Juno News - July 14, 2025


Carney’s conflict？ Ethics screen covers 100+ companies


Episode Stats

Length

30 minutes

Words per Minute

169.41443

Word Count

5,090

Sentence Count

332


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I'm Chris Sims filling in for Candice Malcolm here on The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:07.900 Thank you so much for watching and for listening to this show. We've got a great show for you
00:00:12.520 lined up today. We're going to be speaking with my good friend, federal director of the Canadian
00:00:17.060 Taxpayers Federation, Franco Terrazzano, and for a very specific reason, because all of the
00:00:23.280 bureaucrats in Ottawa are apparently going to be spending their summer scurrying around with their
00:00:29.000 hair on fire, saying they can't possibly find savings in the budget. They're cut marrow thin.
00:00:35.600 They're down to the bone, folks. They have nowhere to cut. I'm old enough to remember when then Prime
00:00:41.380 Minister Stephen Harper informed his ministers to find, I think it was between 5% and 8% savings
00:00:48.120 within their departments, and the bureaucracy freaked out. Spoiler report, we've got about
00:00:56.440 100,000 more bureaucrats now, and their spending has gone through the roof. The numbers that are
00:01:03.640 flowing around right now in Ottawa, as far as spending on our bureaucracy, would choke a horse.
00:01:10.000 So be sure to tune in for that. I wanted to get into the element of accountability here, though,
00:01:16.040 and it's really important to flag this. So I would recommend that people look this up in the
00:01:22.440 National Post. Read about it at Juneau News, and at True North, and in online journalism. Check out
00:01:28.900 Brian Lilly's column on this. And it is that, remember when Prime Minister Mark Carney, who's got
00:01:36.480 a big CV, okay, to be fair, he's former governor of the Bank of England, former governor of the Bank of
00:01:42.600 Canada. The dude's got a PhD in economics. He's a business guy. He's got a very long CV, and a very
00:01:50.320 deep contact Rolodex. We get it. But remember how during the election, a lot of people were playing
00:01:58.360 dumb, saying that Mark Carney couldn't possibly have any conflicts of interest? And to their credit,
00:02:05.320 even the mainstream media during the election was asking then-candidate for Prime Minister,
00:02:12.260 Mark Carney, if he would see that he would have any potential conflicts of interest with businesses
00:02:18.920 if he were to govern as Prime Minister. Remember what he said? Listen to this.
00:02:24.960 Those assets should be publicly disclosed within 120 days, which means you'll campaign
00:02:29.540 in a coming federal election, most likely within the next 120 days, and are serving as Prime Minister
00:02:35.220 now, with Canadians not being aware of what potential conflicts of interest you've sought to avoid.
00:02:40.020 What possible conflict would you have, Stephanie? Stephanie, I'm complying with the rules.
00:02:43.880 I'm complying with the rules in advance. Yeah, that was not a good answer. And again,
00:02:52.220 to a veteran reporter in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, he said, what possible conflicts would I
00:02:56.900 have? And you might even remember, full disclosure, the CBC reporter Rosemary Barton, commentator
00:03:03.140 Rosemary Barton, asked him about this too. And Carney's response again was very odd and defensive of
00:03:08.920 look inside yourself, Rosemary. It was it was a strange response during a very strange election
00:03:14.080 campaign. The reason why this matters is because taxpayers are on the hook for this stuff. And
00:03:21.820 Canadians, at large, require accountability from government. They need to know if their government
00:03:30.120 is in a conflict of interest with any of the companies that are getting contracts that are getting
00:03:36.280 paid with our tax dollars. Remember, folks, close to half of your money, okay, goes out the window to
00:03:45.360 various levels of government in the form of taxes, levies and fees. To do a thought process on that,
00:03:53.280 imagine what lands in your say you're on salary, okay, you've got a regular job that average people
00:03:57.840 have, and you're on salary, and you get your paycheck deposited in your bank account every two weeks.
