Juno News - Is the Trudeau government a sinking ship？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:23.840 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:30.000 hello and welcome to you all another day another week of programs here on the andrew lawton show

00:01:39.900 canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north no that's not an auto correct we're not

00:01:45.780 canada's most irrelevant talk show at least we try not to be and to be so culturally relevant

00:01:51.320 i'm even going to talk very briefly about the barbie movie yes i saw the barbie movie not on

00:01:58.280 opening night. I didn't want to be too eager, but being the dutifully loyal and collegial and

00:02:04.580 convivial husband that I am, I accompanied my lovely wife to the Barbie movie on Saturday.

00:02:11.280 And we actually have a clip from the Barbie movie right here that I can share with you.

00:02:20.860 Do we not have that? I thought we had, this is the problem when I try to do a gag and I

00:02:27.160 don't tell Sean to get there we go.

00:02:29.600 Actually, that would have been more enjoyable than the Barbie movie.

00:02:58.620 You know, that was a clip from the streets of Toronto where stuff like that is commonplace.

00:03:04.020 Now, what I'm not going to do is do the whole, I like Ben Shapiro,

00:03:07.980 but I'm not going to do the whole Ben Shapiro thing and give a 45-minute post-mortem of the Barbie movie.

00:03:14.500 And I'm also not going to do what most other conservative commentators do,

00:03:18.280 which is try to find some political angle to talk about how this movie is everything that's wrong with the world and culture and society.

00:03:24.900 because actually, even if the left likes to politicize anything and everything,

00:03:29.340 I actually like entertainment as an escape from politics.

00:03:33.880 And I will say, if you go to the movie, I would have preferred to see Oppenheimer.

00:03:38.380 I think maybe I'll see Oppenheimer.

00:03:39.280 I haven't been to like a movie in five years,

00:03:41.400 but this week I might just do like Oppenheimer and Barbie.

00:03:45.620 And I want to do that one about the Beanie Babies as well with Zach Galifianakis.

00:03:49.380 But I don't know, maybe I'll just get movie-ed out

00:03:51.160 and go back to just listening to podcasts again.

00:03:53.880 But the one thing I will say is that, yes, the Barbie movie has a bit of a preachiness to it.

00:04:00.460 It talks about the patriarchy unironically.

00:04:03.560 It talks about all these very ham-fisted themes that, you know,

00:04:07.960 perhaps I wasn't the target market for as a 30-something male who's never had a Barbie in my life.

00:04:13.360 But I will say the one thing that I did enjoy about the Barbie movie

00:04:17.260 that I feel makes it so that people shouldn't be just ragging on it all the time

00:04:22.400 is that it is very clear that there is a difference between a man and a woman.

00:04:29.300 That's the one thing that I feel the movie did very well,

00:04:32.400 is that it reinforced there is, in fact, a binary.

00:04:35.180 There is a division between what men and women are,

00:04:38.660 and perhaps it might have even been a little bit too reductivist

00:04:40.940 because Barbie Land, where all the Barbies live,

00:04:43.800 is bright and pink and colorful, and all of them love it,

00:04:48.360 And the man's world is gray and dark and drab.

00:04:52.880 Now, maybe that was a little bit unkind to the men who run Mattel, like Will Ferrell in the movie.

00:04:58.480 But I will say that that was actually an unintentional victory that I would say,

00:05:02.700 is that it's a movie that drives home the point that boys and girls are different.

00:05:05.580 And I'd say Barbies are actually one of the great examples of the differences between boys and girls.

00:05:11.120 Now, of course, if a boy did happen to pick up a Barbie in his younger years now,

00:05:17.100 He would be put on hormones and sent off to the doctor and given some gender-affirming treatment 0.97

00:05:22.160 instead of just being a boy that happened to have picked up a doll and enjoyed it.

00:05:26.000 But here's the thing.

00:05:27.640 You can just enjoy the world and enjoy artistic creations in it,

00:05:32.020 and not everything has to be a political rant.

00:05:34.080 That would be the one takeaway of that I would give you.

00:05:37.160 But the big news today is not even news that's really happened yet.

00:05:40.820 It is news that we are on the cusp of, and that is a cabinet shuffle.

00:05:45.400 Tomorrow, Justin Trudeau is expected to make one of his biggest cabinet shuffles yet.

00:05:51.060 Now, none of this is official.

00:05:53.140 We're all getting like whispers and rumors and suggestions here.

00:05:56.880 And I believe, you know, believe me when I say I am very proud of the work that True

00:06:00.980 North does and I'm proud of our team.

00:06:02.700 We are not exactly on the call list from the Liberal government when it comes to leaking

00:06:07.980 who's going to be shuffled in and out of which portfolios and all of that.

