Juno News - Crisis？ What Crisis？

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juno News. Welcome back to another episode of Not Sorry. I'm Alexander Brown. I'm director

00:00:08.060 of the National Citizens Coalition. I'm a writer, campaigner, a columnist. Thrilled

00:00:13.040 to have you here. And while you are here, I want you to take advantage of our subscription

00:00:17.480 discount. If you click right here, that's junonews.com slash not sorry for 20% off.

00:00:24.400 And Brian Lilly joins the show today. Great guest, big fan of his work. He's a terrific

00:00:30.120 columnist. He's got a new website, brianlilly.com, where he's doing some great work on Substack.

00:00:35.960 We have a lot to talk about because these false starts, these failures to launch, they are mounting

00:00:40.960 for the federal government. We've heard all this wonderful talk that things are getting better.

00:00:46.100 But if you're like me, if you follow the work here on Juno News, if you're up to date,

00:00:51.980 if you see the trend lines going in this direction, you know that things aren't getting

00:00:56.480 a whole lot better. The prime minister is back overseas right now, meeting with ostensibly

00:01:02.600 his left-wing pals. And our press is asking him, just what exactly are you accomplishing

00:01:09.120 right now at this moment of multiple domestic crises? And I want you to listen to whatever

00:01:16.820 this word salad response is.

00:01:18.760 You've mentioned both in New York and London in recent days, you've been meeting with lots

00:01:22.760 of business leaders and CEOs. For the most part, we don't know who those people are. Can

00:01:25.660 you tell us who those people are? And will you commit that your office share who you meet

00:01:29.460 with at a business level like this?

00:01:30.720 Yeah, I think we'll, we share broad, it's a good question. I actually don't know what we

00:01:39.380 share to be honest. I mean, how's that for an honest answer? And...

00:01:43.720 Can you tell us a few people you've met?

00:01:45.720 I met with, we met today with a number of infrastructure, basically infrastructure type

00:01:52.520 investors.

00:01:52.720 I know how I sound when I'm lying, or when I'm spinning, or when I'm stalling for time

00:01:59.060 and grasping at straws and looking for the exits. And it's a lot like that. And this is a moment

00:02:05.180 where key immigration issues persist, where key crime and chaos issues persist, where inflation

00:02:13.320 is rampant, unemployment. The Canadian voter is, some of them are realizing evidently by the

00:02:21.200 polls where the conservatives are now leading and Angus Reid are realizing that, you know,

00:02:25.180 once elbows up recedes this, this percentage of, of the population who maybe fell for the,

00:02:30.820 the, the very worst of it. And, and some of the unhelpful rhetoric that we're still left

00:02:35.340 with all these issues and that these issues should have been, you know, top of mind the

00:02:40.520 whole time. They, they, they never should have, our domestic self-inflicted liberal crises should

00:02:46.900 have always stayed at the tippity top of, of concerns and concerns so big that we have a

00:02:55.560 interim parliamentary budget officer making an unprecedented statement last week, raising

00:03:03.080 the alarm on like I've ever seen. When we talked to Brian Lilly, I know that he's mentioned that

00:03:07.700 he's never seen language like this. He's sounding the alarm, not just by saying, you know,

00:03:12.820 this is unsustainable. He's saying this is stupefying. He's saying our deficit, if we don't

00:03:18.400 get it in control, this is over. I've never seen language like that. If, if, you know,

00:03:24.640 an esteemed professional is being that hyperbolic, that tells you that it's, you know, kind of a big

00:03:30.540 issue. And so take a look at this clip.

00:03:33.600 How alarming is that for, for the average Canadian, for the taxpayer, because there is only one taxpayer,

00:03:37.720 right? It should be very alarming, right? The, these are, I don't know, I think I used the words in

00:03:44.700 French and which the translators probably got really well, like stupefying, shocking, right? 0.72

00:03:51.500 This is not, it's not a, it's, it's not, it's not a, it's not a funny fiscal outlook. It's, it's a really

00:04:01.580 serious fiscal outlook. It's, and we don't lightly use the word unsustainable, right? Unsustainable

00:04:10.540 means you don't have the option of saying, maybe I'll wait a couple of years. I'll see how things

00:04:17.280 go. It means if you don't change, this is done.

