Juno News - How can it get any worse for Trudeau？

00:00:00.000 Went and checked out the Reagan movie over the weekend, because, of course, that's what cool people do.

00:00:04.540 It's a biopic.

00:00:05.780 They didn't really miss anything.

00:00:07.560 The only element I wish that they would have kept in there was the challenger.

00:00:11.360 William, I think you're the only one old enough on this call to remember the challenger blowing up.

00:00:15.940 But that was the only part that they missed.

00:00:17.400 Are you guys planning on seeing it?

00:00:21.140 Go ahead, Cosman.

00:00:22.720 From what you've told me about it, absolutely.

00:00:25.440 And Dennis Quaid is in it.

00:00:26.720 I mean, he was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and it was a great appearance.

00:00:30.780 And he seems to have a lot of sympathies that I think we all share.

00:00:35.100 I'm absolutely going to see it.

00:00:36.680 I adore Reagan.

00:00:38.240 And that challenger speech, I remember it, where he ends with that poem where he says,

00:00:42.980 they slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.

00:00:46.460 I think it was just a wonderful speech he gave.

00:00:48.860 Yeah.

00:00:49.580 Speaking of that, actually, the one element that I didn't see Peggy Noonan in there,

00:00:54.060 which was one of his writers at the time.

00:00:56.720 But I must say, start to finish, it was reverent is the term that I would use.

00:01:02.240 And the look on Mr. Quaid's face at the very end of it,

00:01:04.860 when, of course, we all knew that he was leaving us and he wrote that final goodbye letter,

00:01:08.640 there wasn't a dry eye in the theater.

00:01:10.840 And Mr. Quaid did a really good job.

00:01:13.080 Anyway, I wanted to ask you guys if you were going to go watch it,

00:01:16.600 because I went and watched it by myself, and I thought they did a really good job.

00:01:20.400 But we've got a lot going on in Canada right now,

00:01:22.840 so we should probably get this thing started.

00:01:24.360 Welcome to Off the Record.

00:01:32.140 My name is Chris Sims.

00:01:33.160 I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:01:36.040 You might remember me from such shows as the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:01:40.220 But Andrew's out there busy pounding lawn signs in and kissing babies,

00:01:44.240 so we wish him all the best.

00:01:45.480 I'm joined now by two of your friends, William Macbeth and Cosman Georgia, both with True North.

00:01:51.320 Guys, we have a lot to talk about here.

00:01:54.260 Mostly, mostly, right now, Ottawa is all in a Twitter.

00:01:59.500 The Terrarium Police is in a Twitter.

00:02:01.860 Are we now closer than we were to a federal election?

00:02:05.580 Because did we just watch a big breakup between Jagmeet Singh and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

00:02:12.140 I'm not sure.

00:02:13.160 Who wanted to take that up?

00:02:14.380 William, do you want to jump in on that?

00:02:16.380 Yeah, no.

00:02:17.340 I mean, Neil Sedaka had a great song called Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,

00:02:21.620 and I think he may have written it about Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau,

00:02:25.360 because it took Jagmeet Singh years to break up with this,

00:02:29.460 I mean, maybe not abusive partner, but someone who was doing him absolutely no good.

00:02:34.360 So I think we have a clip of Mr. Singh's goodbye letter to Mr. Trudeau.

00:02:41.280 Today, I notified the Prime Minister that I've ripped up the Supply and Confidence Agreement.

00:02:46.280 Canadians are fighting a battle, a battle for the future of the middle class.

00:02:50.300 Justin Trudeau has proven again and again, he will always cave to corporate greed.

00:02:54.720 The Liberals have let people down.

00:02:57.620 They don't deserve another chance.

00:02:59.980 There is an even bigger battle ahead.

00:03:02.800 The threat of Pierre Polyev and Conservative cuts from workers,

00:03:08.160 from retirees, from young people, from patients, from families.

00:03:13.060 He will cut in order to give more to big corporations and wealthy CEOs.

00:03:19.060 You know, it's so funny.

00:03:20.660 You have to watch Mr. Singh and in some ways feel just a little bit bad for him,

00:03:25.320 because the guy so clearly in over his head being the leader of a political party,

00:03:30.920 he just gave away all of his political power to keep Justin Trudeau in office.

00:03:37.140 And, you know, every time he came out to complain about Justin Trudeau and the Liberals doing this or doing that,

00:03:43.940 you know, the first question put to him is,

00:03:45.480 but you're the one keeping him in power.

00:03:47.880 You're the one enabling his government to survive.

00:03:50.860 You want to stop Mr. Trudeau?

00:03:52.800 Well, you're the one who has the power to do it.

00:03:55.440 So why won't you?

00:03:56.440 And his answer was always something like,

00:03:59.540 and he had no justification.

00:04:02.680 So the fact that he's now finally ripped it up,

00:04:04.760 it must be, in my opinion,

00:04:06.340 a reflection of those very low polling numbers that the New Democrats are seeing right now.

