Juno News - June 10, 2024


Chrystia Freeland admits "wrath" of middle class Canadians "burns hot"

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Bank of Canada hands out $23 million in bonus cheques Immigration agent tells Canadian kids to just "invest in Bitcoin"

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Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

180.81

Word count

7,939

Sentence count

279

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Misogyny

12

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Toxicity

4

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Hate speech

8

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Summary

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

In this episode of The Lawton Show, Andrew Lawton is joined by Conservative MP Adam Chambers to talk about the Liberal government's failure to live up to its promise of raising the capital gains tax to 20% and the impact on Canada's economy. Also, the Bank of Canada announces that interest rates are going to come down as well.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30 Thank you.
00:01:00 welcome to Canada's most irreverent talk show
00:01:15 this is the Andrew Lawton Show
00:01:18 brought to you by True North
00:01:19 hello and welcome to you all
00:01:26 happy Monday
00:01:27 this is Canada's most irreverent talk show
00:01:29 the andrew lawton show on true north on this monday june 10th 2024 we are i guess almost well
00:01:37 no we are beyond how no sorry i'm getting my days mixed up in like just a couple of weeks we'll be
00:01:42 halfway through the the year so if 2024 is not your bag we're like just about at the top of the
00:01:47 crest there and it'll all be downhill from there so take from that what you will but it is good to
00:01:53 have you on the show we'll be talking about the liberal government finally making up on its promise
00:01:58 of increasing the capital gains tax hike.
00:02:01 I know this is a promise a lot of people in the country
00:02:03 were hoping they would not follow through on.
00:02:06 But as we spoke about last week with Conservative MP Adam Chambers,
00:02:11 it seems to be that the government was very keen on getting a windfall
00:02:14 from everyone just like horrified and terrified
00:02:17 and selling off their assets and having to pay the lower tax rate on that.
00:02:21 But we'll talk about that in a little bit
00:02:23 because Canadian doctors are quite frustrated
00:02:26 that the liberals are forging ahead and not giving them a carve out on this. Also, we'll check in
00:02:31 with our friend Chris Sims later on in the program here. And I think in doing so, that will be rather
00:02:37 fascinating because she has a lot of opinions on this attempt at gagging the oil and gas sector, 0.73
00:02:44 which the federal government is doing. They're doing the old 50 shades of gray to the oil and
00:02:48 gas industry. So if you don't get that reference, don't Google it, please. But let me begin. This
00:02:53 story is coming from a video clip a video clip that i actually tweeted out everyone's uh honing
00:02:59 in on like two syllables in particular from justin trudeau but to give some context here he was
00:03:05 speaking to the federation of canadian municipalities and there was a moment where
00:03:09 someone i believe it was a municipal mayor of some kind asked him a question about government
00:03:14 spending he asked this question to justin trudeau about how much the feds are spending about the
00:03:19 debt the deficit and how if at all justin trudeau could ever hope to balance the budget now the
00:03:25 whole clip is over three minutes i think and whenever we play that much justin trudeau i get
00:03:30 a bunch of angry emails from people that don't want to look that much so we'll skip out on the
00:03:34 question we'll skip out on most of the answer i want to go specifically to a little section at
00:03:40 the end when he makes a claim that is in and of itself something we've heard from before but
00:03:45 I want you to pay attention not to what he said, but to the reaction to it, understanding that this
00:03:53 is a room full of Canadian mayors. This is a room full of elected officials, people that want to
00:03:58 suck up to the federal government normally to get federal funding to get Justin Trudeau to visit.
00:04:03 These are mayors of cities and towns that are not having any of what Justin Trudeau is selling. 0.96
00:04:09 Take a look.
00:04:10 Our economy, macroeconomically, is doing better than just about anyone else out there.
00:04:17 And companies around the world are seeing that because since 2015, we've seen a 60%
00:04:23 increase in direct investment in Canada across the country, from Volkswagen to others.
00:04:29 But we've also, just last year, we were the third largest country in the world in absolute
00:04:35 terms after the US and Brazil for foreign direct investment. We made the conscious and deliberate
00:04:43 decision to say if the Canadian economy is as strong as it is right now, which it is,
00:04:47 we need to put that in service of helping Canadians with the cost of living right now
00:04:53 without increasing inflation. And that's why the Bank of Canada was able to just drop it,
00:04:59 drop the rate on Wednesday because inflation is coming down and now interest rates are going to
00:05:03 to come down as well. So that was a choice we made. And in parenthesis, every single
00:05:08 one of those programs, dental, pharma, childcare, are things that the Conservative Party chose
00:05:15 to vote against because they're worried that inflation was too high. Well, we're dropping
00:05:22 inflation and we're being there for Canadians, not with cuts and austerity, and we're going
00:05:26 to keep doing that. And on the carbon price, it actually puts more money in the pockets
00:05:30 It's eight out of 10 Canadian families.
00:05:32 That's a parliamentary budge officer who says that.
00:05:35 It's absolutely true.
00:05:37 Oh, interesting.
00:05:42 So he says, oh yeah, the carbon tax, everyone makes more money.
