00:03:23.900Anyway, so we bought our house about three years ago and the old owners had a rental
00:03:28.860agreement and just in all of the things that you have to pay for when you move into a place,
00:03:34.180buying a new water heater just didn't seem like something we wanted to do.
00:03:37.160So we just sort of paid the monthly fee. And I think I set up auto billing and just sort of forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago. No, it was about a month ago, I guess. Our air conditioner, we had to get some maintenance done on it anyway. So the company that rents us the water heater is also the company that does the maintenance on the air conditioner, apparently. So we own the air conditioner that we don't rent, don't worry.
00:04:00.520So we had them come by and they tried to like put us on this stupid like maintenance plan where they're like
00:04:06.460Well for ten dollars a month you can get your annual maintenance done on the air conditioner
00:04:11.340And I said well, but that's more than if I just pay for you to come and do the maintenance on the air conditioner
00:04:15.080So no, I don't want this plan and then they said okay, but you should get the plan
00:04:20.400So they come and do the air conditioner maintenance and then they ask again if I want the plan and I said no
00:04:25.600And then on my next bill, I've been charged $10 for a maintenance plan in addition to the service charge of like $100.
00:04:33.260And I was so annoyed by the company trying to gouge me for $10 that I just decided I would screw them out of the $35 they've been getting from me every month for the water heater.
00:04:42.760So I think it was like the very next day I called and asked for a water heater, which we're now getting installed.
00:04:47.700and I'm like so ashamed of it because if I look at like what I've been paying for the last three
00:04:52.700years for someone else's water heater it is a big chunk of what I'm paying today for my own water
00:04:59.460heater and I've never in the last three years had to have any repair done or replacement and this
00:05:05.020one I mean maybe the joke will be on me if in a week's time it just like goes on the fritz or
00:05:09.240whatever but anyway I was asking a couple of my colleagues before I started the show here
00:05:13.620because they live all over the country.
00:12:35.780He's wanting to use his kids when it suits him
00:12:38.260and keep them away from everything when it doesn't.
00:12:41.380Now, to be clear, I do not believe kids are at all fair game in politics.
00:12:45.940I believe we should keep people's families out of it unless the family is pontificating on politics in a way that you can criticize the ideas on.
00:12:56.820Xavier's offense is wearing a pink shirt, which he can actually pull off a little bit better than Justin Trudeau can do the coral hoodie, I think, and going to a movie with his dad.
00:13:05.660Now, if we want to talk about taste in cinema here, I'm not aware of Justin Trudeau broadcasting any other film preferences.
00:13:14.300So maybe he's a big cinephile and he's going to a new movie every week.
00:13:43.640And look, I think the whole point of the whole Barbieheimer thing was that people see both.
00:13:47.740So if he wants to do the doubleheader and say we're Team Barbie and then we're, I don't know if you want to be Team Oppenheimer necessarily,
00:13:53.180but Team Barbie and then Team Oppenheimer, that's one way to do it here.
00:13:59.260And he's trying to do the whole look at me, look at me thing, the woke performative virtue signaling, or he's also just trying to, as I said earlier, troll conservatives.
00:14:08.860And you know what, if that's his goal, it's probably going to work.
00:14:12.640And just to put some contrast on this here, if you want to talk about the tale of two leaders, Pierre Polyev has put forward his own image today that is trying to really shatter, I think, the left's scary, evil, conservative boogeyman narrative about him.
00:14:28.060the ad that was released very simple very well shot i don't know when it was put together but
00:14:34.360it was a brief ad in which pierre polyev the family man is put on offer for people and i'm
00:14:40.360going to play this for you here because i want to talk about it for a couple minutes after
00:14:43.660who is pierre polyev many know him as the common sense leader the country needs
00:14:51.160his school teacher parents know him as the boy they adopted and raised in their modest home
00:14:57.320in the suburbs of calgary his dad knows him as the son he took to early morning hockey games
00:15:04.360his neighbors know him as the boy who used to deliver the morning newspaper
00:15:09.320his children know him in francais espagnol and english as papa and i know him as a guy who loves
00:15:17.160me for who i am a canadian who came to call canada home and his wife so when pierre says
00:15:26.200It doesn't matter who you know or where you're from,
00:15:29.260but rather who you are and where you're going.
