Juno News - May 18, 2022


How to cope with the coming recession in Canada (Ft. Michael Campbell)


Episode Stats

Length

40 minutes

Words per Minute

192.79526

Word Count

7,878

Sentence Count

543

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Life in Canada is more expensive than ever.
00:00:03.240 Inflation has increased the cost of goods and services.
00:00:06.160 Housing prices continue to soar.
00:00:08.460 And yet, our government refuses to reduce spending
00:00:11.460 or take any kind of responsibility for this looming economic storm.
00:00:16.600 What can Canadians do to protect themselves?
00:00:18.960 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:30.000 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.
00:00:37.480 So, you know that I was critical of the Conservative Party of Canada debate last week.
00:00:42.020 I thought it was a terrible format, really boring.
00:00:44.420 They didn't really get into the issues that I personally care about.
00:00:46.760 But there was one interesting and explosive moment in the debate
00:00:50.540 when the candidates began slamming and piling on frontrunner Pierre Polyev
00:00:54.920 for his position against the Bank of Canada and for supporting cryptocurrency.
00:01:00.000 It seems like there was sort of a generational divide on the stage
00:01:04.420 where everyone was opposed to Pierre talking about cryptocurrency,
00:01:07.920 but they were also really taking his position out of context
00:01:10.600 and pretending as though he had advised Canadians to put all of their savings in crypto,
00:01:15.960 which I don't think Mr. Polyev ever did.
00:01:19.080 But it does raise an interesting question about the role of inflation,
00:01:23.400 the flooding of the money supply, printing obscene amounts of money from the Bank of Canada,
00:01:27.540 the government, the Trudeau government spending up a storm,
00:01:30.700 burying the country into $1.2 trillion worth of debt.
00:01:34.800 And it is worth having a bigger conversation to unpack some of these issues.
00:01:39.840 So we spent yesterday's podcast speaking to Matt Spoke.
00:01:43.260 Matt is a tech entrepreneur and writer in Toronto,
00:01:45.580 and he's very enthusiastic and optimistic about the crypto space.
00:01:49.700 And he, much like Pierre Polyev, is excited about the potential
00:01:54.360 and the idea of freeing money from the clause of government.
00:01:58.000 So if you haven't listened to that podcast already, I encourage you to go and check it out.
00:02:02.000 But I also think it's fair to criticize Pierre for perhaps being too enthusiastic about Bitcoin,
00:02:08.780 especially given what's happened in the last week or so,
00:02:11.280 which is that Bitcoin has lost a substantial amount of its price.
00:02:14.800 It's collapsed, which shows the vulnerability and lack of stability when it comes to decentralized currencies.
00:02:21.200 The reality is that the market is taking a hit across the board.
00:02:24.740 And so, you know, you've seen tech stops plummet.
00:02:27.540 You've seen the NASDAQ down.
00:02:28.800 S&P, I think, is down 10% so far this year.
00:02:31.440 We're definitely into correction territories in the markets.
00:02:34.560 And many analysts predict that we are entering a recession.
00:02:38.580 And so to Pierre's credit, at least he's talking about the important issues
00:02:41.420 of the day that are facing Canadians, pocketbook issues, the cost of living, cost of housing,
00:02:46.520 the impact of inflation, talking about the cost of gasoline and these issues.
00:02:51.180 It's really important.
00:02:52.600 And I wanted to, again, talk more in depth about the economy
00:02:56.180 and what Canadians can do to protect themselves.
00:02:59.080 And so I'm very, very pleased today to be joined by Michael Campbell.
00:03:02.880 Michael is a top business analyst, a successful entrepreneur, business owner,
00:03:06.560 and investor in the manufacturing, tech, entertainment, and real estate space.
00:03:11.460 He is the host of a very popular, long-running radio show out in Vancouver called Money Talks.
00:03:16.620 Money Talks is now a podcast about finance, money, and investment in the economy.
00:03:21.200 He's also a senior business analyst for BCTV News over on Global.
00:03:25.560 He's based in Vancouver and he prides himself on bringing Canadians the finest independent financial
00:03:30.540 thinking.
00:03:31.160 I was incredibly pleased to be a guest on Michael's podcast over the weekend.
00:03:35.540 And so he is returning the favor by joining my podcast today.
00:03:39.180 So, Michael, it's great to have you on the program.
00:03:40.780 Thank you so much for joining us.
00:03:42.500 Well, it is my pleasure.
00:03:43.860 I mean, there's so much going on that are impacting us directly,
00:03:46.760 whether it's somebody all of a sudden discovers economics, finance, international affairs are
00:03:51.400 impacting them when they just simply go fill up at the pump.
00:03:53.980 But it's across the board.
00:03:55.440 And I think you outlined it very well there saying this is a phenomenal challenge for individuals
00:04:01.000 and their own just sort of cost of living.
00:04:03.880 It's the number one issue you read and you get poll results, that kind of thing.
00:04:08.540 Number one in the States.
00:04:09.700 It's having a huge impact, I think, going forward to their midterm elections.
00:04:13.140 No, it's a big deal.
00:04:14.480 No one should underestimate.
00:04:15.720 It's a big deal.
00:04:17.300 Well, and what we sort of saw that, you know, the criticism I would have against the candidates
00:04:21.080 that were critiquing Pierre Pauly, look, it's totally fair to say, look, Pierre, you
00:04:24.480 shouldn't criticize Bank of Canada or, you know, you shouldn't sell people on crypto
00:04:28.880 as if it's a magic way to hedge against inflation.
00:04:31.340 But at least Pierre is talking about these issues.
00:04:33.900 I know he never told everyone to, you know, sell off their house and put all the proceeds
00:04:37.760 into crypto.
00:04:38.700 He's just talking about it as another alternative and a place where you might want to part of
00:04:43.140 your investments.
00:04:43.940 But I'm wondering if just off the start, before we talk about, you know, the precarious
00:04:48.860 situation in the economy, if you could just comment on what you thought about Pierre
00:04:53.000 Pauly and his criticisms against the Bank of Canada.
00:04:56.740 Well, first of all, the attraction of something like a cryptocurrency is because people don't
00:05:02.500 trust government.
00:05:03.340 That's the number one issue facing, you know, it's global.
00:05:05.780 It's an overriding theme that I use to then drill down and to say what's really happening.
00:05:11.440 Because if you don't have confidence in the system, there's a real problem.
