Juno News - Conservatives rebrand to Canada First (ft. Kris Sims)

00:00:00.000 Federal Conservative leader Pierre Polyev is taking a cue from Elon Musk and Donald Trump and is promising to look into foreign funding.

00:00:09.320 He says many of the foreign aid grants are going to wasteful causes and he's promising to bring that money back home to Canada and to spend it on Canadian interests like sovereignty in the Arctic and national defence.

00:00:22.940 I think most of us are relieved to hear this at the same time as this happy news landed.

00:00:26.880 We also heard that Donald Trump is indeed planning to go ahead with tariffs on aluminum and steel.

00:00:33.220 Joining us today is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation, Chris Sims.

00:00:37.800 I'm Rachel Parker. Welcome back to The Rachel Parker Show.

00:00:56.880 Hey, everyone. I'm Rachel Parker. Welcome back to The Rachel Parker Show.

00:01:00.360 I'm joined now by Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Chris Sims.

00:01:05.480 Chris, I want to start by asking you, we've seen some rebranding from the Conservatives.

00:01:10.800 You know, I've been saying for a while, I don't think that still pitching themselves as a still pitching the federal election as a carbon tax question is the right way to go.

00:01:18.420 And now we're seeing them rebrand with this Canada First agenda that I think is really strong.

00:01:23.360 I want to just get your thoughts. What are you guys at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?

00:01:26.840 How are you feeling about this rebrand?

00:01:29.340 These are great questions.

00:01:30.720 And so I think a lot of us who've been following the United States and especially yourself with your great coverage of it with the Trump administration knew that this would throw a spanner into the works.

00:01:40.840 Right. Because generally speaking, a lot of folks who are small C conservative or want smaller government or they're more on the libertarian side of things.

00:01:50.100 A lot of them up in Canada will probably like what U.S. President Donald Trump is doing in the United States.

00:01:57.520 However, when he starts doing stuff like putting tariffs on Canadians and then we're going to respond with retaliatory tariffs, which are basically just a form of trade taxes.

00:02:07.120 Then we get into some pretty murky waters, especially when it comes to the narrative coming from the mainstream media out of eastern Canada.

00:02:16.420 So then it becomes quite easy to pitch yourself as a populist politician against, you know, the big bad threat from the United States against U.S. President Donald Trump.

00:02:26.120 We're seeing that exactly happen with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

00:02:29.860 You'd think he's running against Trump for his re-election as Premier.

00:02:34.100 So politically, we understand, or at least I understand, why Polyev would want to shift a little bit here to make sure that it's not just about the carbon tax.

00:02:44.720 But practically speaking, and in reality, we still have the carbon tax.

00:02:50.780 The carbon tax is still here.

00:02:52.900 And no matter what Carney and his team and those in the mainstream media are saying, he's not getting rid of it.

00:02:59.680 Like, this is just a weird narrative change.

00:03:02.960 He's going to crank up the carbon tax and then hide it from people and then take away whatever cash rebates they might have gotten.

00:03:09.380 So on the practical side of things, we still have the carbon tax and we really hope that Pierre Polyev continues to say he will axe the tax.

00:03:18.640 But politically speaking, as far as the narrative goes, I would say they do need to shift positions slightly.

00:03:24.820 Not a pivot, but they need to adjust.

00:03:26.760 So part of what we've been seeing over the last few days is, of course, in the United States, we have Elon Musk heading up the Department of Government Efficiency.

00:03:37.240 And we've seen Trump's excellent White House press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, announcing to everyone essentially what the American government has been spending money on.

00:03:45.560 It's like millions of dollars in different countries for plays on trans people and just crazy things.

00:03:51.500 And so, you know, now we've seen people going and taking a look at what the Canadian government is spending money on in the Department of Global Affairs.

00:03:59.240 And, you know, the values aren't as high.

00:04:01.100 Our government's not quite as big, but we're also spending a shocking amount of money on frivolous projects overseas while Canadians are hurting at home.

00:04:08.140 So I was wondering if you could go through some of the most egregious examples that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has found of inappropriate government funding overseas.

00:04:17.020 Yeah, big time.

00:04:17.720 So this is one of the elements we at the Taxpayers Federation are super excited about when it comes to the Trump administration and DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, what Elon Musk is heading up with some of his teams there.

00:04:29.540 Because we've been fighting this now for decades in Canada, and especially the last 10 years or so, it's reached an acute state of government waste.