00:05:45 Not everyone, eight out of 10 Canadians make more money than the carbon tax cost them.
00:05:51 And then everyone in that room just starts booing the guy.
00:05:53 They clearly aren't buying it.
00:05:55 And did you see as he said that, him, I don't know if it's possible to put a screen grab
00:05:59 up of it, but you can watch the clip later. He sinks back into his seat and just smirks, this
00:06:05 big giant smirk. And then as people are booing him, he says it's totally true. And then he just
00:06:11 laughs. Those two syllables, as if to tell you, you know what, I don't even care what you think
00:06:16 because this is what I'm doing. And if it costs Canadians extra tough luck, it was just this evil
00:06:22 maniacal cackle of sorts that Justin Trudeau was giving again to fellow heads of government,
00:06:28 To mayors across this country of towns, cities, municipal, regional municipalities, this is what he's doing.
00:06:34 He just doesn't care anymore.
00:06:37 He just doesn't care.
00:06:38 So originally it was all the premiers that were alienated by this.
00:06:41 Conservative premiers, even the liberal premier in Newfoundland, to some extent the new Democrat premier in Manitoba.
00:06:48 But now municipal mayors are saying to Justin Trudeau, boo this man.
00:06:52 They just don't want what he is selling.
00:06:55 and I find that interesting because I've often remarked on Justin Trudeau losing his shine and
00:07:01 I don't mean like wiping off the black face I mean losing the the aura that he once had about
00:07:05 him where people would just look at him as though he could do no wrong right now they are looking at
00:07:11 him in the opposite way as though he can do no right because increasingly that is the tendency
00:07:15 of this government and he's alienated his partners at the provincial and municipal level so much so
00:07:21 that they are booing him at a conference when he tries to once again issue a defense of his carbon
00:07:28 tax. Now, what I find noteworthy here beyond that is that this isn't going anywhere. In, I think
00:07:36 it's two weeks from today, there's going to be a by-election in St. Paul's. Now, St. Paul's, I
00:07:41 forget who I was talking about this. I can't remember if it was I was interviewed on their
00:07:45 show or they were on my show, but within the last week in some interview, I had a conversation with
00:07:50 someone about the St. Paul's by-election. And I don't normally cover the St. Paul's by-election
00:07:54 because St. Paul's is about as liberal as it gets. If you were to just have a situation in which you
00:07:59 say, we don't even really need to have an election there, let's just put the liberal in and call it a
00:08:04 day, you could probably make a case that St. Paul's was the place to do that. Not that I would
00:08:09 support that, I believe in democracy, but St. Paul's has just been at this ironclad liberal
00:08:14 stronghold for years. But right now, it's not. Right now, there is a chance that the Conservatives
00:08:20 could actually win St. Paul's. Now, there are a lot of people who believe they won't, and a lot
00:08:25 of people who think that, yeah, even if the Conservatives are doing relatively well, Toronto
00:08:29 St. Paul's will still stay in Liberal hands. It's Leslie Church as the Liberal candidate, and I
00:08:34 believe Don Stewart, or Don, Don, Don Stewart. Yeah, Don Stewart's the Conservative. But it'll be
00:08:40 close. And even if the Conservatives are within 5% of the Liberals and the Liberals win,
00:08:44 And that is a strong and stunning rebuke of Justin Trudeau, that if you're a liberal in
00:08:49 this country, would make you, should make you look at him and be like, you clearly have
00:08:54 taken us as far as you can.
00:08:56 The only way you can take us now is further into the ground, which as a party that believes
00:09:00 maybe we want to do something in the future, like be elected again down the road, we are
00:09:04 not too keen on.
00:09:06 But when Trudeau is just sitting back on stage and cackling at his critics, this is not a
00:09:12 guy that's going to effectively communicate his message to Canadians, because clearly he holds
00:09:17 Canadians who disagree with him, even people, again, who are mayors in such contempt. He holds
00:09:23 them in such contempt. And it's the way that we now see this tone shift from Chrystia Freeland as
00:09:29 well, which is quite an interesting one. Now, Chrystia Freeland, she's the deputy prime minister, 0.99
00:09:34 also the finance minister. She is the point person on selling this carbon tax. Sorry,
00:09:40 there's a Freudian slip she sells that too but the point person on selling the capital gains 0.99
00:09:45 tax hike the government is raising the capital gains tax by about 50 percent they announced
00:09:51 this in the budget then they pulled it out of the budget and said they were going to put it out
00:09:55 separately they still have not come up with a plan to do this so just today they're introducing a
00:10:01 ways and means motion which is basically a stopgap measure pending a formal legislative cementing of
00:10:07 this in the fall. So it's a bit procedural, it's going ahead as of I think June 24th, CRA is going
00:10:14 to continue to or start taxing based on the increase, which is why companies and high net
00:10:20 worth, high investment individuals are just dumping a whole bunch of assets now so they can save in
00:10:25 some cases, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars by paying the lower rate. Now, all of
00:10:31 this notwithstanding, hear the way that Chrystia Freeland defends this policy. Hear the way in this 0.99
00:10:38 clip from a press conference she gave in which she sells this to Canadians. But I would also like
00:10:46 to ask Canada's 1%, in fact, Canada's 0.13% to consider this. What kind of a Canada do you want
00:10:59 to live in? Do you want to live in a country where kids go to school hungry? Do you want to
00:11:07 live in a country where a teenage girl gets pregnant just because she doesn't have the money 1.00