00:06:12.080 But there are going to be some big changes.

00:06:13.720 And the last reporting I've seen from CTV, the Globe and Mail, CBC, is that there are going to be seven, seven cabinet ministers who are out of cabinet after tomorrow's shuffle.

00:06:26.340 Now, those seven cabinet ministers are David Lamedi, Mona Fortier, Omar Elgabra, Joyce Murray, Helena Jacek, Carolyn Bennett, and Marco Mendicino.

00:06:39.680 Yes, Marco Mendicino, the man for whom 22 is not a caliber of ammunition, but an IQ.

00:06:46.240 Marco Mendicino is out.

00:06:48.060 David Lamedi, the guy who thinks that the mentally ill should be able to have the state's assistance in their execution, is out.

00:06:56.260 Omar Elgabra, the guy who put a punitive vaccine mandate on truckers who worked solo and in isolation at a time when there was already a shortage of truckers.

00:07:05.860 He is gone and a bunch of other nondescript folks as well.

00:07:10.500 So we're going to see some movement here.

00:07:12.900 Now, I just saw moments ago before I went on air a Toronto Star piece that says there are going to be 10 new faces promoted.

00:07:20.840 And there was another story I saw in CTV which said that pretty much everyone is getting changed.

00:07:26.720 There are only a few people that aren't.

00:07:28.460 Now, the downside of this is that Bill Blair, it sounds like, is going to be the defense minister.

00:07:33.880 Now, I thought the really fun alternative would have been Patty Hajdu as defense minister or Mark Gerritsen as defense minister.

00:07:41.740 Defense minister, not good for the country, but would have been entertaining and would have given me some material to work with here.

00:07:47.660 But I do have, I mean, it's a very serious thing.

00:07:50.760 And just to take a moment here and be a bit more somber, I don't celebrate anyone losing their jobs.

00:07:57.240 And I thought it would actually be appropriate to give a bit of a proper, solemn and sincere send-off to the cabinet ministers who are departing tomorrow.

00:08:27.240 Na-na-na-na. Na-na-na-na. Oh, Marco, goodbye. Yeah, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

00:08:39.740 Listen, I do not celebrate people's demises, but I am not going to shed a tear for the people who

00:08:46.480 have been responsible for the most heavy-handed and Orwellian infringements of civil liberties,

00:08:53.680 of free speech of mobility rights being told that they no longer have a place in the government of

00:09:00.680 Canada. But of course the one little send-off that the Trudeaus give them is that they get to come up

00:09:05.780 with a reason why they're being turfed. This was Omar Al-Ghabra, the former transport minister now

00:09:12.600 who's resigning from cabinet altogether, explaining why he is leaving cabinet.

00:09:18.260 after almost 11 years as a member of parliament two and a half years as a minister and six

00:09:26.300 elections i've made the difficult decision to not run in the next election until then i will

00:09:31.800 continue to serve the constituents of mississauga center as their member of parliament as a result

00:09:36.720 of this decision i'm also stepping aside from my role as minister because the prime minister

00:09:41.500 deserves a cabinet who is committed to running in the next federal campaign as the minister of

00:09:45.780 transport. I helped lead our country through many challenging issues. We

00:09:49.900 protected Canadians during COVID while supporting the transportation industry

00:09:54.180 during an extraordinary period. We worked on reforming our aviation sector by

00:09:59.880 enhancing transparency and accountability. We worked on improving our supply chain

00:10:05.280 and established a supply chain office that will advance resilience and

00:10:09.600 efficiency within our transportation network.

00:10:13.560 We are moving closer to making the dream of a high frequency

00:10:17.920 passenger rail that connects Quebec City to Toronto a reality.

00:10:21.780 Those are just few examples of the important projects that I

00:10:25.740 had the honor of working on that are important to Canada.

00:10:32.520 So he's actually proud of his way.

00:10:34.800 He's actually proud of what he did when he was the transport minister.

00:10:40.260 Well, I would not exactly be listing your real legacy on your resume moving forward, Omar El-Gabra.

00:10:46.980 I actually saw him at the airport a couple of days ago,

00:10:49.580 and I didn't have a chance to stop and chat because I was on my way to a flight,

00:10:53.820 which I guess I did actually have time to stop and chat because the flight ended up being delayed.

00:10:57.660 And if you look at the delay board for any airline at any airport in Canada,

00:11:02.360 you'll see Omar Al-Gabra really doesn't have all that much of which to be proud.

00:11:07.100 But I'm just quibbling here.