00:04:03.320 Imagine that amount being double what it actually is. What could you do with that money? Could you
00:04:11.960 afford better food? Could you pay down your line of credit? Could you save up for a house? Could you
00:04:16.980 get a better education for your kids? That's how much money various levels of government take. So you
00:04:22.280 are absolutely right to demand transparency and accountability when it comes to where your money
00:04:28.740 is going. This is where this is important. On Friday afternoon, the traditional time where all
00:04:35.800 governments like to take out the trash. For those of us who've worked on Parliament Hill, who have ever
00:04:41.120 worked in government as staffers, it's affectionately sardonically referred to as recycling day. Who's got
00:04:47.400 some recycling for today? Well, the thing that was pulled out to the curb on Friday afternoon was this.
00:04:53.360 Turns out, Prime Minister Mark Carney is going to need a special screen set up between himself,
00:05:01.280 his dealings, and any of the companies that he previously had connection to. Apparently,
00:05:07.920 it's going to be in more than 100 instances. Check this out. Carney to recuse himself from dealings
00:05:15.920 with over 100 companies in sprawling government conflict screen. Okay, that is super important.
00:05:24.500 That's the headline from the National Post. Go read it. Go read that article. Share it with your
00:05:31.240 friends. Keep it in mind as we deal with government going forward. Because again, you folks need to be
00:05:37.760 informed citizens on this because this is all your money and we need to hold government to account
00:05:43.080 regardless of party. Which leads me to another key issue here, and that is accountability and the
00:05:51.000 Auditor General. So, folks might remember that the Auditor General plays a very clear role when it
00:05:58.520 comes to counting beans, checking in on ethics violations, all that stuff, finding out where money
00:06:05.160 is going, okay, how contracts are procured on Parliament Hill. The role of the Auditor General
00:06:12.280 was really made famous, I would argue, during the so-called sponsorship scandal. For those of you who
00:06:18.120 are kids who don't know what that is, go look that up. That's what eventually brought down the Liberal
00:06:22.920 Government and ushered in the Harper Arrow was the so-called sponsorship scandal or ad scam. Now,
00:06:29.080 it's really important to key in on this because the Auditor General pointed something out quite
00:06:34.680 recently, just a few weeks ago, and that is this. Apparently, bureaucrats in Ottawa have forgotten
00:06:42.200 how to properly do up a contract, open it to public tender, and get ethical procurement of things.
00:06:50.280 In normal people talk, what that means is the bureaucrats that you're paying on your taxpayer dime
00:06:55.960 have forgotten their duty on how to properly give a contract to an outside agency without ethics
00:07:03.320 violations. Listen to this. Given the investigations you've done so far on McKinsey and GC strategies,
00:07:09.080 do you have a sense at this point of how widespread these issues are in the public service?
00:07:14.280 Well, I can only speak to those two elements, and in both cases, the vendors represented a really small
00:07:20.120 percentage of what was spent on professional services contracts by the federal government. But in the
00:07:26.440 McKinsey work, we had looked at 10 crown corporations and 10 departments. In this audit, there's 31 federal
00:07:33.720 organizations, including one crown in departments. And we found issues in almost every contract that we
00:07:41.000 looked at, which tells me that there's no reason to believe it's limited to these two. And it's time for the
00:07:47.880 public service to go back to the basics and understanding procurement rules and why they should be followed.
00:07:52.680 Understanding procurement rules and why they should be followed. For folks who haven't worked in
00:07:59.560 government, again, on Parliament Hill particularly, there's the ministers, okay, who are elected members
00:08:07.240 of parliament who are then appointed to cabinet as cabinet ministers. They have staff. They're often
00:08:13.480 referred to as political staff. So you've got people who are in strategy, people who are in stakeholder
00:08:19.240 relations, communications professionals, etc. That's political staff. Next to that is the department,
00:08:27.160 okay? The deputy minister is a bureaucrat, okay? They don't face election. They don't have to run for
00:08:34.760 public office. They typically have a permanent job. Underneath that deputy minister is the entire department.
00:08:42.120 There's communications people. You name it. They're all under there, okay? Those people should know
00:08:50.200 how to do procurement, okay? This should be just part of their DNA. Back when I was a staffer, telling
00:08:57.800 tales at a school, I don't care. When I was a staffer, I specifically remember somebody from the ethics
00:09:03.560 commissioner giving everybody a briefing, giving staff members a briefing, political staff a briefing.
