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Juno News
- February 07, 2025
How does Carney really feel about the carbon tax?
Episode Stats
Length
51 minutes
Words per Minute
173.25151
Word Count
8,855
Sentence Count
8
Summary
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gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ
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Transcript
Transcript is generated with
Whisper
(
turbo
).
00:00:00.000
yeah i don't know if you guys have checked outside where you live but uh it's minus everything out
00:00:04.240
here i just took the dog for a walk and you know when the dog turns around and wants to go home
00:00:09.760
but it's too cold um it's below minus 20 here overnight in lethbridge uh and what really was
00:00:16.320
cheesing me off is that we're still paying the carbon tax on home heating and yeah yeah chris
00:00:24.000
i got my uh energy bill yesterday and uh i was shocked to seeing that it doubled uh basically
00:00:32.720
from the month prior yeah it was like minus 30 here the last few days but it is starting to warm
00:00:36.880
up obviously in edmonton it's like minus 15 right now so it's not that bad but uh heating uh my house
00:00:41.760
is uh obviously no easy task and uh the natural gas i mean and i i looked at the the receipt and like
00:00:48.080
a quarter of the bill or something is uh carbon tax so that's nice just disgusting usually the
00:00:53.280
carbon tax actually costs you more than the natural gas uh cosmon do you have the courage
00:00:58.560
to open your home heating bill um i'm kind of a chicken i just don't open them i just throw money
00:01:02.880
on it well i feel like whenever we talk about the weather i can't flex because uh i'm in victoria bc
00:01:10.480
we had about minus one actually the first snowfall of the year and the city nearly shut down uh but
00:01:18.240
luckily the school stayed open but it came very close it's almost an apocalypse over here
00:01:24.720
i saw you're right chris sorry i just checked the breakdown the the federal carbon tax is more than
00:01:29.680
the energy itself so again real slow the carbon tax isaac's paying on his home heating is more than the
00:01:38.000
natural gas he was using and yes cosmon i was checking whether in your neck of the woods apparently
00:01:43.280
they shut down the malahat highway because there was like this much snow god love bc all right
00:01:49.040
let's get this thing going welcome to off the record here on true north my name is chris sims
00:01:58.480
i'm the alberta director for the canadian taxpayers federation thank you so much to true north for
00:02:03.200
graciously letting me host i'm here with my good friends isaac and cosmon we've got a lot to go
00:02:08.480
through here uh and i wanted to kick things off with the outstanding job you guys are doing on
00:02:15.040
mark carney mark carney is of course the former central banker former governor of bank of canada
00:02:20.240
former governor of bank of england and he is now the perceived front runner to replace prime minister
00:02:25.840
justin trudeau as the liberal party leader and yes that means if he wins he will be prime minister
00:02:32.080
of canada it doesn't matter that he doesn't have a seat in the house of commons at least for a brief
00:02:36.640
period of time who wanted to kick this thing off did we want to start with the carbon tax i know
00:02:42.160
cosmon you read carney's book uh what were your findings in there yeah sure so we had the idea that
00:02:52.240
you know carney published this 600 page tome in in the year 2021 and we wanted to use this as a launch
00:03:01.600
point to investigate carney's background beliefs and plans for canada and the world at large and in
00:03:09.360
this book it's quite interesting although i wouldn't recommend you read it but you can read our articles
00:03:16.720
where we summarized basically everything he said and we're going to break it down by topic and the
00:03:21.520
first article in the series we really we released as you mentioned is on the carbon tax but he lays out
00:03:27.520
specifically in quite plain language and detail what he thinks about the carbon tax and there he says
00:03:34.720
that the canadian federal carbon tax the pricing scheme that the liberals introduced with the uh i
00:03:41.120
think it was called the canada carbon pricing act uh was the best model for the rest of the world to
00:03:48.320
follow and he's also talked about holding politicians accountable who abandon certain climate policies
00:03:57.680
and if you recall if you've been watching the news if you've been following mark carney's campaign
00:04:03.200
he's now walked back and done the exact same thing he said politicians shouldn't do now that he's vying
00:04:11.200
for a political office and not a public servant office uh he did the exact same thing he's walked back
00:04:18.480
on the consumer pricing uh portion of the carbon tax now the question is is he serious about that
00:04:26.400
because he's talked about introducing some sort of incentive initiatives for carbon uh reduction and
00:04:34.480
he's also talked about implementing a tariff believe it or not a carbon tariff on countries importing
00:04:41.920
goods to canada charging them for their uh i guess their carbon consumption of their goods could you get
00:04:49.920
into that just a bit more before i jump to you isaac for one sec uh cosmon what did he mean by like
00:04:56.560
holding politicians accountable if they dare sin against the dogma of pro-carbon taxary like what's
00:05:03.920
the punishment here what did he get into that right so what he says and i'll quote him specifically he says
00:05:12.560
climate policies need broad political support to be credible and he actually points to the fact
00:05:20.080
i guess when when he was writing this in 2021 i'm not sure that this was actually a fact but he viewed
00:05:25.760
it this way he says that a majority of canadians support the carbon tax and he's talking about the
00:05:31.600
canadian model specifically and then he goes on to say backtracking on ambitious climate agendas is more
00:05:38.960
difficult if politicians share the same goals and expect to be held accountable and specifically
00:05:47.280
what that means how to hold politicians accountable he doesn't get into detail but when you look at his
00:05:54.400
whole argument he provides a essentially an across the board climate agenda for carbon reduction he talks
00:06:02.560
about you know introducing climate uh carbon reduction policies for financial institutions where they
00:06:08.800
don't invest in carbon intensive projects he talks about uh encouraging corporations to adopt carbon