00:11:13 to buy birth control? Do you want to live in a country where the only young Canadians who can 1.00
00:11:20 buy their own homes are those with parents who can help with a down payment? Do you want to live in
00:11:28 country where we make the investments we need in health care, in housing, in old age pensions,
00:11:36 but we lack the political will to pay for them and choose instead to pass a ballooning debt
00:11:44 onto our children. Do you want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives
00:11:53 of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever higher fences using private health
00:12:02 care and airplanes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority
00:12:10 of their less privileged compatriots burns so hot every canadian across our great country 0.91
00:12:20 needs to ask themselves these same questions because the stakes could not be higher.
00:12:31 You're on the board of the World Economic Forum. You literally party every year with the global
00:12:39 elites and you're like, oh, these people with their private jets and all these people that
00:12:44 get private health care. And she owns multiple properties in the United Kingdom. She has a
00:12:50 rental unit in Ukraine. I think it's her husband has a place in New York. And she's like, oh, well,
00:12:55 at least I'm not in a gated community. I may own five homes in the three countries, but at least,
00:13:00 at least I don't. Well, maybe I am. Maybe I am a global elite. Okay. So that's Chrystia Freeland.
00:13:08 Sean just pointed out as well that she also, we should remind you to go with the cheap shot here, 0.87
00:13:14 where they weren't $700 sneakers.
00:13:17 I think they were like $740 sneakers plus tax.
00:13:20 So yeah, she wears $700 shoes 1.00
00:13:23 and she's like railing against the elites there
00:13:25 and pointing out how the society has turned against them.
00:13:29 The wrath, the wrath of ordinary people, 0.95
00:13:31 the wrath of the less privileged
00:13:33 is burning so hot right now.
00:13:35 At first, when I read the transcript,
00:13:36 I thought she was making a global warming point.
00:13:38 No, she was talking about the anger of the plebs, 1.00
00:13:41 the anger of the ordinary folks like you and I.
00:13:43 and what I find to be so interesting here is that we are seeing time and time again from
00:13:49 Chrystia Freeland this idea of just her being everything she's railing against her being the 0.70
00:13:56 global elite her being the one that is going to apparently solve the problems caused by the
00:14:02 global elites as well so I don't quite get how this is going to work out for us I think as a
00:14:08 Canadian I'm just generally of the mind that we're whatever is going to happen we're going to get
00:14:12 uh just absolutely screwed over by it and that's why the capital gains increase is an interesting
00:14:16 one because they're trying to frame this as only going after the wealthy it only targets the super
00:14:22 rich it only targets the elites it only goes after people that have the old private jets and
00:14:27 whatever uh justin trudeau interestingly enough you may have heard he did an interview i think
00:14:32 it was with the new york times last week and he used pierre polyev's line he used pierre polyev's
00:14:38 line in which he talked about the have-nots versus the have-yots. So Trudeau is now realizing,
00:14:44 oh, you know, this Polyev guy, he's in the polls when he starts talking about the elites. He's in 0.95
00:14:48 the polls when he starts talking about these issues. Maybe, just maybe, I should just start
00:14:52 cribbing his language. So Chrystia Freeland is doing something very similar there, where she's
00:14:57 like, you know, these people, these global elites are the cause of your problem. She's actually
00:15:02 becoming a populist now. She's becoming a populist. Maybe she'll be resigning her membership 1.00
00:15:07 from the World Economic Forum before long
00:15:11 because, well, I can't abide by these people
00:15:13 with their private jets.
00:15:14 Well, the wrath of the working man, 0.99
00:15:16 the wrath of the working man is burning so bright.
00:15:20 But there's a serious, I mean, all of it's serious,
00:15:23 but there's an especially serious point
00:15:24 to be had about the capital gains increase
00:15:28 because this is an example where the government
00:15:30 is trying to look at one little thing and saying,
00:15:33 we can make your problems go away
00:15:36 by taking aim at this group.
00:15:38 They're saying the super wealthy, the super wealthy.
00:15:40 That's what they're talking about there.
00:15:42 The way she describes it is that we just get that tiny little teeny itsy bitsy group
00:15:46 with their private jets and their gated communities and their private healthcare.
00:15:50 If we get them to pay more, then there will be, let's go through the list she provides.
00:15:56 There will be fewer hungry kids.
00:15:58 There will be fewer teenage girls getting pregnant.
00:16:01 and there will be fewer young Canadians unable to buy homes.
00:16:07 So if you see a teenage girl on the street
00:16:10 and she has gotten pregnant,
00:16:11 that actually could have been solved
00:16:13 if Galen Weston had to pay a higher capital gains tax,
00:16:18 believe it or not.
00:16:19 If you got like the Thompson family,
00:16:21 yeah, if they paid a little bit more,
00:16:23 then little Susie's not pregnant
00:16:25 and little Timmy is going to school with a full belly
00:16:28 and that young couple next door to you
00:16:31 that lives in their parents' basement,
00:16:33 they're going to buy a home,
00:16:34 all if Galen Weston just pays a little bit more.
00:16:37 So the capital gains tax increase
00:16:39 is not, as the government presents it,
00:16:41 going to be a panacea.
00:16:43 And more importantly,
00:16:44 and I think this is the crucial point here,
00:16:46 it isn't just the super wealthy that's being affected.
00:16:49 It isn't just the super rich.