00:05:14.680 And I think that's underestimated, actually.
00:05:16.580 And I'll give you a quick example.
00:05:17.900 If I said to you, Candace, hey, look, do you want a five-year government bond?
00:05:20.980 By the way, it pays 83%.
00:05:22.600 You know, hey, 83% every year in a five-year?
00:05:25.900 Oh, little problem.
00:05:27.380 It's Argentina.
00:05:28.900 Well, you don't trust the Argentinian government.
00:05:30.820 You know, I could go Turkey and say 24% five-year bond.
00:05:33.780 They get to those levels because people don't trust government.
00:05:37.700 That's been the attraction in the whole cryptocurrency space, you know, led by Bitcoin, that it's not
00:05:44.060 centralized finance.
00:05:45.440 It's not, you know, under the rule.
00:05:47.100 And we got an example in the Trucker's Convoy.
00:05:48.940 We've had an example with the sanctions on Russia, where all of a sudden, you know, some
00:05:53.240 people in Canada had their bank accounts frozen.
00:05:55.820 We couldn't do that if they held it in Bitcoin, for example, because there's no central place
00:06:00.820 you go.
00:06:01.240 You don't go to the Bank of Montreal.
00:06:03.160 You don't go to the Toronto Dominion Bank and say, freeze these accounts.
00:06:06.180 There's no equivalent there.
00:06:08.000 And the same when they came in and they made the sanctions against Russia's central bank.
00:06:12.260 And presto, all of a sudden, they don't have access to the gold that they've got held
00:06:16.060 outside of Russia.
00:06:17.500 This is the politicization, the weaponization of bank accounts has serious long-term implications
00:06:23.320 because someone's sitting there going, wait a second, I'm not sure if I trust, if I run
00:06:27.320 afoul of the government.
00:06:28.480 It doesn't matter if you're sympathetic or not sympathetic.
00:06:30.640 The message was, if you run afoul of government internationally or domestically, you may have a
00:06:36.020 problem.
00:06:36.440 That money may actually not be yours, but you can't do that with decentralized.
00:06:41.380 So that's where the attraction came.
00:06:42.740 And then the second side is kind of interesting because for a lot of people, it's not either
00:06:47.080 or.
00:06:47.640 It's not cryptocurrencies or housing.
00:06:51.460 No, some of them are the product of the same thing, which is we're worried about the devaluation
00:06:55.840 of the purchasing power of our currency.
00:06:57.920 So we're looking for other things.
00:06:59.600 So, you know, when they flush the system with money, all of a sudden you've got people
00:07:03.280 going, I'll buy stocks.
00:07:04.840 I'll buy baseball collectibles.
00:07:06.220 We just had a record art piece, you know, that famous Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe piece.
00:07:11.960 And it went for 192.5 million US sold in four minutes.
00:07:17.420 Well, that's someone who's got another store of wealth.
00:07:19.840 They're saying, I don't want the paper.
00:07:21.700 I got to do something other than this paper called dollars.
00:07:24.880 And so I'm choosing other things.
00:07:26.300 So that's another huge dynamic in the investment markets over the last couple of years.
00:07:30.940 It was definitely interesting.
00:07:32.400 My husband's really into this space as well, and he got interested in NFTs and Ethereum
00:07:37.440 and just, again, the same concept, trying to, you know, find new and unique ways to invest
00:07:43.900 money because, you know, you look at the economic situation out there and it is looking pretty
00:07:50.440 bleak.
00:07:50.880 I did want to just ask you one question about the Bank of Canada, because I know that there's
00:07:56.240 been a lot of sort of ink spilt in the, you know, pages of our establishment legacy newspapers,
00:08:04.400 criticizing Pierre, saying how dare he criticize the Bank of Canada for their role.
00:08:09.960 You know, they're independent from the Trudeau government and they shouldn't be brought into
00:08:13.040 the fray of politics.
00:08:14.760 So I wonder if you'd help us understand whether the Bank of Canada bears some blame for the
00:08:21.180 inflation that is happening, the rising cost of living, and if you could give us your thoughts
00:08:27.120 on whether you think Pierre's criticisms are valid or whether you agree that you think they're
00:08:31.180 offside.
00:08:32.520 And there's a lot there in what you're asking, and I'm smiling because, you know, careful
00:08:36.100 asking me a question.
00:08:37.020 I might answer it and might take a week and a half.
00:08:39.620 But let's go back.
00:08:41.540 And this is like frightening words coming out of my mouth.
00:08:44.400 Let's go back to September 16th, 2019, the overnight credit marks.
00:08:48.880 But this is key to understand at the time I called it the event of the year that wasn't
00:08:53.380 getting reported.
00:08:54.620 So what happened is, remember, if you're going to borrow money, you've got to have somebody
00:08:57.520 lend it to you.
00:08:58.700 And, you know, the government can't control who lends it to you.
00:09:01.020 They can't say, you know, Candace, you must lend Air Canada X amount of dollars at this
00:09:06.040 rate.
00:09:06.660 So it's a free market.
00:09:08.500 There's an overnight market very quickly, you know, short term lending.
00:09:12.460 You know, one corporation knows that they're going to have a cash crunch.
00:09:15.220 Maybe it's a payroll coming.
00:09:16.240 So they borrow maybe for one day or two days or a week or something.
00:09:20.020 Well, what happened is nobody wanted to lend.
00:09:22.420 September 16th that night, nobody wanted to lend.
00:09:25.280 They have other concerns.
00:09:26.720 I think at the time they were worried about what was inside of Deutsche Bank, you know,
00:09:30.160 in Europe.
00:09:30.580 But they didn't want to lend.
00:09:32.460 So you're the borrower.
00:09:33.580 You got to have money.
00:09:34.840 So you go, well, what if I pay you 4%?
00:09:37.760 Nope.
00:09:38.480 What if I pay the equivalent of 6% annually?
00:09:40.860 And you say, nope.
00:09:41.920 How about 8%?
00:09:42.880 I'm not lending it to you.
00:09:44.300 Then you said 10% done.
00:09:46.760 That's what the overnight interest rate did.
00:09:49.120 It went from 2% to borrow to 10% to borrow in a matter of hours because nobody wants to
00:09:56.440 lend.
00:09:57.060 So what happened?
00:09:58.100 The Federal Reserve said, well, we can't have this.
00:10:00.080 Obviously, you've broken the system, the credit system.