00:17:42.920Oh, wait, that might have been the wrong one.
00:17:52.900Sorry, I thought that was the liberal campaign ad.
00:17:55.900No, it didn't have the, like, I'm Justin Trudeau and I approve this message.
00:17:59.540Although, you know, if we are going to start drawing some comparisons here,
00:18:03.580I will say that the inauthentic, plastic, utopian world of Barbie
00:18:09.320is probably not far off from the liberal world of Justin Trudeau.
00:18:13.880Maybe that can be the real poll question we go for is
00:18:16.740who sets a better standard for the real world, Barbie or Justin Trudeau?
00:18:21.960And I think Barbie is probably going to edge out Justin Trudeau on this one before long.
00:18:27.540But nevertheless, the point of all of this is that there is a way
00:18:31.760that you can have your family become a part of your brand.
00:18:35.520but if you do you have to make sure that that is a part of you that is real and the reason we saw
00:18:44.040so much uh i'll say finger wagging about justin trudeau last week from people is that they
00:18:49.440actually felt like justin trudeau had been stage managing this entire image for so many years
00:18:55.080and i maintain what i said last week which is that his separation is absolutely none of anyone's
00:19:02.600business. I think people should leave them alone. I think no matter how much you hate the guy
00:19:06.080and how aggrieved you feel about his and his government's policies and statements,
00:19:10.780his marriage is not the issue. His politics are, his policies are, and perhaps even his
00:19:16.400personality is, but not his wife and not his kids. But it is also, I think, worth pointing out,
00:19:23.160as we've been discussing, that Justin Trudeau is trying to have it both ways. When it was
00:19:27.240convenient, he'd bring the wife out on the campaign trail. She'd be up there on stage
00:19:31.800in London with Idris Elba trying to promote the Trudeau brand and then behind closed doors as we
00:19:37.640know clearly it was not an ideal situation for either of them and I do not celebrate the breakdown
00:19:43.020of a family and I think we all need to understand the costs that go along with families in politics
00:19:49.560and Pierre Polyev is in a similar situation I don't know what the guy is like behind closed
00:19:55.120doors I know a lot of people who have known his wife for many many years and speak so highly of
00:20:00.700And I think the fact that she's actually taking an active role in his campaign in a way that the last two conservative leader spouses haven't really as much.
00:20:10.820Rebecca O'Toole, lovely woman, wasn't, I don't recall her ever narrating an ad or being in them except for just being there in the photos, similar to Jill Scheer and their kids.
00:20:21.340I know their kids were quite a bit younger as well.
00:20:23.680so we'll see what happens with this but I do think that there is a cautionary tale here that
00:20:30.260people need to be aware of and if we're going to stack up you know Trudeau the family man against
00:20:34.880Pierre Polyev the family man I think it's a legitimate question which one is more believable
00:20:39.840to Canadians which one are Canadians going to buy into so that's the question there and hopefully
00:20:46.940you enjoyed the liberal campaign ad gag I thought of that like two minutes before I did it so glad
00:20:52.080Sean fired the right clip there and didn't go like, wait, wait, we have a liberal ad?
00:21:18.080We've heard from the environment minister that the feds are considering tying a lot more tax credits to provinces overhauling their electricity system.
00:21:27.820Now, a lot of provinces are already doing this, but it's a slow process and it's a very costly process.
00:21:34.340And a lot of the activists, for example, don't like that Ontario's phase out of coal had to involve gas.
00:21:40.920Well, yeah, wind and solar are not at all doing what you think it's doing.
00:21:46.220The activists seem to hate nuclear, despite the fact that it's one of the most clean and cost-efficient forms of energy generation.
00:21:54.240But not enough for the federal government, who thinks they need to try to extort more money out, or more action, out of the provinces.
00:22:02.480And this is how they're going to do it.
00:22:04.760But then we go to the bigger picture here, which is the climate change catastrophism,
00:22:09.420as termed in a new book by Andy West with the Philosophy Foundation in London,
00:22:15.460which I learned of in a great column by Joe Oliver in the Financial Post.
00:22:20.100This is Canada's last fiscally responsible finance minister, and he joins me now.
00:22:25.120Joe, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming back on the show.
00:22:29.980Now, you contended with a lot of the activists when you were in government and in cabinet.