00:11:08.820 I mean, airport delays are a much smaller sin

00:11:12.760 than the punitive restrictions that were put on the aviation sector,

00:11:17.460 on the transport sector, on truckers, pilots, flight attendants,

00:11:21.160 and many other people in the country,

00:11:23.300 which Omar Al-Gabra was all too happy to be the deliverer of.

00:11:28.560 And I will say, when you look at some of the other folks that are going out,

00:11:31.400 marco mendicino and david lametti these were the guys that were having their little text message

00:11:36.220 bromance uh joking about maybe sending in the tanks to deal with the truckers oh oh what's uh

00:11:43.040 what's not to joke about about possibly a tianamon square recreation to deal with people protesting

00:11:49.160 your government who doesn't just kick back and enjoy some gallows humor at the expense of the

00:11:54.300 plebs that you are supposed to be representing and carolyn bennett again one of the most i would

00:12:00.100 say inconsequential members of cabinet although one of the most lauded obviously she's just

00:12:06.500 venerated by people you dare to say anything even mildly critical of uh carolyn bennett and you have

00:12:12.060 the entire shamrock brigade jumping down your throat for days and weeks and months even when

00:12:17.760 she as the woman in cabinet supposedly representing indigenous people uh starts sharing these little 0.57

00:12:24.320 snippy text messages when jody race wilson rabel dares to step a little bit out of line

00:12:29.840 and assert her independence, and Carolyn Bennett, you may recall, was texting about, oh, how she 0.90

00:12:35.300 just might be in it for a pension, and she accidentally texted that to Jody Wilson-Raybould.

00:12:40.880 Again, Carolyn Bennett may be a doctor, not necessarily the sharpest scalpel on the surgical 1.00

00:12:46.940 tray, to use a medical term, but the one thing I will point out here about this is that there are

00:12:52.880 many reasons for this change, and we don't yet know what they are. Certainly, it's an entire

00:12:58.920 major reset of the Trudeau government. There's no denying that whatsoever. He's saying that people

00:13:05.180 effectively were not performing in their positions. Now, here's the thing though. Is he doing this

00:13:12.340 because a fall election is coming up? Is he doing this because we know, he knows we're going to be

00:13:16.960 going to the polls in the fall and he wants to be able to get rid of the folks who aren't running

00:13:20.640 again, put the best foot forward and say, this is the team we're running on. Because that was Omar

00:13:25.340 Algabra's point, which is, well, he deserves a cabinet of people that are committed to running

00:13:30.060 in the next election. Well, if the next election is not until 2024 or even 2025, it seems a little

00:13:37.440 bit weird to relegate your cabinet ministers, some very prominent ministers, to the backbenches for

00:13:43.620 two years, which you only do if they are completely and utterly incompetent and you don't don't belong

00:13:52.040 in your cabinet. But of course he can't say that. So there's a lot unspoken here. Now Marco

00:13:57.720 Mendicino, it's not just the firearms file that he's bungled. It isn't just the Nova Scotia

00:14:03.020 shooting file he's bungled. It isn't just the Paul Bernardo file he's bungled. It isn't just

00:14:08.480 the emergencies act. Marco Mendicino is a guy, if he puts both his shoes on in the morning,

00:14:14.220 I think he probably gets a gold star because that is seen as a victory for a man of his

00:14:19.760 intellectual magnitude but we will talk about marco mendicino a little bit more tomorrow

00:14:24.800 here's the thing last week justin trudeau was asked about marco mendicino and he was specifically

00:14:30.760 point blank asked if he had confidence in marco mendicino and i want you to listen to his answer

00:14:38.440 her minister you didn't directly answer the question about your public safety minister

00:14:46.620 Do you have confidence in him to continue after this handling of the Bernardo transfer file?

00:14:53.580 I have an amazing team in Ottawa and an amazing group of MPs right across the country

00:15:00.080 who are committed to serving their country every single day.

00:15:04.520 And anyone in my cabinet, by definition, has my confidence.

00:15:09.980 Merci beaucoup tout le monde.

00:15:10.860 anyone in my cabinet by definition has my confidence so it stands to reason that anyone

00:15:22.420 not in his cabinet does not have his confidence and i'm probably going to play that clip again

00:15:27.620 tomorrow because when you see all the people that are being demoted that are being pulled

00:15:32.140 out of cabinet it actually doesn't sound all that surprising that justin trudeau may be saying that

00:15:37.560 okay, these folks are dead weight and have to go. So if us were seeing Marco Mendicino is out,

00:15:43.020 David Lamedi is out, Joyce Murray, Carolyn Bennett, Helena Jacek, all of these people,

00:15:48.360 I mean, only a handful of them have used that I'm not running again excuse. So the ones that

00:15:53.640 are running again, but are either demoted or removed altogether, this is Justin Trudeau 0.99

00:15:58.560 saying without saying that they are actually morons or failures or that he does not have 0.99

00:16:04.600 confidence in their performance so look are these people running not running again because they 0.99

00:16:10.480 believe that the Trudeau government is a sinking ship or are they not running again because they've

00:16:15.340 been told this is the way you get out by saving a little bit of face or is something else entirely

00:16:21.160 happening here like I'm convinced that Jagmeet Singh is going to keep this government alive

00:16:26.340 until 2025 that he's not going to pull the plug on it because he knows that the next election

00:16:31.220 means the next loss, which means he's done.