00:09:08.200 We were all communications types. And she basically said, if you go out for coffee with a reporter,
00:09:15.160 like a journalist on Parliament Hill, don't accidentally take home their pen because I will
00:09:21.160 consider that to be a gift that you will have to declare. I'm not kidding. So the idea that a permanent
00:09:29.080 bureaucrat whose job it is to hand out taxpayers' money and to draw up contracts doesn't know how to do
00:09:36.920 ethical procurement is a huge red flag. And it really speaks volumes. It shows you that it's no
00:09:45.160 wonder we are spending money like crazy. Keep in mind, the Arrive Can app that most people loathed using
00:09:53.400 and never really worked, should have cost taxpayers around $250,000. Around that. It wound up costing taxpayers
00:10:04.040 more than $60 million. That is one example, one example of a huge screw up on Parliament Hill.
00:10:13.080 And it's one example of why they cannot get their spending under control. And they have to get their
00:10:20.040 spending under control. Otherwise, we're going to hit a debt interest crisis. Let's find out how much we
00:10:28.440 need to save in order to balance the budget and start paying down the debt and avoid a huge debt
00:10:34.760 interest crisis. How can we avoid this crisis? Let's find out. Joining me now is my good friend and
00:10:42.360 federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Franco Terrazzano. Franco, he's stationed in Ottawa.
00:10:49.720 I like to nickname it Mordor. I'm picturing what's going on right now, Franco, in relation to these so-called
00:10:56.600 cuts. So in the middle of summer, the kids aren't in school, the MPs aren't sitting there,
00:11:02.520 the leader of the Conservative Party doesn't have a seat. It feels like the phony war moment right now,
00:11:07.320 going in the capital from here. What's it like out there? Are the unions freaking out? Is Carney
00:11:14.040 actually going to make the cuts that he needs to make? Oh, I mean, there's a lot to dive into there.
00:11:18.760 But Chris, like, look, you asked me if the union bosses are freaking out. I mean, come on.
00:11:24.040 They are freaking out. They're fear-mongering over a spending review. Okay? Fear-mongering
00:11:30.280 over a spending review. So here's what's going on. Look, Ottawa has been wasting money like crazy
00:11:35.880 for more than a decade now, right? Like, look, back in like 2015, 2016, the federal government was
00:11:41.880 spending around $290 billion. Well, last year, the federal government spent more than $500 billion.
00:11:48.440 So even after accounting for inflation, you got spending up more than 40% in a decade. Okay? So
00:11:57.160 Carney comes along. He's like, okay, we're going to do a spending review because like debt is spiraling
00:12:01.400 out of control. And you've got the union bosses fear-mongering, right? You know, calling this
00:12:05.720 potential savings draconian rollbacks. You know, another union was talking about how it's going to
00:12:10.920 hurt everyone in Canada who depends on vital public services. And you know, my response to that is like,
00:12:17.160 Oh, really? Now government union bosses are worried about services really now,
00:12:22.600 right after the federal government rubber-stemmed hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses,
00:12:27.560 added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, handed out thousands of pay raises every single year.
00:12:34.120 Now union bosses are worried about the services. Like, come on folks. Like if more government spending
00:12:40.120 and more government bureaucrats meant better services, then there would be no potholes left in
00:12:45.240 Canada, right? There would be no wait times in hospitals. Like, come on after this bureaucrat
00:12:50.440 hiring spree, all taxpayers really got out of this deal is just higher taxes and a bigger debt bill.