00:16:51 They want to say that this is just a billionaire tax,
00:16:55 but the reality is there are a lot of Canadians
00:16:57 they're going to be affected by this capital gains tax increase that do not fall at all into
00:17:02 that category of the super rich that don't fall into the category of the super wealthy that
00:17:07 certainly aren't living in gated communities or flying on private jets or getting private
00:17:12 healthcare necessarily and a lot of these people are ordinary small business owners because remember
00:17:17 it's people that own and operate small businesses who are not given any carve out or any exemption
00:17:23 whatsoever from this. So yeah, the super wealthy are going to be hit by it, but also small business
00:17:29 owners. And in particular, we've seen from the medical community in Canada, doctors who
00:17:33 look at their professional corporations as being a vehicle to save for retirement
00:17:38 are being especially penalized for this. I want to welcome into the show, Dr. Kathleen Ross,
00:17:43 who is the president of the Canadian Medical Association. Dr. Ross, good to speak with you.
00:17:48 Thanks for coming on today. Oh, thank you very much for having me.
00:17:51 So let's just begin with the mechanics of this. Why are physicians affected by this in a way that many other groups in Canada are not?
00:17:59 So it's important for Canadians and policymakers to understand that medical corporations are not like other conventional corporations.
00:18:07 And that is how many family physicians and other community-based physicians operate.
00:18:13 We don't incorporate to build a big practice so that we can sell it.
00:18:19 But we do use our corporations to keep money for retirement and other major life events like maternity care, parental leave or sick leave. 0.53
00:18:29 And, you know, honestly, with the with the current nationwide shortage of physicians, particularly those delivering the kind of primary care community access that we need, this this is a challenge.
00:18:41 You're never going to be able to sell your shares or make money off of a corporation.
00:18:47 Yeah, I think that's an important point.
00:18:49 And I would also add here that, you know, yes, doctors are paid well for the work that they do.
00:18:54 And I don't want to say the doctors are dealing with, you know, the economic hardships in a way that other people are.
00:18:59 But I think it's easy to overstate how wealthy the average family physician is or especially, you know, rural physicians.
00:19:05 And people often forget how much overhead they have as well to run their practices, you know, both in terms of they're dealing with the effects of inflation as well.
00:19:14 And, you know, medical products that they have to put in their offices are expensive.
00:19:17 So these people do not fit into this category of the super wealthy.
00:19:21 But the government's messaging on this tax increase has been that it's basically just billionaires who are affected.
00:19:27 Yeah. And I think that's just one piece of the misinformation that's come out with the announcements over the last several weeks.
00:19:32 You know, there are roughly 75,000 doctors practicing in Canada and half of those operate
00:19:39 as professional medical corporations. So the estimated 40,000 people impacted can't just
00:19:44 be the doctors that she's talking about. So I think we do have to take a step back and
00:19:49 really understand this. As you mentioned, self-employed physicians are responsible
00:19:54 for those critical infrastructure pieces. So to provide the community office that patients are
00:20:00 seen in we cover those overhead costs you like rent and staff and salaries and all the medical
00:20:05 supplies and office equipment and and at the moment that amounts to anywhere between 40 and 45
00:20:11 of our gross clinical revenue and the funding and provision of that critical infrastructure
00:20:16 is really not easily replaced i'm assuming that when this was announced you were trying to engage
00:20:23 your partners in the federal government on this and i mean obviously from what we've heard there
00:20:28 has not been a carve out for doctors but did it seem like they were receptive to this concern
00:20:33 at least at any stage in the process so we've been presenting the information that that federal
00:20:38 government asked about and they and they asked some questions after the fact uh you know and
00:20:42 we've presented our information i think in a fair and balanced way particularly as this is being
00:20:48 marketed as a tax fairness you know is this actually fair to professionally incorporated
00:20:54 physicians and the answer to that is no because unfortunately this will mean maximum capital gains
00:21:00 inclusion rate on the very first dollar that that earns capital gains inside of a professional
00:21:08 corporation there's no carve out at all that 250 000 that applies to individuals or the 1.25
00:21:15 million that applies to other small businesses or corporations does not in any way apply to
00:21:21 to professionally medical, medical professional corporations. So the other, the other piece that's
00:21:26 really important because it was mentioned in today's announcement is that we do not have
00:21:30 the ability to simply increase our fees to make up for tax increases or inflation as it relates
00:21:37 to overhead and other professionals may well be able to pass those costs along. And the thought
00:21:43 that we could just simply go and adjust our provincial agreements to make up for this change
00:21:49 at a federal level is is really misinformed so we do need to have these conversations we want to
00:21:55 continue to have these conversations and and really explain to the finance ministry how it
00:22:01 is that the health care system operates and and what role professional medical corporations have
00:22:07 in delivery of critical health care services to canadians and i should also point out i mean this
00:22:12 isn't doctors exploiting a loophole over the years governments have actively encouraged them to