00:04:11.100 Cosmin, what do you think?

00:04:12.640 Well, look, I also wonder how that conversation went down.

00:04:16.060 Did Jagmeet Singh call Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with the same serious,

00:04:20.840 like, tone and tough guy attitude he had in that video?

00:04:23.700 Or was it more bittersweet, like, traditional breakups go?

00:04:27.300 So, and it's funny because this is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's second separation.

00:04:33.200 He separated from his political wife, Jagmeet Singh.

00:04:38.240 And it's, I can't take him seriously.

00:04:41.200 As you mentioned, he's constantly defending the Liberals.

00:04:44.740 He's voting their way.

00:04:46.160 And this just seems to be entirely for appearance sake.

00:04:50.940 Yeah, I would jump in on that.

00:04:52.860 I think we have a clip here of a more recent element of it.

00:04:56.420 So, I've been around the Hill a long time.

00:04:59.420 I was, worked there for roughly 20 years.

00:05:02.500 So, I've seen this sort of political theater before.

00:05:05.920 That's all this was.

00:05:07.480 This whole, I'm ripping up the agreement.

00:05:09.580 I'm throwing his stuff on the lawn.

00:05:11.500 Like, this was a lot of dramatics without actual substance.

00:05:15.840 Because, of course, what matters in a minority parliament is a confidence vote.

00:05:20.840 So, he's, to your point, William, he's going to be asked the same questions on case-by-case basis, as he put it, now until the election actually happens.

00:05:31.500 I think we have a clip here of a very recent news conference where reporters were basically asking Mr. Singh, why are we here?

00:05:39.220 If Pierre Polyev moves a non-confidence motion, will you support it?

00:05:44.500 In terms of any motion moving forward, we're going to look at that motion before we decide.

00:05:50.260 We're not going to presuppose an outcome of that.

00:05:52.340 But we have torn up, I have ripped up the agreement with Justin Trudeau.

00:05:55.780 And I know that means that an election has now become more likely.

00:05:59.300 We are ready to fight an election whenever that happens.

00:06:02.040 And when that election comes, the choice is going to be between Pierre Polyev and conservative cuts,

00:06:07.720 who want to literally destroy our health care system.

00:06:10.980 We want to make it so that the only way you can get care is if you can afford to pay for it out of pocket.

00:06:16.900 Or new Democrats who want to fix our health care system, build it up so it is there for you and your loved ones when you need it.

00:06:23.500 That is a choice in the next election.

00:06:25.220 Yeah, so that was Mr. Sweeney.

00:06:27.100 He's an old-school reporter from CHCH there in Hamilton that was asking him that off the top.

00:06:32.040 I found that interesting, guys, that very quickly, as soon as he was finished his speech about ripping up the agreement,

00:06:37.240 most of the reporters asked him questions like that of, OK, when?

00:06:42.860 Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

00:06:44.100 I mean, ripping up the agreement means nothing if the Democrats are going to continue to vote to keep the liberal government in power

00:06:50.540 for the next 12 or 14 months until the next election happens under the fixed election law.

00:06:56.620 So, you know, and I love that line.

00:06:58.280 Well, we'll have to see what the motion says.

00:07:00.220 Well, what if the motion just happened to say we have no confidence in the liberal government?

00:07:04.600 We're not asking for anything particularly complicated here.

00:07:07.560 And it shouldn't take you more than a couple seconds, I would say, to figure out how you're going to vote on that issue.

00:07:14.360 But, of course, we also know that some have suggested that Mr. Singh's political strategy is motivated less by his party's policy and ideology

00:07:23.780 and more about the fact that he still needs a little more time in order to qualify for that very generous government-funded pension plan,

00:07:31.300 that if he gets just a few more months in office, he'll walk away with a pension worth millions of dollars.

00:07:37.160 And, you know, I guess only he knows in his own heart what is true, whether he's doing this out of conscience or he's doing it out of self-interest.

00:07:46.320 But I would have to believe that if he genuinely believes the liberals are bad for Canada,

00:07:51.440 if he genuinely believes they're wrong for families, then he would be voting to get rid of this government at the first opportunity.

00:07:56.460 You know, putting personal ambitions aside, there was another reporter who put a question to Jagmeet Singh

00:08:03.000 because the NDP, the federal NDP, is tied to their provincial counterparts, and there's an election coming up in B.C. right now.

00:08:11.000 And I think if Jagmeet Singh were to force an election, it would totally tear that provincial-federal tie apart

00:08:19.380 because he's going to make it about him when the provincial parties, especially in British Columbia and Saskatchewan,

00:08:27.600 are trying to form government in the next election season.

00:08:31.520 And I think part of that holds him back.

00:08:33.940 And he's not willing to admit support for any non-confidence motion.

00:08:40.100 And there's all sorts of, like, reasons behind that, as we've mentioned.