00:12:56.440 Yeah. Because again, not to belabor it, we pay their wages. We pay their salaries. Taxpayers pay the
00:13:03.320 wages for all of these government employees. You raised a very good point there. Some folks will be
00:13:08.920 like, Oh, well, it's essential. We need to nationalize everything. We need to have the government
00:13:13.000 take care of us. Okay. Let's go along with that line of logic. How's your healthcare doing? How's
00:13:19.240 the passport office being run? How's Canada post working out for you lately? Like we're, we're
00:13:24.760 getting such crappy service coming from the federal government and yet they don't want to actually make
00:13:30.680 these cuts. How do we square this circle? Well, here's another little stat I'm going to drop on
00:13:36.760 you folks. Okay. So since 2016, the cost of the bureaucracy has gone up 73%. Now ask yourself,
00:13:46.040 I'm laughing because to ask the question is to answer it. Have you been getting anywhere close
00:13:51.400 to 73% better services from the federal government? I mean, look, unless you're taking a taxpayer paycheck,
00:13:58.840 that answer is a big fat no. I mean, here's another point, right? Like you are now paying for 99,000 more
00:14:05.080 federal bureaucrats today than you were just 10 years ago. Um, look, the CRA, the Canada Revenue
00:14:11.640 Agency has seen the second biggest increase in the number of bureaucrats. Uh, and like,
00:14:17.480 are you even able to get a CRA bureaucrat on the phone? Uh, the answer is of course not. Um, and you
00:14:24.120 know, like we've got these union bosses that are fear mongering right now over what seems to be any
00:14:29.320 potential savings. Um, but like, look, I think the union bosses need to be upfront upfront with
00:14:34.920 their membership. And, and that is that the biggest, the single biggest threat to a bureaucrat's
00:14:40.040 paycheck. It's not political ideology. It's not a pressure campaign. It's interest charges on the
00:14:47.240 debt. Okay. You want to know what will really cut healthcare transfers or will really cut the number
00:14:52.120 of bureaucrats. It's not political ideology. It's interest charges and interest charges on the debt
00:14:57.640 are spiraling out of control. Let's go there right now. I will also point out this always blows me
00:15:03.640 away. And whenever you raise this on the podcast, am I correct in saying that the average pay,
00:15:08.920 the average salary for the typical government employee is now over a hundred thousand dollars
00:15:15.320 federally per year? Okay. The average compensation, when you look at the salary, the pension, the bonuses,
00:15:22.200 the other types of perks, the average compensation for a federal bureaucrat is 125,000 bucks a year.
00:15:29.480 The average compensation, 125 grand. Hey, Chris, uh, as you'll know, right. The federal government
00:15:35.080 doesn't publish a sunshine list. Okay. They do not proactively disclose the number of top earners that
00:15:41.080 they have in the federal government. Unlike the vast majority of provinces, by the way, however,
00:15:45.720 your friends at the Canadian taxpayers federation, we filed an access to information requests to find out,
00:15:50.600 you know, how many bureaucrats in the federal government are getting a six figure base salary?
00:15:55.880 Chris, this is going to blow your mind. There are 110,000 federal employees with a base salary
00:16:03.240 of more than a hundred grand, 110,000 employees. Okay. That means about one third of the entire federal
00:16:11.800 bureaucracy gets a six figure base salary. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. So folks, when you're thinking
00:16:19.160 about this, okay, and you're thinking about half your paycheck disappearing in taxes, levies and fees,
00:16:25.560 okay, to various levels of government, remember what Franco just said about a third of the employees
00:16:31.400 at the federal government level, you just said, make over six figures, make over a hundred grand.
00:16:36.120 Yeah. Salary. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. Okay. Let's get into the debt interest because I'll,
00:16:42.600 I'll be upfront. I think a lot of people don't like thinking about the federal debt because they don't
00:16:49.240 like thinking about their own debt. A lot of people are fighting to afford basics right now.
00:16:54.760 They're living paycheck to paycheck. They're within 200 bucks every month of not being able to make the
00:16:59.640 minimum payments on things like their car, their rent, and yes, their debts. But here's the issue,
00:17:06.280 folks. We have to think about it because otherwise the politicians will refuse to,
00:17:11.160 and they won't fight it. And we're all the ones paying the interest on this darn thing.
00:17:16.360 So Franco, get into it for us. How much is the debt right now? And how much is the interest
00:17:22.680 payment on the debt costing taxpayers? Well, the debt is more than $1.2 trillion,
00:17:29.080 which is crazy because fast forward back to 2015 and the debt was about 600 billion.