00:22:17 to structure their businesses in this way
00:22:19 in lieu of fee increases, have they not?
00:22:21 Absolutely, and I think it's really important
00:22:24 to reiterate, and I know I've said it before,
00:22:28 but physicians train for a long time, more than a decade.
00:22:31 We don't start our careers
00:22:32 till we're well into our 30s most often.
00:22:35 Our rates are actually fixed for what we can earn
00:22:38 to pay off our debt, and most graduate
00:22:41 with an average debt of $300,000.
00:22:44 That's a substantial setback,
00:22:46 and our careers are shortened
00:22:48 because of how long it takes to get where we're going.
00:22:50 So these are critical pieces to consider.
00:22:54 We have to save for our retirement.
00:22:57 I mean, Canada does have a great deal
00:22:59 of social programs to support retirees,
00:23:02 but we are highly trained professionals
00:23:04 and saving for our own retirement makes sense,
00:23:07 where it may not make sense
00:23:09 to other pockets of workers in Canada.
00:23:12 But I think we do need to consider all of these things
00:23:15 as we look at shifting how we pay doctors
00:23:19 and how we save for our retirement.
00:23:21 So we know that there isn't gonna be a carve out.
00:23:23 We know the announcement is forging ahead.
00:23:25 And we know that as you indicated there,
00:23:27 doctors cannot just raise their fees to deal with this.
00:23:30 So realistically, what is going to come from this?
00:23:33 What's going to be the effect
00:23:34 now that the genie is out of the bottle, if you will?
00:23:37 So I think there is still space.
00:23:39 There are ways that we could recognize
00:23:41 professional corporations and allow them to have
00:23:44 $250,000 personal exemption that's afforded to individuals because our medical corporations are
00:23:50 in fact us as individuals. The other piece would be to to look at including medical corporations
00:23:57 in the 1.25 million lifetime exemption and again these are possibilities and I think although the
00:24:05 the bill has been proposed there's still space for us to have this conversation and we want to
00:24:09 make sure that we're sharing the right information so that the government can make appropriate
00:24:13 decisions and not risk destabilizing the critical parts of our healthcare system that we need. We
00:24:21 need physicians setting up in community practice, carrying that infrastructure and providing services
00:24:26 to Canadians. And, you know, we're already a little bit beleaguered and worn down and
00:24:32 carrying the burden of a healthcare system that in many ways is crumbling around us.
00:24:37 We don't need another reason to discourage physicians from setting up the practices and
00:24:43 delivering the services that Canadians need. So do I take from that that you remain at least
00:24:48 in some way optimistic that there is still a way to deal with this? The door is still open. I think
00:24:54 there's still time to have a conversation about the uniqueness of medical professional corporations
00:24:59 and we want to have those those discussions. All right well Dr. Kathleen Ross from the Canadian
00:25:06 Medical Association thank you so much for your time. Much appreciated. Take care. All right thank
00:25:11 you i know it's interesting and you maybe wonder okay why am i highlighting one particular group
00:25:15 because it's a group that really challenges that line we just shared that cliff week shared from
00:25:21 christia freeland talking about this as being the domain of those with private jets and those with
00:25:25 gated communities and all that not to say there aren't you know some doctors that live in gated
00:25:29 communities but the point here is that this is not just about the billionaires and this is not also
00:25:35 even if it were, I don't believe for a second that Galen Weston paying more in capital gains tax
00:25:42 is going to prevent all of those issues that the federal government just spoke about. And by the
00:25:46 way, the federal government has shown no willingness or no ability to balance the budget in general.
00:25:51 They have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. So all that's going to happen when
00:25:56 they get this windfall is spend more money. That's what they're going to do when they get this big,
00:26:01 giant windfall from everyone selling off their assets right now. They're just going to say,
00:26:04 oh great, look, we're not going to pay off the credit card. We're not going to invest in anything.
00:26:09 We're just going to spend more money to buy more votes in an election year. This is what they do 0.67
00:26:14 every time. And they try to then say that the issue is one of revenue and we can just go after
00:26:18 the rich, get more money from the super rich. And we'll forget that the government is also going 0.88
00:26:23 after you and I for money. The carbon tax, which incidentally, it's funny how Justin Trudeau likes
00:26:28 to point to the carbon tax and say that this is an example of us getting 88 out of 10 Canadians
00:26:36 getting more back than we're spending. And oh, even the parliamentary budget officer has said
00:26:39 as much, yada, yada, yada. Well, the parliamentary budget officer also said last week that he's been
00:26:45 gagged from sharing the government's analysis on the carbon tax, that the government does not want
00:26:49 him to talk about the analysis. So they aren't actually letting him say what he really knows
00:26:56 and believes and has found about the carbon tax and you may wonder if it is all as rosy as the
00:27:02 feds are making it out to be why would they not want canadians to have it why would canadians
00:27:07 don't want to have the analysis probably the same reason that they don't want canadians
00:27:10 to have the legal analysis they got in the lead up to using the emergencies act uh we'll move on
00:27:16 from the the capital gains uh tax in just a moment but i wanted to welcome in chris sims who
