Juno News - Carney DOUBLES Trudeau’s projected budget deficit

00:00:00.000 canada's ballooning debt will hit 1.4 trillion dollars as the carney government tables a fiscal

00:00:12.140 update bleeding billions of dollars more in red ink the latest budget deficit is set for 65

00:00:19.720 billion dollars conservative leader pierre polyev notes the liberals under mark carney have doubled

00:00:25.920 deficit forecast by Justin Trudeau.

00:00:28.760 Friends, I ask you this question.

00:00:30.860 What's changed after a year of the Carney Liberals?

00:00:34.080 Other than the illusions.

00:00:35.880 Well, other than the fact that Carney's doubled Trudeau's deficit

00:00:38.540 from $31 billion to $65 billion.

00:00:43.640 What's changed?

00:00:44.920 More cost?

00:00:46.500 More debt?

00:00:48.220 More taxes?

00:00:50.280 More on the national credit card?

00:00:52.500 Mark Carney is just another Liberal.

00:00:54.300 And Canadians will be paying the price through higher inflation at the grocery store, at the pump, and when they go to buy a home.

00:01:02.000 This is the most costly government in Canadian history.

00:01:05.200 The highest spending is a share of GDP since 1996 outside of COVID.

00:01:11.500 The biggest deficit in Canadian history ever outside of COVID.

00:01:16.400 The update also included a proposal that may compromise the privacy rights of Canadians.

00:01:22.480 The Kearney government wants to empower police with the right to search and seize your mail.

00:01:27.900 According to the Public Safety Minister, the change will make it possible for police to get warrants for all kinds of mail, not just packages.

00:01:37.160 A technical glitch ahead of last night's NHL playoff game in Buffalo led to a rather touching display of cross-border friendship.

00:01:46.140 When the singer's rendition of O Canada was interrupted by a microphone malfunction, hockey fans and Buffalo chimed in to save the day.

00:02:16.140 This post by former Defense Minister Peter McKay,

00:02:41.560 an outburst of O Canada, sung with enthusiastic warmth and affection from Americans.

00:02:48.980 Relations between the two countries are not going nearly as well on the trade front,

00:02:53.380 however. On the thorny issue of U.S. access to Canada's dairy markets, the Americans say they've

00:03:00.120 reached the point of no return. Here is New York Congresswoman Claudia Teney asking the U.S. trade

00:03:07.960 wrap about trade talks on the issue. Let's listen. Canada has long discriminated against certain

00:03:13.320 industries in my district, and that is what I want to focus on today. I got a couple of quick things,

00:03:17.140 but let's start with dairy. And we've talked about this before. As you recall, probably my district

00:03:22.680 is the fifth largest dairy producing district in the entire United States. For years, Canada has

00:03:28.320 rigged their system to prevent U.S. dairy producers from fair access to Canada's markets. This year's

00:03:34.380 national trade estimate report, as every year's report details, Canada's market manipulation

00:03:40.340 and unfair treatment of U.S. producers is still evident. The U.S. has fought for years

00:03:45.320 to gain access to the Canadian dairy market, and yet Canada continues to violate USMCA

00:03:49.960 and the spirit of its dairy commitments. Have you and your team raised these issues with

00:03:54.760 our Canadian counterparts thus far, and have they been constructive in helping all of us

00:04:00.200 resolve this issue with our friend to the north? We have raised it repeatedly and frequently

00:04:06.240 over the past year. Our Canadian counterparts have indicated as a general matter, they're

00:04:12.720 happy to talk to us about adjustments to USMCA and different things like that,

00:04:16.500 but they have made no commitments on this front at this time.

00:04:19.820 Jameson Greer, whom you just heard there, says that enforcement is the next step,

00:04:26.000 quite possibly as a result of Canada's refusal to bend on the issue of dairy restrictions.