00:17:34.840 So in less than a decade, the Trudeau government doubled the national debt,
00:17:39.400 which means that your kids and your grandkids are going to be making payments on that debt for
00:17:44.040 the rest of their lives. But of course, it's not just the debt, right? The sum total that you have
00:17:48.840 to be worried about because the interest charges alone on the debt are astronomically high. Okay. So
00:17:55.240 interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers about $54, $55 billion a year. Okay. Which means that
00:18:03.240 interest charges are blowing a $1 billion hole in the budget every single week. Now let's give some
00:18:10.200 context to that. Okay. That's a brand new hospital that isn't getting built every week because that
00:18:16.680 money's going to the bond fund managers on Bay street to pay interest on the debt. Or let's put it like two
00:18:22.520 other ways here. Okay. Last year, the federal government spent more money on interest charges than it sent to the
00:18:30.120 provinces in health transfers. Okay. That's how crazy it's getting. Or think about it this way.
00:18:36.840 Welcome to Canada where every dollar you pay in federal sales tax goes to pay interest on the debt.
00:18:43.560 So to really sum it up, think what we could do without this massive debt. Okay. We could nearly
00:18:48.760 double health transfers, or we could essentially eliminate the entire federal sales tax.
00:18:54.440 Picture that folks. And imagine Franco, you made a good point there about a billion dollar hospital
00:19:01.160 and not being built. Perhaps a stronger visualization is okay. Everybody gather around every Saturday
00:19:08.120 evening. We're going to stand around a brand new hospital, shiny new paint. Nobody's inside of it yet.
00:19:14.360 Burn it down every single week. That's just the interest on the debt. Burn down that new hospital
00:19:23.400 structure every single week. This is madness. And this is where we're spiraling to. Now I'm old enough
00:19:31.000 to recognize this movie. I've seen this movie before. And that's actually when the Canadian Taxpayers
00:19:36.680 Federation got started back in 1990. People were super ticked off about the GST. You just mentioned the GST.
00:19:42.680 They were super ticked off about the huge debt. Okay. And the deficits and the interest payments.
00:19:49.000 Do you think we are hitting that wall? Because regardless of color of the team jersey, okay,
00:19:54.200 it was the red team, actually. It was Paul Martin who said that damn clock, the debt clock,
00:19:59.400 we've got to slay this deficit. We have to balance the budget. Do you think we're coming around to that
00:20:04.760 moment again? Regardless of who's in, do you think Carney has the chops to say, you know what,
00:20:10.120 we got to put the brakes on this spending spree? You know, I'm glad you brought up the point about
00:20:16.600 the early nineties. And what's that old saying, like, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
00:20:20.920 Yeah. Right. I think we're getting to that part of the song again. You know what I mean?
00:20:25.080 But look, and let me just bring back the point I made earlier, where it's that these union bosses
00:20:29.400 need to be honest with their membership, because it's not really political ideology
00:20:33.640 that will lead to nurses getting fired, teachers getting fired or hospitals getting closed down.
00:20:39.160 It's debt interest charges, right? And that's what happened in the nineties. Look,
00:20:42.520 you brought up the liberals in Ottawa that made spending, made spending cuts, right? The red team.
00:20:48.040 And also, Chris, in your backyard in Alberta, you had the PCs, the Klein government that, you know,
00:20:55.080 save people money, cut spending, held up that paid in full sign in the summer of 2004.
00:21:00.280 Right. I, I, I, I reminisce about those days, but also the orange team in Saskatchewan in the nineties,
00:21:06.840 right? With the finance minister, Janice McKinnon at the time, what did they have to do? Because
00:21:10.920 the massive interest charges, how much it costs for the government to borrow money? Well, they had to
00:21:15.480 close what, like 50 hospitals across that Prairie province. So this kind of goes back to the whole
00:21:21.880 point that we're making. Look, either the federal government under Mr. Carney, either they roll up their
00:21:27.240 sleeves and they find some savings today or big time spending cuts are going to be forced on them
00:21:33.400 tomorrow. And Chris, to segue back to the first part of this conversation, you asked me, is Carney really
00:21:39.080 making cuts? Well, look, I actually don't even think he's going to bring down total spending. Okay.