00:27:20 is the alberta director with the canadian taxpayers federation which has come out today
00:27:24 and called on the conservatives and members of parliament in general to vote against this
00:27:31 increase when it goes before the parliamentarians. Chris, good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
00:27:36 This is an issue where, and I've been saying this for the last 20 minutes or so,
00:27:40 the government is trying to make this out to be this assault on the wealthy. They're trying to
00:27:44 do the populism thing, but there are a lot of people whose investments are not at all putting
00:27:49 them into that billionaire category that are going to stand to lose here. And more importantly,
00:27:53 it's the tax like even if you don't care about the people who are affected I take the view that
00:27:58 when government is looking for more revenue sources there's a fundamental problem there
00:28:03 yeah for sure I listened through to the top of your show and I didn't think it was possible
00:28:08 but I think Minister Freeland's worse at communicating than Prime Minister Trudeau
00:28:12 in many cases that was insufferable she was going really going through that list I realize now most
00:28:19 of the time um because i worked in the industry so long sometimes i just can't stand listening to
00:28:24 it i'll watch stuff on subtitles i'll mute it and i'll watch it on subtitles in order to get the
00:28:28 gist of it to do my work but for her saying that we shouldn't be passing along debt to our children
00:28:35 and the next generation she's the finance minister like she is right like we're not
00:28:42 and has been for uh i forget when morno left but for a few years and then morno was there before
00:28:48 but like she's been in power for nine years and she's looking at like this massive inequality the
00:28:54 peasant storming the gated communities and it's like look at what's happening in this country yeah
00:28:58 sure I would agree but you've been the one there you're on the other side of the fence there
00:29:04 darling this is it like when Dustin Trudeau took a knee in the Black Lives Matter protest like
00:29:08 they're protesting you he's like he's looking around I hope that I hope they don't know that
00:29:13 i'm actually out here and this is you know i leave i try to give people pro tips quite often
00:29:17 a free pro tip to the to the minister stop talking like that stop saying you know don't
00:29:24 do that i don't care which party you're in stop doing that because you're going to irritate people
00:29:29 because you're condescending towards them so don't do that but more importantly with it with
00:29:33 the issue of the capital gains tax so anecdotally and personally so i was in the hospital with a
00:29:40 friend of mine a few weeks back or a few months back rather a young friend of mine who was having
00:29:45 cardiac issues and so we talked to two cardiologists totally unrelated they didn't know where I worked
00:29:51 like taxes are the last thing that usually come up they two of them mentioned this capital gains
00:29:58 tax thing so I'm really glad that you were able to speak with the Canadian Medical Association
00:30:02 spokesperson there to highlight this because I think unless you have like a doctor who's a sibling
00:30:07 or in the family or something you may not know how they're structured so they're not in line for
00:30:13 a pension okay in the same way say a nurse would be in line for a pension or a police officer
00:30:19 doctors have to you know feather their own nest and finance their own future and so again like 0.56
00:30:24 you pointed out they're not about to line up at food banks but we have to be cognizant of how
00:30:29 they financially structure themselves and according to this one doctor i was talking to apparently
00:30:35 the government had basically said a generation ago, Andrew, okay, guys, this is how you can do
00:30:40 it. Use capital gains, structure yourself as a corporation, and this is how you can do it. In
00:30:46 the same way that we don't pay capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence. So your own
00:30:52 home that you're living in and that you own, when you sell it, you don't pay income tax on the money
00:30:56 you make from that. Now, again, the federal government is sniffing around that really hard
00:31:00 on a home equity tax but for more than a generation now it's been understood that you don't touch that
00:31:06 well apparently that's how a lot of doctors are feeling right now too and so they got to really
00:31:11 pay attention to this because i'm not sure we can afford to lose any doctors who are probably
00:31:16 thinking of heading to the states because of this yeah that's the thing and when uh dr ross had
00:31:22 pointed out i think a fair valid point here that a lot of people don't realize or don't necessarily
00:31:26 take into consideration that they can't just raise their prices not that i support when companies are
00:31:31 doing that as a customer it's just i realize that's their option you can you know either
00:31:36 lower your overhead or raise your revenues that's what you do whereas doctors can't just do that so
00:31:40 they either have to really start cutting back and the last thing you want is the doctor that
00:31:44 you know can't afford to pay the rent or the doctor that oh maybe we reuse these things because
00:31:50 you know it's like you don't want to push them into a place where in their practices they're
00:31:54 they're cutting corners because that's the only option they have to lower costs.
00:31:58 Yeah, exactly. And so, and again, for people, I loved how you pointed out that the narrative is
00:32:04 that if you just tax the daddy warbucks, if you find the monopoly man, that one guy, and you tax
00:32:09 the bejesus out of him, that all of our social problems will go away. Like it's such a ridiculous 0.97
00:32:14 way of trying to explain this to people. I wanted to put a bit of a number on that. So it's between 0.53
00:32:19 four and five days. So Franco Teresano and our team in Ottawa crunch these numbers and apparently