00:08:43.880 Yeah, for the next couple of months at least, just in practical terms,

00:08:49.380 a lot of their ground game is out in B.C. right now.

00:08:53.280 So they're going to be the ones that are doing get out the vote.

00:08:56.100 They're going to be the ones knocking on doors or the ones handing out the granola bars to all their little,

00:08:59.640 you know, volunteers that are going to be campaigning.

00:09:02.680 And so a lot of parties will share staff and people will move back and forth.

00:09:06.860 But the NDP in particular is the same party.

00:09:10.400 Like, it's the same structure.

00:09:12.400 It isn't just there's some friends among staff.

00:09:14.720 No, no, this is the actual same structure, same constitution.

00:09:17.660 And, you know, Chris, there's already been threats of separation coming from Manitoba and elsewhere.

00:09:23.120 Like, they're not totally, like, unified.

00:09:26.140 And I think a lot of the provincial counterparts see Singh as a liability because of his closeness to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

00:09:33.000 They're tied together.

00:09:34.280 Their fates are intertwined to some degree.

00:09:37.140 Yeah, for sure.

00:09:37.680 The new Alberta NDP leader, Nahid Nenshi, he's already made kind of rumblings like this.

00:09:43.120 Now, I haven't been able to pin him down on a provincial carbon tax yet.

00:09:46.740 I know one of his predecessors who was running for the leadership and then bowed out actually came out and said, the consumer carbon tax is dead.

00:09:54.120 Like, we shouldn't be doing this provincially either here in Alberta.

00:09:57.220 Say we got rid of it federally.

00:09:58.560 We shouldn't have one here in Alberta again, which was really important.

00:10:02.180 You've probably noticed, William, too, because, of course, it was the NDP Premier Rachel Notley that invented her own here in Alberta.

00:10:08.080 So to hear any NDP candidate, leadership candidate, say, you know what, that's dead, that was really significant.

00:10:14.480 And I don't know where Nenshi stands on that.

00:10:16.640 I keep asking him, but we don't know yet.

00:10:19.200 But you're right, absolutely right, Cosmin.

00:10:21.180 There is now this kind of, there's a bit of turbulence, I would describe it, ideological turbulence between the provincial elements of the NDP and the federal elements of the NDP.

00:10:31.320 William, do you think, what do you think is going to happen with Mr. Singh after this announcement?

00:10:35.780 Do you think they're just going to keep putting pressure on him internally?

00:10:40.060 You know, it's a great question.

00:10:41.580 I don't think he's going to have any easier of a political future post this announcement than he did heading into it.

00:10:49.020 You know, of all of the federal parties, I would say that the New Democrats are probably the least ready to have a full-scale national election.

00:10:57.600 You know, they've still got a ton of work to do nominating candidates.

00:11:01.360 They've got a lot of work to do raising money.

00:11:03.020 They have to get a platform together.

00:11:06.740 And he's still, I think, dealing with internal divisions in his party, dealing with the fact that so many blue-collar union workers have fled the New Democrats to support Pierre-Paul Lever and the conservatives because they see a better path forward under a conservative government than a New Democrat party that has really become a party of inner big cities, not the same working-class party it always used to be.

00:11:31.520 So, no, I'm not expecting much from him.

00:11:34.300 He'll find ways to support this government, either directly or indirectly.

00:11:39.700 Maybe just New Democrats won't show up for some key votes, just enough to keep the liberals in power.

00:11:45.420 But he's going to continue getting asked those very same questions.

00:11:48.720 If this government is truly as bad as you say it is, why don't you take, you know, why don't you put them out of their misery?

00:11:54.340 Why don't you send Canadians to the polls?

00:11:56.620 Interesting you point out that it could be that the NDP, at least at the federal level, is losing some of its seed corn, some of its base, right?

00:12:03.560 The really urban voters.

00:12:05.260 Now, I would argue that's largely because people can't afford things, period.

00:12:09.940 They can't afford rent.

00:12:11.040 They can't afford food.

00:12:12.380 They can't afford the basics.

00:12:13.660 They can't afford fuel.

00:12:14.540 And so that's when the rubber really hits the road.

00:12:17.960 And if all they're getting with answers from Mr. Singh is kind of more philosophical things and not we are going to scrap the carbon tax or we are going to balance the budget to kill inflation, real meat and potato things like that, I think they're going to drift to some other person who is promising them those things.

00:12:36.000 Cosmin, you were doing a little bit of work over on the other side, on the other team, looking at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's leadership of the Liberals.

00:12:44.480 And what you were finding is that he could be losing some of what I guess you could describe as his natural voting base.

00:12:51.020 Can you tell us a bit about that?

00:12:53.200 Well, for sure.

00:12:53.940 I mean, in Quebec, there's a by-election happening in Montreal right now.

00:12:58.400 And they're not even willing to use his face on their campaign signs.

00:13:03.060 They're putting the candidates forward.