00:21:44.920 What, everything that I've heard from the Carney government is that debt is still going to go up and
00:21:50.200 yes, they're going to try to find savings in some areas of the budget, but they're going to compensate
00:21:55.640 that so to speak with higher spending elsewhere. So the only thing that I can see from the Carney
00:22:00.680 government based on what has been tabled before us today is that they will find some savings around
00:22:06.520 the edges, but really overall spending is still going to go up. Maybe just not as fast as it did
00:22:12.120 under the Trudeau era. I want you to debunk a couple of things here for, for viewers here of
00:22:17.960 the Candace Malcolm show. Often we'll hear prime minister Carney say things to the parliamentary press
00:22:23.880 gallery like, Oh, I'm going to cut spending. It's going to be investing. It's government.
00:22:30.120 Like, it's not like he's taking his own money or, you know, uh, harvesting from an orchard of money
00:22:35.320 trees. It's still government spending, right? Like, is there a difference? Is there a difference
00:22:42.120 between operational spending and capital spending? Is there a difference between government spending
00:22:47.800 and what they're calling investing here? Okay. So you're so right to say that every single dollar,
00:22:54.520 whether they call it spending, investing, throwing the money out of a window, every single dollar
00:23:00.040 is still taxpayers money. And all of that money over and above the revenue taken, that's more money
00:23:05.240 added to the debt, more money wasted on debt interest charges. Now, look, Chris, I can tell you,
00:23:09.960 look, I just bought a 24 pack of a Canadian, but don't worry. It was an investment. You know what I
00:23:16.040 mean? Like, so a lot of it also depends on what they decide to classify as operating spending versus
00:23:21.480 capital spending. Now, obviously what we're worried about at the Canadian taxpayers federation
00:23:25.880 is we're worried about accounting trickery, right? Oh, they might cut some operating spending,
00:23:30.600 but what they're really doing is just changing the title and then calling it capital spending,
00:23:35.160 right? So it's really hard to tell, uh, in an objective way, what is actually operating versus what
00:23:41.160 is capital spending other than what the government just wants to use as different labels.
00:23:45.560 Um, like, look, can you make the case that some type of capital might have long-term impact?
00:23:50.520 Yes, maybe. Okay. But it's still more money going out the window. And I would say this,
00:23:55.800 instead of just reorganizing or relabeling what different types of spending is,
00:24:00.200 we should see overall spending going down. Okay. Because after the last 10 years of out of,
00:24:05.160 out of control, runaway borrowing, look, finding savings in every area of the budget should be like
00:24:10.760 finding water in the ocean. Two more questions for you. One, uh, do our creditors care like the
00:24:17.560 bond fund managers on Bay street? Like you, like you often say, do they care if this is capital
00:24:23.480 spending or operational spending, or is this just a bottom line of going into deeper debt?
00:24:28.040 Oh, they absolutely will care if all of that extra spending means more debt, right? So they w they will
00:24:33.880 totally care. Um, if like all of this new budgeting still means more debt, right? And here's where the
00:24:40.200 problem is, even during the election where Carney was saying, he's going to split the budget into
00:24:44.600 operating capital. Well, if you actually look at his numbers, Carney wants to add $225 billion to the
00:24:50.760 debt over the next four years, $225 billion folks. Let's put that into context. Over those years,
00:24:57.720 Trudeau wanted to add about $131 billion to the debt. Okay. So Carney is planning on adding about
00:25:04.680 a hundred billion dollars more to the debt than even what Trudeau was planning to add, right?
00:25:10.040 The banker supposed to be better with the numbers and the drama teacher, but the banker is adding
00:25:14.520 almost a hundred billion dollars more debt than what even Trudeau was planning to do. So you asked me,
00:25:20.360 will they care? Of course they will care if we're already more than a trillion dollars in debt.
00:25:25.160 And then over the next four years, the federal government adds $225 billion to that tab.
