Feds won’t say if corporate welfare is working
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Summary
Environment Minister Volke Vissing has proposed an indefinite driving ban on weekends in Germany in order to help meet their climate goals, but will it be implemented? And what will that mean for the Canadian taxpayers?
Transcript
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i'd be remiss to not point out it's not canadian but this story in germany that came up i do you
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know germany's transport minister his name is volking vissing uh volking vissing now i'm not
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a follower of the german transport minister so i don't know too much about him but i don't need
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to know much more because there is a climate policy fight underway in germany right now and as
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one stage in this fight this is what the german government has promised an indefinite driving ban
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on weekends the uh politician uh mr vissing says uh it forces us to consider a considerable legal
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and factual uncertainties because they're trying to get their climate through a plan through and they
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don't know if it's going to go he says that they need to reduce traffic to help meet their climate
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goals and they can only do that through measures such as a quote comprehensive and indefinite
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driving ban on saturdays and sundays unquote this would be an amendment to the emissions reduction
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bylaw it would look at all sectors together and if the government is not meeting its emission
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reduction target they have to do drastic extreme action like for example driving banning you from
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driving your cars on the weekend now this is particularly extreme i don't know if it's going to go
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through or not we saw last year or two years ago the french government banned domestic air travel
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and it's so fascinating to me that a couple of years ago when you had some people popping up and
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saying well you know we saw what they did in the covid realm uh maybe they're going to give us climate
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lockdowns and everyone said oh you're a conspiracy theorist you're never going to have you know movement
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restrictions because of climate and then all of a sudden you have domestic air travel being outlawed in
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france you have in the case of germany the government floating the idea of not being able
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to drive your car on saturdays and sundays not being able to drive on the weekend so this is going
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to be i think an incredibly dangerous development now again when 15 minute cities people were coming
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up to me for a few weeks last year and just asking me 15 minute cities what are you going to do what
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are you going to do and i said hold on i if we're talking about just zoning and urban planning and trying
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to make communities walkable i don't really have an issue if we're talking about things that will
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fundamentally restrict mobility i would have an issue with it and again even from that position
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people are saying you're being consumed no one's trying to restrict mobility for climate and then
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well here we go here we have the game set match right there well uh let's talk about all of the
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things that we can expect on this front and more with our good friend chris sims from the canadian
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taxpayers federation we caught up with her in person last week back to our regularly scheduled
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program now chris always good to talk to you do you have a good time at the conference last week
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yes it was lovely to see you in person and i was front row center when you were speaking to premier
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daniel smith i i like so just a little aside people often do an awful lot of work at these
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conferences and they'll prepare themselves they'll prepare their remarks and they usually don't have
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a picture from it and so i always try to if i can take a nice picture of whoever is speaking
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and just send it to them because it's always nice to have a memento and it was nice uh seeing you
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interviewed the premier about this one little note there what you were mentioning with with the german
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minister you're absolutely right uh i'm of the same thinking of uh the government is often trying to
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restrict your mobility uh there's usually a war on the car so to speak especially in urban centers
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and well in uk this has become like an all-out war where you have the government putting up these
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uh high emission zone cameras and then people going around and like taking them down it was actually
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quite a thing for a while yeah exactly and remember that all started with toll roads that you could only
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get into the downtown core and at first it was you know so for road maintenance and then it was for
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emissions and now they've got these crazy cameras everywhere it always seems to escalate until you force
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the government to stop the escalation and i need to point this out with that german minister recommending
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this this is a minister in the government of a g7 country musing aloud about not allowing his free
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citizens to drive their own privately owned cars this is not some weird organization that is giving
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some advice to the government here or there on the back of a napkin no this this was the minister
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in germany a very serious player country so i did want to flag that and really highlight it
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um that we're getting there yeah we had no if i can jump in on that chris you're absolutely right and
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and we've seen governments for example do things like you can only water your lawn every other day
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depending on where you live and these sorts of restrictions and again like anything else it's that
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old i hate quoting al gore but it's the old frog in the pot of boiling water thing of these little
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incremental encroachments on your liberty don't seem all that big and you know if the government