00:04:30.980 Our guest today is former Agriculture Minister Jerry Ritz, who joins us from the heartland of

00:04:36.640 his former federal riding near Battleford, Saskatchewan. Welcome, sir. Always a pleasure,

00:04:42.420 Mark. Good to be here. Okay, so you were Agriculture Minister at a time when, as we have now,

00:04:48.500 supply management is just the lay of the land and the way things work. Now, we've heard and you've

00:04:54.860 heard about the frustrations if you happen to be on the other side of the border and looking to

00:04:59.920 access dairy markets in Canada and feeling that you've been unfairly restricted, at least the

00:05:05.500 farmers, dairy producers in places like upstate New York and Michigan and Wisconsin have been

00:05:11.900 shut out of our market. And that is one of the festering problems as far as our ability to get

00:05:22.180 a trade deal with the Americans goes. What do you think that conservatives should be advocating at

00:05:28.600 this point? I mean, is it still a position that you hold that, you know, this is the right thing

00:05:34.320 to do in terms of protecting our dairy farmers, or should there be a change? Well, everything

00:05:40.220 evolves, Mark. I find it very hypocritical from both sides saying what the other guy is not doing

00:05:46.340 or is doing. I mean, the Americans turtle up and protect sugar and cotton to the same extent that

00:05:51.740 we protect our supply managed system.

00:05:54.600 However, saying that anytime we took on a free trade arrangement with whether it was

00:05:58.880 Trans-Pacific Partnership with New Zealand and Australia, both big dairy producers or

00:06:02.960 the European Union, where, you know, there's there's major dairy producers, as well as

00:06:06.980 the non-EU states like Switzerland, which is a large dairy producer, SM was on the table

00:06:12.520 and we negotiated back and forth and around and so on.

00:06:15.960 And we were able to hold some of the standards that we did.

00:06:19.720 Does it need to change?

00:06:20.940 Absolutely.

00:06:21.400 as i said things evolve there are farmers within the climate system that want to be able to trade

00:06:27.640 that want to get past that so you know there's room for for both here i mean i don't know if

00:06:34.520 there's if this is a deal breaker on the part of the americans i know as you've heard uh from the

00:06:40.040 congresswoman in new york this is very frustrating on behalf of those in her electoral district

00:06:47.000 and they want changes and they're pressing Jameson Greer to force those types of changes.

00:06:54.920 I don't know if that is, as I said, a deal breaker for them,

00:06:58.820 but do you think that Canada should at this point scrap it altogether,

00:07:04.320 just get rid of it and move on?

00:07:07.320 Well, I don't think that's possible.

00:07:08.660 I mean, we're looking at an unfunded liability for quota in the dairy system alone

00:07:13.300 that is sneaking up on $40 billion.

00:07:15.540 dollars. That was a government program that was put in on 55 years ago by Eugene Whalen at the

00:07:21.300 time to safeguard small family farms. There are very few small family dairies anymore. You know,

00:07:27.980 some in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, but the vast majority are now in that 100 to 200 cow range,

00:07:33.560 some as many as a thousand cows. So, you know, things have changed. There aren't the number of

00:07:38.380 farmers that they were when the process was put in place to what there is now. It's economies of

00:07:43.320 scale. But, you know, I had the great opportunity to south when I was down in Arizona to meet with

00:07:48.680 a number of American farmers. And the last three I talked with were dairy guys from Wisconsin.

00:07:53.900 And I said, well, how much milk do you want to bring north? And they said, well, we don't have

00:07:57.040 any extra. And Wisconsin is the dairy state. So it's a hot button issue that Trump and his

00:08:03.060 accolades have identified. And, you know, they're putting pressure on that acupressure point and

00:08:08.080 Canada's falling for it. You know, you press back on issues that the Americans are turtling up on

00:08:13.020 And as I said, like sugar and cotton, we don't grow a lot of cotton, but we certainly can

00:08:17.460 produce sugar.

00:08:19.140 And if you allowed, you know, right now we allow 2%, I think it is on dairy, where if

00:08:23.520 we went to five, that's huge.

00:08:25.220 And we could say, OK, then we want reciprocity on sugar.

00:08:28.380 We want 5% of that.

00:08:29.740 And we could rebuild our sugar beet industry in southern Manitoba and southern Alberta

00:08:34.000 to do it.

00:08:36.080 All right.

00:08:37.160 But should we scrap dairy?

00:08:39.300 I mean, should we scrap supply management?

00:08:41.520 Should the Conservatives adopt a position that supply management is no longer sustainable and that we should move on?

00:08:49.860 What's your take on that?

00:08:51.260 Should Pierre Polyev adopt that position?

00:08:53.760 Well, the short answer is no.

00:08:55.380 There's a lot more complications to it than just saying scrap it altogether.

00:08:58.920 As I said, that unfunded liability of quota, most of it held by Farm Credit Canada and the government of Quebec against barns, against buying more cows and so on.

00:09:10.320 that quota is worth in the neighborhood of $40 billion.