00:13:05.380 Whereas before, you saw in past elections, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's face was plastered everywhere.

00:13:11.760 Everybody wanted to have pictures taken with him.

00:13:15.240 But now they've kind of sidelined him, put him in the background because they know how unpopular he is.

00:13:22.540 So how do you think this is going to reflect on the next election?

00:13:27.640 Are they just simply going to not show Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

00:13:32.380 I'll put it to you, William, first.

00:13:35.100 Yeah, it was a bad week all around for Prime Minister Trudeau.

00:13:39.100 He's losing friends left, right, and center, or left and far left and far from the center.

00:13:45.660 But he's losing support in Montreal, which was arguably the last remaining Liberal basket in the country.

00:13:52.180 He's now losing support from the LGBTQ community.

00:13:55.600 They put out a couple senior people from different organizations, including a Gallup count, have called on him to step down in order to apparently improve the Liberals' chances of winning.

00:14:07.420 And as if that weren't bad enough, well, he's lost support apparently of his own campaign director, who very recently just announced he was stepping down because possibly he didn't want to lead the Liberal campaign if it was going to be an utter crushing defeat.

00:14:21.880 That doesn't look good on a campaign manager's resume.

00:14:25.480 So, no, the Prime Minister's friends are apparently fleeing the sinking ship as we speak.

00:14:31.580 That's interesting.

00:14:32.560 So, I just finished what we would call a debt clock tour, and that is where we took our gigantic debt clock with the big screen on it showing the $1.2 trillion debt that we have here in Canada.

00:14:44.220 And what I was struck by is we only had short notice to give to our supporters because we were frankly just moving it across the province and wanted to use the gas money because we had to go park it back in Saskatchewan.

00:14:54.380 And we're very frugal with our donors' money.

00:14:56.400 So, we had a couple of quick pub nights.

00:14:58.640 I was overwhelmed by how many people showed up to these things with like a day and a half notice.

00:15:03.180 And what was really interesting is that in places like Red Deer in Edmonton, we were getting people out that I hadn't met before.

00:15:10.740 And the reason why is, again, to keep pounding on this is just how dire straits that people are in.

00:15:17.880 And I think that might be why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is losing what he would probably assume is natural support base, right?

00:15:26.960 I don't know who said it, but a friend of mine says it quite often.

00:15:31.460 You can't save the world if you can't pay the rent.

00:15:35.500 And it's just so true.

00:15:37.080 And so, a lot of these other issues might be taking a backseat or a back burner because Prime Minister Trudeau's government has overseen the unaffordability of pretty much everything.

00:15:47.280 To put the debt in perspective, they've doubled it.

00:15:51.400 So, picture John A. Macdonald and Laurier and Diefenbaker and King and all those folks who were Prime Minister during times of, you know, drought and depression and world wars all that time.

00:16:03.900 Take all their debts, including the first Trudeau.

00:16:07.140 Double it.

00:16:08.600 That's what they've done.

00:16:09.820 And then they printed around $300 billion out of thin air, which made inflation skyrocket while they locked down businesses at the same time.

00:16:19.320 So, it was like the perfect storm.

00:16:21.540 And so, I think that is why we are seeing these polls just going like this and them losing more support.

00:16:28.880 My question to both of you, though, William, you may know, because I actually don't, because I don't have enough people on the inside there.

00:16:38.160 Are there adults in the room, so to speak?

00:16:41.140 So, back in the day when we saw, for example, former Prime Minister Paul Martin turn around and say, I no longer have confidence in Jean Chrétien.

00:16:49.360 I'm paraphrasing.

00:16:50.520 There was a big bun fight and then they took over.

00:16:53.180 There were always these kind of elders in the party.

00:16:56.880 There were always the adults in the room to, you know, put the hand on the shoulder and say, buddy, it's time to take a walk in the snow.

00:17:02.620 Like, let's go.

00:17:03.820 Are those people there in Ottawa when it comes to the Liberals now or have things, has the regime changed so much?

00:17:11.280 Yeah, yeah, it's a great question.

00:17:12.540 I certainly think there's nobody within the organization who has any ability to tell the Prime Minister, you know, it's time to go.

00:17:20.520 I think he's built an operation who only tells him what he wants to hear.

00:17:25.340 And it's things like, you're doing a great job.

00:17:27.880 You know, you're just misunderstood.

00:17:29.960 If only you had better communications.

00:17:32.340 Canadians would love your policy agenda.

00:17:35.560 It's unbelievable.

00:17:36.820 And, you know, you did see that attempt in the summer to maybe bring in an outsider.

00:17:41.240 They wooed Mark Carney pretty hard to come back.

00:17:45.400 And I think, frankly, he took one look at the current Liberal government and said, no way am I attaching myself to that bandwagon.

00:17:53.980 It's like saying, do you want to hitch your lifeboat to the Titanic after it's already hit the iceberg and been sinking for two hours?

