00:02:23.180So look, I'm glad that the streaming tax is gone.
00:02:26.700As I said, it should have never been brought in the first place.
00:02:29.060And regardless of whoever's in the White House,
00:02:30.980whatever they think, we should be making life in Canada more expensive.
00:02:35.180Now, on your question about subsidies,
00:02:37.740taxpayers shouldn't be footing the bill, right?
00:02:39.820like the government shouldn't be wasting that type of money so the streaming tax should be gone
00:02:44.160and there should uh the taxpayers shouldn't be forced to be picking up the subsidies
00:02:47.600yeah the government the crtc they're obsessed with funding content they love it they they know
00:02:56.260that politics is downstream from culture and so you have to have millions if not tens of millions
00:03:03.460and hundreds of millions going into the production of content by let's face it a lot of left-wing
00:03:09.300content producers out there. That's the type of person they love to fund. And so just get as much
00:03:15.880content out there that encourages the type of government that these people happen to be running.
00:03:21.400That's my own personal opinion on it for what it's worth. But at the end of the day, it's the
00:03:25.560taxpayers that are getting hosed here. But it shows, again, an unwillingness by the Carney
00:03:31.580government to stand their ground on matters involving the Trump administration. All we heard
00:03:38.660was elbows up. All we heard was how we have got to stand up to the Americans. And time and time
00:03:45.280again, they have caved. There was another digital tax bill, I believe, that they, a piece of
00:03:52.500legislation that they caved on. They caved on the Gordie Howe Bridge most recently, where you saw
00:03:58.440what happened, you know, under pressure. They then relinquished 50% of the revenues coming from the
00:04:06.260tolls of that bridge. We were lied to as the public by the prime minister suggesting, oh, no,
00:04:13.400you know, the debt's going to be paid off first, the $6.4 billion that we spent on building this
00:04:19.300thing. And then we find out, no, that in fact, that debt does not have to be paid first, that
00:04:25.160we're going to have to pay the debt with the 50% of the revenues that we get from the tolls while
00:04:31.020the americans or while the americans get their 50 so all of this suggests that the the carny
00:04:38.440government is big on talk when it comes to standing up to the americans but push come to shove they
00:04:44.180back off what do you think well you know mark um look i i take your point and i think you might
00:04:49.300have one in terms of accountability right just when a politician runs on one thing and then they
00:04:53.940do another thing but you know let me split this issue into two because i think there's a difference
00:04:58.660between what happened with the Gordie Howe Bridge and what is happening with the digital
00:05:02.520services tax previously and now the online streaming tax, right? So on the Gordie Howe
00:05:07.620Bridge, I mean, clearly the new deal is worse for Canadian taxpayers, right? Clearly that
00:05:13.980concession is worse than the previous deal or what the Canadian public had been told
00:05:18.640previously, right? Because Canadian taxpayers paid for the construction of the bridge just
00:05:23.440north of $6 billion. We're supposed to be getting that money back to recoup those costs,
00:05:27.720right? And clearly the new deal, although it's still muddy, clearly the new deal means that
00:05:33.620it's going to take more time for Canadian taxpayers to recoup that money, right? That's
00:05:38.120what everybody is saying based on all the facts that have been released, albeit it seems like
00:05:43.340there's a lot of mud still left in the water. So the Gordie Howe bridge deal obviously seems worse
00:05:48.540than what Canadians were sold years and years ago, okay? However, on the online streaming tax,
00:05:54.200on getting rid of the digital services tax. Those are good things, right? Like now I get that there
00:06:01.180is a, you know, this tariff dispute going on to say the least, but getting rid of the digital
00:06:07.000services tax, getting rid of the online streaming tax, those are both good, right? Both of those
00:06:12.320would hurt our economy and would make life more expensive, right? These types of taxes on
00:06:17.480businesses, they deter investment and they mean higher prices for Canadian consumers. So I think
00:06:22.660we do have to split the Gordie Howe Bridge and also the removing of these other taxes because
00:06:29.020the deal on the Gordie Howe Bridge, obviously it looks worse for taxpayers, okay? But getting rid
00:06:34.080of these taxes, that's a good thing. It's time to modernize Canada's rules on nicotine.