00:22:35.580And the one thing that I would say is that enough was never enough.
00:22:38.600And we've seen the rhetoric really ramp up in recent years to the point where it's not just, yeah, we've got to do something about climate.
00:22:45.820It's the world is burning. We're all going to die.
00:22:48.580There's no question. This is a catastrophe that is imminent, and we mustn't question it.
00:22:56.860And that's been building up for some time.
00:23:00.060You recall it was global warming, and then when it didn't warm, it became climate change.
00:23:05.540but there was always this intensity, almost a quasi-religious fervor or certainly an ideological
00:23:15.940fervor that was behind the rhetoric and there were all sorts of incantations of doom and priests
00:23:25.460and priestesses that were carrying the sacred message and if you weren't on side and totally
00:23:34.260on side and then of course you weren't just a skeptic you were a denier. Well that term is
00:23:41.340actually quite an important one because there are a lot of people and I've interviewed many of them
00:23:45.660who are believers in the fundamental idea that humans are causing global warming that we need
00:23:52.340to change something they're even supporters of carbon taxes but people that don't go the full
00:23:58.120distance and the full demonization and the full anti-industrialization approach and they're
00:24:04.460vilified they're called deniers or lukewarmers uh sometimes and i think that's interesting as well
00:24:10.220that we've basically taken this uh scientific process or what's supposed to be a scientific
00:24:15.100process and have turned it into this us versus them a very polar political discussion yeah and
00:24:21.840you can only you know the reason i wrote the article is because for some time i've been puzzled
00:24:27.200as to the fervor we were talking about, the prevalence of these beliefs and the willingness to undergo really severe economic hardship,
00:24:41.460even though what we were doing wouldn't necessarily have any effect on the global temperature, and we know that in Canada.
00:24:49.300So I was always searching for what was the psychology behind it, and then when I read the book that you just referred to,
00:24:56.880which is a social psychological analysis of it. It really came together because it refers to
00:25:05.520to culture and culture is either religious or it's ideological. And either way, it doesn't
00:25:15.040permit any dissent. Dissidence is not allowed. I mean, we talk a lot about diversity,
00:25:21.120But diversity of opinion, certainly on that issue and a lot of others, is simply intolerable.
00:25:28.940And I think that part of the fervor and the fundamental insecurity, I guess, is that it's based on, allegedly, a profound belief that the science is settled.
00:25:42.020And we've all heard that repeated endlessly.
00:25:45.040So there's no reason for anybody to listen to someone who might want to present scientists who have a different view.
00:25:54.980And let me tell you, there are thousands of them that do, even though they're in the minority.
00:26:02.240And I think it goes to the ideological or religious commitment.
00:26:09.080And it just doesn't tolerate any dissent.
00:26:14.720and and that's that's really unfortunate because what we're being asked to do will in in canada
00:26:22.800according to rbc economics cost the country two trillion dollars to get to net zero by 2050
00:26:31.040and the globe according to mckenzie uh will have to fork over 275 trillion dollars well this is
00:26:39.920this is a staggering amount and frankly i don't think there's any way that the uh that the western
00:26:47.280democracies will uh will tolerate that we're starting to see the resistance um in in europe
00:26:54.800where they've just gone through a an energy crisis and the cost of uh of energy has ballooned and
00:27:02.640they're confronted in a lot of cases very tragically with a choice between eating or
00:27:07.920heating well that's not tolerable and neither is depriving the world's poorest countries of energy
00:27:16.960which is the only way out of abject poverty i i fear you may be slightly optimistic in one sense
00:27:25.360and my reason for thinking that is just looking at the last three years and how much economic
00:27:31.440harm people were willing to withstand uh to deal with what was presented as an emergency and that
00:27:36.960was COVID and whatever we think of how governments responded to that once what we learned there is
00:27:42.320that when something is an emergency or a crisis all of the old rule books tend to get thrown away
00:27:48.720and I feel that the branding of climate change as an emergency will license a lot of the same
00:27:54.720economic harm people are totally willing to bankrupt certain sectors and certain businesses
00:28:00.320to fix this problem well i i don't confuse me totally with an optimist on this matter but i
00:28:08.400think you you got it right when you said they're they're prepared to to see others suffer but the
00:28:14.720question is uh how much um pain will will the population overall be willing to and and polls
00:28:21.680indicate that that it's not very much and what what we've got in europe is a bit of a test case
00:28:28.480because there the emergency is real it's it's intense and it's it's hurting people right across
00:28:36.400the board uh the poor people always are the ones who are affected most adversity but the middle
00:28:41.840class is is uh suffering as well and you see it in the polls you see um the prime minister of the
00:28:49.200uk backing off some of his his policies he's allowing a lot more drilling going on he's
00:28:56.240He's backing off some of the restrictions on what kind of heating is permitted and whether,
00:29:05.440and you know, in Europe, they've defined natural gas as non-emitting, as a clean source of energy.
