Juno News - Justin Trudeau says he's not going anywhere this year

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.

00:01:16.920 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:25.120 Hello and welcome to you all, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:29.860 this is the Andrew Lawton Show on True North, the first program of 2024. Yes, it is January 2nd.

00:01:39.060 We are two ways into a new year, which means we celebrate the arbitrary passage of time

00:01:44.120 from one day to the next and pretend that from December 31st to January 1st, a year has elapsed.

00:01:50.740 It's a bit of a weird thing that we do on New Year's. I've never really been a fan of it.

00:01:54.660 I used to just be the Grinch of New Year's and hate the whole thing.

00:01:59.260 And then one year, I don't know, maybe it was three years ago or so,

00:02:02.220 I just had like a weird bit of New Year's spirit.

00:02:04.520 And I went to a New Year's party and, you know,

00:02:06.920 convinced myself to stay up until, I don't know, like 12.02 a.m.

00:02:10.360 And this time I was actually, I was out at a New Year's dinner for New Year's,

00:02:16.660 which was like a big deal for me.

00:02:18.580 And yes, I had to have a nap to make it to that point.

00:02:21.000 But you know what?

00:02:21.480 I did it and it was delightful.

00:02:23.640 So hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.

00:02:26.800 We are right back into the thick of it here.

00:02:29.400 As many of you may have seen, if you follow me on, I was going to say Twitter, but it's called X now.

00:02:34.620 If you follow me on X, I was not in Canada over the holidays.

00:02:39.960 I actually have always been, I was in Quebec one year for Christmas.

00:02:43.340 I don't know if that counts as being in Canada or not, but I've always spent Christmas with my family.

00:02:49.260 this year, though, my wife and I got out of Dodge and we were actually in Egypt, which has been like

00:02:53.420 a lifelong ambition for both of us. And it was the only week we could find time to go. And I,

00:02:59.560 so actually I have a picture of it here. We have evidence that I was in fact in Egypt as I, there

00:03:05.540 we go. That's me. And on top of me is a, oh no, sorry. I'm the one on top there. The camel's on

00:03:11.560 bottom. And in the background, the great pyramids of Giza, not Gaza. They don't really have pyramids

00:03:18.120 there Hamas blew them up uh that was a lot of fun uh poor camel but he uh dutifully carried me along 0.99

00:03:23.960 and at the end of it his handler uh was very very nice man he he came up to me and he said

00:03:29.220 I've taken care of you and I said well yes you have he's like good now you must take care of

00:03:34.480 me and my family and he put his hand out and I was wondering how much he was trying to shake

00:03:38.640 me down for it ended up being like five dollars or something so it was absolutely well worth it

00:03:44.200 Also took in some of the other great majestic sites of Egypt.

00:03:49.620 I paid a visit to this guy.

00:03:52.260 This is not for the faint of heart, this picture.

00:03:54.420 Now, I know that looks like the remains of King Tut in King Tut's tomb,

00:04:00.700 but that's actually Justin Trudeau's polling numbers right there, believe it or not.

00:04:05.160 They've been lying dead for about 4,000 years just sitting there,

00:04:09.780 and even a light gust of wind would just obliterate them into dust.

00:04:14.220 So that's not King Tut.

00:04:15.120 That is the Liberals' latest polling data right there in real time for you.

00:04:20.220 But it was a lot of fun.

00:04:21.960 And one of the things that was so fascinating before we get into the main show here,

00:04:26.680 I had never been to Egypt before, so it was a very new experience.

00:04:30.400 The police there are incredibly, incredibly corrupt.

00:04:35.340 And I don't like stereotypes.

00:04:37.120 I like I don't like I just don't I don't like generalization I don't like stereotypes

00:04:42.400 and so we had one day my wife and I we had a guide and the guide was with the driver and we

00:04:49.860 were traveling and there was this brand new bridge so the Egyptian president Abdel el-Sisi has been

00:04:56.420 like huge on public works he's building roads and bridges every which way and there was this one new

00:05:02.680 bridge that uh everyone was excited about the bridge didn't officially open until january 1st

00:05:09.320 but it was completed and it was open because people could drive on it and the police officer

00:05:15.560 that we encountered standing at the on-ramp uh was just there to like get everyone who wanted

00:05:22.040 to go on the bridge to bribe him which we learned was the only way you'd get on the bridge and i was

00:05:28.040 like okay well that's a little bit of an oddity and then you know maybe all the police aren't

00:05:31.240 that bad we but we we go to this old temple my wife and i beautiful old uh building well not

00:05:36.280 really a building but a site thousands of years old and there is this police officer there with

00:05:42.120 his uh submachine gun and he sees us taking pictures and he he you know gestures for us to

00:05:48.040 come over and he starts showing us all of these different places there he opens this one gate

00:05:53.720 and lets us walk through he points us here it was a couple of minutes and at the end of it i'm

00:05:58.600 I'm thinking, oh, wow, what a wonderful police officer. That's so nice. He's bringing us behind

00:06:02.580 these closed doors. And then we're in this tiny little dark tomb. And in one hand, he has his

00:06:08.780 submachine gun. And in the other hand, he's just staring at me with his hand out, waiting for me to

00:06:14.740 pay him off for the service I didn't know I was getting. Now, again, fortunately, this scam was

00:06:21.220 basically all about like getting seven or eight dollars from me as well. So the poor Egyptian 1.00

00:06:26.520 currency at least means that when you're getting hosed, because everyone in the country is trying 0.86

00:06:31.160 to screw you. So when you're getting hosed, at least it's for a small amount of money. But

00:06:34.600 whatever you did, enough about me. I hope you had a wonderful, wonderful holiday here.