00:16:33.620 He's got no real ability to stay on as NDP leader after another loss.

00:16:38.960 Trudeau knows after he's got to either get a majority or he's out.

00:16:42.960 So he needs to either call the election when he thinks he'll get the majority

00:16:47.440 or engineer something that forces the liberals to keep him in power.

00:16:52.300 So maybe he thinks that if the economy is going to get worse and worse,

00:16:55.640 that his path to staying in power is a fall election.

00:16:58.600 or maybe he realizes that he's actually just got to milk this supply and confidence agreement

00:17:02.780 to 2025 because then he'll get two extra years in power as opposed to zero extra years. I'm not

00:17:09.240 going to claim to have a crystal ball but I will say that I mean like Jagmeet Singh I have no balls

00:17:16.020 here I don't have the ability to see the future but what I am going to say is that there's not

00:17:21.320 going to be a way forward for the liberal government without something majorly changing.

00:17:28.780 And I'm sorry, but you can put some like, you know, disinfectant and room spray and

00:17:32.920 try to make this, you know, the House of Commons and the cabinet room smell a little bit better,

00:17:37.100 but you're not going to be able to turn around a fundamentally flawed government whose direction,

00:17:44.800 whose path that it's proceeding in has been as dangerous and damaging as it is.

00:17:49.900 And I mean, Chrystia Freeland, who it sounds like from the reports I've read, is staying in power. 0.99

00:17:55.520 It sounds like she's staying as finance minister.

00:17:58.400 When she goes out and about and is talking about, oh, inflation is so low and everything's great.

00:18:03.460 I mean, that is not translating to the real world.

00:18:06.920 That's not translating to the real experiences of people in this country.

00:18:11.060 And I mean, this is actually a good segue into this report that came out from TD.

00:18:15.600 and we invited the author of the report who I don't actually believe responded at all I mean

00:18:20.580 maybe they declined but I don't think they got back to us at all which is unfortunate because

00:18:24.540 I'm a TD client I give TD a lot of money but TD has said Canada's standard of living

00:18:30.520 is falling behind and this report talks about the fact that well there may be some on paper

00:18:36.480 economic growth in this country it's not translating in the real economy to real

00:18:42.120 prosperity for real Canadians. And I think this is a very important report because it's saying

00:18:47.660 that Canada has been lagging behind the U.S., behind other advanced economies. The money quote

00:18:53.160 here, no pun intended, from the report author, economic growth does not necessarily equate to

00:18:58.820 economic prosperity. I want to unpack this and some of the other economic trends a little bit

00:19:03.440 more here with Philip Cross, who is the former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada and

00:19:10.040 is also a monk senior fellow in economics for the mcdonald laurier institute philip always good to

00:19:15.540 talk to you thanks for coming on today thanks for having me back andrew so i mean let's first off

00:19:20.340 talk about the sales pitch that the federal government is giving here which is that everything

00:19:24.460 is great i mean that is probably the least convincing pitch if you talk to real people

00:19:29.240 in this country but what is it they're drawing from that's making things look so rosy as an

00:19:35.980 Economist, frankly, I'm a bit at a loss, probably that the unemployment rate is at such a low level. And a lot of that reflects more that a lot of people left the labor force that we're having trouble finding workers and finding people to do jobs, not that the economy is booming.

00:19:53.220 if you look at any other metric whether it's

00:19:57.380 gdp growth incomes inflation and in particular if you look at the most dynamic sectors of the

00:20:04.500 economy the ones that determine our growth going forward which are business investment investment

00:20:09.140 and exports we're way down the totem pole on these measures yeah and i i think this td report i mean

00:20:17.380 obviously the banks have their own forecasts and you know you could find three economists

00:20:21.220 and between them perhaps five opinions on what's happening in a particular country here but i think

00:20:26.980 when we're looking at the way that we're lagging behind other advanced economies on standard of

00:20:32.100 living that that's very key here because a lot of the times we've been told uh by our government

00:20:37.060 that oh well you know when we compare ourselves to the us and the uk and european countries we're

00:20:42.180 doing great but here we are we're not in that same league right now no and i'd encourage your

00:20:48.020 viewers, instead of looking at the TD report, look at my report that came out from the Fraser

00:20:54.040 Institute a couple of weeks ago that covered a lot of this ground, that noted that our GDP growth

00:21:01.020 has fallen way behind the U.S. That was true before the pandemic. It occurred during the pandemic.