00:10:02.000 And so they stepped in and they said, oh, I know, we'll be the lender.
00:10:06.800 We'll be the ones.
00:10:07.760 And we'll do it back at 2%.
00:10:09.280 Well, let's keep going.
00:10:11.220 So that was September 219.
00:10:12.720 Then you get into, you know, the lockdowns, the problems in March of 2020.
00:10:18.760 The pandemic was growing there.
00:10:21.020 Same problem.
00:10:22.380 The level of uncertainty was such that people didn't want to lend money.
00:10:26.200 I mean, would you want to lend money to a cruise ship line when there's a lockdown or
00:10:29.540 an airline when there's a lockdown or even to government?
00:10:32.800 What's going to happen to government?
00:10:34.740 You know, my gosh, the economy's being locked down.
00:10:37.140 They're not going to get the tax revenues.
00:10:38.780 So people wanted to hold their money.
00:10:40.880 Or if I am going to lend it to you, I want more.
00:10:43.840 I don't, I'm not going to lend it to you 2%.
00:10:45.620 I need 6, 8, 10%.
00:10:48.360 Well, again, the central bank said no.
00:10:51.300 So they stepped in.
00:10:52.540 They guaranteed, basically guaranteed mortgages.
00:10:55.740 That's why all of a sudden mortgage rates dropped because the risk went out of them.
00:10:59.540 And they started to lend the government money.
00:11:01.760 I mean, I'm not going to get into the mechanism, but basically they're saying, we will give
00:11:05.560 you the money.
00:11:06.160 We will create the money and we will give it to you, government of Canada, at 1% for 10
00:11:12.580 years, whatever it was.
00:11:14.080 Record lows.
00:11:15.260 So that's the role they played.
00:11:16.600 And they continued doing it in Bank of Canada, continued doing that right through into November
00:11:21.840 of 21.
00:11:23.080 Then they said, we're not going to increase that amount.
00:11:26.000 They bought $400 billion or so of government bonds.
00:11:31.420 Otherwise, our government wouldn't have had the money.
00:11:34.420 You know, I mean, it was sort of ironic when the prime minister said during the 2021 campaign,
00:11:40.500 I don't think about monetary policy.
00:11:42.760 And I'm going, well, goodness gracious, that's interest rates.
00:11:46.120 Who do you think provided you the money to do CERB, to do whatever it was, the subsidies
00:11:52.500 for small businesses?
00:11:53.420 You name the program, the hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:11:56.280 Who provided the money?
00:11:57.400 It was the Central Bank of Canada, again, through a mechanism.
00:12:02.400 But bottom line is they created the money, ended up with government, you know, floated
00:12:06.780 four or 500, actually 576 billion in bonds over two years.
00:12:11.600 That was the Bank of Canada.
00:12:13.840 That's who provided the money.
00:12:15.140 That's the role they played.
00:12:16.420 And it started with their worry that we had an absolute problem in the credit market, like
00:12:21.780 it was dysfunctional.
00:12:23.000 And you can't have a dysfunctional credit market when you've got a world full of credit, that
00:12:26.900 you've got five, you know, the record amount of loans out there, record amount of borrowing
00:12:32.720 and debt out there.
00:12:33.580 You can't do it that way.
00:12:35.140 So that's sort of the dynamic.
00:12:37.540 And now you already regret asking me that.
00:12:39.400 I can see that.
00:12:40.280 But that's the role that Canada played.
00:12:42.760 Without them, they were worried the system comes to a halt.
00:12:45.520 No lending takes place, but we have a system built on lending and borrowing.
00:12:49.480 So it would come to a halt.
00:12:50.960 They stepped in.
00:12:52.080 Government of Canada couldn't be borrowing at six or eight percent or whatever would have
00:12:55.240 ended up if they went to an individual or a mutual fund or a pension fund.
00:12:59.060 They're the ones that kept interest rates to the record low.
00:13:01.840 Government got the money and the government started to spend.
00:13:05.760 Well, I appreciate you breaking that all down for us because I sort of vaguely remember
00:13:10.200 the news that you were talking about in late 2019.
00:13:14.000 It couldn't have been, you know, a more precarious time given what we experienced in the following
00:13:19.180 four months.
00:13:19.560 But I do remember I had Pierre Polyev as a guest on my podcast.
00:13:23.160 We did a very long interview where he was also, you know, very concerned back then about
00:13:28.860 the inflationary impact of those kinds of decisions.
00:13:32.800 And you're also right to bring up Trudeau's comment about not thinking about monetary policy
00:13:37.500 because here we are, what, a year later and we're in this incredibly, you know, loomy system,
00:13:46.840 loomy situation where it seems like we are heading towards a recession.
00:13:51.540 We have a prime minister that doesn't care or think about it.
00:13:54.040 And, you know, media that don't hold him accountable for it.
00:13:58.020 So I'm just wondering, you know, at this point, do you think that we are heading into a recession?
00:14:04.000 What role did Justin Trudeau and his spending have in that?
00:14:08.900 And what's the best thing that the government can do at this point to help protect Canadians
00:14:12.980 against what could be really, really dark times ahead financially?
00:14:16.720 Well, let's talk about how you get inflation.
00:14:20.740 And as Milton Friedman, you know, maybe the most famous economist the last hundred years,
00:14:25.580 but said, inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon.
00:14:30.520 So when we're flushing the system with money, the key was, yes, the Bank of Canada created
00:14:34.740 the money, lent it to the federal government.
00:14:38.640 Then the federal government started to spend.
00:14:40.960 And it wasn't pandemic relief only.
00:14:42.940 In fact, the majority of that money went to people who were not impacted financially.
00:14:47.760 Everyone's impacted socially, et cetera.
00:14:49.820 It may be health-wise too, tragically, but they were not impacted financially.
00:14:54.620 And well, that's why we have record savings rates all of a sudden.
00:14:58.280 I mean, we had these stories of, not stories, the facts of 40,000 grade nine students got CERB
00:15:03.980 payments.
00:15:04.960 Like, are you kidding me?
00:15:06.400 40,000, yeah, they are not the breadwinner.
00:15:08.800 And if you recall, back in May of 2020, we had the Canada Revenue Agency come and said,
00:15:14.780 we're suspecting a lot of fraud here.
00:15:16.300 And the government said, no, don't worry about that.
00:15:19.500 That's not our goal.
00:15:20.640 They were pushing money into the system.