00:09:14.000 Who's going to pay for that?

00:09:15.320 As I said, it was the government program that put it in place.

00:09:17.560 So it's the government that has to step up and cover off that unfunded liability.

00:09:21.900 And if you start doing that, that's going to collapse farm credit.

00:09:25.980 It's going to collapse Cast Populaire and other operations in Quebec,

00:09:30.260 as well as the farming industry itself.

00:09:32.780 So, you know, the ripple effect would be astronomical, ripping that out.

00:09:36.640 We've seen that kind of attitude from the Liberals on our oil and gas sector in Western Canada, and we're facing the ramifications of that type of, you know, double-take-the-hindmost attitude that they have.

00:09:49.260 So I don't agree with completely scrapping SM.

00:09:52.200 I think it needs to change.

00:09:53.520 I think they need to evolve.

00:09:54.900 I think they need to open up somewhat, but not to the extent that the Americans say they want to collapse.

00:09:59.980 Well, the Americans aren't even calling for it to be collapsed.

00:10:01.960 They just want access.

00:10:02.820 but if they get access does that not change supply management i mean i thought supply

00:10:12.100 management was designed to protect the dairy industry in canada from competition well there's

00:10:18.080 room for competition absolutely right now as i said we're two two and a half percent of our of

00:10:23.100 our intake is allowed in american products coming in that varies a little bit more for finished

00:10:27.420 goods like cheeses and so on but at the end of the day if you doubled that and then tripled it

00:10:32.680 and quadrupled it over a period of years, you could actually start to make a very significant

00:10:36.720 difference without causing damage to the system and the family farms that underpin it.

00:10:42.320 So you're talking about a gradual uptick in Americans' ability to access our dairy market.

00:10:50.920 Well, that's the only thing to me that would make sense economically and viably

00:10:54.120 without cratering our system. And Americans don't have the ability to send that volume

00:11:00.060 right away either. They've got to build up capacity to do that. So, you know, at the end of

00:11:04.840 the day, it's incremental gains that would make the difference. But, you know, as has been well

00:11:09.280 reported, we've had no substantive discussion since last October, and we're getting down to

00:11:13.960 the deadline, the crunch time. And by turtling up, I've heard Dominic LeBlanc say, no, it's off

00:11:18.860 the table. There's nothing going to happen. That's not the right way to do this. The right way is to

00:11:23.180 say it's on the table, but here's the best that we think we can do. And we want reciprocity for

00:11:28.740 sugar. You know, put the pressure back on in the same way that they are. Do Canadian farmers have

00:11:36.140 access to the U.S. dairy market? No, we don't. That's part of supply management is we don't

00:11:42.580 trade. We do sell them genetics. We do sell them our handling expertise. That's one thing that a 0.78

00:11:47.860 solid bottom line in the SM sector has done for our farmers is we've got the best genetics in the

00:11:53.000 world. We've got the best feed rations. We've got the best handling systems. You know, every cow

00:11:57.640 that walks in to get milk now reads out on a computer as to her gestation cycle, any

00:12:03.200 medications she's had, her milk output, it's all there. And nobody else has been able to step up

00:12:10.720 and put that type of product on the market like Canadian farmers have, simply because they've had

00:12:15.800 a solid bottom line. Pierre Polyev has spoken about eliminating tariffs, but does that apply

00:12:24.140 to Derry as well, I mean...

00:12:27.980 I can't answer that.

00:12:29.040 I'm not sure what the details are

00:12:30.780 in a statement like that.

00:12:32.380 I think he's talking about the tariffs

00:12:34.260 that Trump has raised

00:12:35.820 and Carney has reciprocated with.

00:12:37.540 Now, we've had to withdraw a bunch

00:12:39.340 because Carney was slapping tariffs

00:12:40.780 on Kuzma-covered articles early on,

00:12:43.840 and we faced some backlash

00:12:45.120 from the Americans for going too far.

00:12:47.520 And that is Jerry Ritz

00:12:48.360 joining us from Battleford, Saskatchewan.

00:12:51.500 If you enjoyed the show,

00:12:52.740 consider supporting great independent journalism by becoming a premier member of Juno News.

00:12:58.260 Please go to junonews.com backslash straight up. You can find the link below. Helps us do what we

00:13:04.360 do. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Juno News - April 30, 2026

Carney DOUBLES Trudeau’s projected budget deficit

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