00:04:21.800 If you don't change, this is done. And I think we, we all feel that if you're a part of this

00:04:29.020 audience, you know how difficult things are out there right now. You know how much we've seemingly

00:04:33.920 lost as a country and need to get back. So join Brian and I for this chat. Let's, let's talk a

00:04:39.400 little common sense, holding the liberals to account and, and making sense of these false starts and do

00:04:45.360 take advantage of that promo code at junonews.com slash not sorry. Brian Lilly joins the show now

00:04:52.120 here on Juno news. Brian famed political columnist for the Toronto sun show host has a terrific new

00:04:59.040 substack at brianlilly.com. Brian, thanks for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. Now, Brian, you just

00:05:05.100 wrote, I was just reading it this morning on, on Carney's UK trip where, you know, it's seeming a little

00:05:11.600 bit like, like a sham while there's all these domestic crises happening at home. You mentioned

00:05:16.720 that we see him meeting with your Starmer again. We see him meeting with the Australian PM, the Spanish

00:05:23.020 PM, Iceland's PM, and I will not try to pronounce her name, but we don't see any deliverables at a

00:05:30.200 news conference touting all his great work. He was asked about all these business leaders he's meeting

00:05:35.220 with. And the answer was clearly a struggle for him to say anything of substance as is becoming the

00:05:41.540 norm. What is your concern here as, you know, he's overseas with all these issues at hand and

00:05:47.340 why are we not seeing deliverables from this trip and potentially others?

00:05:53.020 So my issue isn't that he was out of the country, that he was meeting with foreign leaders. I'd like

00:05:58.660 him to do that. That is a part of the job, but you need to deliver something on it. And, you know,

00:06:04.540 I was seeing people on X and elsewhere complain, oh, he's out of the country again. He doesn't like

00:06:09.420 Canada. And I'm thinking, well, if we want to expand our trading ties, if we want to actually

00:06:13.860 be successful at that, he's got to leave the country and he's got to focus on signing trade

00:06:19.300 deals, significant ones, or improving them. But then I was looking at his itinerary would come out

00:06:25.500 and I was like, wait a minute, there's no there there. I mean, just the other day I was defending

00:06:30.280 this trip on Warren Kinsella's podcast saying, well, you know, this is good. Let him do it,

00:06:36.020 but he's got to deliver. Well, how is he going to deliver when the bulk of what he was there for

00:06:42.380 is something called the Global Progress Summit? This is a meeting of left wing national leaders

00:06:50.160 and politicos from around the world. And it's put on by a group called the Center for American

00:06:56.080 Progress. That's a Democrat linked left wing think tank out of Washington, DC, whose day in,

00:07:02.420 day out work is trying to take down Donald Trump. I mean, this makes no sense that the people on the

00:07:09.360 board, the top leaders of it have all worked for Obama or Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. They've

00:07:14.880 recently worked against Donald Trump and put out papers every day denouncing the president. You don't

00:07:20.640 have to like Donald Trump either, but we're in the middle of trying to get a deal with this guy.

00:07:24.860 And you're going to spend your time at a summit put on by people who are opposed to him and his

00:07:31.740 very existence. That makes no sense to me. Plus, can you imagine if Stephen Harper went to the

00:07:38.040 International Democratic Union and described it as a chance to protect Canadian workers? The news

00:07:45.120 release that Carney's office put out on this was all about how this was to build the Canadian economy,

00:07:51.400 protect Canadian workers, and drum up business. He had a business breakfast on Saturday morning. Then

00:07:58.200 he went to the Women's Rugby World Cup to cheer on Canada. Look, if he's there already, that's great.

00:08:05.660 But if that and going to the Global Progress Summit are the reason he's there, I'm sorry,

00:08:10.200 those are party or personal events. That's not you drumming up business. The news release had the

00:08:16.400 Global Progress Summit as a kind of an add-on. Oh, and he'll also do this. No, that is the bulk of

00:08:21.180 what he did. All those leaders that you mentioned are all left-wing political leaders that were there

00:08:25.980 for the summit as well to talk about how to fight against the right. And I know that hearing from my

00:08:33.740 audience this morning, the Juno audience, like their concerns right now, of course, we want to be

00:08:38.560 expanding ourselves and speaking to our foreign allies. I mean, I have similar thoughts about that

00:08:44.600 conference. But coming into the weekend, people were going into the weekend, we're really alarmed to see

00:08:50.500 the words of the interim PBO. Really dramatic language, unlike which I've ever seen before.