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has the authority to restrict your ability to drive on the weekend they also have the ability
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to restrict your ability to drive on weekdays and that's the whole point here is that it will never
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stop at that because they especially when they tie it to emissions reductions if they aren't meeting
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their emissions reduction goals the rest of you plebs need to do it and you better believe there's going
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to be some essential worker carve out where the minister himself can go around in his uh you know
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motorcade or whatever but you and i can't that's exactly right there's a pivotal moment in atlas
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shrugged where the 20th century motor company which is the great novel of course by ayn rand
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the 20th century motor company has been taken over by these crazy statists and people have to plead
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their case every year please this is how many children i have please this is how big my house is
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this is what i need to be able to you know afford everything and so i can see ministers and ministries
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being set up to do this who is now essential why do you need to drive your car where exactly are you
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driving your car what kind of groceries are you hauling in it like see where this goes real real fast
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and so this is why again we always sound the alarm whenever government wants to get bigger
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uh sheila gun reed uh our mutual friend said that she wants government to be small enough to drown it
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in a teacup and this is why because regardless of you know if you like to vote green or if you like
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to plant flowers or if you like to drive your big rig um the government will control your life if you
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let it so thank you very much for flagging that that was new because we were so busy at the conference
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i didn't even see that on friday speaking of the conference and you mentioned my fireside chat with
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premier danielle smith i i was looking at you out of the corner of my eye when i asked i think my first
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question which people will see in a few moments which was about the gas tax and i mean obviously
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people on on this show will see the answer in a moment but i just wanted to give you a sense of
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what you thought of her response to that because i know this has been something you've been pounding
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on for a little while now and i hadn't really heard her address head on uh yeah i think they were
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your first four questions actually were along this line so good on you uh normally i do a wind up but
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they like ate into my time so i had to like just come out swinging but nice to see you premier by
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the way about this yeah tax increase uh but it's true and you know premier smith uh she's a big girl
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she's been in this game for a long time and she knows that her government increased the fuel tax so
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it was really good that you asked her that what i found interesting and to be clear a big fan of
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premier daniel smith she's done a million very good things for alberta primarily and i keep harping on
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this keeping spending below the rate of inflation plus population growth that sounds really nerdy and
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wonky so the government is not getting the credit it needs for this if they stick to this kind of
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spending restraint for the next generation we will have hundreds of billions of dollars saved so
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they're doing that very well but you're right they did fully increase their fuel tax so for folks
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outside of alberta we typically have a provincial fuel tax on both gasoline and diesel
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that is 13 cents per liter a few years back then premier jason kenney said you know what i'm going
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to reduce it every now and then based on the price of a barrel of oil premier smith was elected leader
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within the party and thus premier she looked around realized everything was unaffordable said you know
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what i'm going to decouple it really from the price of a barrel of oil and reduce it anyway so we had
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zero provincial fuel tax for an entire year in alberta and it was great we had the lowest gas prices in
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the entire country that's not so anymore manitoba is eating our lunch ndp premier wab canoe has had it down to
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zero now since january 1st so we're paying 13 cents per liter back up again and in manitoba they're paying
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zero cents per liter for the provincial fuel tax i hear what she's saying when she says things like uh we need the
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funds because governments will always say that they need the funds uh she also uh said that they
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need it and i'm paraphrasing her that they need it for road maintenance what i found very interesting
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about that is that the ucp government said in their budget document andrew that they don't use it for
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road maintenance it's i found this really surprising so it's right in the page where they're announcing
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their 200 per year car electric car tax and they leave this little sentence in there saying
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we do not allocate the provincial fuel tax to road maintenance but we still see this as an issue of
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fairness for people who drive electric vehicles that was such a strange admission so and then of course
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i don't obviously the premier doesn't sit there and write the budget document herself but i think she
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made the same assumption that a lot of us do is that it does go to road maintenance but her own
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government says that it's not so i don't think this fight is over i think if the government is
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able to do their next quarterly budget update and review and see the books and if they're in a surplus
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situation it would be very very very good of them to reduce that fuel tax back down again because now