00:06:16.800
pricing models governments etc so he he wants a whole societal approach to carbon pricing not just a
00:06:24.720
governmental one but like i mentioned he does really laud the canadian model as the ideal one that all
00:06:32.160
countries should support the current canadian model where we can see largely the
00:06:38.560
carbon tax that we're paying like isaac was just talking about there on his home heating bill uh
00:06:43.200
isaac was it you that was getting in a little bit more into this whole idea of a carbon tariff
00:06:49.040
um were you doing a bit of a dive into that or so i saw a headline about this and it was one of those
00:06:55.440
things i could barely wrap my head around it because i can't really think of two words that are more
00:06:59.920
unpopular right now than carbon and tariff but he's sticking them together like the worst peanut butter and jam
00:07:06.000
sandwich ever um what did what was your take on this when you saw carney wheel out his carbon tax idea
00:07:14.800
in halifax walking back what looks like decades of thinking on this yeah uh well it wasn't me who
00:07:21.600
reported on that but uh you got that right chris about there perhaps being no two less popular words
00:07:28.240
in canada than carbon and tariff and we know this from from polling i mean canadians are vehemently against
00:07:33.840
the carbon tax and you would assume against tariffs given the recent uh situation we just
00:07:41.120
went through with the united states of course we only recently received a one month reprieve but
00:07:46.320
the tariff threat is far from over we've seen premieres from across the nation be against the
00:07:50.880
tariffs canadians against the tariffs we'll talk about that later in the show about the poll showing
00:07:54.800
that the tariff war has actually united canadians because they they hate it so much but what i did
00:08:00.000
want to get into chris was a few things i've written on carney because you said uh earlier that
00:08:06.800
he's the front runner for the of course liberal party election but uh he might be taking that a bit
00:08:12.560
too to heart because he of course has been criticized by a fellow leader in the leadership election for
00:08:19.760
the liberals uh ruby dolla who is saying carney you're you're not the prime minister yet i don't
00:08:24.400
know why you're behaving as if you already are you know we have to go through the due process here
00:08:29.120
of the liberal party leadership election uh why are you talking as if you're already the prime
00:08:33.840
minister and remember that election doesn't conclude until march 9th so she called him out on
00:08:40.240
on various occasions for example he said he was in um constant communication with various canadian
00:08:46.320
ministers and then dolla said uh in what official capacity he was communicating with them with and she
00:08:52.720
said quote does carney have a cabinet position we do not know about how is a private citizen
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communicating with cabinet ministers and what are they telling him what information are they
00:09:02.240
revealing to a private citizen that should shouldn't be happening and then uh adding to
00:09:07.520
that various canadians started uh calling carney out on x as well because we'll remember he was on
00:09:13.280
the um john stewart show speaking on the country's behalf again as if he were already the prime minister
00:09:19.040
this is of course the same interview where he referred to himself as a political outsider
00:09:23.280
i know and then uh uh swapping to another story i wrote about carney um albert environment minister
00:09:30.640
rebecca schultz actually called on the four remaining canadian banks in a net zero alliance that
00:09:36.240
carney created back at uh was it cop 26 one of the cops where he was uh leading it anyways since then so
00:09:43.760
there were four banks remaining when schultz uh asked that they leave essentially which was two weeks ago
00:09:49.760
since then i think her call has garnered some value considering rbc and scotia bank have since left
00:09:57.520
leaving only coast capital and van city which of course are two smaller banks compared to rbc and
00:10:02.080
scotia bank the two huge banks that left this net zero scheme so yeah i mean yeah uh what do you what
00:10:10.720
do you think about that chris the the do you think schultz had any influence on those banks leaving i'm
00:10:15.120
curious oh hopefully uh i must say that premier daniel smith has largely been the only adult in the
00:10:23.760
room when it comes to trying to talk us president donald trump down from these tariffs trying to show
00:10:30.080
instead of tell actually showing the law enforcement that was lining up at the border showing the black
00:10:35.360
hawk helicopters the drones all the work that was being put in there explaining that we should have
00:10:41.040
uh a north south energy corridor if you want to have sort of a fortress america thing like she was
00:10:46.400
really pressuring them diplomatically and i think that showed because on the eve of the tariff imposition
00:10:53.200
we were going to get nailed with 10 instead of 25 here in alberta especially for our energy in particular
00:10:59.680
so i think that shows and i think it's really important for other ministers in her cabinet including
00:11:05.440
minister schultz to show leadership on this stuff like we cannot sit back and hope that someone else
00:11:12.560
points out the fact that it's a joke that we do not have an east west pipeline in canada
00:11:20.000
in our own country it was one of those moments i don't know if you guys have experienced this recently
00:11:24.640
you know what it's like when you've got family coming in and visiting from out of town and you're
00:11:28.320
showing them around your own town or city and you kind of notice stuff through fresh eyes because
00:11:33.520
you're visiting it was kind of that experience recently watching a lot of this canadian stuff be
00:11:39.280
covered by american networks and hearing it stated out loud that we do not have an east to west pipeline
00:11:48.000
for our own energy was asinine and so hearing that again was really important very eye-opening and so
00:11:57.040
any time that we can push put pressure on these sorts of power brokers on things like having good
00:12:04.560
access to canadian energy is super smart the elements i wanted to pick on here with carney's announcement
00:12:12.160
is two things one the carbon tax is still here i'm a little bit worried that i'm hearing the narrative