00:21:06.740 And now in the recovery from the pandemic, we've fallen behind the U.S. by a good 10 percentage

00:21:12.140 points in growth and as i said it's it's especially because of if you compare the the sectors what

00:21:19.100 explains this difference between the u.s and canada it's especially business investment and

00:21:24.140 exports you can't blame this on an aging economy you can't say that we've exhausted technological

00:21:29.260 changes it's something very specific to this country and in this report basically i go on that

00:21:35.900 that I think it's an increasingly anti-business culture and way of talking to firms that I find

00:21:43.960 is the biggest difference between Canada and the US. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because

00:21:48.400 you mentioned, and I think I actually pulled the quote out here, you talk about the fact that

00:21:53.100 the importance of a nation's culture to economic growth. Without a culture that supports

00:21:57.620 entrepreneurship and innovation, even the best policies and institutions will produce

00:22:02.260 disappointing results so right now we have i think this tendency especially when we're talking about

00:22:09.140 inflation for our leaders to just say well canada is a passenger in a global trend right now it's

00:22:14.180 like oh there's inflation in the uk so inflation in canada is not really our fault it's everywhere

00:22:18.900 whereas you're saying that in canada there actually is something that's a very specific

00:22:23.060 and uniquely canadian phenomenon that's driving down growth very much so and it's because business

00:22:29.940 investment in this country over the last decade has fallen 20% while in the US it's grown 20%

00:22:36.100 over the same period. And the importance of business investment is that it embeds

00:22:41.620 technological changes. It drives your competitors going forward. That's why again, over the last

00:22:46.980 decade, our exports have fallen slightly while the US has continued to grow. So it's something

00:22:53.540 very specific and it's, you know, it's very specific to business investment and exports.

00:22:58.900 Yes, we've tried to fluff up growth by having low interest rates and having large government

00:23:04.660 deficits in spending and having a housing boom, but none of those are sustainable in the long run

00:23:09.860 if you don't have investment, jobs, and exports. We're an exporting nation. We count on exports

00:23:15.860 for one-third of our income. Between exports and business investment, you have well over a third

00:23:21.300 of our economy going absolutely nowhere. This is going to result in stagnant incomes over the longer

00:23:27.860 term now how much i mean you talk about how culture changes slowly here and i'm wondering

00:23:33.620 how much of it is really influenced by changes in government or if the culture has sort of an

00:23:39.300 evolution in this country that is influenced yes but not as radically by policy changes

00:23:47.220 well that's the one thing i i'm optimistic about is that culture does change slowly i think there

00:23:52.740 really is a a desire or still an impulse for innovation and entrepreneurship in this country

00:24:00.340 i don't think you can kill that off but at the same time you know you go back to you you talked

00:24:05.540 about the td uh report economists have been recommending that governments in this country

00:24:10.740 do a lot of things that the governments have actually done you know we've adopted free trade

00:24:15.780 with all the major g7 countries we have the highest level of education in the g7 we subsidize

00:24:22.180 research and development like crazy as shown by the huge subsidies given to the auto firms

00:24:28.340 recently so we've done a lot of things and yet our growth continues to sputter and that's why

00:24:34.180 i go back to saying it's probably more than just a little tweak of a policy here or there

00:24:40.340 we have to go back and look at how it is we talk to the business sector

00:24:44.500 internationally and in the in this country to make firms want to invest and spend in this country

00:24:50.500 now i want to just preface this by saying what i'm about to argue is not at all my point but i'm

00:24:56.260 trying to say you know how would the government right now federally respond to your point and

00:25:00.420 they'd say well just look at the 13 billion we've given a volkswagen look at the billions

00:25:04.900 we're handing out in corporate subsidies that's that's a showing our investment in business our

00:25:09.700 investment in entrepreneurship what what would you say to that because that's the government's

00:25:13.940 answer to you saying there's not a business climate here is to throw money at these companies yeah

00:25:17.860 Yeah. Well, I think what the government really revealed itself was when the head of Germany

00:25:22.500 came over last winter in the middle of a major crisis. I mean, I was in Europe last winter.

00:25:27.740 Trust me, it was cold. It was cold in restaurants. I mean, they turned the temperature down. They

00:25:32.580 ran out of natural gas. So the head of Germany comes over here. He asked Canada to step up

00:25:38.020 natural gas exports. We respond by saying, no, there isn't a business case for it.