00:06:39.060 I wanted to talk on this show about one of the things that does not change. I mentioned glibly

00:06:44.060 Justin Trudeau's poll numbers. They have been in the gutter for months now. Pierre Polyev and

00:06:50.440 the Conservatives have been riding high. You see some fluctuations here and there. But

00:06:55.160 But Justin Trudeau would have, I saw one poll recently, a 3% chance of forming government if the election were held on the day that the polling was done, whatever that was.

00:07:07.140 It was early December. 3% chance, which means that out of 100 scenarios, 97 of them would lead to Pierre Polieva, the Conservatives, winning.

00:07:17.700 Three percent, one of them might be, I don't know, nuclear catastrophe of the Conservative campaign bus, would lead to Justin Trudeau winning.

00:07:26.180 So it's odd that he has been, as he does the round robin of interviews for the end of the year, so brazen in claiming that everything is fine.

00:07:36.220 This was one of his interviews with Mercedes Stevenson.

00:07:39.200 Historically, Canadian prime ministers don't get elected four times in a row, and people

00:07:45.680 are being very clear that they don't like you in these polls.

00:07:50.660 People are frustrated right now.

00:07:52.300 But on a personal level, I made a commitment in 2015 to a whole bunch of young people who

00:08:00.200 came out to vote for the very, very first time that we were going to be doing the right

00:08:05.420 kinds of things to secure the promise of this country in a way that people were worried

00:08:10.820 about.

00:08:12.060 And years later, even with everything we've done on the environment, on inclusion, on

00:08:17.680 gender equality, on growing the economy, on reconciliation, those young people eight years

00:08:24.420 later are having trouble paying their rent, worried about their future in ways that are

00:08:29.000 just as tangible, if not more, because of the global context we're in.

00:08:34.160 And I didn't make a promise that I was going to make things better for them and then walk

00:08:37.500 away after four years or even after eight years.

00:08:40.040 I said I'd be there to fight for them every single day.

00:08:44.620 Even if they don't want you there.

00:08:46.620 Listen, there'll be an election eventually in which people get to make that choice.

00:08:51.080 But I am not giving up on them.

00:08:53.620 I'm not giving up on Canada.

00:08:55.480 I'm not giving up on the progressive vision of progress that we've been fighting for every

00:09:02.120 single day over the past years that's very much like you can't fire me i quit he you know her

00:09:10.760 point in the question was a very valid one which is uh canadians don't want you anymore they don't

00:09:15.960 like you they don't want you around and he said well i made a commitment to them they're not

00:09:19.960 getting rid of me that easily it's like no no they're forgiving you for the commitment they

00:09:24.280 want you to walk away you you don't owe it to them you in fact you owe it to them to walk away

00:09:29.880 We are coming up, I believe it's in March, I can't recall exactly the date, I have it written down

00:09:35.560 somewhere, but we are coming up on the 40-year anniversary of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's famous

00:09:42.840 walk in the snow, which was that little late night walk he took through, was it the grass or the sand?

00:09:48.560 No, sorry, the snow. When he took that little walk and decided that he was going to be stepping down,

00:09:53.620 that he had taken things as far as he could take them. Now, Pierre Elliott Trudeau gets,

00:09:59.400 i think a lot of credit for being self-aware but the reality is he had already had his moment uh

00:10:06.360 and he had already lost and it was only coming back and arguably he had his most uh substantive

00:10:11.480 term when he returned but he had at that point nowhere else to go but down so he he left and the

00:10:18.120 the so-called walk in the snow has now entered canadian parlance so will justin trudeau take

00:10:22.840 a walk in the snow i mean every indication he's given in every interview that one with mercedes

00:10:27.880 Stevenson being the most recent example here, is that you are going to have to drag him out the

00:10:33.300 door kicking and screaming if you want him to go anywhere. There is no shame. There is no self

00:10:40.020 awareness. There is no introspection. When you look at polling numbers, which obviously you have

00:10:45.560 to take with a grain of salt, he says, well, it's all these external things. I mean, it's not really

00:10:50.040 about me. It's about all of these other factors. That's basically what he's saying here. So when

00:10:56.520 he says we made a commitment to young people in 2015 yeah you were going to legalize pot and you

00:11:02.120 were going to change the voting system and you did just one of those because that one was the one

00:11:06.220 that benefited you uh the reality is justin trudeau made a commitment to young people young

00:11:11.320 people in some cases are happy with them in some cases they're not but this idea that he has to

00:11:16.520 stay there until the end of time or he's voted out whichever comes first is a very weird way i mean

00:11:23.920 I'm a big believer in quit before you fail, which is when you get to the point where you cannot do

00:11:29.740 anything more, you should go out where people still believe that you had something to offer

00:11:36.640 and that you did something. Sean in my messaging here says, Gretzky is a great example of that.

00:11:43.980 I'm assuming he's not referring to the Ontario member of the legislature, Lisa Gretzky. So

00:11:49.940 So I'm left to believe this must be a sports reference.

00:11:52.660 But Wayne Gretzky did something that apparently proves my point.

00:11:55.440 So thank you very much for that, Sean.

00:11:56.700 Very helpful.

00:11:57.880 I'm sure the audience understands what you're talking about if I don't.

00:12:01.260 But Seinfeld, I can use Seinfeld references.

00:12:05.260 Seinfeld knows this full well.

00:12:08.100 Because when the series Seinfeld ended, it was at the absolute apex.

00:12:12.880 It was the top.

00:12:14.020 It was like in the ratings.

00:12:15.340 People were offering them more and more and more money just to keep it going.

00:12:19.760 And Seinfeld and the cast said, listen, you were at the top.

00:12:23.340 There is only one way to go, and that is down.