00:12:19.760
coming from mainstream media but also i'm sensing a slight slipping of focus with the conservative party
00:12:27.280
that the carbon tax issue is put to bed it's over now it's not number one isaac you just opened your
00:12:34.960
bill it's still there we all have to still pay it period two it's going to increase on april 1st
00:12:43.600
nothing has changed so that's a huge important point here it is still here it is not gone the second
00:12:50.640
element element is exactly what these liberal leadership candidates are saying and in particular
00:12:57.360
carney he didn't say he was going to completely get rid of the carbon tax and nuke it from orbit like
00:13:05.440
what needs to happen no he's going to make big polluters pay well what does that mean in normal people
00:13:12.880
talk that means a power plant running on natural gas you think they're going to eat that cost and
00:13:20.560
not pass it on to you like think again what about a refinery that's making our gasoline and diesel for
00:13:26.960
our pumps we think they're just going to eat the cost of a government imposed carbon tech no like give
00:13:33.040
your heads a shake so this is just going to hide the carbon tax you're going to still pay it and just to
00:13:40.480
add a cherry on top to this which is so insane i can't believe i need to explain this again not to
00:13:45.760
you guys but like to people at large it was so crazy to hear this come back up carney is going to get
00:13:52.640
rid of the rebates so as anemic and scattered and unreliable as they are for a lot of people as of right
00:14:00.480
now some people get some money back sometimes it's a totally screwed up system i know i get it but at least
00:14:08.960
it's money that you can choose what to do with it you can put it towards your next heat bill isaac or
00:14:15.200
you can pay try to pay down some credit card bills or people can buy i don't know birthday candles for
00:14:20.720
their kids you name it it's money but no no that's not good enough for central planners like carney
00:14:26.720
they get really itchy with that kind of freedom cashiness so he's going to take away that rebate
00:14:32.960
and give you back these green points remember back when aaron o'toole tried this stupid idea when he
00:14:38.800
was conservative leader and you're going to get a solar blender so somebody who is strapped for cash
00:14:45.120
who's fighting to afford groceries is not on the market for a new furnace an e-scooter is not going
00:14:53.280
to solve their problems what will solve their problems or at least help solve their problems is
00:14:58.160
canceling the carbon tax altogether getting rid of it as a cost so carney trotted out his carbon
00:15:03.040
tax idea and it's the worst one i've seen yet that was that was my take coming from carney yeah chris if
00:15:08.560
i may jump off of that yeah it seems to me that this is an attempt to disarm the conservative
00:15:15.440
opposition he's thinking into the future uh probably thinking that he's going to win this liberal
00:15:21.920
leadership race and have to square off against pure poly ev and he wants to disarm that carbon
00:15:26.960
tax election plan that they had going but where i would differ is that i don't really think it has
00:15:33.280
worked because it raises more questions than answers and you've pointed out a lot of those questions he
00:15:39.280
talks about a climate incentive program to replace this consumer carbon tax the carbon rebates but who is
00:15:47.200
going to fund that who will fund this initiative and the incentive and with regard to continuing to
00:15:53.760
apply a carbon tax on major polluters as he calls them and major industries specifically the oil and
00:16:00.880
gas industry it just obviously how he's an economist right he should know that industries facing that
00:16:09.680
sort of cost will pass it down to consumers it's going to end up we're going to be paying it at the pump
00:16:15.840
we're going to be paying it with any good that's transported via truck so he's not answering any of
00:16:22.800
these questions and i posed these questions directly to his campaign and there was no answer at all and
00:16:30.320
the problem is the legacy media refuses to look into his past to look into all of the policies which
00:16:38.000
he's promoted during his time as the governor of bank of england you know his time at the united
00:16:42.880
nations his time at the he did a g30 thing with janet yellen the former uh secretary of the treasury in
00:16:49.520
the united states they were all pushing carbon taxes in the business world as well as uh with
00:16:55.280
governments and nobody's asking him whether he still believes these things or not they just take
00:17:01.680
what he says now at face value and reports it as fact but in reality hidden in these announcements and
00:17:08.560
there's no clear plan but what he's really talking about here is a national policy and he's not provided any
00:17:14.960
details or any uh sense of relief to canadians who are worried about continuing rising costs of living
00:17:23.520
and all of the things that come with the carbon tax like isaac's heating bill and the high price at
00:17:29.120
the pumps here in british columbia and victoria it's like a dollar 89 at the pump for regular fuel
00:17:36.080
it's it wasn't like that before that's disgusting i'm sorry um i mean it's not great here but man it's a
00:17:43.440
lot better i think we're at 151 right down in in lethbridge i'm sorry i'm truly sorry because that
00:17:49.920
makes it unaffordable for people to fill up their trucks to go to work like dropping their kids off
00:17:55.200
that is rough man um you mentioned the details that he kind of rolled out what i noticed is that he kind
00:18:04.000
of slipped and said the loud part out with quiet part out loud when he was in halifax because one of
00:18:10.240
the last things he said and i'm paraphrasing a bit but not much he said the problem with the current
00:18:16.560
carbon tax the one that's kicking you in the teeth right now isaac on your home heating bill the problem
00:18:21.120
with the carbon tax is perception he said it's a perception problem for the carbon tax and he said
00:18:29.120
that the current carbon tax had basically been a victim of quote misinformation and lies
00:18:36.640
he used that word um that gets my dander up pretty fast because it's not lies we know what we're
00:18:46.320
paying in the carbon tax people aren't stupid they can read their bill and they know that they can do
00:18:51.360
the math in fact right now the government of canada lists the cost per liter of fuels gasoline
00:19:00.320