00:18:01.460 He said, no, I'm going to stay in my very cushy, cushy job that I'm enjoying now as a global elite.

00:18:07.680 And I'll wait for the next one.

00:18:09.320 So, no, I don't think there is any grown-up left in that Liberal government who's there to say, Prime Minister, you need to go.

00:18:16.620 Cosmin, what's your read on this?

00:18:17.860 Do you think he's going to lose more what he would, I guess, he would consider base support?

00:18:22.820 Well, I wonder how much of this has to do with the Liberals putting all their eggs in the environment basket.

00:18:29.240 They've pushed environmental policies from day one.

00:18:33.460 And, Chris, you would be great to add to this because the carbon tax, I think, contributes to this a lot.

00:18:40.000 Polls are showing that Canadians view affordability, cost of living as a more important policy issue than the environment.

00:18:50.060 And the Liberals have essentially branded themselves as these progressive, you know, first-class leaders when it comes to pushing environmental policies, policies that are often crafted in international organizations like the United Nations and, you know, the COP summits and all of those things.

00:19:09.920 So, there's a huge amount of unpopularity when, and virtue signaling, quite frankly, when the government is telling you, no, you need to worry about climate change more than, you know, the nickels and dimes that you're left with at the end of the day.

00:19:26.060 And it comes across poorly with Canadians.

00:19:30.340 That's a great point.

00:19:31.540 There's a lot to tackle there.

00:19:33.560 First, with those, you know, big so-called climate summits that they go to, Canada has shown really poor judgment there.

00:19:44.000 We almost always send the most delegates, even swamping the host countries.

00:19:50.240 So, we don't walk the walk, okay?

00:19:53.080 We don't, you know, if you, there's that famous cartoon, I'm sure you've both seen it.

00:19:57.880 It's this younger man and an older man, and they're looking up into the sky, and it's just black with smoke and all of these jets flying.

00:20:04.360 And he says, Dad, what's that?

00:20:06.140 And he said, politicians flying to the next climate summit.

00:20:09.340 And it's true, right?

00:20:11.060 So, there's that little level of hypocrisy, which also, by the way, costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars every single time they go to those things.

00:20:19.000 Number two, with the environmentalism issue, so, William, you're old enough to remember, I think, before, before the carbon tax and CO2 overtook that narrative, there was all sorts of stuff.

00:20:34.800 There was cleaning up, you know, garbage sites.

00:20:38.960 There was literally saving the whales.

00:20:40.980 It was keeping rivers clean.

00:20:43.120 There was all sorts of things that didn't involve taxing people to death for driving their minivan or heating their home that were environmental elements, and they were good things.

00:20:53.140 It actually reminds me recently, I don't know if you guys saw the recent interview with RFK Jr.

00:20:57.480 I found that pretty interesting that he said we've been tied, I'm paraphrasing him, we've tied ourselves to this carbon thing instead of looking at broader environmentalism issues.

00:21:07.660 And he's a good person to talk about it because he started River Keepers.

00:21:11.040 I still have my old Mother Earth News magazine with him on the cover of it from the late 80s, early 90s.

00:21:16.780 You can eat fish out of the Hudson River now.

00:21:19.520 They didn't carbon tax to do that.

00:21:21.580 He just made sure to clean up the environment.

00:21:23.660 And so I think you really nailed something there, Cosmin, where the current government will talk a lot about the environment, but then they're bankrupting average working families without anything really to show for it.

00:21:35.140 And the reason why there's nothing really to show for it, of course, is because Canada is responsible for about 1.2% of global emissions.

00:21:43.740 So even if we all joined in and like went and lived in a cave or ceased to exist, it wouldn't make a dent in global emissions.

00:21:53.600 So it's not fixing the problem that they had set out to do.

00:21:57.300 If instead we sold, say, natural gas, which is much cleaner, to a huge emitter like India, we would probably be able to get those global emissions down. 0.90

00:22:06.440 But that doesn't involve carbon taxing you with, you know, 15 bucks every time you fill up your pickup truck, $400 extra per year just to heat your home.

00:22:15.840 Like those, I think they lost normal people when they did that, Cosmin.

00:22:20.620 Yeah, and the Liberals have claimed that this is a profit neutral thing, but it's always been about the profit and their own, you know, parliamentary budget officers shows that Canadians are not making back a neutral, you know, pay in.

00:22:38.200 They're not getting the money that they put in back.

00:22:40.540 A lot of people are getting shortchanged.

00:22:42.900 And when families sit down at the kitchen table and start discussing their budget and the finances, I'm sure the carbon tax comes into the equation because they're asking themselves, what are we paying for here?

00:22:55.880 We're losing money to funnel to the federal government for, you know, Lord knows what.

00:23:02.660 Yeah, it's a ton of money.

00:23:04.200 William, did you want to get in on that?

00:23:05.340 Yeah, I mean, I think what conservatives find so frustrating about the carbon tax thing is that the point you make exactly, we could do everything perfectly, and it would have zero impact on global carbon emissions.

