00:04:37.120I like I don't like I just don't I don't like generalization I don't like stereotypes
00:04:42.400and so we had one day my wife and I we had a guide and the guide was with the driver and we
00:04:49.860were traveling and there was this brand new bridge so the Egyptian president Abdel el-Sisi has been
00:04:56.420like huge on public works he's building roads and bridges every which way and there was this one new
00:05:02.680bridge that uh everyone was excited about the bridge didn't officially open until january 1st
00:05:09.320but it was completed and it was open because people could drive on it and the police officer
00:05:15.560that we encountered standing at the on-ramp uh was just there to like get everyone who wanted
00:05:22.040to go on the bridge to bribe him which we learned was the only way you'd get on the bridge and i was
00:05:28.040like okay well that's a little bit of an oddity and then you know maybe all the police aren't
00:05:31.240that bad we but we we go to this old temple my wife and i beautiful old uh building well not
00:05:36.280really a building but a site thousands of years old and there is this police officer there with
00:05:42.120his uh submachine gun and he sees us taking pictures and he he you know gestures for us to
00:05:48.040come over and he starts showing us all of these different places there he opens this one gate
00:05:53.720and lets us walk through he points us here it was a couple of minutes and at the end of it i'm
00:05:58.600I'm thinking, oh, wow, what a wonderful police officer. That's so nice. He's bringing us behind
00:06:02.580these closed doors. And then we're in this tiny little dark tomb. And in one hand, he has his
00:06:08.780submachine gun. And in the other hand, he's just staring at me with his hand out, waiting for me to
00:06:14.740pay him off for the service I didn't know I was getting. Now, again, fortunately, this scam was
00:06:21.220basically all about like getting seven or eight dollars from me as well. So the poor Egyptian
00:06:26.520currency at least means that when you're getting hosed, because everyone in the country is trying
00:06:31.160to screw you. So when you're getting hosed, at least it's for a small amount of money. But
00:06:34.600whatever you did, enough about me. I hope you had a wonderful, wonderful holiday here.
00:06:39.060I wanted to talk on this show about one of the things that does not change. I mentioned glibly
00:06:44.060Justin Trudeau's poll numbers. They have been in the gutter for months now. Pierre Polyev and
00:06:50.440the Conservatives have been riding high. You see some fluctuations here and there. But
00:06:55.160But 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.
00:07:07.140It was early December. 3% chance, which means that out of 100 scenarios, 97 of them would lead to Pierre Polieva, the Conservatives, winning.
00:07:17.700Three percent, one of them might be, I don't know, nuclear catastrophe of the Conservative campaign bus, would lead to Justin Trudeau winning.
00:07:26.180So 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.
00:07:36.220This was one of his interviews with Mercedes Stevenson.
00:07:39.200Historically, Canadian prime ministers don't get elected four times in a row, and people
00:07:45.680are being very clear that they don't like you in these polls.
00:12:44.520I mean, it would have looked bad if he had just said when Pierre Polyev became the leader in 2022.
00:12:49.220all 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
00:12:56.180wanted and he is the only single person who doesn't seem to realize that now in his year-end interviews
00:13:02.600he did the usual suspects he did CBC, CTV, Global News well Pierre Polyev did a very different
00:13:09.660approach Pierre Polyev sat down with True North he sat down with Rex Murphy he sat down with Brian
00:13:16.080Lilly. He talked to all of these other folks. And what was interesting is the media then
00:13:20.940pounced on Pierre Polyev for not talking to the right kinds of journalists because only the
00:13:26.960official Parliament Hill journalists are the real journalists. That was the approach that they
00:13:31.040tended to take about that. But it was fascinating to me. I mean, I actually got a lot more out of
00:13:36.260some of these Pierre Polyev interviews than I probably would have gotten if he was just being
00:13:39.720beaten over the head with Rosie Barton's questions about tone and civility or whatever she would
00:13:45.540have asked him about had he sat down with her. But what's fascinating here is that Justin Trudeau
00:13:50.880doesn't seem to realize the why for the polling number. He did mention in a bit of self-awareness
00:13:57.240that Pierre Polyev has captured an anxiety and an angst in the Canadian population very well,
00:14:04.520but he still doesn't realize why things aren't working. This is a clip that I think really shows
00:14:10.200that. Where do you find optimism right now? Because I think that's something Canadians
00:14:14.660are struggling with right i think there is a frustration anger and patience all those things
00:14:19.780and i wonder where where you find that and where you would tell them to find it two things first
00:14:25.140of all a lot of the things that we're putting into place now are going to be delivering in the coming
00:14:33.380years as we're seeing inflation getting under control as we see interest rates hopefully coming
00:14:38.260down in sometime in 2024 that's going to take pressure off as we see ten dollar a day child
00:14:43.940care become a reality across the country but the building blocks are there but even that's not even
00:14:50.820where i draw most of my inspiration from it's our fellow canadians we saw it during the worst forest