uh square meter of uh or rather cubic meter of natural gas diesel per liter and as long as you
00:19:08.400
know your tank capacity it's pretty simple math so that's why it costs you about 20 bucks right now
00:19:14.480
extra to fill up a pickup truck it's why it costs a trucker about 200 extra to fill up with diesel um
00:19:21.040
isaac i'll just finish off with you on the carbon tax issue um do you think that carny calling the carbon
00:19:28.080
tax a perception problem and that the the bad rep that it has right now is due to misinformation and
00:19:34.320
lies do you think that'll be accepted by the majority of canadians who are like yeah he's he's right this
00:19:39.760
is all but this is on me it's my fault i really don't think so we saw a similar story a few months ago
00:19:47.520
with uh steven guibo remember he when he said oh people just don't like they're they're not they're not
00:19:53.600
they're not the rebates aren't clear enough to canadians we need to make it more obvious this is when he
00:19:57.920
forced banks to label it uh more appropriately so oh people just don't know how great these
00:20:02.720
rebates are trust me they're they're misinformed but i mean to call it misinformation like what are
00:20:07.520
you saying and max is misinforming me that i'm not really paying what i'm paying in in the federal
00:20:11.360
carbon tax and as you said chris this doesn't even begin to uh calculate the compounding effect of
00:20:19.200
simple trickle-down economics that i would honestly expect a child to understand obviously if a trucker is
00:20:25.360
paying more for the product they're delivering to you the pat the cost will be passed on to you they
00:20:29.600
can't just absorb this cost this is not how economics work this is not how the bottom line
00:20:33.760
can be calculated i mean it's ridiculous and and just one other thing i wanted to add chris because
00:20:37.600
you mentioned this earlier but um when i was writing my article on how all of the premiers were
00:20:42.240
reacting to the tariffs uh i just wanted to say that i watched about a 30 minute or so uh press conference
00:20:48.000
from the quebec's premier francois legault and he said that he's not in favor of energy east so just
00:20:54.640
wanted to get that on the record because we're wondering why we don't have a pipeline across
00:20:58.880
canada i mean there are various players uh in this uh equation yep and uh that whole i had to say
00:21:07.520
man during that frenzy that was happening when we all you know the terrorists were coming and everybody
00:21:11.920
who had their hair on fire was running around and all of a sudden team canada was a thing again
00:21:16.240
mm-hmm um dirty alberta oil sands sure changed to canadian energy real quick didn't it
00:21:24.800
yeah no i even wrote an article today about bc all of a sudden they're pro energy though they want to
00:21:28.480
fast track all these energy products so they can become less reliant on the united states as if
00:21:32.800
their whole government's platform over the last decade hasn't been a war against energy amazing it's
00:21:38.480
as if they think we haven't been paying attention i will point out uh exactly to your point with you
00:21:43.680
know background in economics and that uh coming from carney um he knows he just probably doesn't
00:21:50.560
care anymore because he's been insulated from worried about opening your energy bill or worried
00:21:56.640
about being able to make rent for an awful long time like one of his most recent gigs as the governor
00:22:01.440
of bank of england paid him more than 800 000 canadian per year plus a 450 000 housing allowance
00:22:12.960
like hearing the cries of the average working person through those ermine earmuffs has got to be pretty
00:22:18.480
tough after a while um do we want to shift gears slightly it's still technically on carney but on
00:22:23.920
capital gains tax sure we wanted to take that one away did you want me to take the lead on them what
00:22:29.440
cars mccosman what do you want to do sure just like he's flip-flopped on his views about the carbon tax now
00:22:38.080
he's suddenly against the capital gains tax and it's interesting because if you know a little bit
00:22:44.000
about carney and his relationship with the trudeau government he was actually advising prime minister
00:22:48.880
justin trudeau for a little bit and speculation was that he was poised to become the next finance
00:22:55.600
minister and that's what caused the whole uh perfuffle with christia freeland who decided to resign
00:23:02.640
and the reason she resigned was essentially because of she disagreed with certain policies but that's
00:23:09.360
up for debate but now carney is saying he wants to repeal the car uh the capital gains tax uh but in
00:23:18.560
reality that was being collected by the cra now they've said they've paused it but it's not it's not
00:23:24.320
really clear where that is right now i mean maybe chris knows a little bit better than i do what the
00:23:29.440
status of that is or whether people are paying it currently so as of right now as far as i know
00:23:36.560
at tape time they have paused the collection of the increase so the capital gains tax still exists
00:23:43.040
i wish it were gone completely wouldn't it be awesome if a federal political party actually
00:23:48.400
campaigned on eliminating the capital gains tax that would be super awesome but what we're talking
00:23:54.000
about is the increase so the increase hadn't even gone through parliament and crazily the cra canada
00:24:02.640
revenue agency was acting as if it had they were already collecting the tax rate on people as if it
00:24:10.480
had gone through parliament and the king had stamped it the whole bit knew none of that had happened it
00:24:15.840
was so crazy that the canadian taxpayers federation like we took it to court and i think we're still
00:24:21.520
fighting it in court because you want to talk about taxation of the representation that was wild and
00:24:27.440
that isn't just like a really cool principle or like a an inspiring slogan that's in our constitution
00:24:34.160
of no taxation without representation so as far as i understand the cra has hit pause on that
00:24:41.920
their their insane collection of the tax increase and now the liberals as of right now the liberal
00:24:48.160
government is saying they're delaying the increase so it's a win in one sense and that people aren't
00:24:55.440
paying the increase but what's crazy here and isaac you and i were talking about this before we hit record
00:25:02.080
it just gives the government gives businesses more runway of like we're still going to hit you with