00:04:38.440 So much so that that's what that golden pig statue is for.

00:04:42.160 We hand out trophies in a mock ceremony to politicians and bureaucrats that waste your money.

00:04:48.380 And you're right.

00:04:49.400 The dollar figures are different, but the intention and the waste is really the same in principle and in spirit.

00:04:56.620 You can kind of look at it this way, that Canada's economy is way smaller, and our population is also way smaller.

00:05:03.420 So all you need to do is add a couple of zeros onto it, and it amounts to the same thing.

00:05:07.260 So some of the most egregious forms of waste were, for example, spending more than $8,000 in taxpayers' money.

00:05:15.120 So your money, your family's money, your neighbor's money, on a sex toy show in Germany.

00:05:22.260 Now, I'm not going to give you the name of the title.

00:05:26.140 Franco Teresano repeats it. 0.94

00:05:27.880 It is so disgusting. 0.62

00:05:30.020 I don't say that. 0.85

00:05:31.640 But that's actually what it's called. 0.96

00:05:33.500 It begins with a J, and it involves a whole bunch of gross sex toys, basically, and somebody putting them on display. 0.83

00:05:42.700 Now, we spent more to take that show on the road.

00:05:45.520 A lot of people don't know this.

00:05:46.620 They did a weird bus tour through Germany.

00:05:49.480 Now, if that's your thing, okay, that's your thing.

00:05:52.980 Don't make taxpayers pay for this stuff.

00:05:55.920 That is an outrageous waste of money.

00:05:58.320 It's a very similar vein.

00:06:00.000 We spent thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars on getting old people in foreign countries to come into an auditorium on camera and talk about their sex lives.

00:06:13.920 Worst time, best time, last time, worst time. 0.95

00:06:16.680 It is the stupidest waste of money, and we also spent thousands of dollars on, there was this, it was actually called a lesbian pirate opera, where two women cross-dress as male pirates and then vanquished the bad guys on the boat, and there's a lot of singing involved. 0.99

00:06:35.280 Again, if you want to go watch a musical about lesbian pirates, like, fill your peg leg, but don't make taxpayers pay for it. 1.00

00:06:44.500 And if you're noticing a theme here, Rachel, that's on purpose, because, frankly, the government uses woke as a cloak for government waste.

00:06:54.820 They think if they can just slap, like, a rainbow flag on something, and it's still an egregious waste of taxpayers' money, that we'll be too scared to criticize it.

00:07:03.860 Well, that's not true.

00:07:05.280 Waste is waste, and this is a nonsense waste of money.

00:07:10.080 One of the interesting things that we've learned since the Doge was created was that a lot of times when foreign funding goes out the door, only a small percentage of the funding that actually goes out the door makes it to the desired destination, and the rest gets caught up somewhere else.

00:07:28.400 Maybe, maybe, you know, in contracts to friends of the government are taking a piece out of it.

00:07:34.200 But, you know, we've heard a lot of criticism that, you know, foreign funding is not all that it's made out to be.

00:07:39.720 Would you say that the situation is similar here in Canada?

00:07:43.220 Yeah, because there's next to no oversight.

00:07:45.180 So, for example, it's interesting that it's USAID.

00:07:49.200 I don't know how they pronounce it down there.

00:07:50.560 USAID.

00:07:51.300 USAID.

00:07:52.120 That that was what it looks like the fountainhead of the waste, at least the funding element was coming from.

00:07:57.000 It's very similar up here, where it's in the Department of Global Affairs, what you and I would have called foreign affairs a few years ago.

00:08:03.740 And there's this pot of money called the Mission Cultural Fund, but there's not a lot of oversight into this.

00:08:10.840 Like, there's only so many auditors that keep the track of books at the federal level in Canada.

00:08:15.700 We need more transparency and more accountability because this is the same pot of money people might remember when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a huge family trip to India.

00:08:28.100 It was very early in his term, and he did the whole Mr. Dress-up thing and danced and stuff like that, and it was embarrassing for a lot of people.

00:08:36.280 Well, one of the elements of crazy waste there was, again, spending tens of thousands of Canadian taxpayer dollars to fly a Canadian chef from Canada to India to cook him Indian food.

00:08:51.640 In India. 0.98

00:08:52.960 It's the stupidest thing, but it wasn't singular to Trudeau. 0.97

00:08:56.480 For the longest time, the Mission Cultural Fund, I'm not kidding, had a pot of money so that a diplomat, some bureaucrat working overseas, if they got hungry, they could pick up the phone and fly in a Canadian chef to cook for them. 0.99

00:09:15.040 It's mind-blowing, Rachel.