00:25:30.840 Okay. Last question. And I think it might be one of our favorite questions that we get at the
00:25:34.840 Canadian taxpayers federation is okay. Tough guy, where do you want to cut first? Do you want to cut,
00:25:41.080 you know, gruel budget for orphans or do you want to cut hip replacements for little old ladies?
00:25:46.520 Like I'm often, there's so much waste that you and I cover and all of our team covers at the
00:25:50.600 taxpayers federation. I get so mad that I feel like just cutting government by like 80%, see which
00:25:57.960 wheels fall off. Then I'll actually care about adding things back onto this clown car. But in all
00:26:03.960 seriousness, where can he find savings? Where can he cut? Are there some big cuts that he could make
00:26:10.680 that would instantly balance this budget? Yeah. I mean, look, let's, let's talk about the small
00:26:15.240 things. Okay. The infuriating examples of ways. I don't know. Uh, maybe don't spend 8 million bucks
00:26:20.760 building a barn on the governor general's estate. Like Chris, I don't know about the first thing
00:26:25.400 about farming, but my buddies backs and back at Brooks, uh, could build a barn for a lot less
00:26:29.800 than 8 million bucks. Right. Uh, or how about this? I don't know. Call me old fashioned, but maybe we
00:26:34.520 don't need to spend 8,800 bucks on a sex toy show in Germany titled whose jizz is this, right?
00:26:41.880 Right. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah. Yeah. I did it for you. Uh, or, or, or I don't
00:26:45.720 know, uh, 12 grand outsourcing old people, sex stories in other countries, right? The government
00:26:51.080 spent 12 grand. So seniors in other countries can talk about their sex lives in front of live
00:26:55.960 audiences in other countries. So look, there's, there's a small examples of ways. Uh, the big
00:27:00.840 examples though, like, look, there is no way to balance the budget, to fix the budget and cut taxes
00:27:05.960 without firing bureaucrats. There's no way, there's no way around it. Okay. Because the federal
00:27:10.520 government added 99,000 bureaucrats in a decade. Okay. Now, uh, more than half of the government's
00:27:17.000 day-to-day spending is consumed by the bureaucracy. In fact, look, if you, if the government just
00:27:22.440 increased the bureaucracy to stay in line with population growth over the last 10 years, uh,
00:27:27.160 we would be saving $7 billion a year. So the big place to cut is the bureaucracy. I'll give you one
00:27:32.760 more area that the government must cut. And it's another big one, corporate welfare. Hey, how about this?
00:27:38.920 How about you let people and businesses keep more of their own money rather than hiking taxes on
00:27:43.400 Canadians and Canadian entrepreneurs, and then turning around and giving bucks of cash to
00:27:47.800 multinational corporations, right? Uh, like the government put taxpayers on the hook for like
00:27:52.120 $30 billion to multinational corporations, like what Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis, and Northvolt.
00:27:58.440 So look, there's a bunch of the small ways that we could talk about the entire show. Uh, but the two
00:28:03.400 big items that they have to really tackle is the bureaucracy and then just completely ending
00:28:08.200 corporate welfare and to grow the economy. How about you cut taxes, cut regulations and get out
00:28:13.240 of the way. You've got so many stats. Just one second. Did you just say that if the feds had kept
00:28:18.840 spending in line with population growth, they'd save $7 billion a year? Uh, no, no, no, no. I was
00:28:24.840 only talking about the bureaucracy, right? So yeah. So only the, only the bureaucracy, like
00:28:30.440 silly me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're giving them too much credit. Uh, no, no, no. Like folks,
00:28:35.320 if, if think about it this way, the bureaucracy grew out of control so wildly that if they just
00:28:41.960 allowed the bureaucracy to grow in line with population growth, and you know how much Canada
00:28:46.040 has grown over the last 10 years, if that we would save about $7 billion a year just by keeping
00:28:53.320 bureaucracy growth in line with population growth, $7 billion a year. I work with him every day,
00:28:58.120 folks, and he still continues to amaze me. Uh, Franco Teresano, thank you so much for your time.
00:29:03.320 Thanks for joining the Candace Malcolm show. Hey, that was fun. We should do this more often.
00:29:10.040 That's it for the Candace Malcolm show for today. Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
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