00:25:07.600
this crazy tax increase but now you have longer to flee the country get all your assets sold off and
00:25:13.760
take them somewhere else it's crazy they should just eliminate it all together yeah chris i think
00:25:20.480
you're being a bit humble because obviously i've done a lot of reporting on this and the ctf took
00:25:26.240
the cra to court and then a few days later maybe a week later oh all of a sudden the capital gains is
00:25:31.840
being delayed a year so uh interesting timeline there but i mean it was we've done extensive reporting
00:25:38.880
on the capital gains tax hike at true north uh this is a terrible thing for canadians we we've
00:25:43.760
seen groups warn that it will decimate the tech sector healthcare leaders have said that doctors
00:25:49.520
will leave canada to go to the united states that i mean as if we're not already in a shortage of of
00:25:54.960
family doctors like this is just going to make all of the outstanding issues in canada uh exacerbate
00:26:01.040
them essentially and make them worse so yeah but and as you said chris i mean they delayed it a year
00:26:07.120
now so that's kind of weird uh because all of the liberal party candidates are against it all of
00:26:12.160
the parties seem to be against it so why don't we just abolish it all together i'm not really
00:26:16.480
understanding that and on the bright side i guess they're it's pushed now until after the next federal
00:26:22.320
election will have taken place so at that point pierre polyefro has said he too will eliminate the tax
00:26:27.840
hikes so if he does form office it will be taken care of and if the liberals win i mean who knows what
00:26:33.920
will happen and quickly for folks who think that oh this only affects rich people no no
00:26:39.440
does not just affect rich people it affects so many people uh the cd howe institute uh estimated
00:26:45.760
that this would blow a 90 billion dollar hole in our gdp in our economy like we just can't afford to do
00:26:53.440
that like we have un money right now we are 1.2 trillion dollars in debt our inflation is crazy our
00:26:59.920
interest payments on the debt are crazy like we can't afford to goof around at all and here they
00:27:05.600
are saying oh let's just increase a capital gain tax so very quickly on capital gains uh and i would
00:27:12.560
say this if it was of a different party that made a video this good but pierre polyev's team made a
00:27:18.480
great kind of informational video on what capital gain is like what is capital what happens if there's a
00:27:25.360
capital gain so that could be anything from say you're a heavy duty mechanic like my father-in-law
00:27:31.040
was and you've got all this really expensive equipment like drill presses and parts washers
00:27:37.280
and all this stuff like fabrication like welding that is capital and if you sell it if it's over a
00:27:45.360
certain amount that can be considered to be a capital gain okay so that isn't just these aren't just
00:27:51.520
mucky mucks playing the stock market and stuff no um same sort of things say you know an older
00:27:56.400
family member dies and they leave you their cabin or their cottage or some secondary property that is
00:28:02.640
now in your name when you sell that you are punished with the capital gains tax so if you increase that
00:28:10.880
thing you are increasing the costs this tax take for so many people and to your point exactly isaac on
00:28:17.840
physicians um about a year or so ago i was in the emergency room with a friend of mine and totally
00:28:24.480
unprompted it must have been because i had like a taxpayers hat on because that's what i was wearing
00:28:28.480
at the time we went into the er i wasn't thinking about it totally unprompted three two or three separate
00:28:34.160
physicians brought up the capital gains tax increase to me and apparently when they go through med school
00:28:40.560
and stuff they're told hey listen you don't get a pension the same way say a nurse or like uh you
00:28:47.760
know a tech would get okay you're not employed in the same way so you need to structure your business
00:28:53.840
because that's what doctors have to run in such a way that you this is how you save for retirement
00:28:59.760
it's a doctor thing okay you'd have to ask a doctor but apparently by hiking up indiscriminately the
00:29:06.080
capital gains tax on them without warning it was totally upsetting their entire plans for retirement
00:29:12.960
so this is why i was hearing from them saying like unprompted i'm going to leave canada and a bunch
00:29:18.320
of my friends coming through med school are going to i'm like whoa okay like so yeah it's it's a major
00:29:23.040
issue um cosmon did we want to get to the clip here on uh from from carney where he was making his
00:29:29.440
most recent announcement sure and i also think it'll be a good jump off point for our next story
00:29:36.000
but carney essentially uh compares canada to the united states he says that you know the united
00:29:43.280
states is waging a war on the woke and can't under you know his vision for this country canada will
00:29:51.200
maintain its inclusivity etc but i would wager that the united states and in particular doge
00:29:59.360
or the department of government efficiency is waging a war on overspending and wasteful spending
00:30:06.560
particularly it just so happens that woke initiatives overlap with overspending and wasteful spending and
00:30:15.600
money just not well used to the benefit of the taxpayer and we see that in canada as well if you've
00:30:25.200
been on social media or particularly x recently there's been a huge discussion about global affairs
00:30:32.080
canada and where canada's money has been going in terms of international and foreign uh spending and
00:30:39.360
that was sparked by donald trump's you know defunding of usaid which is a very similar has overlaps with
00:30:47.440
global affairs and the the mandates that they both share and an interesting thing that has come to
00:30:53.920
light i honestly didn't know some of these things about global affairs canada what we've been
00:30:58.240
funding but the first one i've seen floating around is that we've actually been funding the bbc's
00:31:04.480
that's the british broadcasting center which is uh the cbc equivalent in the united kingdom
00:31:11.280
their charity arm and canada has funded about 1.6 million dollars uh to the bc bbc's charity and you
00:31:22.160
see that if we have our graph up there's a little orange bar there and that's in pounds but in
00:31:28.080