00:15:23.440 And I mean, depending on which political party you support, have various attitudes about how
00:15:28.620 much debt we should be taking on.
00:15:30.260 But we know that we took on this monstrous amount.
00:15:32.600 We had the Parliamentary Budget Officer just two weeks ago tell us it was about $576 billion,
00:15:37.980 of which $204 billion were not pandemic-related spending.
00:15:41.940 I mean, it was just flushing money out.
00:15:44.620 And it's that amount of money that created this record savings.
00:15:48.520 All of a sudden, the economy opens up.
00:15:51.000 People have pent-up demand, whether it's for travel or whether it's they were going to do
00:15:54.880 a reno or whatever they were going to do.
00:15:57.780 Presto.
00:15:58.140 Prices go up because it's taking place right at the same time as we've got some supply shortages,
00:16:03.920 which also play a part.
00:16:05.720 But at all, the foundation of that was if everyone was broke, it wouldn't matter that
00:16:09.860 we didn't have supply because we wouldn't be buying anything anyways.
00:16:12.800 You know, the lowest people on the income scale are not causing inflation.
00:16:16.520 They don't have the money to spend.
00:16:18.540 You know, so we flushed the money across the board.
00:16:21.900 I mean, one of the stats coming out of the government programs was that only $0.14 went to
00:16:26.640 the low of every dollar went to the lowest income group, the lowest 20% of income earners.
00:16:32.260 And we had out in British Columbia and British Columbia, there was a great example where you
00:16:36.440 had the premier, John Horgan, stand up and say, if you make $125,000 in your family or
00:16:44.940 less, we're going to send you a grand.
00:16:47.660 $125,000 to break.
00:16:49.220 It wasn't if you got impacted by the pandemic, if you lost financially by the pandemic, if
00:16:55.320 you're at the lower income rate.
00:16:57.760 No, it was anybody at $125,000 in a family, it's a family income, got $1,000.
00:17:05.660 And I'm going, you know, and that didn't include, by the way, it's something we always make a
00:17:10.320 mistake in the broad media of not including remuneration being benefits.
00:17:14.580 So let's say I've got make $125,000, I've got an extra enhanced medical plan, I've got
00:17:19.620 an enhanced pension plan.
00:17:21.400 So I could have been making $125,000 and 20 more in benefits and still got $1,000 sent
00:17:26.940 to me.
00:17:27.880 That's how you get inflation.
00:17:29.740 That's the essence.
00:17:30.780 It's not Bank of Canada.
00:17:32.420 It's, I mean, they have a part to play for sure.
00:17:34.560 I'm not saying that.
00:17:35.100 But the real cause is the indiscriminate sending out of money.
00:17:38.880 Well, it was going to go somewhere.
00:17:40.720 And as I say, one of the measures was record savings account.
00:17:43.100 So yeah, we've got inflation.
00:17:45.780 Then you compound it two ways.
00:17:47.680 But first with, yeah, supply shortages on some things, but that's still not the essence
00:17:51.680 because the essence for me is not the CPI number.
00:17:54.540 It's what am I paying for food?
00:17:56.020 What am I paying for energy?
00:17:57.280 What am I paying for my housing?
00:17:58.800 You know, rents or whatever.
00:17:59.960 I can't avoid those.
00:18:01.220 I don't have to buy furniture next week or clothing next week.
00:18:04.480 So that doesn't compute in my personal cost of living.
00:18:08.420 It doesn't have to.
00:18:09.260 Uh, so presto, all of a sudden, uh, so yes, we had supply shortages, but that wasn't why
00:18:16.140 we got higher energy prices, you know, that, and that was a killer.
00:18:19.640 That's not why, uh, on money talks, we were talking about, uh, the supply shortage or there
00:18:25.540 rather the commodity boom in February of two 20.
00:18:28.360 That's how obvious it was.
00:18:29.700 We hadn't invested anything in oil, anything in copper or nickel, you know, in seven years.
00:18:36.060 Well, as soon as demand picks up, you got a problem.
00:18:38.260 Then you exacerbate it with other, I mean, it's the most direct line you can draw through
00:18:42.180 government policies around the world and what we're doing with energy.
00:18:44.920 It's like horrendous.
00:18:46.300 That's the killer.
00:18:47.480 So that's what Canadians are dealing with is they just can't avoid that energy price increase
00:18:51.740 or that food price increase or that rents have gone up dramatically across our country,
00:18:57.000 well above the CPI rate, you know, in Canada.
00:18:59.640 So yeah, that's what we're dealing with and it's not easy.
00:19:02.880 Right.
00:19:03.120 And well, there's so many, and everywhere you look, there's, you know, something else to
00:19:06.120 be concerned about.
00:19:07.220 One of the things that I'm constantly concerned about, Michael, is there's this, uh, there's
00:19:10.940 con there, there's a server that comes out every few months that talks about, um, Canadians.
00:19:14.740 This one's done by Ipsos, um, but how many Canadians, uh, are within $200 of not being
00:19:20.300 able to make their ends meet?
00:19:21.660 So, so people who don't have any kind of emergency savings, people who just basically live paycheck
00:19:26.200 to paycheck, according to the latest Ipsos service survey, it's, it's now 49% of the
00:19:31.300 country.
00:19:31.600 So, so we're talking about, you know, we're not just talking about working class Canadians
00:19:35.940 or people, again, who make minimum wage.
00:19:38.200 We're talking about a big, big swath of the middle class who, who just don't have any
00:19:43.540 money saved.
00:19:44.240 If they, they don't have the ability to, to absorb a big price shock or, or, you know,
00:19:48.960 and so, so you look at this, this, this number, 49% don't have, uh, say savings of more than
00:19:55.320 $200, uh, each month.
00:19:57.260 And then, and then, you know, you just suppose that with the incredibly quickly rising, um,
00:20:02.760 inflationary numbers, I think they were at seven or 8%, um, you know, that the cost of
00:20:06.900 gasoline, I know you're out in British Columbia.
00:20:08.420 I think you've seen gas numbers of over, over $2, uh, a liter, which, uh, you know,
00:20:14.220 when I got my driver's license, I think gas was, uh, 49 cents a liter.
00:20:17.800 Um, and, uh, you know, that was, that was a long time ago now, 20 years, but, uh, still,
00:20:23.400 uh, you know, the, the, the, the cost of living is, is going up dramatically.
00:20:27.640 Uh, how, how is this going to impact Canadians?