00:12:25.860 So they canceled the show.

00:12:27.500 They left people wanting more.

00:12:30.300 They left people wanting more.

00:12:31.900 Now, in the case of Justin Trudeau, he knows that people don't want anymore.

00:12:35.840 He's already passed that point.

00:12:38.000 You know, maybe the 2021 election was the logical point at which he could have made his exit.

00:12:42.880 Probably about a year after that.

00:12:44.520 I mean, it would have looked bad if he had just said when Pierre Polyev became the leader in 2022.

00:12:49.220 all right I'm out I you know I've done it he can have a shot now but he is not liked and he is not

00:12:56.180 wanted and he is the only single person who doesn't seem to realize that now in his year-end interviews

00:13:02.600 he did the usual suspects he did CBC, CTV, Global News well Pierre Polyev did a very different

00:13:09.660 approach Pierre Polyev sat down with True North he sat down with Rex Murphy he sat down with Brian

00:13:16.080 Lilly. He talked to all of these other folks. And what was interesting is the media then

00:13:20.940 pounced on Pierre Polyev for not talking to the right kinds of journalists because only the

00:13:26.960 official Parliament Hill journalists are the real journalists. That was the approach that they

00:13:31.040 tended to take about that. But it was fascinating to me. I mean, I actually got a lot more out of

00:13:36.260 some of these Pierre Polyev interviews than I probably would have gotten if he was just being

00:13:39.720 beaten over the head with Rosie Barton's questions about tone and civility or whatever she would 1.00

00:13:45.540 have asked him about had he sat down with her. But what's fascinating here is that Justin Trudeau

00:13:50.880 doesn't seem to realize the why for the polling number. He did mention in a bit of self-awareness

00:13:57.240 that Pierre Polyev has captured an anxiety and an angst in the Canadian population very well,

00:14:04.520 but he still doesn't realize why things aren't working. This is a clip that I think really shows

00:14:10.200 that. Where do you find optimism right now? Because I think that's something Canadians 1.00

00:14:14.660 are struggling with right i think there is a frustration anger and patience all those things

00:14:19.780 and i wonder where where you find that and where you would tell them to find it two things first

00:14:25.140 of all a lot of the things that we're putting into place now are going to be delivering in the coming

00:14:33.380 years as we're seeing inflation getting under control as we see interest rates hopefully coming

00:14:38.260 down in sometime in 2024 that's going to take pressure off as we see ten dollar a day child

00:14:43.940 care become a reality across the country but the building blocks are there but even that's not even

00:14:50.820 where i draw most of my inspiration from it's our fellow canadians we saw it during the worst forest

00:14:56.020 fire season on his in history over the summer the way people stepped up for each other the way people

00:15:02.740 were there for each other the way people are there now with food banks with supports the way

00:15:07.460 communities are coming together yeah they're united and all being mad at the federal government

00:15:11.780 and the government's right now because there's something to be mad about there but at the same

00:15:16.100 time those people who throw up their hands and say oh Canada's just broken couldn't be wronger

00:15:21.220 because Canadians are not broken they're facing really tough times but we're doing what we always

00:15:27.140 do as Canadians we roll up our sleeves we're there for our neighbors we lean in to the headwinds

00:15:32.900 and we succeed some people don't buy that though I understand how tough it is right now

00:15:39.060 but what people need to be looking for is who is actually looking to solve the challenges we're

00:15:45.620 facing and who's just looking to exploit them or amplify them and that is going to be the choice

00:15:51.460 that will shape the next two years in politics

00:15:56.420 so basically he's saying canada is not broken because canadians are great and okay that's a

00:16:02.820 you know a nice little heartwarming message but when someone gets up and says canada is

00:16:07.620 broken which is a line Pierre Polyev has used and that's obviously where Justin Trudeau is

00:16:13.060 going with that when he says that he's not saying there's a problem with Canadian people he's saying

00:16:18.660 that the institutions in this country are not working and are not serving Canadians that there

00:16:25.300 is something very different from saying Canada is broken than Canadians are broken and Justin

00:16:31.940 Trudeau is the one trying to conflate these two, I would say quite wrongly. But there's also

00:16:37.820 something, and this is a criticism you could make of Stephen Harper's government. It's a criticism

00:16:42.120 you could make of the former Ontario government under Kathleen Wynne. But we'll talk about it in

00:16:47.540 the context of Justin Trudeau right now. He has been elected three times. He had a majority

00:16:53.280 government in 2015. He had a minority government in 2019. He has a de facto majority government

00:16:59.760 now because the NDP is propping his government up. Now, the reason that's an important point is

00:17:06.280 because if you look at from 2015 to now, Justin Trudeau has had an eight-year period. By this

00:17:12.380 fall, it'll be a nine-year period with which he can do effectively whatever he wants.

00:17:19.460 So when he talks about, well, we're putting in things now that are going to start yielding

00:17:24.240 benefits and reaping benefits years down the road, you're like, well, hang on, you've had

00:17:30.080 almost a decade. Why didn't you do these? Okay, maybe you didn't get time to do everything in

00:17:34.560 your first term, but certainly your second, why didn't you do them? What was holding you back?