00:25:42.680 Yeah.

00:25:43.060 Are you kidding?

00:25:43.640 There's news to the people wanting to buy it.

00:25:45.240 Yeah. Here's a head of a fellow G7 country who we should be disposed to help out just because he's a fellow G7, never mind it, he's a good customer, asking us to increase our energy exports. And we say there isn't a business case. That's farcical. We won't build pipelines. We discourage oil and gas investment. That's the type of, and oil and gas is the largest industry in this country.

00:26:12.640 Not auto manufacturing. Oil and gas is twice as important as the auto industry. So yes, you can go out and give subsidies to the auto industry. Whether or not they'll pay off in the long term, I don't know. As many people pointed out, it's not at all clear who's going to win the electric vehicle wars in the future.

00:26:33.940 but you know while we're doing that we're discouraging an industry that is twice as

00:26:39.800 important just the oil and gas industry by itself never mind adding in pipelines and industries like

00:26:45.120 that so I think the government revealed its true colors about the way it talks to the to the

00:26:51.700 business community in the way that it responded to Schultz's request last winter. Is your view I

00:26:59.260 mean because to go back to the global picture here and I think inflation has probably been one

00:27:03.240 of the most acute measures of of the state of the economy if you were to talk to most people

00:27:07.780 because it's the one they're seeing but in general unemployment and and all of this factors in as

00:27:12.040 well but but is your view that if Canada had implemented some of the stuff you're talking

00:27:15.440 about that we would have been a little bit more insulated from some of these global trends over

00:27:20.440 the last couple of years oh I think certainly um partly because you know uh the biggest source of

00:27:27.620 inflation over the last year was food and energy and the government stands back and goes oh that's

00:27:32.540 something we don't control. Actually, because we import so much food and our gasoline prices are

00:27:38.800 directly linked to the U.S., every time the Canadian dollar drops, that costs consumers

00:27:44.860 higher food and energy and other prices for imported goods. It's quite striking that when

00:27:51.740 last winter, when the oil and gas prices blew through the roof, our dollar didn't do anything.

00:27:57.820 And it's because the international community understood that our government would not allow more investment in the oil and gas industry, and we wouldn't be able to profit from that.

00:28:07.880 If we had allowed the oil and gas industry to profit from those high prices, the dollar would have risen, gasoline and food prices would have come down, and inflation would have been lower.

00:28:17.680 So there's a direct connection between the two.

00:28:20.600 Philip Cross is with us.

00:28:22.480 I mean, you're basically with everywhere.

00:28:24.240 You're with the Fraser Institute,

00:28:25.600 Macdonald Laurier, formerly Statistics Canada,

00:28:28.040 and you produce great work wherever you are.

00:28:30.180 Thanks so much for coming on, Philip.

00:28:31.840 Always good to talk to you.

00:28:33.160 My pleasure.

00:28:33.820 Thanks for having me on.

00:28:34.700 Thank you very much.

00:28:35.820 And listen, I mean, we can talk about

00:28:37.520 the divide more fundamentally here

00:28:39.780 between the financial economy and the real economy.

00:28:42.340 The on paper picture when Christopher Freeland

00:28:44.800 holds up a chart and says,

00:28:46.500 oh, you know, look, inflation's at an all time low.

00:28:48.300 And then you go and can't afford to buy eggs

00:28:51.040 at the grocery store or you buy.

00:28:52.880 I mean, this has happened to my wife recently.

00:28:54.820 She went to the grocery store, bought, you know, groceries for however long.

00:28:59.060 And I don't even think, I can't remember what the final dollar value was,

00:29:03.720 but it was something absurd, like, you know, $250 and we're a household of two.

00:29:08.520 And I mean, sure, yes, make your jokes.

00:29:10.600 But contrary to how I look, I don't actually eat as much as you're all thinking I do.

00:29:15.000 And that's what people are seeing.

00:29:17.480 That is what the family of four, the family of five, the family of six is seeing.

