.240 old this year so super sad to see that happen just wanted to mark it that it was wow time flies

00:51:42.960 25 years ago today uh owen hart passed away wow look at that picture phil uh was mentioning one

00:51:50.240 of our producers he was mentioning i think they're all gone now except for brett god bless him yeah

00:51:55.440 we got davy boy smith we've got owen hart owen's the one there um with the blonde buzz cut without

00:52:00.320 the uh sunglasses then we got bret hart who thank god is still with us uh he's a good old alberta

00:52:05.600 boy and then uh his dear buddy there jim the anvil nightheart who i believe was his brother-in-law

00:52:11.440 as was Davey Boy Smith.

00:52:12.900 So just wanted to say so sorry to Owen Hart's family.

00:52:17.340 May he rest in peace and condolences and God bless to his loved ones.

00:52:22.840 Goodbye.

00:52:26.140 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:52:28.360 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:52:41.440 We'll be right back.

00:53:11.440 We'll be right back.

00:53:41.440 Thank you.

Juno News - May 23, 2024

Canadians reject Freeland’s capital gains tax hike

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