canadian dollars that's about 1.6 over 1.6 million canadian dollars from global affairs canada to the
00:31:35.600
bbc so isaac like why are we funding the bbc just wait just wait we should probably play the clip i think
00:31:44.080
of of carney first because sure we're going to need a wake up after we finish listening to him talk
00:31:50.720
so stay with us folks listen to this clip of carney because we're going to talk about sex toys in a
00:31:55.040
second okay roll tape now the one thing i've learned over the many years of managing crises
00:32:02.160
is that plan beats no plan plans create focus discipline and the energy that major changes
00:32:11.280
a crisis demands and make no mistake we are in a crisis we can do little to change the external
00:32:20.640
forces that are causing it but we can act as canadians there's a fever gripping america
00:32:28.800
and while it rages canadians will remain resolute and true to our values
00:32:34.400
while america engages in a war on woke canadians will continue to value inclusiveness while america
00:32:44.240
shuns the vulnerable we will continue to show solidarity with one another while america attempts
00:32:51.680
to turn back the clock canadians will build sustainability for future generations before america's
00:33:00.560
fever passes we must seize this moment for canada this is the time to change this is our time to build
00:33:14.160
this is the time for canada okay so that i gotta say just party apart okay i would say this if he was
00:33:23.600
ndp and i would say this if he was conservative he's gotta get a battery pack or something man because
00:33:29.840
he's more boring than michael ignatiev like he makes prime minister stephen harper look like a
00:33:34.800
stand-up comedian he's gotta put some lightning in those shoes um uh isaac exactly getting back to
00:33:41.600
the throw there from cosmon uh what was your take on this as you've been watching this go down yeah
00:33:47.120
sorry i uh thanks for repeating the question there chris uh my mind waking you up yeah brought me back
00:33:53.440
back to life there yeah no i mean look i've always had a uh i haven't been shy to say that i've been
00:34:00.240
against foreign spending in general when our economy is so weak let alone on ridiculous initiatives that
00:34:07.120
we saw today come out from global affairs canada everyone was revealing these things because we
00:34:12.160
know they uh scrubbed their website or something happened there where none of these projects existed
00:34:17.600
anymore so everyone i was on x this morning i mean i couldn't find anything except people calling out
00:34:22.720
global affairs canada saying what is going on here like this is criminal activity you can't just get
00:34:27.440
rid of all this public data hide it from us because well maybe because of what's happening in in the
00:34:32.880
states with doge and and the public shift we're seeing against uh woke initiatives but i mean i feel
00:34:39.920
that all canadians would probably be along this line where it's like we can't afford our energy bills
00:34:46.080
our our groceries why are we sending billions in some cases to other countries to fund
00:34:51.920
things that don't affect us as canadians the bbc what what effect does that have on any canadian i've
00:34:56.800
never watched the bbc i don't know how it affects my life in any way there are way more ridiculous and
00:35:01.600
ludicrous examples i know you have a list chris whenever i'm reading a ctf uh uh press release you
00:35:07.600
you guys have lists of what foreign spending has been on and it's just almost unbelievable it it is
00:35:14.400
and uh so that's why number one i think it's great that elon musk has dumped gasoline onto this fire
00:35:22.080
and gotten so much attention about government waste if we can have everybody be this kind
00:35:27.440
of activated tax fighter and go find government waste on both sides of the border we will all be
00:35:33.360
the better for it so the mission cultural fund is a pot of money within global affairs canada which
00:35:40.880
we used to call foreign affairs canada it's a pot of money that bureaucrats use all over the world
00:35:47.440
they blow money from this pot of cash and i'm just gonna say if people are noticing a theme with
00:35:54.400
these ridiculous expenditures woke is a cloak for government waste if they can paint it give it a
00:36:04.080
certain paint job and make it woke they then inoculate themselves they think from criticism because they
00:36:11.920
think we wouldn't dare criticize it well just watch us okay so we spent more than eight thousand dollars
00:36:19.280
on a sex toy show in germany so making these items and then putting them on display i will point out
00:36:28.480
we spent thousands more doing a little bus tour through germany afterwards with artists promoting
00:36:34.160
these things and the name of this show is so disgusting i'm not saying it like i refuse google it yourself
00:36:43.200
sex toy show in germany canadian dollars went towards it second we spent thousands of dollars
00:36:51.440
to listen to sex stories again if you guys noticing a theme here i don't know what's wrong with these
00:36:56.880
bureaucrats sex stories from seniors old people sex stories but here's the kicker they weren't happy just
00:37:07.760
wasting taxpayers dollars on domestic old people sex stories no no bill and doris in you know kitchener
00:37:15.600
that wasn't good enough they had to take this on the road we were outsourcing old people sex stories
00:37:21.840
we spent thousands of dollars on a lesbian pirate musical i'm not joking these are all on that website
00:37:30.240
and folks want detailed explanations go to taxpayer.com look up teddy waste awards go back through
00:37:37.520
20 years of this stuff it'll set your hair on fire and so legit if people want to find out where
00:37:45.360
their money is going and hey man if that's what you want to listen to if you want to go watch a lesbian
00:37:51.280
pirate opera fill your boots or your peg leg pay for it yourself like nobody cares just don't make
00:38:00.080
taxpayers pay for this nonsense and so cosmon do you think that this will catch on up here this kind
00:38:07.040
of doge let's ferret out and get these kind of like tech bros that are noticing code to actually
00:38:13.520
find waste up here will it become popular well i think it's set a precedent whether or not there's
00:38:21.360
actual government motion to audit any of this spending and to see where it's all going and whether
00:38:28.000
it's actually achieving results or it's just being spent frivolously frivolously that's yet to be seen and
00:38:34.320