00:17:40.180 And Stephen Harper, it was the same sort of thing. You could make the claim that in 2011 or 2015,

00:17:45.840 by which point the conservatives have won three elections already, anything in their platform,

00:17:51.440 you are right to question why do you even need this platform you've been in government for so

00:17:57.360 long why have you not done everything you you've needed to do i mean the best thing you could do

00:18:03.020 as a government if you're running for a fourth term in office is say uh you know our platform

00:18:07.900 is one page and it's basically just maintaining all of these things we've already done that's

00:18:13.320 effectively it because by that point anything you haven't done is because you didn't come up

00:18:16.800 with the ideas or you were just holding back your best material uh just waiting for people to give

00:18:21.580 you an encore but sometimes i just want to see the best material in the main set now the problem

00:18:26.840 with that i was once at a journey concert and journey made the fatal mistake of doing all their

00:18:31.740 hits in the main set so everyone left before the encore but you know what no one was left wanting

00:18:37.100 more so journey understood that part at least i'm throwing again i can't do the sports references

00:18:42.780 but if you want me to do journey references in Seinfeld, I've got you covered. Just none of this

00:18:47.140 Gretzky stuff that people are talking about, you kids these days. One of the things that has

00:18:52.620 changed this year is Saskatchewan has made good on its promise to not collect the carbon tax.

00:18:59.620 They are no longer collecting a carbon tax on fuel and heating. Their rationale is that the

00:19:05.020 federal government gave this selective carve-out for home heating oil, which disproportionately

00:19:10.740 benefited atlantic canada so saskatchewan is saying to the federal government well you know

00:19:15.780 what tough luck we are not going to charge the carbon tax to our people now is this constitutional

00:19:21.880 or not i'm certain there's going to be a court battle about it but it means that the provinces

00:19:26.660 are not messing around when it comes to this standoff with the federal government over it

00:19:32.340 one of the things that i think will come up here is obviously where the feds go from here because

00:19:37.520 no prime minister wants to be the one that ushered in a federalism crisis. And I would

00:19:42.340 say that federal provincial relations have been pretty strained right now, worse than I've ever

00:19:48.700 seen in, well, worse than I can recall in my life, not worse than they've ever been.

00:19:53.640 But this is a big problem. So in the case of Saskatchewan, they're looking at the federal

00:19:58.300 government and saying, you know what, if you guys are going to do this to us, we're going to do this

00:20:01.820 to you. We've had the Sovereignty Act, the Saskatchewan First Act, we've had the notwithstanding

00:20:07.200 clause. All of these different provincial governments right now, from New Brunswick to

00:20:11.960 Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, they've all been saying with alarming regularity now to

00:20:18.480 the federal government, we are not going to play your game. So I think if I were to make a prediction

00:20:25.660 for the year ahead, we will probably see more of this on different policies. Remember, Saskatchewan

00:20:31.480 used the notwithstanding clause on a parental rights bill. It wasn't on the Sovereignty Act,

00:20:36.760 it wasn't on an energy thing they use notwithstanding clause to get around a provincial

00:20:41.080 rights bill that a court had found unconstitutional we've had alberta that's talking about using this

00:20:46.440 in many different contexts ontario has used the notwithstanding clause which is that section of

00:20:51.960 the constitution that effectively lets uh provinces preemptively say uh we are going to do this in

00:20:58.440 spite of what the charter of rights and freedom says so if we see federal provincial relationships

00:21:04.920 like this is that the best way of doing things you know one thing that i will just to geek out

00:21:12.120 on political science for a moment here the federal government kind of views itself as being

00:21:17.800 the overarching power under which provinces lie but if you read the constitution the federal

00:21:23.960 provincial relationship is actually envisioned as more of a partnership in some jurisdiction

00:21:29.800 in some contexts a federal government has sole jurisdiction in others provinces have

00:21:34.120 sole jurisdiction and in a few areas federal governments and provincial governments have to

00:21:39.640 share jurisdiction and i mean really if you're talking about let's say a health care or energy

00:21:46.360 these are supposed to be matters of provincial jurisdiction they do not work for the federal

00:21:52.520 government they are not subordinate to the federal government so it is in some ways supposed to be a

00:21:58.120 an equal relationship or uh to use the old line first among equals to describe the prime minister

00:22:04.440 well you could also use that to describe the federal government so i but again at the same

00:22:10.760 time no one wants this really antagonistic relationship between the two and i think that's

00:22:16.680 going to be what we're seeing more of but you know the charitable defense of what saskatchewan

00:22:20.760 and alberta and the like are doing here is that they wouldn't need to do this if the federal 0.89

00:22:26.520 government weren't trying to encroach into provincial jurisdiction time and time again so

00:22:32.600 we'll talk about what saskatchewan is doing here i also want to talk about the fuel tax issue in

00:22:37.800 alberta chris sims is our regular monday correspondent but obviously we don't have a

00:22:41.800 monday show this week but it had been too long since we had heard from her so we wanted to bring

00:22:45.480 her on for a rare tuesday appearance the alberta director for the canadian taxpayers federation

00:22:51.000 uh chris always a pleasure thanks for coming on and happy new year happy new year thanks for

00:22:55.480 having us again so let's talk here about what saskatchewan is doing i i just laid the groundwork

00:23:01.160 here but effectively are they in legally iffy territory here or are they pretty soundly

00:23:07.800 protected that's a great question i think we're in kind of newer territory we've got an actual

00:23:13.880 you know we often hear people of the taxpayers federation email us and say something like i'm

00:23:17.640 not going to pay my taxes this year damn this government which you know we appreciate that

00:23:22.120 passion you got my email good yeah thanks so much for responding to our survey so so what we find 0.95

00:23:28.600 interesting here is that we've got the premier saying it so now there's a heck of a lot more on

00:23:35.080 the table and what's really neat to see is that uh premier scott moe has really kind of got this

00:23:41.480 confidence about him now and i like to think that it's often due to the fact that we have

00:23:47.640 have Danielle Smith as the Alberta Premier right next door. And so the two of them, I think, are

00:23:52.620 kind of in a bit of competition with each other on who can stand up to the Trudeau government

00:23:57.060 faster and more. And so what's interesting with Saskatchewan is that they have a crown corp when