00:29:20.940 they're not actually seeing christia freeland's graph i mean that should be the federal government

00:29:25.780 plan right now is you know put put a picture of christia freeland pointing to the graph

00:29:29.900 on the grocery store self-checkout screen so that you can all just look at that and then look at the

00:29:36.400 bill beside it and see which one makes a little bit more sense but right now the government is

00:29:41.540 going to be gaslighting people into thinking that their finances are a lot better than they actually

00:29:47.180 are and and all of this to go back to the cabinet shuffle discussion we had a few moments ago

00:29:53.100 is weighing here on what is happening in the political climate so uh the polling that we've

00:29:59.420 seen uh is that justin trudeau has been voted the worst prime minister in 55 years now admittedly

00:30:07.540 this is one one poll i mean you always have to take polls with a grain of i mean if you can

00:30:12.560 afford to buy salt at the grocery store you can use a grain to analyze the poll numbers but this

00:30:18.680 was a survey that was done of a thousand canadians by research company and justin trudeau was the

00:30:24.000 worst pm of the last 55 years now if you're a raw raw raw rock ribbed conservative it's not all good

00:30:30.140 news because the second worst was stephen harper and the third worst was kim campbell uh and if

00:30:36.560 i'm to be honest i'm amazed that enough people remembered kim campbell's name to rank her

00:30:40.720 as the third worst prime minister of the last 55 years.

00:30:44.040 And in contrast, they said Pierre Trudeau was the best in recent memory.

00:30:48.660 So again, kind of a tough one because you can't really trust the sample

00:30:53.480 that says Pierre Trudeau is the best prime minister.

00:30:55.360 But the point is, the shine has certainly come off of Justin Trudeau.

00:30:59.420 I mean, I've always said, you know, it looks like he's glimmering and shining.

00:31:02.440 It's actually just some lingering residue from the shoe polish

00:31:05.180 that he parades around wearing.

00:31:06.720 but the reality is that there is not this massive momentum there is not this trudeomania 2.0 that's

00:31:14.980 carrying him i mean this is a government that right now is effectively on life support now

00:31:20.640 if the government is on life support that means david lametti will just like kick out the plug

00:31:25.000 and kill it off permanently that is the government's made policy on on actual life support but

00:31:29.680 the the reality is this is not a government that has any real popularity i mean you can look at

00:31:35.520 the few unhinged people on Twitter that really love to just go rah, rah, rah, Justin Trudeau.

00:31:41.240 But even they must know right now that they're selling snake oil.

00:31:45.480 They're selling a government that is spinning its tires and not really producing anything of value.

00:31:51.380 Like I was reading, and again, it's all just rumored until it's official,

00:31:55.160 that Pablo Rodriguez, the guy who gave us C11 and C18,

00:32:00.840 is going to replace Omar Al-Ghabra as minister of transport.

00:32:05.700 Now, just to look at the optics for a moment,

00:32:09.260 Pablo Rodriguez is a guy who some years back,

00:32:12.760 police said was driving with alcohol on his breath

00:32:17.100 and refused to take a breath test,

00:32:19.700 and he was charged about that.

00:32:21.000 So that's what you want in a transport minister,

00:32:22.820 a guy where the police have said

00:32:24.500 that you're not actually transporting yourself

00:32:26.300 in accordance with the law.

00:32:27.420 He's going to be the next transport minister,

00:32:31.760 according to some of these reports.

00:32:33.740 But again, who would look at Bill C-18,

00:32:38.100 which is the bill that has made it

00:32:39.480 so that news outlets cannot share their content on Facebook,

00:32:42.780 and C-11, which is forcing web companies

00:32:45.640 to manipulate their algorithms

00:32:47.040 to serve up content Trudeau likes.

00:32:48.880 Who would say, you know, those bills,

00:32:50.640 we want to take that level of government efficiency

00:32:54.040 and apply it to the transportation sector.

00:32:57.440 We want to let the guy that forced,

00:32:59.940 the guy that lost a game of chicken

00:33:02.820 with Facebook and Google and we want him to be responsible for movement of Canadians around the

00:33:09.700 country. Like give Pablo Rodriguez a week in the transport minister job and all of a sudden Air

00:33:16.520 Canada will decide that it wants to pull out of the aviation sector. That's the level of competence

00:33:21.340 we can expect from Pablo Rodriguez. So this is where the government is going right now and I'm

00:33:27.020 sorry but it's not going to get any better. So the question you have to ask Canadians is who's

00:33:32.660 still buying this and what do they want out of it because if an election were held today

00:33:37.520 i'm not convinced justin trudeau loses like we we can talk about polling and we can say oh well

00:33:44.920 yes the shines come off and he's not that popular but but you know that the media will when push

00:33:49.900 comes to shove say poliev's the bad guy trudeau's the good guy maybe reluctantly maybe he's he's

00:33:55.500 flawed but necessary uh and it's like oh well yes he needs a little good counterbalance you know he

00:34:01.180 needs the NDP to be the conscience of the Liberal government because that's been just so useful for

00:34:07.300 Canadians the last little while. And again, I know a lot of this is so speculative. I don't know if

00:34:12.340 there's going to be an election in a month or an election in a year or an election in two years.