00:20:30.820 And what advice, I know part of what you do on your show is you give financial advice
00:20:34.620 to Canadians.
00:20:35.200 Uh, what, what advice do you have to people who are, you know, getting ready to absorb
00:20:39.320 the, uh, big price gains that have, have come and are continuing to come?
00:20:45.100 Just a couple of things on that.
00:20:46.580 And, uh, let's come back to so much of this is direct relation to government policy.
00:20:51.540 And it's not just, yes, it is the flushing the system with money.
00:20:54.600 That's one thing.
00:20:55.420 But when you look at energy policy, for example, seven years of underinvestment, I mean, who
00:21:00.060 in their right mind would say, I'm going to invest $10 billion in a, in a refinery.
00:21:04.680 Cause the problem actually, I can come back to this is a refinery problem first.
00:21:08.580 You know, oil prices are up 70%.
00:21:10.340 Uh, but my goodness, look at the refining product.
00:21:13.540 We don't have the capacity, but who would build a refinery anyways?
00:21:16.880 We've got 18 in Canada, haven't built one in 30 years.
00:21:19.840 Why would we, but why would you drill for oil in a country?
00:21:24.000 And, and, and this is consistent.
00:21:25.460 It's not just Canada.
00:21:26.340 It's the U S it's, uh, throughout Europe.
00:21:29.200 When they're telling you, we want to put an end to your, your product.
00:21:32.180 We don't want your product.
00:21:33.680 When there's protests that meet any kind of decision to expand oil production, despite the
00:21:39.480 fact that the existing production continues to drop, it's just a natural sort of phenomena
00:21:44.780 or a natural part is the well doesn't produce as much.
00:21:47.460 It ages out.
00:21:49.040 We weren't even keeping up to what we needed.
00:21:51.580 This is huge.
00:21:53.040 You know, did we not think that emerging markets wouldn't all of a sudden decide they need
00:21:57.420 energy to raise the lifestyle, the life, you know, um, standard of living for their people.
00:22:02.320 I mean, it's, it was an inevitable.
00:22:05.780 This isn't one where you go, gee, that's an unintended consequence.
00:22:08.580 No, that's one with anybody who got a C minus in first year economics would have understood.
00:22:13.120 You cannot restrict supply.
00:22:15.780 You have discouraged anyone from drilling.
00:22:18.480 Uh, and now you have demand picking up emerging market demand, obviously pandemics ending,
00:22:23.860 you know, put a lot of people back in, uh, demand.
00:22:27.400 The list is a long one.
00:22:28.560 So presto, you get these high energy prices that they were inevitable and they continue
00:22:33.660 to be.
00:22:34.400 Well, it's, it's because we have ideology and ideologues, uh, you know, governing our,
00:22:39.120 our policies clear.
00:22:40.220 They don't, they don't like energy, they're only going on gas.
00:22:42.140 And so they, you know, have these punitive bills, C-69, which recently got, um, struck
00:22:46.180 down by an Alberta superior court, uh, basically said, you know, you can't build a, uh, uh, energy
00:22:51.400 project like a pipeline, unless you, you know, do this sociological study on the gender
00:22:56.480 impact in the communities.
00:22:57.660 I mean, who would sign up to, uh, to, to build a project, you know, whether it's LNG or refineries
00:23:04.800 or anything when, when you have to jump through these ideological hoops, I think you're right.
00:23:08.660 It's not unintended.
00:23:09.540 It's, it's perfectly intended.
00:23:10.800 But anyway, I, sorry, sorry to interrupt.
00:23:12.360 I'll let you continue.
00:23:12.880 No, no, that's, that's, it's a great point and we're paying for it.
00:23:15.600 So, I mean, and I don't think people should sit there and go, yes, you can get dips.
00:23:19.660 If we cause a recession, I'll come back to your question on that in a second.
00:23:22.320 But if we cause a recession, obviously demand will go down.
00:23:25.380 Industrial demand will go down for energy.
00:23:27.600 So yeah, you can get a dip in prices, but we have a structural problem.
00:23:31.680 Like for example, you know, when, uh, the, the prices started to really grab the headlines.
00:23:36.260 I mean, it started well before this, but they started the headlines, uh, politically in say
00:23:41.420 February.
00:23:41.880 And we had Joe Biden going to Venezuela, you know, his people going to Venezuela, begging
00:23:46.020 for more production.
00:23:47.040 Like, are you kidding me?
00:23:48.240 They went to OPEC, OPEC plus saying, please increase your production.
00:23:52.320 Well, here's a little fact about OPEC there last month, eight out of 10 producers in OPEC
00:23:56.460 plus couldn't even meet their existing quotas.
00:23:59.820 It's just not so simple.
00:24:01.020 You don't have a switch.
00:24:01.980 You can flick, you know, Oh, just produce more.
00:24:04.560 Well, first of all, why would they, where's the capital investment going to come?
00:24:07.720 Where's the expertise?
00:24:08.940 I mean, the industry has shrunk in terms of expertise and across the board.
00:24:13.380 And then back to the other thing I mentioned, we have a refining problem.
00:24:17.440 Like none of us buy crude oil.
00:24:19.200 That's always a shock to people.
00:24:20.360 I say, you look at the crude price, but you've never bought any, you know, you bought
00:24:23.520 gasoline, you bought diesel or impacted by diesel, maybe protein, home heating oil, jet
00:24:29.980 fuel.
00:24:30.300 When we fly, all of that is a manufactured product.
00:24:33.740 Well, you need refineries to take crude oil and manufacture those various products we
00:24:38.600 make from petroleum.
00:24:39.960 We don't have enough refineries.
00:24:42.100 We don't build refineries.
00:24:43.660 But I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to kick in as much as a five to 15 billion have a sort
00:24:48.620 of a seven, eight, nine year lifespan.
00:24:50.940 Oh, but we're cutting out oil.
00:24:52.440 So we really won't need you in, you know, Greta Thunberg told me we didn't need you next
00:24:57.100 Wednesday, but let alone 2030 or 35, the numbers they start throwing out.
00:25:03.220 It's just so fundamental.
00:25:05.180 Nobody would invest in that stuff when you've told them you're not going to be
00:25:08.580 able to sell your product in whatever time frame.
00:25:11.440 And certainly they were talking 2030, 2035.
00:25:15.320 That's not a long enough to recoup.
00:25:16.760 I can't even get the darn thing open by 2030, you know?
00:25:20.040 So we're just living this result.