00:32:25 the amount that the government is planning on making from this capital gains tax increase
00:32:31 is going to be gone in like five days. So at the rate of the Trudeau government spending,
00:32:37 this big long thing that they're making is a standalone vote in the House of Commons,
00:32:41 this is a hill to die on, it's going to solve all of our social problems, a chicken in every pot.
00:32:45 no it's gonna be toast in like five days so i have lunch meat for my kids upstairs in the fridge
00:32:52 that's gonna last longer andrew than that money it's like the liz trust lettuce thing uh we should
00:32:58 do like a live cam and see where we're going there uh i wanted to turn to another issue here i i
00:33:03 mentioned the parliamentary budget officer being gagged this is proving to be like a great pastime
00:33:08 of the government they're going full uh 50 shades of gray not just on the parliamentary budget
00:33:12 officer but uh they're also they're also going after the oil and gas sector here and it was
00:33:18 amusing because a few weeks back charlie angus introduces this private members bill uh basically
00:33:23 making it so that if anyone says oil is good you get you know hauled off to one of his you know
00:33:27 communist gulags or whatnot and uh now like that was like a punchline everyone's like oh charlie
00:33:32 angus what a nutcase and now the liberals are basically doing it with the oil and gas sector
00:33:37 yeah so i i don't have all the details but i was reading up on it a bit this morning because your 0.57
00:33:42 colleague, Rachel Emanuel, very smartly flagged it on Twitter and said, guys, what's going on here?
00:33:48 So apparently, this is generally what's happening. If you are an oil and gas company and you publish
00:33:55 the fact that, say, you are capturing CO2, like at the other end of your production pipe, you're
00:34:00 capturing it somehow. And this is having this kind of an impact on the environment. Apparently,
00:34:05 the Trudeau government is looking to do some sort of embedded fact check sort of thing.
00:34:11 So some panel somewhere will be able to decide whether or not to sue you as an environmental
00:34:17 organization, meaning the energy company, and say that you have to prove all of that based on this
00:34:23 international panel of experts. Just imagine what their standards are. And so this is a little bit
00:34:29 concerning, and it's something that the minister here in Alberta, Rebecca Schultz, was flagging,
00:34:33 saying we can't go down this road because this is censorship. This is a strange gag law. You're
00:34:39 attacking our energy industry again. And so it's definitely something to keep an eye on. Apparently
00:34:44 it's before the Senate right now. So we're going to be kicking some tires on this thing this week,
00:34:48 but some to say it looks like the Trudeau government is attacking Alberta's energy sector
00:34:54 again, but this time in a weird sort of censorship fact check, you can't prove that sort of way.
00:35:01 And again, that's another way for an oil and gas company to be hindered, right? To have a pack
00:35:06 of international groups on their back all the time trying to reduce their ability to produce product
00:35:12 very similar in the way that they were trying to ban pipelines the way they were trying to
00:35:16 ban tankers it just seems like they're trying to put through just transition and put people 0.99
00:35:20 out of jobs so it just seems like a never-ending attack largely against alberta's main sector the
00:35:25 energy sector but this time it's kind of strange it's a almost a censorship version of it so
00:35:30 definitely something we have to look into yeah and it's buried in the budget and anytime they
00:35:35 take something of this nature and slip it in the budget we should always be mindful because they're
00:35:38 trying to hope that it's not big enough that it would rise to the point of bringing up outrage
00:35:43 but they wouldn't want to just want to keep it under the radar which is why no one really paid
00:35:47 attention when the budget was first announced yes exactly uh if that can a couple of things for
00:35:52 people uh one figure out how to read a budget i know it can get cumbersome i think the last
00:35:58 federal budget was i think it was 600 pages or something crazy like just inexcusably long
00:36:04 It's padded with way too much social stuff and not the actual these are the numbers, these are the
00:36:08 facts, let your feelings to be determined after the fact. There's a lot of feelings packed in there
00:36:14 but I would just definitely recommend that people get used to looking towards the back and the annex
00:36:18 and looking at historical data tables on where spending has gone, where taxes have gone and then
00:36:24 really try to scour it and try to find any new taxes that are buried in there. Provincial budgets
00:36:30 are usually a better place to start because they're usually much more straightforward and a lot
00:36:34 shorter. There isn't a lot of filler shoved in there. And so I would start there. That's how we
00:36:39 found the Netflix tax in British Columbia. That's how we found out, for example, they were removing
00:36:43 the PST exemption on soda pop there. It's those details that will eventually nickel and dime you
00:36:49 to death. And they represent new taxes. But again, this seems like something that isn't even a tax
00:36:54 issue. And so to have them put it in the budget, it's just really head scratching. So we're
00:36:59 definitely going to be taking a look at that. Yeah, you mentioned the Netflix tax, by the way,
00:37:03 You and I have been around long enough into politics to remember when Stephen Harper was just relentlessly mocked by the media for saying the liberals were going to tax your Netflix show.
00:37:12 And now, admittedly, Stephen Harper, we should play the clip.
00:37:14 It was really, I watched it not that long ago.