00:23:19.700 Until there is significant reduction on the part of China, India, and the United States too, finding better ways to reduce their emissions, it doesn't matter what Canada does.

00:23:30.940 And, you know, Canada produces liquefied natural gas, which burns with less than 50% the greenhouse gas emissions of coal.

00:23:39.760 And we could have become a global exporter of this cleaner form of energy and sending it to places like China and to India to wean them off coal or to at least reduce the amount of coal they're burning.

00:23:53.300 But instead, you know, we've had a government who just did everything they could to kill that industry saying, you know, oh, there's no business case for it, which is just, you know, infuriating for those of us who are like, well, except for now there's Qatar and all these other places selling liquefied natural gas to people who wanted to buy it from us, you know, and we don't happen to sponsor terror, which is another real upside to doing business with Canada.

00:24:16.620 And people, I think, forget that conservatives have led a lot of the major environmental initiatives in this country, you know, the acid rain treaty, you know, where we were at risk of having a tremendous damage from from acid rain due to pollution, air pollution, sulfur dioxide in the sky.

00:24:32.060 You know, that was a conservative government, Brian Mulroney, who implemented leadership with the United States.

00:24:36.600 Back during Reagan.

00:24:37.620 Yes, yes.

00:24:38.320 Another wonderful thing for President Reagan, God rest him, and, you know, conservatives actually go out and see nature.

00:24:47.060 That's another great thing that people forget, that it's by and large conservatives who are the ones who live in rural Canada, who spend their time out in rural Canada, out in nature, whereas all these people claiming to love the environment, well, they live in skyscrapers in big cities, and they don't really ever go to see nature or spend any time with it.

00:25:06.260 So, for the suggestion that conservatives don't care about the environment, completely false.

00:25:11.240 Yeah, I hear you.

00:25:13.560 Environmentalism was always a big deal to me.

00:25:15.260 I hand-sewed my baby's cloth diapers.

00:25:17.280 I've literally swum with the salmon.

00:25:19.060 Like, you know, my nickname is Hippie, like, in all the newsrooms I've ever worked in.

00:25:23.680 Almost all my stuff is thrift because I believe in reusing and recycling things.

00:25:27.320 Remember the old three R's? 1.00

00:25:28.740 Remember all these other elements of being a good environmental steward that wasn't just hung up on the carbon tax?

00:25:33.820 Which, by the way, like you pointed out, Cosmin, doesn't work, and it costs you a ton of money.

00:25:38.500 And the government's trying to tell you that if you give them a 20, you'll get back a 50 magically at no cost to you.

00:25:45.180 They're ripping you off.

00:25:46.440 Okay?

00:25:47.040 Anybody with a bit of common sense understands it doesn't work.

00:25:49.460 Hey, speaking of environmentalism, do you want to end on this fun story about the frog?

00:25:54.700 I think so.

00:25:55.800 I think it's a great story.

00:25:56.960 Okay.

00:25:57.960 Trigger warning.

00:25:58.980 I was a little bit, hey, true to my environmentalism thing, I was a little bit upset about this.

00:26:03.680 So, apparently, Parks Canada, the federal government, spent something like $10,000 over the last few years to cull, which I think meant to kill, one frog.

00:26:21.080 One invasive big honking bullfrog.

00:26:24.240 So, here you go.

00:26:25.360 Here's our headline from our website here.

00:26:26.840 Four years, $10,000, one frog.

00:26:29.520 Inside Parks Canada's costly frog call.

00:26:32.120 That's by Ryan Thorpe.

00:26:33.740 Yes, we have our own full-time investigative journalist on staff at the Taxpayers Federation.

00:26:39.180 Ryan dug through reams of documents through Freedom of Information requests coming from Parks Canada.

00:26:45.660 People might be remembering, didn't they hire helicopter sharpshooters to kill deer?

00:26:50.520 Yes, they did.

00:26:52.200 This is the same group of bureaucrats that hired foreign sharpshooters to shoot deer out of a helicopter.

00:27:02.820 And we spent millions of dollars on this thing.

00:27:05.660 And this is, again, in one of the most kind of earthy, like, hippy-dippy places that I love in all of Canada.

00:27:13.920 It's in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia.

00:27:16.600 So, they apparently had this problem with invasive deer that were eating too many of the plants that they preferred or something.

00:27:23.920 And so, the bureaucrats from the federal government from Parks Canada blew millions of dollars to shoot a bunch of these deer from helicopters.

00:27:32.500 Now, of course, the questions that flood your mind are, couldn't they find any local hunters?

00:27:37.840 Why did they spend millions of dollars?

00:27:40.300 Why helicopters?

00:27:41.220 But now, fast forward, I think I'd laugh if they hadn't actually killed the frog, but I'm kind of sad that they killed the frog.