00:09:17.440 So suffice to say, yeah, we're wondering where a lot of this money is going, but the actual waste that we can even see going out the door is alarming.

00:09:27.620 So I have to ask, if we were to see a Conservative government later this year, do you think that there would be a better opportunity for the federal government and potentially even organizations like yours to get their hands on the books and actually do an audit of where all this money has gone?

00:09:42.120 So this needs to be a group effort.

00:09:45.700 There was something that Pierre Polyev said to Dr. Jordan Peterson a few weeks ago, and it's so true.

00:09:50.780 To paraphrase him, he basically said, politics can't be a spectator sport.

00:09:56.720 It has to be a participatory sport.

00:09:59.360 Meaning you have to, as Roosevelt told us all to do, be in the arena.

00:10:03.660 Be the man in the arena.

00:10:04.800 So even if Pierre Polyev becomes Prime Minister, and even if he calls for massive audits and will help as best we can, I mean, anybody can steal our homework.

00:10:15.680 We don't care if you even give us credit.

00:10:17.540 Go to the Taxpayer.com website.

00:10:19.600 Take all of our waste stories from the last 20 years.

00:10:22.840 Chase those rabbits down those rabbit holes. 0.99

00:10:25.200 Please.

00:10:25.560 So we don't have the manpower to staff an entire team to help the federal government find waste.

00:10:31.220 But if they can take our spirit of finding waste and apply it to other people who are digging through the books, that is what needs to happen.

00:10:40.280 The beautiful thing of what's happening in the States right now is that finding government waste has become cool.

00:10:48.540 Finally, this is the cool thing for the cool kids to do.

00:10:52.700 And if we can get an army of Canadians who are chasing those rabbits, it'll be a huge savings for taxpayers' money.

00:11:00.260 People will be shocked on how much they're wasting.

00:11:04.140 Like, and it's the federal level of government's crazy too.

00:11:06.640 But even here in Alberta, we handed out thousands of dollars to some woman here in Alberta so she could flop around on a lawn chair and call it art. 1.00

00:11:15.920 Like, this happens all the time.

00:11:18.380 And then we need to go after the big ticket items, like the CBC is more than a billion dollars.

00:11:24.000 There's stuff in Canadian heritage that'll probably make your hair curl for government waste.

00:11:29.120 So if we can just take some of the spirit that's happening in the States and apply it up here in Canada, we would save billions of dollars.

00:11:36.780 I remember, actually, when we covered that, I think on the Alberta Roundup, that, Archie, you guys should go back and find that episode.

00:11:43.060 It is hilarious.

00:11:43.980 You would be amazed at the stuff our government is spending money on.

00:11:46.940 Okay, Chris, just super quickly, I have to ask you.

00:11:49.180 Obviously, now we have federal conservative leader Pierre Paulyev saying, you know, I want to end foreign aid.

00:11:54.720 I want to focus on ramping up Canada's defense, whether that's for Arctic sovereignty or for the Canadian military.

00:11:59.620 All very good, positive things.

00:12:01.960 What are you guys hearing at the Canadian Tax Careers Federation?

00:12:04.700 How welcome is this news of this announcement that Paulyev has made?

00:12:08.520 So generally speaking, we want government to stop wasting money everywhere in every single department.

00:12:13.320 If that includes blowing money on silly procurement plans within Department of National Defense, that's fine, too.

00:12:19.020 However, when it comes to what our supporters want, our supporters, generally speaking, support wise spending in the armed forces.

00:12:27.920 That's what the capital W, Y, is spending.

00:12:30.620 And they don't generally support blowing money overseas.

00:12:35.200 Like we just saw, for example, a bill that we, again, spent thousands and thousands.

00:12:39.920 It might even be in the millions.

00:12:41.040 I'd have to check.

00:12:41.660 We spent a ton of taxpayers' money promoting gender diversity and understanding within health care in the Philippines.

00:12:49.260 There are people who are on wait lists in Canada for years for a hip replacement, for heart surgery, for knee replacements, who have been paying taxes in Canada their entire lives.

00:13:03.360 Why are we spending a nickel on that nonsense in the Philippines? 1.00

00:13:07.180 So that kind of foreign aid, yeah, that has to go.

00:13:10.280 Chris, thank you so much.