00:29:13.120Well, you know, you can argue with that or not, but the reason they did that is the practicality
00:29:21.520that if you don't have gas to back up wind and solar, you're going to have blackouts and brownouts,
00:29:28.280or you're going to use coal and you're going to burn wood pellets. So when it comes to that kind
00:29:35.880of a crisis, and we're not there yet, but when it does, then I think people start changing their
00:29:41.100minds. And you can see that also in some of the U.S. states like California, the so-called blue
00:29:48.180states that is the democratic states which have moved more uh to to renewables and are paying the
00:29:55.220price in terms of a very high energy costs and periodic brownouts well and i think to add to
00:30:02.640that the one thing in canada that's been so infuriating and this goes back to the electricity
00:30:06.840stuff i was talking about at the outset of the segment here is that they're wanting a solution
00:30:11.960that doesn't exist. And yes, wind power and solar power exist, but the output, the cost,
00:30:18.760the efficiency, the reliability are simply not there. And it's not that they might not be in
00:30:23.920the future or some other magical energy source won't exist in the future, but they're not there
00:30:28.060now. And provinces like Ontario, like Alberta have spent a lot of money to transition away from coal
00:30:34.440because that was deemed to be an environmental benefit. They have to rely on gas. In Ontario,
00:30:39.560you have the benefit of nuclear but even that is derided by a lot of these same activists
00:30:44.920yeah that's right and i've written about that because i have some background i was the former
00:30:49.500chair of the uh of of the independent electricity system operator which basically runs the grid in
00:30:56.720in ontario and the the the truth about renewables is that in a small amount
00:31:03.000They can have a role. But as we know, the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. And so as you increase the amount, the proportion of energy that's coming from renewables, then the cost starts escalating dramatically and the reliability declines as well.
00:31:23.240You absolutely have to have natural gas as a backup, because right now there isn't a technological alternative.
00:31:33.400You know, we're hoping that one day battery power can provide the storage.
00:31:41.100But right now it's four hours, and that's certainly not long enough.
00:31:46.020But since most of the time, neither of the two renewables, wind and solar, are operating, you have to have something to back it up.
00:31:56.620I mean, nuclear is absolutely fundamental, but it can't gear up in minutes.
00:32:14.940And I think the government of Ontario realizes that.
00:32:18.600They're not being explicit, but they talk about a pragmatic approach.
00:32:22.840And that's, I think, what they're talking about.
00:32:26.500But frankly, it's complete delusion for people to think that they can get off natural gas and rely entirely on renewables.
00:32:37.600It's been tried, and it's been a catastrophe, frankly.
00:32:42.400And to bring it back to that catastrophism and that aspect of this, the one thing that I'll point out as well is that there are a lot of slogans and platitudes in this space.
00:32:51.780Now, I mean, obviously this exists in politics in general, but when we hear net zero by 2050, we've picked an arbitrary goal, net zero, we've picked an arbitrary year, 2050, and we've said everyone has to bend over backwards to make this happen.
00:33:04.720And it's not particularly feasible, as we're seeing, which is why even if Canada were to bend over backwards and cripple its economy and do all sorts of harmful things, we're talking about a net reduction of emissions in the world that is minimal, absolutely minimal compared to China, India, the United States.
00:33:25.380And that part is, I think, probably one of the most obvious points, but it's not really one acknowledged by governments.