00:27:48.740 They spent $10,000 trying to get rid of this massive invasive species of big honking bullfrogs.

00:27:54.340 And apparently, they got one frog, William.

00:27:57.980 Yeah, it's an impressive amount of money to kill one single frog.

00:28:01.940 You know, I understand the need to protect ecologically sensitive regions from invasive species.

00:28:09.300 Bullfrogs are jokingly called bully frogs because basically, they will shove any smaller creature they can down their throat in order to consume.

00:28:20.320 So, I can see how that would be problematic.

00:28:21.640 But, you know, it's the sheer incompetence of the program and the cost that came with it that really makes you laugh.

00:28:28.060 I don't know if either of you are familiar with Australia's great emu war.

00:28:32.560 It happened quite a long time ago where the Australian military basically decided to eradicate excessive numbers of emus in part of the country.

00:28:42.140 And, of course, they lost to the emus despite the fact that they were equipped with machine guns.

00:28:46.840 So, you know, I guess we follow in great historical precedence there of governments simply being unable to handle invasive species.

00:28:58.340 That being said, there is an exception to this.

00:29:00.880 It would be the province of Alberta, God bless it, that has effectively eliminated rats in the province.

00:29:07.020 So, if done well, I guess governments can handle invasive species.

00:29:13.380 But with deer and bullfrogs, they just don't seem to understand how to get it done without breaking the bank.

00:29:19.340 Yeah, we don't have any rats in Alberta of the rodent order anyway.

00:29:24.180 Cosmin, what do you think of this?

00:29:27.060 Were you hopping mad?

00:29:29.400 Well, it just makes me wonder who devises these plans.

00:29:34.100 Like, anybody looking at this situation, I could send my five-year-old son who loves catching frogs, I'll take him on a kayak.

00:29:42.220 All you have to do is promise him a Lego kit and he'd be able to do it within an hour.

00:29:47.540 It's outrageous.

00:29:49.000 Like, and I want to see the cost broken down.

00:29:52.220 What did they spend $10,000 on?

00:29:55.020 Was it the travel expenses?

00:29:56.660 Who are they hiring?

00:29:57.740 It just doesn't make any sense.

00:30:00.480 How big was their net for the bullfrog?

00:30:02.500 I think we have a picture from, so my colleague, Carson Binda, he's the bee, here he is, good old Carson.

00:30:09.520 He's our British Columbia Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:30:12.820 And he had his press conference in British Columbia just a few minutes ago.

00:30:17.140 And this is a great picture that was snapped by our friends at Western Standard.

00:30:20.780 So thank you so much, Derek and friends, for taking this picture of Carson.

00:30:24.120 And it's wanted, a real bully, Parks Canada, reward $15,000.

00:30:29.720 So the overall cost was apparently around $15,000, but specifically narrowed down, when you try to narrow down the timeline of catching this one frog, it was around $10,000 per that one frog.

00:30:42.140 So I think my team is trying to get t-shirts made of this thing.

00:30:46.420 So it's one of those ridiculous things, right, where people will often say, who are defending the government, oh, we can't have cuts.

00:30:54.780 You know, what do you want to cut first?

00:30:56.500 You know, schooling for little Timmy or health care for your grandma.

00:31:00.920 Like, that's not the case, especially at the federal level.

00:31:04.360 They waste gobs of money. 0.95

00:31:07.040 This is just one example of them wasting gobs of money for something this silly.

00:31:13.780 And again, I totally understand them trying to say, we need to, you know, reduce invasive species.

00:31:19.120 I get that part.

00:31:20.700 Why did they need to blow this much money on it?

00:31:23.280 And why don't they plan better?

00:31:24.900 For folks who are interested, by the way, in those emu wars, I don't know, William, if you've seen it.

00:31:29.360 If you go on YouTube, there's this amazing channel called Oversimplified.

00:31:33.420 It is the best.

00:31:34.680 It's this one dude.

00:31:35.600 I think he used to be a history teacher.

00:31:37.500 And then he got smart and went on YouTube.

00:31:39.380 And it's totally PG.

00:31:40.820 You can watch it with your kids.

00:31:41.940 It's all animated.

00:31:43.320 And he actually, that's how I knew about the emu wars, because my son loves Oversimplified.

00:31:47.280 And I sat there and watched it with him.

00:31:49.260 At least he was kept in the Commonwealth. 1.00

00:31:51.080 Right, William?

00:31:53.060 Well, you know, I have to laugh that for those of us who have worked for the government and have seen up close

00:31:58.680 how awful government tends to be at actually solving problems and addressing issues.

00:32:05.140 We often think the government is, it should be, the solution of last resort to dealing with any problem.

00:32:11.060 You know, I think in the case of the deer, they simply let a group of hunters out one sunny afternoon,

00:32:18.520 and they were able to shoot and kill about, I think, 500 deer, more than the government had done

00:32:24.740 with its helicopter sniper program had achieved in all of its other time of existence.