00:24:03.840 it comes to their power regulation and power delivery. Now, quite often, we don't like crown

00:24:09.660 corporations because they can wind up being monopolistic. You don't have any competition

00:24:13.860 and it can go sideways. But with the fight with Ottawa, it's been very useful for him to be able

00:24:20.540 to do that. So much so that we've got Daniel Smith kind of going, hmm, maybe we should create

00:24:26.000 a temporary form of an Alberta Crown Corporation just as a mechanism to fight Trudeau's attack

00:24:32.220 on our energy sector. And so I think we're in pretty new territory here. I'd have to think long

00:24:38.700 and hard about when the last time was that a provincial leader stood up with this kind of force

00:24:44.000 saying, I'm refusing to collect your federal tax within my jurisdiction. We know that Quebec must 1.00

00:24:51.100 have said something like this sometime in the past, but this is definitely something big and

00:24:56.860 bold coming from the West. Yeah, I would agree. And I think that in the context of what Saskatchewan

00:25:03.600 is doing here, they're really doing an end run and a very creative end run around the federal

00:25:07.460 government. I'd say something analogous would be when Alberta said, we are not going to devote

00:25:12.060 police resources to enforcing the gun grab. It was really a move the federal government hadn't

00:25:17.760 anticipated and kind of was a bit checkmated on this. I'll ask you then in the context of how this

00:25:24.680 competition benefits people, because I agree. I mean, this one-upsmanship between Alberta and

00:25:28.540 Saskatchewan is great. I was in, I want to say it was Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg. It was one of

00:25:33.480 these like tourist trap towns in Tennessee once, and they had a dollar store. And then you got

00:25:38.440 drive a little bit down the street and there was a 99 cent store. And across from that, there was a

00:25:42.680 98 cent store. And I was like, this is fantastic. I mean, they're probably all owned by the same

00:25:47.160 company, but like, I was like, this is great. I mean, what, what better way to, to be a consumer

00:25:50.800 than be in the midst of three businesses that are all vying for your consumerism here. And if you're

00:25:57.340 I think you and I were joking in the past, if you live in Lloydminster, which is that city that

00:26:02.120 straddles Saskatchewan and Alberta. You're getting the best of both worlds here. But

00:26:05.740 Canadians benefit when you have provinces that are wanting to really provide a better value for

00:26:12.520 their residents and for citizens here. But the flip side of this is that Alberta is not doing

00:26:18.260 everything perfect. The Alberta government this year reinstated as of yesterday the fuel tax. And

00:26:24.480 I know you were really just desperately hoping and pleading with the government on my show a couple

00:26:30.240 of weeks ago that they would walk this back. They didn't. So first off, how much is this for

00:26:35.720 Albertans? Yeah, this is really frustrating. And so just to focus on the positive again for a

00:26:41.500 second, it's the reason why we're really happy that Premier Daniel Smith and Premier Scott Mo

00:26:47.060 are standing up to Trudeau is because it usually saves people money and it provides more

00:26:52.640 accountability because typically the more local smaller government is going to be more accountable

00:26:58.960 and usually cheaper to operate than this big conglomerate amorphous thing that is called

00:27:05.400 Ottawa. And so that is why we're cheering them on when it comes to that sort of thing.

00:27:10.100 Unfortunately, you're right. It's a big head scratcher. So one year ago, Premier Daniel

00:27:16.700 Smith did the right thing. She fully suspended the Alberta fuel tax, which saved us 13 cents

00:27:22.140 per liter of gasoline and diesel. And it was big savings. It was like $10 a minivan, $15

00:27:28.300 a pickup truck, about $130 for a trucker to fill up his big rigs. When you add it all up province

00:27:33.840 wide, it was saving around $100 million a month. So big time savings. Now, technically, yes, it was

00:27:42.420 tied to the price of a barrel of oil. And when they announced the fuel tax suspension, they said,

00:27:48.480 hey, if the price of oil drops below a certain threshold, we're going to partially reimpose

00:27:54.120 this tax. So that's the math part. But the politics part a year ago is when the premier

00:28:00.040 announced why she was doing this. And the why matters here. She said she was doing this because

00:28:05.820 people were struggling to afford the basics, because inflation was still a huge problem,

00:28:10.040 and because Prime Minister Trudeau is obsessed with increasing his federal carbon tax. So she

00:28:15.940 saw this as kind of a shield against Ottawa. None of that stuff has changed. In fact, it's getting

00:28:22.400 worse. Trudeau is going to jack up the carbon tax in just a few weeks' time. But inexplicably,

00:28:28.820 the Treasury bureaucrats in Edmonton have gotten a hold of Nate Horner, the finance minister,

00:28:34.740 and whispered something into his ear, and they've now increased it. It's up to nine cents per litre.

00:28:41.140 So for the first time in a year, Albertans are not paying the lowest fuel taxes in all of Canada.

00:28:47.080 that title is actually now in manitoba with the ndp premier wab canoe

00:28:52.300 yeah and look i i think what you're saying there is valid and it's why temporary in terms of the

00:29:00.840 government lexicon is never something anyone should take to the bank but i'll ask you about

00:29:05.980 the why here because this would be an easy win for taxpayers to make this permanent is it just

00:29:11.380 that the government in alberta can't afford it is that their only rationale have they really defended

00:29:16.040 allowing this to go back on? That's what they're trying to say. But the problem here is that the

00:29:22.740 math is staring at us in the face. So great question. If they were teetering on the brink

00:29:29.100 of a deficit of not balancing the budget, the Taxpayers Federation and people like us would not

00:29:35.660 be clamoring for them to extend this fuel tax relief. We don't want to see deficits. We want

00:29:41.060 to see them running surpluses so they can pay down the debt, okay? Because the debt is a major

00:29:45.880 problem. We're spending billions of dollars on interest payments per year. That isn't the case

00:29:50.560 in Alberta. We have a $5.5 billion surplus right now on the books. They have a $5.5 billion surplus

00:30:00.260 after a year of not collecting this tax. So mathematically, it's a big head scratcher as well.