00:34:17.380 But what I do know is that things right now are not going well for Canada. And the government

00:34:24.600 cannot be allowed to get away with this attempt to gaslight Canadians into thinking that things

00:34:31.160 are just going swimmingly here now i i'm told by one of my colleagues that true north did a little

00:34:36.880 poll in the comments on i don't know if it's facebook or youtube or rumble i don't know

00:34:41.340 wherever it is right now uh youtube sean says and and we've asked is justin trudeau the worst pm of

00:34:46.780 the last 50 years and uh shockingly 97 percent have said yes now uh these are kind of looking

00:34:52.920 like kim jong-un election results right now i don't think it's a representative sample but

00:34:57.800 certainly of those watching this program, 97% of you think that Trudeau is the worst PM in the last

00:35:04.680 50 years. And 3% of you either clicked the wrong thing or are tuned into the wrong show. You thought

00:35:09.660 you were listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber and it was actually Andrew Lawton. So take from that what

00:35:14.600 you will. But just a little bit of a side note here, a complete deviation. I meant to talk about

00:35:21.560 this last week. I am a recycling scofflaw. So I actually got for the first time, and I'm very

00:35:27.460 proud of this. I got an official notice on my recycling bin. This does not belong in the blue

00:35:34.980 box. I live in London, Ontario. When recycling is not done right, it costs taxpayers $250,000 per

00:35:43.280 year. Help us cut costs. Now, I shared this because as many of you know, I have this long

00:35:48.580 running resentment towards bylaw enforcement. I hate bylaw enforcement. I find it useless. And

00:35:55.380 if all the municipal bylaws were gone, I think we'd be a freer and happier people. But nevertheless,

00:36:01.200 this is not like a bylaw notice. It was stuck on by the blue box pickup guy who left. So we put

00:36:08.880 out two recycling bins because actually we try to do things right. We try to, you know, put out the

00:36:13.760 one bin with the plastic and the one bin with the cardboard. And I guess the plastic and metal go

00:36:19.140 together. They throw them into the same truck, I think. Anyway, so what happened was they picked

00:36:25.440 up the one with all the cardboard. They picked that up. They left the other one and stuck this

00:36:31.100 little judgmental preachy note on it. And what had happened was a few weeks ago, we had some

00:36:36.640 contractors and they, this was a few months ago actually, and they left some like leftover vapor

00:36:42.840 barrier or some plastic drop sheet or whatever it was that they never ended up using. And they just

00:36:47.780 left it in the backyard. And for like months, I've been just looking at this thing, not doing

00:36:52.380 anything with it. And then I was bringing out the recycling and I just said, you know, this is

00:36:56.420 plastic. Let me just, and it's not a huge sheet. I just, let me just fold it nicely and stick it in

00:37:01.800 the recycling bin because I thought, okay, it's plastic. They're taking plastic. This is the whole

00:37:05.720 point of the recycling process. And it was like, there was so little of it that it didn't even rise

00:37:12.180 above the surface of the recycling bin.

00:37:15.680 And this was enough for them to say no

00:37:18.820 and give me the note that said I'm getting dinged

00:37:21.520 or I'm contributing to like some $250,000 expenditure.

00:37:25.760 They're trying to like prey on my fiscal conservatism

00:37:28.000 by saying that, you know,

00:37:29.300 you're punishing the taxpayers

00:37:30.620 by your inability to recycle.

00:37:32.540 And I'm like, you know what?

00:37:33.040 You're punishing me, the taxpayer, 1.00

00:37:34.780 by being stupid right now. 1.00

00:37:36.360 So that was it. 0.99

00:37:37.920 So I actually like wanna just put this on my computer

00:37:41.980 or something. I just like, I'm very proud of it. Maybe I'll just wear it around. This is like the

00:37:45.900 new Scarlet Letter. This is the new Scarlet Letter. You just wear around and be a recycling 0.63

00:37:51.140 scofflaw. So we are tomorrow going to have more of a full report for you on the Trudeau cabinet

00:37:57.460 shuffle. The question we've asked in the title of this show, is this a sign that the liberal

00:38:02.800 government is a sinking ship? Let us know in the comments. We'll read some of those on tomorrow's

00:38:07.800 show. Do you think there's an election coming in the fall or do you think this is just trying to

00:38:11.360 get rid of the dead weight and put a fresh face forward for the next month, year, two years,

00:38:17.540 however long it takes. So this is The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's most irreverent talk show

00:38:22.000 on True North. We will talk to you all tomorrow at four o'clock Eastern. Thank you, God bless,

00:38:26.380 and good day to you all.

00:38:41.360 Thank you.

00:39:11.360 We'll be right back.

00:39:41.360 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 25, 2023

Is the Trudeau government a sinking ship？

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