00:13:13.340 Thank you.

00:13:14.020 All right, everyone.

00:13:14.680 That was Chris Sims, the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:13:18.540 And, of course, fan favorite.

00:13:20.180 I've had her on my show many times over the years.

00:13:23.260 Now we are going to dive into our comment section.

00:13:26.640 Jeff has looked over some of your comments from last week, and he's pulled up some of the best ones.

00:13:31.660 We're going to take a look at those now.

00:13:33.200 Up first from at David Bale says, 30 days in the hole, same as Mexico and Colombia.

00:13:40.760 So many people getting suckered into premature actions or reactions, be methodical about this.

00:13:46.720 So, essentially, this was a response to the news that Donald Trump would be pausing his plan to implement tariffs on Canada for 30 days.

00:13:54.440 I really agree with what David wrote here about people being overly reactionary.

00:13:58.860 I think that's essentially what we heard from Viva Frey, that Canadian politicians played right into Donald Trump's hand by freaking out so much over the tariffs and making it such a big news story that, you know, they had no choice but to go and essentially beg Trump for mercy.

00:14:15.220 And then we saw that 30 days.

00:14:16.200 If they had played it cool the whole time, I don't think it would have given Donald Trump as much power to use the tariffs as a bargaining chip.

00:14:23.140 But Canadian political leaders stressed, essentially, their residents out over it by making it such a big deal.

00:14:30.320 And I think that was probably the wrong move.

00:14:32.440 Taking a look at our next comment here.

00:14:34.700 This is from user at Shelly Bennett says, Trump, please stop drug and human trafficking at the border.

00:14:42.160 Canadians, Trump is the bad guy.

00:14:43.900 This is so true.

00:14:44.740 I think this is why you've seen a lot of Canadian conservatives, you know, not really be super upset about some of the impact of the tariffs.

00:14:55.980 There are actually a lot of people, including myself, you know, we're glad to see that the federal government has been forced to be a little bit more serious at the border.

00:15:03.360 That being said, I have a friend who is an OPP officer and apparently police officers in the Niagara region along the border are being paid, offered a significant amount of overtime money to do these shifts.

00:15:18.920 And all they're really doing, from what I'm hearing, is driving around the Niagara Falls region.

00:15:24.420 And so I don't know if that's exactly a good use of taxpayer money.

00:15:26.840 I also don't know how that's helping to strengthen borders.

00:15:29.780 So I think there's more to be done.

00:15:30.900 We've got to really look in to see what exactly this money is being spent on.

00:15:33.640 Because if it's just, we're paying, you know, thousands of dollars to send police officers to drive around the Niagara region.

00:15:39.640 Don't think that's really what border security looks like to me.

00:15:42.820 Okay.

00:15:43.020 And finally, our last comment here is from No Heart Dare says, we definitely need to stop all foreign aid until our budget is balanced.

00:15:54.640 That was from five days ago.

00:15:55.680 So this guy, he knew what was in the books for the Conservatives and what Federal Conservative Pierre Polyev would be announcing.

00:16:03.340 I agree.

00:16:03.960 It is time to focus on Canada first.

00:16:05.560 That's the new slogan that we've seen the Conservatives come out with.

00:16:08.920 I've been signaling for a few weeks now that I don't think it's a good idea for the Conservatives to pitch the election as a carbon tax election.

00:16:15.500 I think a lot of Canadians have been saying that, and now we're seeing them essentially rebranding in preparation to go against a different Liberal leader, one who is saying that he will cancel or restructure the carbon tax.

00:16:26.420 Now, you can make the argument that the next Liberal leader, probably going to be Mark Carney, is lying about this.

00:16:31.600 And I think that there is a strong case to be made there.

00:16:34.100 However, I think that's something that Conservatives understand and that the broader electorate might not understand.

00:16:39.620 So you really have to actually listen to what the opposition, in this case, Mark Carney, what he's saying.

00:16:45.380 And the Conservatives need to position themselves against that, not position themselves against what they think Mark Carney will do, because I think that messaging would be lost on the electorate.

00:16:53.640 All right, everyone, that's all we have time for today on The Rachel Parker Show.

00:16:57.020 Thank you so much for being here.

00:16:58.280 I hope that you guys have a great week.

00:17:00.160 God bless.

00:17:00.620 God bless.

00:17:04.100 God bless.

Juno News - February 11, 2025

Conservatives rebrand to Canada First (ft. Kris Sims)

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