00:14:56.020fire season on his in history over the summer the way people stepped up for each other the way people
00:15:02.740were there for each other the way people are there now with food banks with supports the way
00:15:07.460communities are coming together yeah they're united and all being mad at the federal government
00:15:11.780and the government's right now because there's something to be mad about there but at the same
00:15:16.100time those people who throw up their hands and say oh Canada's just broken couldn't be wronger
00:15:21.220because Canadians are not broken they're facing really tough times but we're doing what we always
00:15:27.140do as Canadians we roll up our sleeves we're there for our neighbors we lean in to the headwinds
00:15:32.900and we succeed some people don't buy that though I understand how tough it is right now
00:15:39.060but what people need to be looking for is who is actually looking to solve the challenges we're
00:15:45.620facing and who's just looking to exploit them or amplify them and that is going to be the choice
00:15:51.460that will shape the next two years in politics
00:15:56.420so basically he's saying canada is not broken because canadians are great and okay that's a
00:16:02.820you know a nice little heartwarming message but when someone gets up and says canada is
00:16:07.620broken which is a line Pierre Polyev has used and that's obviously where Justin Trudeau is
00:16:13.060going with that when he says that he's not saying there's a problem with Canadian people he's saying
00:16:18.660that the institutions in this country are not working and are not serving Canadians that there
00:16:25.300is something very different from saying Canada is broken than Canadians are broken and Justin
00:16:31.940Trudeau is the one trying to conflate these two, I would say quite wrongly. But there's also
00:16:37.820something, and this is a criticism you could make of Stephen Harper's government. It's a criticism
00:16:42.120you could make of the former Ontario government under Kathleen Wynne. But we'll talk about it in
00:16:47.540the context of Justin Trudeau right now. He has been elected three times. He had a majority
00:16:53.280government in 2015. He had a minority government in 2019. He has a de facto majority government
00:16:59.760now because the NDP is propping his government up. Now, the reason that's an important point is
00:17:06.280because if you look at from 2015 to now, Justin Trudeau has had an eight-year period. By this
00:17:12.380fall, it'll be a nine-year period with which he can do effectively whatever he wants.
00:17:19.460So when he talks about, well, we're putting in things now that are going to start yielding
00:17:24.240benefits and reaping benefits years down the road, you're like, well, hang on, you've had
00:17:30.080almost a decade. Why didn't you do these? Okay, maybe you didn't get time to do everything in
00:17:34.560your first term, but certainly your second, why didn't you do them? What was holding you back?
00:17:40.180And Stephen Harper, it was the same sort of thing. You could make the claim that in 2011 or 2015,
00:17:45.840by which point the conservatives have won three elections already, anything in their platform,
00:17:51.440you are right to question why do you even need this platform you've been in government for so
00:17:57.360long why have you not done everything you you've needed to do i mean the best thing you could do
00:18:03.020as a government if you're running for a fourth term in office is say uh you know our platform
00:18:07.900is one page and it's basically just maintaining all of these things we've already done that's
00:18:13.320effectively it because by that point anything you haven't done is because you didn't come up
00:18:16.800with the ideas or you were just holding back your best material uh just waiting for people to give
00:18:21.580you an encore but sometimes i just want to see the best material in the main set now the problem
00:18:26.840with that i was once at a journey concert and journey made the fatal mistake of doing all their
00:18:31.740hits in the main set so everyone left before the encore but you know what no one was left wanting
00:18:37.100more so journey understood that part at least i'm throwing again i can't do the sports references
00:18:42.780but if you want me to do journey references in Seinfeld, I've got you covered. Just none of this
00:18:47.140Gretzky stuff that people are talking about, you kids these days. One of the things that has
00:18:52.620changed this year is Saskatchewan has made good on its promise to not collect the carbon tax.
00:18:59.620They are no longer collecting a carbon tax on fuel and heating. Their rationale is that the
00:19:05.020federal government gave this selective carve-out for home heating oil, which disproportionately
00:19:10.740benefited atlantic canada so saskatchewan is saying to the federal government well you know
00:19:15.780what tough luck we are not going to charge the carbon tax to our people now is this constitutional
00:19:21.880or not i'm certain there's going to be a court battle about it but it means that the provinces
00:19:26.660are not messing around when it comes to this standoff with the federal government over it
00:19:32.340one of the things that i think will come up here is obviously where the feds go from here because
00:19:37.520no prime minister wants to be the one that ushered in a federalism crisis. And I would
00:19:42.340say that federal provincial relations have been pretty strained right now, worse than I've ever
00:19:48.700seen in, well, worse than I can recall in my life, not worse than they've ever been.