it would take quite a an amount of effort it would spark up a lot of political conflict the liberals
00:38:42.000
like to accuse the conservatives of cutting services etc but when they're talking about what cuts need to
00:38:48.720
be made it is this stuff it's the stuff that's unnecessary it's the stuff that's wasteful and sure
00:38:55.680
perhaps it provides jobs for a few bureaucrats but does it actually provide substance and and improve the lives of
00:39:03.120
ordinary people no we're just subsidizing these programs uh to fill the pockets of individuals who
00:39:10.320
haven't are invested in it into some degree and ngos etc so in many ways it does work like a patronage
00:39:17.600
network to these activist organizations that take over this take the money from taxpayers and transfer it
00:39:23.520
into their own pockets uh but back in 2023 i just want to point to another story the government essentially
00:39:31.520
admitted that it was not taking tracking billions of dollars going towards uh foreign aid gender
00:39:38.480
projects they don't even have you're right i forgot about this yeah they don't even have a way to measure
00:39:44.800
how much money is going where it's going who's receiving this money and they just shrug their shoulders
00:39:51.120
it's an insane amount of negligence when we're talking about billions of dollars that could be used
00:39:58.320
for much better things it could be used for infrastructure we need houses we need the
00:40:03.600
health care situation is in dire crisis to your point on health care to give people an idea of a
00:40:10.000
billion because i explain this all the time a billion dollars will build you a pretty nice hospital
00:40:18.480
so the next time you hear some bureaucrat flapping their gums about spending a billion here and here and
00:40:24.320
there that's a hospital picture it with its shiny glass doors and elevators and fanciness and all
00:40:30.240
that stuff it's a wild waste of money um i'll also point out i'm waiting for the moment when elon notices
00:40:39.680
march madness so as of right now it's really good number one it's really a good idea to focus on the
00:40:46.720
insane stuff like we were just describing oh yeah one of my other favorite ones was um studying whether or
00:40:51.840
not outer space is sexist like crazy waste of money on nonsense so it's important to point out that
00:41:00.320
stuff because it gets people's attention and it is costing thousands and in some cases millions of
00:41:05.920
dollars we spent more than a million dollars on a deer cull off the west coast of canada through parks
00:41:12.320
canada by hiring gunmen out of new zealand to shoot deer out of a helicopter and they did a crappy job of
00:41:20.720
it too because they're terrible shots like all of that was a gong show so tons of government waste
00:41:26.480
but when you get down to the big ticket items it's slightly more boring but mind-boggling just you wait
00:41:33.040
until elon musk and his doge team discovers how much they waste around the end of february beginning
00:41:39.200
of march because that's of course when fiscal rolls over at least up here in canada it's probably the
00:41:44.480
equivalent down in the states so what that is is and i've worked on both sides of the fence in
00:41:49.680
government and out of government is right around now ish pretty soon an email is going to be going
00:41:55.520
out among the departments saying does anyone have anything really stupid that they need to waste money
00:42:01.360
on couch cushions you know uh color portraits whatever an espresso machine like ridiculously overpriced
00:42:09.680
office chairs because they will lose their budget if they don't blow all of it yeah so at the end of
00:42:18.560
fiscal each department has to use it or lose it so say they've actually been a good manager and they've
00:42:25.360
got a lot saved and left over they don't just put that back in the treasury they don't just give that
00:42:30.480
back to taxpayers or save money no they all rush and blow it at the last minute in february it costs
00:42:37.200
billions of dollars every year to do this wait until they find that out in the states um yes if
00:42:44.480
i may just quick on that uh just because i know a lot of people are fans of the office and there's a
00:42:49.120
good episode illustrating that point exactly where they essentially teach michael what a surplus is so
00:42:54.800
they're like look we have a surplus it's x amount we need to spend it by the end of the day or we won't
00:42:59.120
get it next year so then they have this huge debate on what whether to buy a new chairs for everyone
00:43:03.840
or a copier or what they're going to waste well not waste but use the money on uh in this instance
00:43:08.320
so yeah if any fans of the office out there that's just a quick little uh shout out that's a perfect
00:43:13.440
i'm going to go check that out because i'm going to use that example from now on it's a perfect example
00:43:17.600
um do we want to get to uh tariffs and pride are we there yet yeah no i'll take this one away and i'm
00:43:25.680
already kind of excited because i got this uh this office anecdote but now i i'm excited again because
00:43:30.800
i get to talk about data which excites me i love going through this stuff uh so careful people
00:43:36.080
he's got a spreadsheet okay oh i've got a few uh no so this was a recent survey by um the angus reed
00:43:43.440
institute which was pretty interesting to me because uh the threat of tariffs from us donald trump or us
00:43:49.440
president donald trump actually sparked a surge in national pride among canadians which we've only seen
00:43:55.600
essentially decline since 1985 so this is the first big rise in national pride that we've seen in decades
00:44:03.040
so this is a a miracle of sorts but uh it may be for questionable reasons or if you want to say that
00:44:10.880
because of the the tariff situation but we actually reported on a previous version of this same study
00:44:16.480
in december which showed that pride had recently plummeted thanks to the pandemic and economic woes that
00:44:22.160
canadians were feeling they were no longer proud of the country but now we're seeing
00:44:27.440
that the pride is taking a shift for the better as canadians are feeling united with one another
00:44:32.640
and the country as a whole uh fighting these tariffs from from trump but another interesting
00:44:38.320
thing that i saw in the study and this might have might be something you you miss first time reading
00:44:43.040
it through but this was pretty interesting i found uh canadians said they were following the trump