00:30:08.200 So even if, and they should, even if they kept their promise to put 50% of their cash surplus down on the debt, which they've agreed to do, fine. Andrew, they could still extend this by another six months and still have a more than a billion dollar surplus at budget time.

00:30:27.380 So this is again, like politically, mathematically, we don't get it.

00:30:32.240 This doesn't make any sense.

00:30:33.260 My only, my, my spidey sense is telling me that I think in Edmonton, I call it auto-wash

00:30:39.820 at the federal level.

00:30:41.180 I think in Alberta, you did, you do a lot of talk radio here.

00:30:44.300 Do they call it dome disease up in Edmonton?

00:30:46.660 Yeah, I think so.

00:30:47.980 They get under this dome and these bureaucrats at treasury start, these are the same people,

00:30:52.880 by the way, who want a PST.

00:30:54.820 Like they are not our friends.

00:30:56.120 you should not be listening to these people um my hunch is uh that the politicians the premier

00:31:02.040 the minister are catching a bit of dome disease and they're listening to the bureaucrats at treasury

00:31:07.320 and who love higher taxes well maybe we're overdue for another red lobster accord which uh if you

00:31:13.800 don't get the inside joke i'll explain it again later i have explained we have explained it in

00:31:17.160 the past i don't know if we've shown the uh the famous picture but uh the invitation we need

00:31:21.800 another conference yeah we have the red lobster accord uh all right chris timms we will talk to

00:31:26.600 you next monday thank you so much as always for your time happy new year all right thank you and

00:31:31.480 happy new year to you as well uh since we're uh keeping on a little bit of a provincial bent today

00:31:37.080 i wanted to turn from uh one area of provincial jurisdiction to another which is health care

00:31:43.240 uh not to say the provinces are always managing this issue as well as they need to be this is

00:31:49.080 probably no more acutely available and accessible to us than it is with wait times. Now, wait times

00:31:56.840 are not as much an issue as they are, or let me back up. We don't hear the discussion of it as

00:32:03.300 much as we did a few years ago even. There was a real pinch point where there was a crisis,

00:32:08.060 especially in Ontario, of people being treated in hallways. You had hospitals that had to develop

00:32:12.700 hallway medicine protocols but when we talk about access to health care especially to

00:32:18.700 surgeries which are very much important for people they're still in terrible terrible places we know

00:32:25.740 there are a number of studies that have pointed to how many canadians are just taking themselves

00:32:29.820 off the waitlist and going and paying out of pocket in the united states or elsewhere in the

00:32:34.460 world our friends over at secondstreet.org have been tracking this issue relentlessly and they

00:32:39.900 found that waitlists have increased by five percent with over 140 000 more canadians waiting

00:32:47.500 for surgery diagnostic scans or specialist appointments joining me is the president of

00:32:52.620 secondstreet.org colin craig colin always a pleasure thanks for coming on today well thanks

00:32:58.140 for the chat today and i appreciate it so obviously uh this is an issue that canadians if they don't

00:33:04.380 know about it's because they're fortunate enough to be not on the wait list any canadian who ever

00:33:08.220 tried to navigate the system is well aware of this here and uh we're not talking about examples of

00:33:14.620 people that are you know being turned away at emergency rooms because they had a heart attack

00:33:18.780 and they're not being treated but uh that is also not to say that these are not very crucial things

00:33:24.220 that people in canada are not able to readily access well that's right i mean this these numbers

00:33:30.620 that we've dug up we asked every province in the country a pretty straightforward question how many

00:33:35.900 people in your province are waiting for surgery a diagnostic scan or to see a specialist and

00:33:41.500 there are actually only three provincial governments that could tell us all three of those numbers

00:33:47.580 nova scotia quebec and alberta and the other provinces gave us either one of the numbers or

00:33:54.780 two of the numbers so there's a lot of holes in it we're looking at 3.1 million people waiting

00:33:59.900 for those important health care services and you alluded to it in many cases sadly those are a lot

00:34:06.780 of people that are suffering and we tried to be cautious and try to fill in some of those blanks

00:34:13.180 if you go to our website you've got this big grid with all the numbers the governments gave us

00:34:17.180 with a lot of holes and if you fill in the holes to try to look at what that big picture looks like

00:34:22.380 it's probably about 5.1 million Canadians that are waiting or to put this in plain English about one

00:34:28.860 in eight Canadians are on a wait list right now for health care services just

00:34:33.000 to just to jump on that point the issues that you had from the provincial

00:34:36.900 government is that a data collection issue or is it a transparency issue and

00:34:40.380 by that I mean do they have the numbers and they're not sharing them or are they

00:34:43.540 just not making it a point of finding these in front this data I think it's a

00:34:48.000 partially a data collection problem and to be blunt and incompetence problem if

00:34:54.060 you have a problem the first thing you need to do is understand how big it is

00:34:58.800 and understand how you're going to get rid of it or attack it, fight it, whatever you want to call it.