00:33:32.060well they don't want to uh talk about it but canada is 1.5 percent of global emissions so
00:33:38.380we could go back to the stone age and it wouldn't uh it wouldn't affect anything within a few weeks
00:33:44.220uh china's increase in in coal production would make up for that and we would be running around
00:33:49.740with with with rocks and clubs you know a feeling right and our led-powered candles because you
00:33:57.340can't even burn the flame that's not allowed you know so you know really this is this is not uh
00:34:03.260this is not uh the way to go and it's not uh it's it's totally it's totally impractical and uh
00:34:10.140you know europe uh european under understands that uh so i'm afraid it may take a a a a a real
00:34:19.180sort of emergency to get people off the idea that uh that this is uh this this is something that
00:34:26.300they have to pursue at the expense of the least advantaged people in the least advantaged countries.
00:34:33.740But you know, maybe at some point, practicality and guilt will start moving things over. And of
00:34:42.300course, another way that it could happen is with political change. Right now, it may be that it's
00:34:49.740too early to be sure, but the Liberal Party seems to be in its death throes, so that could
00:34:55.660that could obviously make a difference but we're we're seeing this issue play out in in other
00:35:02.460countries and frankly those who are carrying the green banner are not doing well politically in
00:35:09.340the last year or two no and i think to put a fine point on this your contrast of the canadian
00:35:16.060experience in the european experience is an important one and i would also say that even
00:35:20.300people that are very committed to the abstract idea of a climate emergency when the energy crisis
00:35:26.220hits them that's no longer an abstract emergency that's something they have to contend with and
00:35:30.260it's all well and good to say when everything is theoretical oh yes we need to you know go and save
00:35:35.160the seaside property in the Maldives or whatever but when you are faced with that decision and
00:35:40.220don't have the energy you need to run your business or you can't afford to heat your home
00:35:44.980It's not the abstract crisis that grabs you.
00:35:48.580Well, the other thing that's really important to understand is that the science is not settled.
00:35:54.220There's a book written by Stephen Coonan, who was an undersecretary of energy and is a scientist in the Obama administration.
00:36:06.540And the title of his book is Unsettled.
00:36:08.780So that would indicate where he's coming from.
00:36:12.640But very recently, and this was quite significant, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the body, the UN body that so many of these catastrophists look to for support, the chairman said, let's not exaggerate this.
00:36:33.660There isn't the emergency that, frankly, so many people are talking about.
00:36:39.480And you're paralyzing people with fear by claiming that almost nothing can be done.
00:36:46.600We got 12 years, two days, and five hours before the doom is sealed.
00:36:53.600Well, first of all, they've been making these projections forever.
00:37:02.400So why would we believe models which are consistently wrong the next time? You know, just maybe they don't have it right this time either. Someone who has a perfectly wrong record is not someone that normally inspires confidence.
00:37:20.360But, you know, the latest projections are getting even more strident, I think, because of the fact that they can't really back it up.
00:37:31.780And the reason that they're running hard is because they have certain relationships built into them mathematically that aren't proving out.
00:37:41.280So, you know, I don't think we should lose sleep about an imminent climate emergency.
00:37:48.980I'm losing sleep about what the climate alarmists are doing to the economy.
00:37:56.420And what they're doing to the Western world in its real existential battle, and that is an emergency, in its real existential battle with China, which is laughing all the way to the bank.
00:40:51.540Do you want them to stop stealing the content
00:40:53.420or do you want them to steal the content?
00:40:56.620Oh no, they want you to pay for the content,
00:40:58.740which means it is not anything other than extortion.
00:41:02.600It is extortion. The mainstream media in this country are extorting big tech and the government is facilitating it because there is never anyone more generous than someone who has access to the wallet of someone else.
00:41:16.500So the federal government gets to claim that it is being benevolent and generous while it is spending Facebook's money and spending Google's money to prop up dying legacy media outlets.
00:41:27.820and we in Canada as taxpayers are supposed to be grateful that the government's sticking it to big
00:41:33.320tech and oh well at least they're not charging us more in tax money it is about what is right
00:41:38.020and what is wrong and the government has decided that it wants to just penalize tech companies who
00:41:44.260have many flaws many many flaws but just penalize them for the sake of subsidizing dying media and
00:41:52.100doing it in a way that it doesn't look like the government's just writing another big fat check
00:41:56.420And how dare, how dare these outlets, which demanded their content be removed in the first
00:42:03.320place by virtue of supporting Bill C-18, turn around and now try to get this company prosecuted.