00:25:22.400 It's structural.
00:25:23.160 We've got a problem.
00:25:24.000 We better get used to paying more.
00:25:26.160 People are aware of gasoline.
00:25:27.540 They're not near as aware of diesel, which is at all time highs.
00:25:30.820 Now diesel's used in farming equipment.
00:25:32.980 Oh good.
00:25:33.340 More food price increases, you know, used in freight and trucking.
00:25:36.740 The list goes on.
00:25:38.400 And yeah, I guess my message is it's going to impact all of us.
00:25:42.720 And it's a direct result of government policy globally.
00:25:45.900 You know, the green revolution was unrealistic to say we can replace the fossil fuel grid with
00:25:52.820 renewable energy in three years or five years or 10 years.
00:25:57.620 I mean, there was nothing to support that claim.
00:26:01.060 And there's so much wrong with it.
00:26:02.140 I mean, I could just go on and on that it was just fundamentally incorrect.
00:26:05.700 And that's what we're living though.
00:26:07.800 That's what we're living is that kind of price increase.
00:26:10.600 So, you know me, I can keep going.
00:26:13.220 But I do want to not go over or miss your question about recession.
00:26:16.940 This is the big deal here.
00:26:18.440 You've got the central banks going.
00:26:20.560 The only thing we can do, we can't change supply of oil or energy.
00:26:24.920 We can't change, I think, the food dynamics.
00:26:27.360 We can't change any goods shortages.
00:26:29.960 China's lockdown is just opening up now, but that creates more shortage.
00:26:34.160 What we can do is make people not buy stuff by raising interest rates.
00:26:39.580 They were on the, you know, when they had record low rates, they were part of the problem
00:26:42.800 and pushing money in the system.
00:26:44.140 That's why housing went up.
00:26:45.200 I mean, that was the number one thing, giving me a one and a half percent five-year mortgage.
00:26:49.900 I'm a buyer, you know, and I was an investor because the rates were so low.
00:26:54.220 They want to make those higher.
00:26:55.700 So it discourages us from demand.
00:26:57.760 That's the only weapon they have.
00:26:59.840 Here's the problem.
00:27:01.320 So how high would rates have to get?
00:27:03.040 Mortgage rates have gone up significantly, you know, say 16, 18 months ago, say they're
00:27:06.880 at 1.7.
00:27:08.080 Now we're over 4% for a five-year fixed.
00:27:11.100 You know, 1.7 going back a year and a half, over 4%.
00:27:15.000 First time since 2010.
00:27:16.760 Will that choke off the housing market?
00:27:19.520 Will enough people say it's no longer affordable?
00:27:22.060 I'm out of here.
00:27:23.160 That's what they're looking at on the economy as a whole.
00:27:25.700 Obviously, housing is very important to our economy, but it's on the whole.
00:27:28.860 What interest rates do we have to move them to?
00:27:31.340 Where do we have to push them to to choke off the economy and cause a recession?
00:27:36.900 They don't want to cause a recession.
00:27:39.080 Think about this.
00:27:39.740 This is the dilemma they're in.
00:27:41.600 If I cause a recession, presto, government revenues go down.
00:27:44.620 Oh, but they've got record debts to service and interest rates for government have gone
00:27:49.300 up.
00:27:50.040 I can't have a recession.
00:27:52.160 That's the dilemma and the big, you know, they always talk we're going to have a soft
00:27:55.320 landing or the probabilities of soft landing.
00:27:57.600 Well, good luck with that.
00:27:58.700 It's not a dial.
00:28:00.260 It's not some little fixed thing that they turn like the temperature in my room.
00:28:04.040 No, they've missed it all the way up.
00:28:06.860 Keep in mind, our central banks told us we had transitory inflation right through December
00:28:12.380 of this past year.
00:28:13.200 And I'm going, well, the Roman empire was transitory too.
00:28:16.140 Good luck with that.
00:28:17.380 You know, we have structural problems.
00:28:19.340 And so they've got a lot wrong.
00:28:21.340 And now they're telling us, don't worry, we're going to get inflation back down to 2% in
00:28:26.980 three in two to three years.
00:28:28.460 And I'm going, yeah, what's the pain along the way?
00:28:31.560 So this is the dilemma.
00:28:33.380 There's no magic formula here.
00:28:35.020 How much, how high do rates have to get to choke the economy down to recession?
00:28:40.360 So we'll have to see.
00:28:42.020 Well, it's so interesting, Michael, because you kind of pick on up on two different areas
00:28:45.700 where we have these sort of expert class of technocrats who act like they can simply
00:28:50.240 change behavior, like you said, by turning a dial.
00:28:52.500 Like, oh, we can solve global warming or climate change.
00:28:55.640 We can change the Earth's temperature on a dial.
00:28:57.840 All we have to do is completely redesign the energy system, you know, from scratch.
00:29:02.300 And lo and behold, that just doesn't work.
00:29:03.840 And we're all paying for that now.
00:29:04.880 And I get the same sense when I'm reading, you know, my financial updates and financial
00:29:09.500 news.
00:29:09.900 It's like, oh, this is a delicate balance between, you know, interest rates and inflation
00:29:13.760 and the unemployment rate.
00:29:14.940 And again, acting like there's these central planners that have all of the information
00:29:19.520 and all of the knowledge needed to, you know, manage a very, very complex economy.
00:29:24.920 And I can't help but wondering and thinking, you know, this is the problem in our society
00:29:30.060 is that you have these experts and these elites who treat everything like it's a blank slate
00:29:34.900 and they can just design it perfectly without really being in touch with the concerns and
00:29:40.820 demands of a variety of people.
00:29:41.680 I think this is why we see so many populist uprisings and things like the trucker convoy
00:29:45.860 because people are fed up with these experts and elites looking down their nose, telling
00:29:49.380 them what to do without really understanding their situation.
00:29:52.800 And so I wonder, because I know we've been talking about this a little bit, but you give
00:30:00.120 financial advice to families, you know, that statistic I mentioned earlier about 49% of
00:30:04.680 Canadians were within $200 of being unable to pay their monthly bills.
00:30:09.420 Like what can everyday Canadians do at this point?
00:30:13.500 What's your advice to like a young family that's looking to buy a house or a young family
00:30:17.600 looking to save up or, you know, just manage to get through whatever it is that we're about
00:30:24.100 to get through?
00:30:24.840 What advice would you give to them?