00:19:53.640But this is a big problem. So in the case of Saskatchewan, they're looking at the federal
00:19:58.300government and saying, you know what, if you guys are going to do this to us, we're going to do this
00:20:01.820to you. We've had the Sovereignty Act, the Saskatchewan First Act, we've had the notwithstanding
00:20:07.200clause. All of these different provincial governments right now, from New Brunswick to
00:20:11.960Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, they've all been saying with alarming regularity now to
00:20:18.480the federal government, we are not going to play your game. So I think if I were to make a prediction
00:20:25.660for the year ahead, we will probably see more of this on different policies. Remember, Saskatchewan
00:20:31.480used the notwithstanding clause on a parental rights bill. It wasn't on the Sovereignty Act,
00:20:36.760it wasn't on an energy thing they use notwithstanding clause to get around a provincial
00:20:41.080rights bill that a court had found unconstitutional we've had alberta that's talking about using this
00:20:46.440in many different contexts ontario has used the notwithstanding clause which is that section of
00:20:51.960the constitution that effectively lets uh provinces preemptively say uh we are going to do this in
00:20:58.440spite of what the charter of rights and freedom says so if we see federal provincial relationships
00:21:04.920like this is that the best way of doing things you know one thing that i will just to geek out
00:21:12.120on political science for a moment here the federal government kind of views itself as being
00:21:17.800the overarching power under which provinces lie but if you read the constitution the federal
00:21:23.960provincial relationship is actually envisioned as more of a partnership in some jurisdiction
00:21:29.800in some contexts a federal government has sole jurisdiction in others provinces have
00:21:34.120sole jurisdiction and in a few areas federal governments and provincial governments have to
00:21:39.640share jurisdiction and i mean really if you're talking about let's say a health care or energy
00:21:46.360these are supposed to be matters of provincial jurisdiction they do not work for the federal
00:21:52.520government they are not subordinate to the federal government so it is in some ways supposed to be a
00:21:58.120an equal relationship or uh to use the old line first among equals to describe the prime minister
00:22:04.440well you could also use that to describe the federal government so i but again at the same
00:22:10.760time no one wants this really antagonistic relationship between the two and i think that's
00:22:16.680going to be what we're seeing more of but you know the charitable defense of what saskatchewan
00:22:20.760and alberta and the like are doing here is that they wouldn't need to do this if the federal
00:22:26.520government weren't trying to encroach into provincial jurisdiction time and time again so
00:22:32.600we'll talk about what saskatchewan is doing here i also want to talk about the fuel tax issue in
00:22:37.800alberta chris sims is our regular monday correspondent but obviously we don't have a
00:22:41.800monday show this week but it had been too long since we had heard from her so we wanted to bring
00:22:45.480her on for a rare tuesday appearance the alberta director for the canadian taxpayers federation
00:22:51.000uh chris always a pleasure thanks for coming on and happy new year happy new year thanks for
00:22:55.480having us again so let's talk here about what saskatchewan is doing i i just laid the groundwork
00:23:01.160here but effectively are they in legally iffy territory here or are they pretty soundly
00:23:07.800protected that's a great question i think we're in kind of newer territory we've got an actual
00:23:13.880you know we often hear people of the taxpayers federation email us and say something like i'm
00:23:17.640not going to pay my taxes this year damn this government which you know we appreciate that
00:23:22.120passion you got my email good yeah thanks so much for responding to our survey so so what we find
00:23:28.600interesting here is that we've got the premier saying it so now there's a heck of a lot more on
00:23:35.080the table and what's really neat to see is that uh premier scott moe has really kind of got this
00:23:41.480confidence about him now and i like to think that it's often due to the fact that we have
00:23:47.640have Danielle Smith as the Alberta Premier right next door. And so the two of them, I think, are
00:23:52.620kind of in a bit of competition with each other on who can stand up to the Trudeau government
00:23:57.060faster and more. And so what's interesting with Saskatchewan is that they have a crown corp when
00:24:03.840it comes to their power regulation and power delivery. Now, quite often, we don't like crown
00:24:09.660corporations because they can wind up being monopolistic. You don't have any competition
00:24:13.860and it can go sideways. But with the fight with Ottawa, it's been very useful for him to be able
00:24:20.540to do that. So much so that we've got Daniel Smith kind of going, hmm, maybe we should create
00:24:26.000a temporary form of an Alberta Crown Corporation just as a mechanism to fight Trudeau's attack