00:32:30.980 And by the way, the cost was zero, because, you know, hunters like to hunt deer.

00:32:35.040 That's kind of one of the things they do.

00:32:36.660 So, yeah, I, you know, when people say, oh, we need a solution, we need the government to take

00:32:41.420 this over, I think, well, I hope we've tried literally every other solution first before

00:32:46.540 we're resorting to the inefficiency and incompetence of government to now try and fix this problem.

00:32:53.500 We started with Reagan and we can end with him.

00:32:55.720 Some of the most scary words in the English language, I'm from the government and I'm here

00:32:59.660 to help.

00:33:00.260 Guys, thanks so much for a great chat today.

00:33:02.760 Thanks.

00:33:03.300 It was great.

00:33:03.960 Thank you, Chris.

00:33:04.640 Thanks so much for watching Off the Record here on True North.

00:33:08.260 And remember, everything that we have just discussed is off the record.

00:33:18.300 Yeah, I wish more people who are younger read about Reagan or learned about him.

00:33:23.400 I think they forgot there was a time when, you know, things were really cool.

00:33:28.280 And it was the 80s when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were running two of the biggest

00:33:33.180 government, most important governments in the in the world.

00:33:35.960 And they were just getting things done left, right and center.

00:33:39.400 Yeah.

00:33:39.900 Yeah.

00:33:40.180 We actually share a birthday.

00:33:41.280 And I wrote him a letter and said, you share my birthday.

00:33:44.100 We're both Aquarians.

00:33:45.020 And yeah, this one, this is his own biography, the autobiography.

00:33:48.600 And then actually, I don't know if you've read his own diaries.

00:33:52.940 I haven't yet.

00:33:54.120 No, it's pretty good.

00:33:55.980 Because you really get the sense of it's funny.

00:33:58.540 He was a big movie star.

00:33:59.760 So you'd think he had a big ego.

00:34:01.660 No, it's always this like self analysis.

00:34:05.380 And like, I hope, please, God, let me be worthy.

00:34:08.160 I really hope I'm up to this task.

00:34:09.940 Like this humble servant sort of approach when talking to himself over and over again.

00:34:16.040 And it's something, yeah, go ahead, Cosmin.

00:34:18.660 Is the film like more serious?

00:34:20.400 Or is it comedic?

00:34:21.880 No, there's nothing funny about it.

00:34:23.700 Well, he was funny.

00:34:25.120 Like Reagan always had a joke.

00:34:26.960 So his jokes that they put in there are funny.

00:34:29.360 But no, it's, it was almost to the point of where I'm like, wow, there's almost no real

00:34:33.820 writing in this.

00:34:35.080 Because it was like, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened.

00:34:38.640 Like, it's basically a straight shot.

00:34:41.340 It's a history drama, pretty much.

00:34:43.280 Yep.

00:34:43.820 Very straight drama.

00:34:44.540 And they didn't create anything.

00:34:46.100 You know what I mean?

00:34:46.500 There was no like weird dialogue back and forth where writers took liberties.

00:34:50.360 The only element that was out even called artistic is the way they framed it.

00:34:54.860 It starts with a young Russian man talking to an old Soviet.

00:34:59.260 And he's like, comrade, how did you let mother Russia go? 0.89

00:35:03.160 And he looks at him.

00:35:04.040 He's like, there was this one man.

00:35:06.440 And it starts.

00:35:08.000 My one criticism of it is that I think they spent too long on the Hollywood phase.

00:35:11.780 Like, nobody really cares.

00:35:14.060 They should have done that in about 10 minutes.

00:35:16.080 And they spent like close to an hour on it, which was a bit of a problem.

00:35:20.100 Did they do like the McCarthy hearings?

00:35:22.020 Because I'm pretty sure he was called before the Senate committees or the Congress committee.

00:35:27.320 Yeah.

00:35:27.600 Yeah.

00:35:27.840 He was right there on American blah, blah, blah.

00:35:30.940 So he was there.

00:35:31.720 They explained why.

00:35:32.620 Because he was also, of course, the head of the Actors Guild.

00:35:34.640 So that's how we got to understand unions and how they worked and all that stuff.

00:35:38.540 So they have him there.

00:35:39.960 I think I spotted Ayn Rand in the background.

00:35:42.380 I think they had her there.

00:35:43.880 But I couldn't, I can't be sure because I only watch it in theater.

00:35:46.860 But yeah, I would recommend it.

00:35:48.020 Anybody that's part of the movement, I would recommend it.

00:35:51.620 Reagan had this crazy idea when it came to the Cold War, set him apart from his predecessor.

00:35:55.820 He said, well, I think we should win and they should lose when it comes to it, which was different than what America had been under Jimmy Carter.

00:36:03.980 So it turns out when that became the goal, they were able to get it done in actually a relatively short amount of time.

Juno News - September 06, 2024

How can it get any worse for Trudeau？

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