00:35:04.520 So if you're going to measure progress against how many people are waiting to see a specialist,

00:35:09.340 well, the first thing you got to do is figure out, okay, well, how many people are waiting right now

00:35:12.400 to see a specialist and how do we get that number down? And if you can't produce that number as a

00:35:16.600 provincial government, I think that's a problem. So yeah, I think it's a problem in terms of the

00:35:22.200 fact that they don't seem to collect the data centrally in some cases, and in other cases,

00:35:28.040 maybe just not even asking the question to find out well and to be more cynical on this not that

00:35:33.880 i try to be a cheery optimist sometimes but why would you want to collect the data if you know

00:35:38.840 what it will show and i think that's probably where we're seeing a little bit of this here

00:35:43.000 there's no motivation to go in and do an intensive deep dive into figures that are going to show

00:35:47.960 provinces are are not delivering the service they're supposed to yeah no that could be part

00:35:53.860 it i mean we've got to remember too that they can often give us some data but not others so they can

00:35:58.740 tell us right across the country pretty much with the exception of prince edward island how many

00:36:03.060 people are waiting for surgery um but we got to remember that quite often with healthcare issues

00:36:09.380 you don't always need surgery sometimes you need some kind of other intervention

00:36:13.460 medication or some kind of other change physiotherapy whatever it is it's often cases

00:36:19.300 where you don't need surgery and so you've got to meet with a specialist to find out what that

00:36:23.860 course of action is maybe need a diagnostic scan and so forth so uh it's troubling that you can't

00:36:29.360 get those numbers but like i said the numbers don't seem to be good there were some bright spots

00:36:33.920 though we saw some positive improvement over the past year in saskatchewan and manitoba and

00:36:39.420 quebec were a couple of the ones that we highlighted where we've seen some good progress

00:36:43.680 in terms of a number of people waiting i know that the third rail in canadian politics has

00:36:48.880 always been health care. I mean, any discussion about the system yields just this knee-jerk,

00:36:54.520 visceral, emotional reaction from people. We've had mixed court rulings on what you're able to do

00:37:00.700 as far as fee-based services and care. But one thing we know in the case of Quebec is that you

00:37:07.480 have the option to oftentimes go and get a service out of your own pocket. Now, that's not to say that

00:37:13.800 when you're paying as much in taxes as you are for provincial health care, that's just. But

00:37:18.540 if you're kind of just looking in self-preservation mode I get why people do that so for people outside

00:37:24.260 of Quebec though they don't have that opportunity available so they're either forced to just deal

00:37:28.960 with it or to leave the country are they not yeah that's basically it it's a real messy situation

00:37:35.900 it makes no sense whatsoever so you're right if you're living in Montreal and let's say you need

00:37:41.060 to get your hip done you have a few choices one of which is you could wait for the government to

00:37:45.860 provide you that hip operation and you get it done,

00:37:49.220 you walk out, you don't face a bill,

00:37:50.900 it's paid for through tax dollars.

00:37:53.040 You also have the option of going to a local clinic

00:37:57.620 in Montreal and get your hip done

00:37:59.700 or maybe in Quebec City or somewhere else.

00:38:01.800 You can pay for that privately and get it done fast

00:38:05.400 and you have that option, public system or private option.

00:38:08.020 Then obviously you have a third option,

00:38:09.620 which is to leave the province altogether,

00:38:13.060 to go to another country or other province whatever so quebec is unique uh the supreme

00:38:18.340 court of canada has given quebec uh this unique right the rest of the country you don't really

00:38:24.500 have that option there's a whole bunch of government regulations and barriers that mean

00:38:28.420 that you can't pay for example in vancouver to get your uh your hip operation and you have to

00:38:34.980 travel somewhere else so quite often you see people from vancouver fly to calgary and you

00:38:40.260 And you often see Calgarians do the same thing, they'll fly to Vancouver and pay for it.

00:38:44.500 There's some interesting things that are happening there where in Calgary is actually a clinic

00:38:50.280 that is enabled, it's a bit wonky, but they've been able to hire surgeons that are not part

00:38:56.620 of the public system whatsoever and you can actually now pay in Calgary for some private

00:39:02.800 surgery locally.

00:39:04.500 It's weird, it doesn't make any sense.

00:39:06.260 The problem is all these government regulations are gumming up the health care system.

00:39:11.080 They're leading to more people depending on the public system rather than some of those people deciding to pay privately.

00:39:17.140 And when that happens, you take pressure off of the public system and you reduce wait times in the public system.

00:39:23.080 And that's why no other developed nation on the country with universal health care does what Canada does.

00:39:28.440 They make it easy for patients to have that choice because it's better overall for results.

00:39:33.260 Yeah. And I want to talk about one of those ideas in a moment.

00:39:35.580 But just on the weird sort of situation you described there in Alberta, one of the things I find so obnoxious about this debate is that we don't really have the system that the universal health care activists think we do and kind of pretend we do, where it's not this truly 100% public system with nothing private whatsoever, because there are these weird loopholes and exceptions.

00:39:59.700 I mean, on one end, you have just people that have a friend of a friend who's a doctor that

00:40:05.080 can jump the line that way. But in other cases, you have a lot of clinics that operate in a very

00:40:10.160 weird legal gray area. I've talked to some people. In fact, I did a discussion on this very show,

00:40:16.340 and there was a private healthcare clinic in my city that does a combination of private and public

00:40:22.340 healthcare. And I had a lawyer on the same show who was saying, well, I'm not convinced that what

00:40:26.060 they're doing is legal and and the owner of the clinic said well yeah we are and here's why but

00:40:30.200 but people can't even quite agree with what the law says in some cases on on this stuff and then

00:40:35.920 you you further add to this patients just want a solution i like patients don't care where it comes

00:40:41.760 from and uh one of the points your colleague dom lucick wrote an op-ed for true north about this

00:40:46.780 and he said in the european union you can go to another eu country pay out of pocket and then be

00:40:51.840 reimbursed. Now, I'm never a big fan of government spending a lot of money. But my approach to this

00:40:57.820 would be if the government has said that you had a right to this, and they were going to pay for it

00:41:02.480 anyway, it shouldn't matter where you got it from. But that is a no go in Canada.