00:08:57.580 You know, stupefying. The claim that, you know, if we don't get this under control, this is over.

00:09:03.680 Over. Not we're in trouble here. This is over.

00:09:07.300 I've been covering the PBO since Stephen Harper introduced it after the 2006 election. I've never

00:09:12.960 heard a PBO use words like this. You know, like Kevin Page in his early days was sometimes co-opted

00:09:18.780 by the opposition and said things that were rather partisan. But I never remember language like this

00:09:26.720 to describe the fiscal situation. And so sure, if you're going on this mission to drum up business

00:09:32.040 that's going to boost the economy and make it so that that deficit isn't as big because the government's

00:09:37.620 getting more revenue because the economy's bigger. Great. That's not happening. And meanwhile, yeah,

00:09:42.160 we've still got an unsustainable fiscal situation.

00:09:45.040 Unsustainable fiscal situation. More reporting that our real GDP per capita flatlined while the U.S.

00:09:52.320 economy surges. If I'm not mistaken, it's like six straight years since we've seen any growth there.

00:09:58.040 And, you know, if you're if you're a regular person right now, maybe maybe you you went all in on

00:10:03.100 elbows up. Maybe understandably you were worried about some of the 51st state rhetoric. I think

00:10:08.440 we're seeing in the polls that, you know, the rubber isn't quite meeting the road with some of

00:10:12.680 those promises and this trickle back to the reality that if Trump is not the number one priority in

00:10:20.700 Canadian polling, we are reminded of how difficult things are, that that people are worried about

00:10:27.080 crime. They're worried about cost of living. They're worried about unemployment. And

00:10:32.240 if they're not going to get elbows up right and you've covered it, you know, so

00:10:36.480 fantastically this. I'm curious, do you see the air coming out of the balloon here with their start

00:10:43.940 where, you know, because these results are not are not coming quickly?

00:10:49.000 This in some ways is going to provide a real opportunity for the conservatives to get their

00:10:52.760 groove back. Well, I know most in the media like to point to nano's polling showing that

00:10:58.500 the conservatives are well back. Abacus has never found that they've always had the

00:11:03.020 conservatives a couple of points behind or tied. Angus Reid poll last week had the conservatives

00:11:09.360 ahead by three, 41, 38. So look, I think it's still competitive. You know, depending on what the

00:11:17.280 ballot question is, you're into a resume contest. And that's part of why Mark Carney won. It's like,

00:11:22.560 oh, we've got economic problems. There's a banker, there's an economist, but he's not delivering.

00:11:29.660 There's an old movie from the 80s called About Last Night. And Rob Lowe's this young guy asking

00:11:35.020 Jim Belushi, the brother of the late John Belushi, he's asking him about this event that happened with

00:11:40.720 this woman last night. He keeps asking, is she a pro? Is she a pro? And the line that Belushi keeps

00:11:45.940 giving back to Lois, at this point, we don't know. And that I feel like that is me talking about

00:11:51.320 Mark Carney. Oh, is he going to do this? He's going to do that. At this point, we don't know,

00:11:56.160 because there's a lot of talk. There's not a lot of action. There's, what are the deliverables? He

00:12:02.300 can point to some things, and they clearly have. Yep, they did the middle class tax cut. They lowered

00:12:08.740 the consumer carbon tax rate to zero. But food inflation is still going up. Unemployment is still

00:12:16.000 rampantly high. People are complaining that their kids can't find a job because of all the temporary

00:12:21.240 foreign workers. There's a woman in my building complaining to me she's an immigrant herself, 0.99

00:12:27.380 complaining that her kids, so she's employed, but her kids can't find a job. And she's worried

00:12:31.520 about her kids. And she's blaming the temporary foreign worker program. This is someone that was

00:12:36.680 supportive of Carney and now saying, well, wait a minute, what is going on here? So look, there's

00:12:43.240 lots of opportunity for air to come out if he doesn't deliver. And that major projects list announcement

00:12:49.760 that he had. That was an incredibly tepid and weak affair. I'm sorry, those projects were all going

00:12:57.560 ahead with or without being on the major projects list. I mean, the copper mine in Saskatchewan was

00:13:03.160 pretty much near completion. I think it'll be done next year. So he promised to think big,

00:13:12.280 act bigger, move at speeds not seen in generations. I didn't vote for Mark Carney. I did not write

00:13:18.420 columns cheerleading for him. But he is the prime minister. And if I want the economy to succeed,

00:13:23.440 I need him to succeed. We're not going to do that with what he's doing so far. He's not living up to

00:13:28.980 his own words. And I think if that continues, and people don't see real action by early in the new

00:13:35.160 year, by Christmas, or just after that, that, yeah, it's going to be like a pin going into a balloon.