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hey a little secret just for you and all of your viewers ottawa when i when we were just there a couple
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of days ago it had slightly cheaper gas prices i couldn't believe it wow yeah that's with
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uh hst instead of just gst and in general i think the fact that it's always more in ontario especially
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yeah so it was around if i'm guessing i think it was around 152 153 in ottawa i'm here in lethbridge
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back again and it's 162 like i've never seen it like this before so yeah it's uh people are kind
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of grinding their teeth at the pumps right now uh one thing i wanted to ask you about here is
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corporate welfare which has been well i mean typically it's been like the number one uh
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contributor to the quebec gdp for many years but a corporate welfare it's been under the microscope
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by the federal conservatives but not historically i mean stephen harper still was guilty of this in a
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number of cases there was a fascinating story you flagged for me that the federal government isn't
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saying if companies will keep their job creating promises so all of these big lofty goals they put out
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here about you give us this money we're going to create this many jobs once they get the checks
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once they get the subsidy so we don't actually know if uh you know volkswagen stelantis ford if
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all of these companies that have made these big promises will actually deliver on the jobs
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that they've said will be tied to this money bingo and so i don't know if i remembered to introduce you
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to our inter investigative journalist ryan thorpe he's an excellent reporter and he's with the
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canadian taxpayers federation very mild-mannered though so he wouldn't have approached you and
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and introduced himself i believe i ran into him in one of the hospitality suites ah he was probably
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maybe it was franco that introduced me but yeah i did meet him he would have been right next to
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franco at the time so we act as his interpreter his extrovert interpreter um he did so much legwork
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on this and i really wanted to give him a shout out for this because he went through all sorts of
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spreadsheets and so what i found i almost laughed so you're right you set it up you imagine no matter
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the color of the jersey that the the politician's wearing they do the big ribbon cutting and they
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kiss the babies and they say this is delivering this many jobs because we're handing taxpayers
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money out to fill in the blank ford or a solar company or loblaws or whatever it is it doesn't
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matter corporate welfare the only little problem there is that they're not keeping the receipts
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and the way it was described in the article is that okay say you get back the data from the
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government saying uh this is how much money it got the company got this is how many jobs were promised
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and then there's a column there for jobs actually created and almost always it's zero
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and we're like okay this is you know a little bit too good to be true as far as juiciness goes
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so it can't possibly be zero like there are human beings working in these places once they're set up
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but this is the kicker they made it all zero because they're not required to keep track of it
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not one bit they could hire three or they could hire 300 doesn't matter but it's taxpayers money
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so this was astonishing to a lot of people in the office that they have no requirements to keep the
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receipts on how many jobs are actually delivered once the cameras go home and the ribbons have been cut
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well quite something and it's insane too because you know you would never if you were in the private
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sector and you were signing a contract with someone i mean what do you do i give you this money you
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give me this service part of the the only justification for corporate welfare at all
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like the only one is job creation that's the only way to justify now nine times out of ten you could
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look at this and say it would have been cheaper for you to actually just hand out the money on the
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street to people then uh put it in because it's enriching volkswagen stallances and all of these
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things but but if they're not even required to fundamentally track the metric that the money is
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based on what the heck's the point of it all exactly it's just shoveling it out the door and
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it's to win favors and patronage that's all it is and it's disgusting no matter which party's doing it
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and you're right it doesn't seem to matter which government which party's in power this happens at
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the provincial level as well right we see corporate we see corporate welfare at both federal and provincial
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levels and for anybody who is cringing at that term right they think that it's derogatory to say corporate
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welfare it was almost positive it was stephen lewis a very famous left-wing person who coined the term
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corporate welfare so most folks in this game are using that term and again we almost never see any
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good return on investment and to your point if we saw person for person dollar for dollar we'd still
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oppose it because we think companies should be the ones paying for this sort of thing and not taxpayers
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because we taxpayers have no say but at least then there'd be receipts but there's not even any
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receipts these these columns were apparently zero in all of the spreadsheets that they were handing
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back to us wow that's crazy good stuff on this great work to ryan and to your whole team there
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chris sims we'll talk to you next week thanks so much for coming on you bet thanks for listening to
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the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news