00:06:39.340Alternatives to cigarettes like heated tobacco, vaping products, and oral smokeless products
00:06:44.140don't burn tobacco or produce smoke. Now, they aren't risk-free, but the growing body of
00:06:50.240scientific evidence shows that they have the potential to be substantially less harmful than
00:06:55.740smoking cigarettes. Now, despite this, Canadians are banned from accessing this critical information
00:07:02.260and sometimes even banned from the products. Nicotine pouches remain banned in convenience
00:07:07.560stores across the country and current laws ban communication about the risk of these products
00:07:13.500compared to cigarettes. It's absolutely ridiculous. The evidence is here. The tools exist. Canadians
00:07:19.720deserve to have the freedom to know about them, to learn about them, to even just understand them.
00:07:25.100It's a free country. We should be able to have this information. So learn more about this campaign
00:07:31.020and our friends over at Unsmoke by visiting their website, unsmoke.ca. And thank you so much to
00:07:37.320Unsmoke for sponsoring this episode. The $600 million in funding that they're going to have
00:07:43.000to take out of the back pockets of the pockets of taxpayers, that's not a good thing. Agreed.
00:07:48.700So, I mean, when they were handed the decision of what to do here, what they should have said was, I agree.
00:07:57.860Okay, cancel it, nix the tax, you know, means that some of these content producers, artists, whatever, are going to get less money, you know, than we otherwise would have given them.
00:08:07.000But they're not. They're still getting a ton of cash, $600 million, but they're just taking it out of all taxpayers, out of the general revenues, tax revenues of the country.
00:08:18.700i mean the other way it would have been users so if you use these streaming services then you pay
00:08:24.860would have been user pay and as much as i hate these taxes because i do use these services as
00:08:30.380well albeit in the united states but canadians um it's a tough it's a tough way to go but you know
00:08:39.740mark there's a third option here there's a third option here right get rid of the online streaming
00:08:44.700tax and get rid of the subsidies, right? That's what should have happened, right? Like, it's not
00:08:49.620like they, they, they had to keep the subsidies in place, right? Like we're forgetting the third
00:08:54.700option, which is the correct option is get rid of the tax and stop forcing Canadian taxpayers to
00:09:00.500pay for stuff they don't want to pay for. Right. And like, come on folks, like, like if you're an
00:09:05.180artist, if you're producing these, you know, uh, Canadian content programming, whatever you can
00:09:10.440make money and you can make lots of money if you're producing stuff that people actually want
00:09:15.660to voluntarily pay for, right? Let's stop forcing taxpayers taking money from some people that is
00:09:22.960not voluntary and forcing them to subsidize content that they don't want to pay for. Okay.
00:09:27.840So like, look, I think Mark, I think a lot, uh, what I think we're saying pretty much the same
00:09:32.180thing. The only thing I'll add is that there was a third option, get rid of the tax, get rid of the
00:09:36.860subsidies and that's what should have happened and of course we also have the media subsidies
00:09:40.740right and i know i don't know if that is part of this or not i don't think it is
00:09:45.680but of course we've seen hundreds of millions of dollars go to fund media right and i've seen
00:09:51.940some of these uh organizations like the toronto star and so forth going cap in hand to the
00:09:57.360government saying make sure that you keep these huge subsidies because currently i believe it's
00:10:02.260like $30,000 per reporter. That's the subsidy for some of these news organizations. You know,
00:10:09.360without that, a lot of them wouldn't be in big trouble. And there's talk of cutting that down
00:10:13.520somewhat, I think to what, 15 or somewhere, somewhere like that. And so they should cut
00:10:18.320it down to zero. They should absolutely cut it down to zero, but this is the problem, right?