00:30:27.080 It's difficult because first of all, it's if somebody is a low income, that's who gets
00:30:31.880 impacted.
00:30:32.380 We knew that, excuse me, going in.
00:30:34.100 And as we were alluding to earlier, that level of what's considered, you know, full impact
00:30:38.120 of the inflation in a difficult way, changing your lifestyle has moved way up the income scale.
00:30:42.740 Now we're about half of Canadians are impacted in a way that is changing their lives.
00:30:47.620 It's really tough for them because the structural problems that we've got are real.
00:30:53.880 Keep in mind, even a year from now, if oil, say oil's at, let's make an easy number for
00:30:59.540 us, $100 today.
00:31:01.500 And that's way up, obviously, from sort of the $60 range, just going back four or five
00:31:07.360 months and way more than a year ago.
00:31:10.000 But a year from now, let's say oil's at $115.
00:31:13.260 Well, the inflation will be reported as $5 increase on the $110.
00:31:19.780 You know, it's compared to the previous year.
00:31:23.200 So when we get all these lofty prices, inflation rate will probably go down.
00:31:28.020 We're not going to keep going up at 40% a year on something.
00:31:30.980 You know, so they're really stuck in this.
00:31:33.980 The one thing they're also measuring, and I want people to understand this, what you're
00:31:37.780 measuring is those paper things called dollars don't buy you as much.
00:31:41.400 That's what we're really measuring.
00:31:43.160 Inevitable consequence.
00:31:44.500 When you produce a lot of something, usually the price goes down.
00:31:47.940 So we produced, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:31:52.180 No wonder the value of them, the purchasing power went down.
00:31:55.880 And that's what's happened.
00:31:56.940 So their money doesn't buy as much.
00:32:00.060 And, you know, we were chatting before where I'm just saying it's really interesting revelation
00:32:04.700 for people that we say, hey, the Canadian dollar is 78 cents against the U.S. dollar.
00:32:11.040 I'm going, who cares?
00:32:12.280 I don't eat U.S. dollars.
00:32:14.240 I don't live in a U.S. dollar.
00:32:16.180 That's not the relevant measure of your currency.
00:32:19.280 It's what it can buy.
00:32:20.620 And we know it's going to buy a heck of a lot less food coming up in the next year.
00:32:25.280 You know, it's, you know, if you're wanting to buy lumber for a deck, you know, you're
00:32:28.920 building, whatever it is, it doesn't buy as much stuff.
00:32:32.220 And so if you're just at that 200, you know, like you're breaking even.
00:32:36.780 And that's a significant number.
00:32:38.300 When someone says I'm within, you know, inflation rates at 6%, keep in mind what that actually
00:32:43.140 means to people.
00:32:44.340 It means if you're the average Canadian, you probably have to spend about $4,000 more
00:32:50.340 for the same stuff you bought a year ago, if that keeps going at that, say, 6% rate.
00:32:56.660 And then, wait a second, that's after-tax dollars.
00:33:00.020 So I got to make like $5,500, pay $1,500 in income tax.
00:33:04.820 Oh, now I've got that $4,000 left over.
00:33:06.960 That's the challenge.
00:33:08.480 And there's no easy way, easy, there's no way out, actually.
00:33:11.720 People's lifestyles are going to change.
00:33:13.620 When you have extra money, you know, so you're an investor.
00:33:17.020 My advice has been, since February 2020, buy commodities, buy stuff.
00:33:22.640 Why?
00:33:23.080 Because, and you can see, it's been a great call, by the way.
00:33:26.820 It's just, that's the way it is.
00:33:28.380 Because it's the stuff that's getting, compared to our dollars, getting worth more and more
00:33:34.220 and more.
00:33:34.980 And I still believe that.
00:33:36.400 I'm still a big fan of oil as an investment, Canadian oil, because we still undervalue it.
00:33:41.320 But it's not just that.
00:33:42.700 If we're going to do the EV revolution, and I believe we are politically, well, you need
00:33:47.040 a lot more copper.
00:33:47.940 I mean, we're not in the ballpark of, and I saw the Globe and Mail just put in an article
00:33:52.360 a day or two ago, and I was laughing.
00:33:54.280 I said, I've been talking about this for two years.
00:33:56.400 Where's your lithium?
00:33:57.400 Where's your cobalt?
00:33:58.480 Where's your copper?
00:33:59.580 Where's your nickel?
00:34:01.160 You know, that's how you get electric vehicles.
00:34:03.480 You need lithium for batteries, you know, or wind turbines.
00:34:06.520 We're not, we're not even in the ballpark of discussing, how do you increase the production?
00:34:12.160 How do we obtain those minerals and metals?
00:34:14.260 And yeah, it's, so I still like the switch into those material things to protect my purchasing
00:34:21.980 power of the dollar.
00:34:23.380 And I'll give you one last example, just to, I'm not, I don't want to confuse people.
00:34:27.580 Let's say you were lucky to have $10,000 and you had it two years ago.
00:34:31.080 Would you rather have 10,000 worth of oil starting two years ago or 10,000 worth of dollars
00:34:35.080 start two years ago, be way better ahead with oil.
00:34:38.740 And yeah, absolutely.
00:34:41.340 And I mean, to your point, you know, you're, you're making a salary and, you know, you don't
00:34:45.800 get a raise necessarily every year.
00:34:47.380 And all of a sudden your salary last year is, is worth, to your point, $15,000 less or $12,000
00:34:53.080 less because of the cost of living increases and taxes.
00:34:55.940 And there is a great irony, Michael, in the fact that we have a political class and an
00:35:01.300 environmentalist class that, that, that sits in rails against energy and oil, Canadian
00:35:06.160 oil.
00:35:07.140 And yet when the oil price goes up, you know, Justin Trudeau benefits because he gets more
00:35:10.880 revenue and, you know, we have Alberta balancing its budgets because, because of that.
00:35:15.440 So, you know, that, that, that, that, that, the rising commodity prices does help the government,
00:35:21.080 helps investors as well.
00:35:22.540 And just a final point, you know, the environmentalist movement doesn't like Canadian oil sands.
00:35:26.820 What, what do they think about all the mining of all the chemicals that you just mentioned
00:35:30.160 that are necessary to support their, you know, the worshiped electric vehicles and wind turbines
00:35:36.060 is something that they never, never seem to want to talk about or address, but it's, it's
00:35:39.820 an obvious contradiction and a bit of a hypocrisy from my perspective.