00:41:07.700 Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's sort of like taking the horse blinders off for governments,

00:41:11.900 right? We have this approach in this nation, largely where provincial governments think,

00:41:16.540 okay, this is how we're going to provide healthcare to Canadians. And they're thinking

00:41:20.620 within their own jurisdiction. Whereas what they do in the EU is they take the horse blinders off

00:41:25.860 and they say, well, wait, we can allow patients access to the entirety of Europe and allow them

00:41:31.480 if they want to go to another European country, they can go there, pay for surgery and then get

00:41:36.260 reimbursed by their home government. And it's not whatever they want to spend. It's up to what that

00:41:41.700 government would have spent locally. So if we give an example in Canada, let's say in Ontario there,

00:41:47.840 Andrew, that you need your hip operation. And let's say that the government's going to tell

00:41:52.580 you, well, they'll get to you next year. So in the meantime, you're in chronic pain, you're off work,

00:41:58.000 you're not making any money, you're dependent on the social assistance, whatever. It's a bad

00:42:04.440 situation all around. But if they said to you, Andrew, okay, if we give you this surgery next

00:42:09.580 year, it's going to cost $30,000 for us as a government to give it to you. We're going to

00:42:14.700 you the option of going somewhere else and you'll have access to thirty thousand dollars in

00:42:20.140 reimbursement well you might decide well look you know i've got a cousin in lithuania i'd love to

00:42:26.300 see that cousin i'm going to go over there see that cousin and at the same time i'll get my hip 0.99

00:42:31.820 operation because i can get it done for maybe 25 000 canadian and uh you know i'll actually save

00:42:37.900 the government some money well you'd have that option you could recover your cousin's place

00:42:42.220 whatever or maybe you go to tennessee or wherever you would have that option suddenly as a patient

00:42:46.940 you'd have access to thousands and thousands of places to get that surgery done around the world

00:42:53.820 and for the government it's it's positive because they can get you back to work faster you can start

00:42:59.660 working again paying taxes and so forth they're paying the money say this year instead of next

00:43:05.740 year in that example of lithuania you know they'd actually save a bit of money maybe if you went to

00:43:10.940 Tennessee it was 30,000 or maybe 35,000 it was 35,000 well then you're paying

00:43:15.620 that difference between the 30 and 35,000 but it's good for the government

00:43:20.180 because it helps helps them get you the care you need faster like so you get

00:43:25.580 back to work for other patients who decide not to go abroad for surgery well

00:43:29.660 they benefit too because now Andrew Lawton's not ahead of me in line he's

00:43:33.200 gone on to somewhere else I don't want to travel I want to get my surgery in

00:43:36.420 Ontario well it's still good for me because now I get to move up a spot in

00:43:39.860 line. So it's good for patients too. It's not a magical solution, but it can help in a time of

00:43:45.400 crisis. We're in a time of crisis. So it's an idea that we think that governments should give a look

00:43:50.520 at here in Canada. We've actually seen some governments kind of do this in Manitoba. They've

00:43:55.360 been sending patients all over the world to Ohio and California, British Columbia, and I believe

00:44:01.620 Alberta as well, sending them to private facilities where they can get their hips and their knees done 1.00

00:44:07.120 and whatever. That was one thing that they did to try and get their backlog down. And they've had

00:44:11.460 some positive results in Manitoba. The numbers are down about 21% for the surgeries that they

00:44:17.620 provided data for. So I think it's an option that could help. Yeah, very well said. You can read all

00:44:24.260 of this and more over at secondstreet.org. The president, Colin Craig, always good to talk to

00:44:28.680 you, sir. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me, Andrew. Thank you very much. I will say

00:44:33.880 on the note of fee-based service, I wasn't going to tell this story because, well, it wasn't mine

00:44:38.920 to tell, but I think, I don't think she'd mind. My wife, when we were over in Egypt, which I

00:44:43.420 mentioned at the beginning, got quite sick. And we were at this one hotel. This is just before we

00:44:48.540 came back and we were kind of in the middle of nowhere. Like we were, there was nowhere to go

00:44:52.060 and no good way to get around. And she was sick, like not like critically ill, but like just needed

00:44:58.640 some drugs from a pharmacy. And I was like, I don't, didn't know where the pharmacy was,

00:45:03.200 how to go to the pharmacy. Uh, so the front desk was very helpful. They said, well, there's a

00:45:06.740 pharmacy, uh, not far from here. They'll deliver it for you tonight. And he gave me the number and

00:45:12.160 you know, I called up the guy and it was like, you know, she needed a couple of, uh, it was like

00:45:16.580 cough syrup and ibuprofen basically. And, uh, they said, we'll deliver it in 20 minutes and it's

00:45:23.780 going to cost you 180. And I was like, Ooh, that's a bit steep, but you know what? For like

00:45:28.340 delivery that seems, you know, whatever. And we were a bit desperate and they meant 180 Egyptian 1.00

00:45:33.380 pounds, which was $5 for the drugs and the delivery fee. So, uh, sometime, not, not that

00:45:39.440 Egypt's healthcare. I don't, I don't know if it's good or bad, but, uh, sometimes you can get things

00:45:43.180 for a bit cheaper than you think, uh, elsewhere. So, uh, welcome to you all. If you're coming in

00:45:48.140 and happy new year, we will talk to you in just 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of the Andrew

00:45:53.380 Lawton Show on True North. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to

00:45:59.280 the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:46:23.380 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 02, 2024

Justin Trudeau says he's not going anywhere this year

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