00:10:24.160Once they're hooked on the crack cocaine of these subsidies, it's going to be very, very hard for
00:10:29.260these companies to give that up in fact it might might be impossible some of them may end up going
00:10:34.560under we just saw a huge number of layoffs over at global and that's with the subsidies you know
00:10:40.880what i mean you know what i mean and i think that's brings us to the question like did it even
00:10:45.100work right uh it cost taxpayers a whole bunch of money did it even work i think the answer
00:10:49.400is no and look whenever you whenever just because something is the hard thing to do
00:10:54.520it doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. Right. And even for the ecosystem that is
00:10:59.500journalism, I mean, look, Mark, look what we're talking on right now, right on Juno news. Like
00:11:03.880there, there'll be new innovation when the government takes away the subsidies. Now,
00:11:08.840what is that going to look like? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. We just kind of have
00:11:12.500to see how it happens, but you know, people still want to get the news as you can see from the
00:11:17.360conversation that you and I are having right now, but I'm glad you brought up the media subsidies,
00:11:22.220right? Whether it's the media subsidies that were announced under Trudeau and continued through
00:11:26.280Carney, or whether it's just the $1 billion a year elephant in the room. Of course, you know,
00:11:32.480I'm talking about the state broadcaster, right? And, you know, I see a couple issues with
00:11:38.060taxpayers being forced to subsidize media corporations. Number one, people should just
00:11:43.520be able to voluntarily choose which type of media outlets they want to support with their own money,
00:11:48.260right? We shouldn't be forced to do that as taxpayers. Number two, it's also unfair for
00:11:53.400other news, independent news competitors to have their tax dollars going to fund their competitors,
00:12:00.720right? That's also completely unfair. But I also think even just the perception of bias reduces
00:12:07.500democratic accountability, right? Like a news organization that takes taxpayers money, they
00:12:12.980might be biased, they might not be biased, but there's certainly a perception of bias, right?
00:12:17.620i don't think you can say that that's not true there's certainly a perception that someone's
00:12:21.780not going to bite the hand that feeds them well i'm sure it's more than just a perception and
00:12:27.400it's a mutual dependency here now it's not just that the media organizations are dependent on
00:12:32.280government cash in order to perpetuate their existence the government has become dependent
00:12:37.400on the legacy media to perpetuate their message to push whatever narrative they want pushed out
00:12:43.260there because they know that they're getting a very different set of stories and approaches to
00:12:49.280news from organizations like Juno and others that do not take government money. And so that's
00:12:56.660what's going on here. They're using tax dollars to perpetuate each other. The government is using
00:13:03.320the legacy media to push its message and to push its biases under the guise of news. And these
00:13:12.040news organizations are using the government money just to stay afloat and to your point that even
00:13:18.680that may not be enough and they should have figured that out from the start as soon as you
00:13:23.560go down the road of government subsidies for these news organizations that dependency is never going
00:13:28.840to end there is there's not going to be a day when these companies say okay we don't need the money
00:13:33.960anymore we're fine we're good we're making all sorts of money now that you know their business
00:13:39.000model is dead. And somehow the government thinks it's important to perpetuate these
00:13:45.160dying business models ad infinitum. Last word to you. Well, what's next, right? Subsidies for
00:13:51.460Blockbuster, right? I don't know what to say, right? You know what I mean? Like, look, whether
00:13:55.860it's a media organization, whether it's another type of business, obviously I mentioned the joke
00:14:01.440of Blockbuster, right? We shouldn't be having taxpayers subsidizing any form of corporation,
00:14:07.140right like i think we just got to call a spade a spade or i think we just got to say like what it
00:14:11.780is right it's it's corporate welfare that's that's what it is um look i'm against all these subsidies
00:14:17.660but i think to to speak about what we're talking about today i think the real point is the digital
00:14:22.880services tax the online streaming tax they should have never brought in in the first place they
00:14:27.080would make life more expensive it's good that they're gone but there is an option three which
00:14:32.460is get rid of the online streaming tax and get rid of the taxpayer subsidies yeah sadly these
00:14:38.020taxpayer subsidies are not going anywhere i mean these artists have been getting it for decades
00:14:43.140you know they used to take it from the uh the cable companies and you know these you know the
00:14:49.720bell medias of the world um you know talus's and all these other companies they used to take that
00:14:55.400money from those companies and bundle it into the arts you know but you know some of these companies