00:37:17 It was one of those, like, Stephen Harper trying to be relatable clips where it's like he's listing TV shows he likes and it's not believable that he's ever seen any of the shows.
00:37:25 He's like, I particularly like Breaking Bad.
00:37:29 uh like it was like i particularly like insert popular show here but but he was right i mean
00:37:35 the core point was well breaking bad is a good show he was right about that but he was right
00:37:39 that the liberals were going to tax netflix now it took them a decade but he wasn't lying
00:37:43 no he still did it it's the same as when he was saying they're gonna have little itty bitty
00:37:47 deficits meanwhile there's a 40 billion dollar deficit and the finance minister is scolding
00:37:54 reporters about passing down debt to the last generation and her government has doubled the debt.
00:38:01 It's kind of crazy pills. You start wondering if you're in the same sort of timeline of reality
00:38:05 as everybody else. But yeah, I remember when he said that. It was during the 2015 election campaign.
00:38:11 And yeah, it was similar. So the funniest thing, I can't repeat the funniest thing I saw him say
00:38:16 once on the CBC because it's, you know, that way. But the other funniest thing I saw him say once
00:38:21 is when they remember when they asked him if he had ever if he smoked marijuana yeah and he said
00:38:26 yeah wasn't his answer well i have asthma i've never smoked anything or something no it was
00:38:30 better he's like do i look like i smoke marijuana oh he just did this deadpan to the camera i think
00:38:38 he had like a sweater vest on and stuff while he was doing it but no i remember when that was like
00:38:43 the question that could sink your political career like that that shows that now now it's like we
00:38:47 of a leader who's like i smoked it while i was in office and he still gets elected not today why
00:38:53 yeah of course it's quite bizarre and so this is where i just i want to bring it back to
00:38:58 affordability and taxes for a second and i just really wanted to stress to people
00:39:01 um i heard this i heard the capital gains tax brought up on my local fm rock station like a
00:39:10 couple djs in the morning talking about it and so i wanted to urge people this has trickled down to
00:39:16 the normal people like the people who don't follow politics shows like this people who don't follow
00:39:20 the play-by-play in the house of commons average working people now are talking about this and so
00:39:25 a little bit of homework if i can take this and tell it to your sister and your brother-in-law
00:39:31 and all of the normies in your family who don't live and breathe politics and tell them how it's
00:39:36 going to affect them and namely how quickly trudeau is going to burn through this money
00:39:41 because of his spending habits i think there's a chance that we can get the majority of politicians
00:39:47 to eventually be opposed to something like this if we get enough people at the door angry about this
00:39:53 okay we've got something for you chris sean has earned his keep today sean take it away
00:39:58 something you might not know about me is that i love movies and tv shows one of my all-time
00:40:04 favorites is breaking bad it's even available on some online streaming services if you've never
00:40:09 seen it. But I'm running for Prime Minister, so why am I talking to you about TV shows?
00:40:15 Because some politicians want to tax digital streaming services like Netflix and YouTube.
00:40:20 Some have even called on us to introduce a Netflix tax. Now Justin Trudeau and Thomas
00:40:25 Mulcair have left the door wide open to doing just that. I'm 100% against a Netflix tax.
00:40:32 Always have been, always will be. So the choice is clear. Only our Conservative Party can be
00:40:37 trusted to focus on the needs of canadian consumers and to keep your taxes low only our
00:40:43 party can be trusted not to bring forward a new netflix tax i like movies and tv shows
00:40:54 i'm making fun of him i i loved how honest he and authentic he was about that he never tried to be
00:41:00 cool and when he did like let loose he was always very fun like when he was singing and stuff like
00:41:05 that but yeah uh in any case yeah he was right stephen harper called it right there and i must
00:41:10 stress the liberal party at the time the tweet's still up said we will never never bring in a
00:41:16 netflix tax have a good day like sunny way remember how that used to be their communication that was
00:41:22 so much nicer and now they're doing one better not just the tax but also and we're going to
00:41:25 manipulate what you see on the home page of it and you will like it no so good good job pulling
00:41:32 that up. That was a blast from the past for sure. All right. Well, thanks Sean there. Chris Sims
00:41:36 from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We will see you next week. Thanks for coming on as always.
00:41:41 You bet. All right. Now I should, I was not going to bring this up because I went through like
00:41:45 painstaking efforts to hide it from you, but it's amusing now. And I may have to like crowdfund a
00:41:51 new computer. So like 10 minutes into the show, I spilled half of my coffee on my laptop. And so I
00:41:58 was like furiously like trying to avoid you seeing me wipe it up with a shirt which i've probably now
00:42:04 ruined because it was the only thing i had available so anytime there was a guest on the
00:42:08 screen uh assume that i was like doing this and sean was like very graciously not throwing the
00:42:14 camera back to me but uh i don't know my computer is not it's not in in flames so uh we'll see it
00:42:19 might just smell like uh smell like americano uh anyway all right thank you so much to everyone
00:42:24 for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is
00:42:29 the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:42:34 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:42:36 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:42:54 We'll be right back.
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