00:44:49.120
tariffs more closely then they followed the israel-hamas conflict russia invading ukraine
00:44:54.480
the snc lavalin scandal and much much more in fact the only thing um canadians said they paid more
00:45:00.800
attention to than the trump tariffs was the emergence of covet 19 and this was only a one percent difference
00:45:06.960
so 90 percent of canadians said they followed covet 19 closely or very closely and this is 89 saying the
00:45:12.800
same of the trump tariffs so that's how high of an um international event we're talking about here
00:45:20.720
but uh another thing that i found very interesting and and you might not have found this interesting
00:45:24.640
if you didn't know the same background things i do but this one struck me by surprise and i wanted to
00:45:29.600
ask you guys about it so the percentage of canadians who said they had a deep emotional attachment or
00:45:36.400
were very proud or proud to be canadian increased in every single province except manitoba where it
00:45:42.720
actually decreased in both categories now this is interesting because every single premier from
00:45:47.680
every province in canada issued a response to the tariffs except manitoba premier wab canoe so i'm just
00:45:54.640
wondering if there's any equivalency or relation between these two things because i i found that very
00:46:01.280
strange a very strange correlation what do you guys think go ahead cosmon sure i would just suspect
00:46:09.200
that the uh it's a temporary phenomenon whenever you get into conflicts uh i mean particularly wars but
00:46:16.320
a trade war is a minor version of that that doesn't involve real violence but it does spur a sentiment of
00:46:24.880
national pride but we're talking about years where our own government and bureaucrats and the media have
00:46:35.200
you know if i could put it in any other way they've crapped on canada canada's history and here we are
00:46:41.120
we're in a situation where we are facing conflict uh and a potential recession as a result of of
00:46:48.880
tariffs and of course canadians are going to band together but whether that's a sustainable uh lift in
00:46:56.320
national spirits i'm not so sure because because of the constant barrage of telling us to be ashamed of our
00:47:03.840
history telling us to be to put down our our past and and to view canada as some sort of you know
00:47:12.080
genocidal country that has committed all of these horrible past wrongs it's very difficult to look at
00:47:19.680
the federal government who's calling for a united approach when they've done nothing to actually
00:47:27.280
inspire unity among canadians they've actually made regionalism and regional divides worse over the
00:47:33.680
last nine years and chris i know we got to wrap up soon here so i'll ask you a different question
00:47:38.880
because you might have a key insight into this so the this survey asks canadians their top three
00:47:44.560
concerns or issues and during this instance of the survey with the tariffs two new categories emerged so
00:47:49.600
that was of course u.s tariffs and relations with the u.s but perhaps unsurprisingly the top three
00:47:55.840
concerns remained cost of living slash inflation health care and housing affordability so obviously these
00:48:02.160
tariffs aren't taking the eye off the ball for canadians that are really going through the
00:48:06.720
struggles with i mean the most pressing matters you could almost imagine i i yeah i just want to get
00:48:11.760
your thoughts on that chris yeah for sure so uh right off the top when it comes to the whole unity
00:48:17.200
thing um just as a human being and a canadian and someone who has always loved canada and i've
00:48:23.280
read our history and embrace it i'm not embarrassed of it i embrace it and i teach my kids about it
00:48:28.560
um i was a little annoyed when i heard us president donald trump say oh it's not a real country
00:48:34.320
you know and i like a lot of things that he did in his previous term like i like you know obviously
00:48:38.880
going after government waste and all this stuff going having low energy costs like those are all
00:48:42.960
smart policy choices so if even i was annoyed when he said that i can i can see why there would be a
00:48:49.680
little bit of a bump there of like hey man like don't make me like grab you by the sweater and punch you
00:48:54.560
back um however i to your point i don't know how long this will be how long lived this will be
00:49:01.360
because it sure didn't take very long uh for the premier of quebec to come out and say yeah
00:49:06.560
no energy east that whole east west thing that whole getting our energy to market thing yeah that
00:49:12.480
that's just not going to happen um and so what was your main question for me though i was just totally
00:49:17.360
distracted by the trump part again yeah no just on the the top three issues remaining um cost of living
00:49:23.360
health care housing affordability for sure so of those three two of them are still affordability
00:49:29.200
so taxes inflation housing affordability that's all cost that is all the fact that 50 of canadians
00:49:36.560
half of canadians are within 200 of not being able to make the minimum payments on all their bills
00:49:43.440
not paying stuff off let's not be crazy but we can't make the minimum payments on our credit card bills
00:49:49.200
um it's so rough to be able to afford rent every month like half of people are in that boat right now
00:49:55.280
and so yeah it's no wonder that affordability is right up their top of mind and really bluntly
00:50:02.800
tariffs are just taxes they are trade taxes and we can impose them on ourselves by mistake if we start
00:50:10.080
trying to nail the americans with our own tariffs if we tariff fresh fruits and vegetables coming from
00:50:17.040
california our broccoli is going to be 25 or 30 percent more expensive at the grocery store does
00:50:24.480
that sound like a great idea right now totally doesn't and so i will also point out that the
00:50:30.640
carbon tax is going up on april 1st for diesel which as you pointed out earlier in the show for
00:50:37.280
trucking which is the lifeblood of our economy it is what delivers everything we eat and use so talk
00:50:43.600
about a layered effect of affordability the carbon tax on diesel is going up 20 percent that's a tariff
00:50:52.160
we're hitting ourselves in the face with so yeah not surprised whatsoever isaac from those poll numbers
00:50:58.160
we're hitting ourselves uh i think that's all the time we have for today's show
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