00:13:42.080 Yeah. And I feel the same. And particularly on major projects where your reporting has been

00:13:47.720 terrific and your writing where it's taking credit for all these projects that were already well

00:13:51.300 underway. I work in the conservative third party space. So I'm a small C conservative. I'm the

00:13:56.960 director of the National Citizens Coalition. I'm thrilled to talk to the Juno audience. I contribute

00:14:01.900 on some projects like Project Ontario. I want to be wrong about this start. Like I'm rooting for my

00:14:08.200 prime minister. I'm not wearing the blue jersey. As you can see, I'm wearing green today. I would be

00:14:13.500 thrilled if this looked a lot more like 2014 than the absolute heart of those terrible Trudeau years.

00:14:23.620 But these concerns are mounting. And one of the ones that is really troubling people, and you talk to

00:14:29.780 the industry experts, you talk to MPs, is they are claiming to be getting it together on immigration.

00:14:35.160 We know generationally what a problem this has become. Talking to that lady in your building, 0.94

00:14:40.040 what a problem this has become. I talk to young men all the time. In my sphere, young women working 1.00

00:14:46.300 in the job market right now, they're sending out hundreds of resumes, hundreds of resumes that are

00:14:51.240 instead going to temporary foreign workers, seemingly, or those who came here through the

00:14:56.660 International Mobility Program. And there is new reporting today, or going into this weekend,

00:15:01.720 that Canada is failing to count how many migrants are even overstaying their visas. We are apparently

00:15:08.240 conducting exit tracking. So when you leave, your passport is getting flagged in the system. But

00:15:13.860 refusing to share these numbers publicly tells us, and we could all assume that this was going on,

00:15:21.200 that there is a significant amount who are staying here illegally. We have, in the next few years,

00:15:27.120 4.9 million temporary visas coming up. Given the level of outright fraud that's taken place from

00:15:34.820 some of these scummy colleges to these LMIA postings that don't pass the smell test,

00:15:41.180 what would be your concern there that if we're failing to release to the public how many migrants

00:15:47.100 are overstaying their welcome, how bad might this number actually be?

00:15:50.420 It'll be staggering. Could be in the millions. Look, we've taken an immigration system that under

00:15:56.780 successive liberal and conservative governments was seen as a model. Other countries would study it

00:16:02.700 for what to do. If they were to study it today, it would be what not to do. And let me put this in

00:16:10.100 perspective. This is not good for anyone involved in this situation. Unless we just want declining

00:16:15.840 living standards and a harder life, this is not good for anyone. Because it has put a strain on

00:16:22.120 the housing stock in this country. It is putting a strain on the healthcare system. It's putting a

00:16:28.560 strain on a lot of things. When you bring in people faster than you can house them, get them healthcare,

00:16:32.960 find them jobs. You know, when my parents came to Canada in 1968, it took them five years to be able

00:16:40.580 to save up and buy a home. And they were young. They were in their early 20s when they came.

00:16:46.940 And they started having kids. You know, my older brother was born not long after they got here. So,

00:16:52.780 you know, growing family, lots of expenses. They were able to make a decent living,

00:16:58.020 save enough money to buy a nice, modest, middle-class suburban home. You can't do that now. And you can't do

00:17:04.780 that if you are one of the newcomers coming in, unless it's, you know, the whole multi-generational

00:17:09.680 family pooling resources or the village back home sending money. You can't do that if you're the

00:17:14.480 newcomer. You can't do that if you are a Canadian kid born and raised here. We've made things

00:17:20.580 unaffordable. The knock-on effects are so vast. And, you know, I'm not sure how they're going to

00:17:27.340 clean it up or if they even have the will to clean it up. You'll recall that former Immigration 1.00

00:17:32.000 Minister Mark Carney, or sorry, Mark Miller, was at one point saying, well, you know, the way to get

00:17:38.600 down from 7.2% of our population being temporary residents is make a whole bunch of them permanent