00:35:43.180 And a fundamental contradiction.
00:35:44.520 I agree with you.
00:35:45.320 And I've said, why is it so difficult for people who support renewable energy, have a great
00:35:49.300 concern on climate change?
00:35:50.440 Fair enough.
00:35:51.060 Why is it so difficult for them to acknowledge that that means by fact that you need a lot of
00:35:56.800 more and these raw materials to actually produce that.
00:36:00.340 I mean, I have no idea why they cannot bring themselves.
00:36:03.140 And that's why we've had, come on, we've been talking climate change 20 years saying
00:36:07.200 renewable, 20 plus, and we still don't have any plan whatsoever to actually get it done.
00:36:12.880 That's like the guy, you know, who says, I'm building a mansion, I'm building a heck of
00:36:16.300 a house.
00:36:16.880 And you keep saying, well, where are you going to get the materials?
00:36:19.700 Oh, well, I'm building a mansion.
00:36:21.840 I'm building a house.
00:36:22.700 You know, there's never any response to that.
00:36:26.740 And, uh, and that's why the EV revolution continues to be delayed.
00:36:30.960 You know, and if that's your thing, you should be mad about that.
00:36:33.180 If that's your, if climate change is your thing, you should be angry that we have no plans to
00:36:37.720 actually institute it.
00:36:39.240 You know, the odd electric vehicle or giving a $5,000 rebate isn't the challenge.
00:36:43.180 If you're going to impact climate change, it is this massive amount of raw materials.
00:36:48.360 And where's the energy coming?
00:36:50.240 Oh, fossil fuels, diesel is going to power those machines to create the wood turbine or
00:36:55.440 to mine.
00:36:56.480 And we just haven't had a mature conversation about it.
00:36:59.840 And we're starting to live the results in higher prices.
00:37:02.920 That's just one example of the lack of mature conversation on that subject.
00:37:07.580 Uh, I couldn't agree more.
00:37:09.160 We produced a mini documentary here at True North, uh, I guess it was two years ago now
00:37:12.420 called Green Hypocrisy.
00:37:13.400 One of the episodes was dedicated entirely to trying to understand the supply chain and
00:37:18.500 the production of an electric vehicle, where it comes from, the mining activities, all
00:37:22.700 that kind of thing.
00:37:23.240 And, and, you know, you look at sort of a, a holistic, uh, carbon footprint of producing
00:37:28.420 one of these things versus the lifetime of, uh, of, of, of a regular vehicle.
00:37:32.600 And, and, and, you know, it's, it's not clear that one of them is, is better or worse from
00:37:37.040 the environment.
00:37:37.460 And, and I'm glad that you brought that up because it's certainly an important conversation,
00:37:40.960 uh, to have.
00:37:42.320 Uh, one more thing here, because it's one of my things and I appreciate people have
00:37:46.220 different priorities.
00:37:47.440 Mine is, I don't like starving people to death.
00:37:49.560 And it's something I've been talking about the simple relationship between the price of
00:37:55.480 natural gas and two of the components that are used for fertilizer, ammonia and urea.
00:38:00.820 So when natural gas prices went to the roof as a direct result of government policy, people
00:38:07.780 didn't make that connection.
00:38:08.980 That meant fertilizer prices went, fertilizer prices are, are more than double in the last
00:38:14.020 year because the components of the, of that tripe nitrogen based, there's also potash too.
00:38:18.760 Uh, but you know, huge amount of the supply of fertilizer is impacted the price of ammonia.
00:38:24.220 And they, I get the impression they didn't even know that like literally it's so superficial
00:38:29.440 that we had leaders putting in policies that guaranteed higher natural gas prices, which
00:38:34.300 we are living right now.
00:38:35.620 Well, and this is well before Ukraine, I mean, we're talking in September, some bright people
00:38:40.920 were writing about the food crisis.
00:38:42.480 I'm talking head of fertilizer plants saying energy prices were so high in September, October,
00:38:46.960 we're cutting back production.
00:38:48.620 Guess what happens?
00:38:49.860 Emerging markets don't use as much fertilizer when you've just doubled the cost.
00:38:53.680 If they can get ahold of some, we are going to have lower crop yields.
00:38:57.280 And literally starvation is in the playbook right now, 193 million people in the world
00:39:03.020 are on the edge of starvation.
00:39:05.600 You know, they're that little precipice we're pushing them over.
00:39:08.700 What killed me is that we have decision makers.
00:39:10.840 I don't think who knew that fundamental, you know, relationship between natural gas prices
00:39:17.420 and, you know, fertilizer.
00:39:19.480 Cause I can't believe they sat there and said, I got a way to get those fertilizer prices up.
00:39:23.000 We can really crush some people.
00:39:24.780 So yes, we're going to get higher food prices.
00:39:26.780 Diesel increase is also impacting that because that's how you run your equipment on a farm.
00:39:31.660 Yeah, it's a very difficult situation and it all comes back to that same stuff.
00:39:35.660 Well, it's unconscionable that that's happening.
00:39:38.000 And we do see the odd reports here and there about food shortages that it's hard to wrap
00:39:41.660 your head around that living in North America and sort of land of abundance.
00:39:45.780 But you're absolutely right to point that out.
00:39:47.900 It's incredibly bleak.
00:39:50.020 And again, our leaders need to be held much more accountable for the decisions that they make.
00:39:53.900 Well, Michael Campbell, it's really a pleasure to have you on the show.
00:39:56.280 I was so pleased to be invited to join your podcast.
00:39:58.680 I've been listening to you on the radio for a very long time.
00:40:01.160 My dad listens regularly as well.
00:40:03.560 And you've been a staple in our household.
00:40:05.400 So it's an honor for you to join the show.
00:40:07.400 And I hope I hope that you'll come back and we can continue to break down some of these big, big issues.
00:40:13.000 So I really appreciate your time, Michael Campbell.
00:40:14.840 He is the host of Money Talks.
00:40:16.760 And thank you for joining us.
00:40:18.440 Absolutely.
00:40:19.480 My pleasure.
00:40:20.040 These are important subjects.
00:40:21.480 They're impacting us directly to bring to people's attention.
00:40:23.960 Excellent.
00:40:25.560 All right.
00:40:25.880 Thank you so much for joining us.
00:40:27.080 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:40:30.280 for you.
00:40:46.200 Let's meet you in the room.
00:40:46.760 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is Isabella Luke's area.