00:17:44.380 residents. Well, that's, that, we shouldn't be making temporary foreign workers a path to 0.97

00:17:51.340 citizenship. We shouldn't be giving people backdoor entry into the country. That's what we're doing

00:17:57.900 with the asylum system. In 2014, 20, yeah, 2014, I believe it was, there were 16,000 people who came

00:18:07.060 to Canada and declared asylum. These are not people who came from UN refugee camps and the like. These

00:18:13.080 are people who showed up at our door, at our airports, at our border somewhere and declared

00:18:18.180 asylum. 16,000 and there was a 10,000 person backlog. The most recent statistics we have for

00:18:25.240 last year, 190,000 people declared asylum and that was down from the year before. And the number of people

00:18:31.140 waiting for their hearing is almost 300,000. That's a broken system, but it's being seen as a backdoor

00:18:38.120 entry into Canada because they've incentivized people to come. You, you, you know, they're not

00:18:45.040 going to enforce things. You get a work permit right away. You get a bunch of money to help you set up

00:18:49.320 your home. You maybe have your home paid for with a hotel or a shelter. This is destroying the system that

00:18:55.460 was there. And, and so I have no hope that they're going to deal with that 4.9 million people. I think

00:19:01.980 an awful lot of them are going to stay and, and, and the current government will not have the will

00:19:07.080 to, or the competence to go in there and deal with this. I hope you're wrong about that. I, looking at

00:19:12.520 those recent numbers too, I believe it's now one in every 83 people in Canada are, are, are products of

00:19:19.260 that just broken asylum stream where we have students just who are studying, you know, business

00:19:26.640 management at a school, like say a Conestoga who is coming up all of a sudden, oh, I can't go home.

00:19:32.300 Even though they're going home for vacation, they're going home to visit the family, but now it's, it's,

00:19:37.360 it's these fraudulent, evidently hundreds of thousands of fraudulent asylum claims.

00:19:42.100 And we were also causing problems for the Americans because suddenly we had 10,000 Indian nationals from 1.00

00:19:47.240 Canada going across the border and declaring asylum. So they're in Canada on a visa that allows them 0.81

00:19:53.900 entry into the United States. Then they go to the States and declare asylum. Why? Because they're 0.94

00:19:58.140 just trying to use all of this system as backdoor entry into either Canada or the U S we clearly need

00:20:05.500 to clean that up. They're tinkering on the edges. I don't see them doing the heavy lifting that's

00:20:10.740 needed. You're an active guy on, on the digital channels too. You know, you're driving millions of

00:20:16.180 engagements a month when I go on even to just my, my Instagram reels. Now you open it and you actually

00:20:22.060 just see immigration fraudsters, like just putting out messages being like, I'll, I'll mule you across 0.99

00:20:28.080 the border, you know, Hey, you know, Punjabi fellow Punjabi guys who came here since 2020, you know,

00:20:34.500 just the hop in the truck. Like it is, it is on front street. We're not even trying to, to hide it.

00:20:40.680 And that the new immigration minister is off to such a poor start fumbling her words in the house,

00:20:45.300 not inspiring much confidence. They can say that they're, they're lowering that PR number a little

00:20:51.380 bit. They can, you can see at least in the case of the province of Ontario, they are studying,

00:20:56.000 starting to, you know, put the boot to the, the career colleges to some extent, as well as the,

00:21:02.480 the fraudulent trucking industry where we're now hundreds of guys are being pulled off the roads

00:21:06.680 for the shoddy licenses. But unless you really cut into that 4.9 million, this is, if we think we

00:21:14.060 have record youth unemployment now, I can't even imagine how bad it's going to be in the next few

00:21:19.600 years. Yeah. Well, you know, 15 to Alberta was at 20% youth unemployment two months ago. It only fell

00:21:26.640 to 17% because people stopped looking for work. That's how bad it is right now. So getting worse is

00:21:33.220 not a good option. Getting worse is not a good option. We're, we're seeing, you know,

00:21:36.680 getting worse with all these issues is not a good option. And unfortunately that's what we're seeing

00:21:41.580 from what is seemingly a carny false start. Brian Lilly, thank you for joining us today.

00:21:47.980 Everyone check out his work at the Toronto sun and at brianlilly.com. Thanks so much, Alex.

Juno News - September 30, 2025

Crisis？ What Crisis？

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