00:24:32.220on our energy sector. And so I think we're in pretty new territory here. I'd have to think long
00:24:38.700and hard about when the last time was that a provincial leader stood up with this kind of force
00:24:44.000saying, I'm refusing to collect your federal tax within my jurisdiction. We know that Quebec must
00:24:51.100have said something like this sometime in the past, but this is definitely something big and
00:24:56.860bold coming from the West. Yeah, I would agree. And I think that in the context of what Saskatchewan
00:25:03.600is doing here, they're really doing an end run and a very creative end run around the federal
00:25:07.460government. I'd say something analogous would be when Alberta said, we are not going to devote
00:25:12.060police resources to enforcing the gun grab. It was really a move the federal government hadn't
00:25:17.760anticipated and kind of was a bit checkmated on this. I'll ask you then in the context of how this
00:25:24.680competition benefits people, because I agree. I mean, this one-upsmanship between Alberta and
00:25:28.540Saskatchewan is great. I was in, I want to say it was Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg. It was one of
00:25:33.480these like tourist trap towns in Tennessee once, and they had a dollar store. And then you got
00:25:38.440drive a little bit down the street and there was a 99 cent store. And across from that, there was a
00:25:42.68098 cent store. And I was like, this is fantastic. I mean, they're probably all owned by the same
00:25:47.160company, but like, I was like, this is great. I mean, what, what better way to, to be a consumer
00:25:50.800than be in the midst of three businesses that are all vying for your consumerism here. And if you're
00:25:57.340I think you and I were joking in the past, if you live in Lloydminster, which is that city that
00:26:02.120straddles Saskatchewan and Alberta. You're getting the best of both worlds here. But
00:26:05.740Canadians benefit when you have provinces that are wanting to really provide a better value for
00:26:12.520their residents and for citizens here. But the flip side of this is that Alberta is not doing
00:26:18.260everything perfect. The Alberta government this year reinstated as of yesterday the fuel tax. And
00:26:24.480I know you were really just desperately hoping and pleading with the government on my show a couple
00:26:30.240of weeks ago that they would walk this back. They didn't. So first off, how much is this for
00:26:35.720Albertans? Yeah, this is really frustrating. And so just to focus on the positive again for a
00:26:41.500second, it's the reason why we're really happy that Premier Daniel Smith and Premier Scott Mo
00:26:47.060are standing up to Trudeau is because it usually saves people money and it provides more
00:26:52.640accountability because typically the more local smaller government is going to be more accountable
00:26:58.960and usually cheaper to operate than this big conglomerate amorphous thing that is called
00:27:05.400Ottawa. And so that is why we're cheering them on when it comes to that sort of thing.
00:27:10.100Unfortunately, you're right. It's a big head scratcher. So one year ago, Premier Daniel
00:27:16.700Smith did the right thing. She fully suspended the Alberta fuel tax, which saved us 13 cents
00:27:22.140per liter of gasoline and diesel. And it was big savings. It was like $10 a minivan, $15
00:27:28.300a pickup truck, about $130 for a trucker to fill up his big rigs. When you add it all up province
00:27:33.840wide, it was saving around $100 million a month. So big time savings. Now, technically, yes, it was
00:27:42.420tied to the price of a barrel of oil. And when they announced the fuel tax suspension, they said,
00:27:48.480hey, if the price of oil drops below a certain threshold, we're going to partially reimpose
00:27:54.120this tax. So that's the math part. But the politics part a year ago is when the premier
00:28:00.040announced why she was doing this. And the why matters here. She said she was doing this because
00:28:05.820people were struggling to afford the basics, because inflation was still a huge problem,
00:28:10.040and because Prime Minister Trudeau is obsessed with increasing his federal carbon tax. So she
00:28:15.940saw this as kind of a shield against Ottawa. None of that stuff has changed. In fact, it's getting
00:28:22.400worse. Trudeau is going to jack up the carbon tax in just a few weeks' time. But inexplicably,
00:28:28.820the Treasury bureaucrats in Edmonton have gotten a hold of Nate Horner, the finance minister,
00:28:34.740and whispered something into his ear, and they've now increased it. It's up to nine cents per litre.
00:28:41.140So for the first time in a year, Albertans are not paying the lowest fuel taxes in all of Canada.
00:28:47.080that title is actually now in manitoba with the ndp premier wab canoe
00:28:52.300yeah and look i i think what you're saying there is valid and it's why temporary in terms of the
00:29:00.840government lexicon is never something anyone should take to the bank but i'll ask you about
00:29:05.980the why here because this would be an easy win for taxpayers to make this permanent is it just
00:29:11.380that the government in alberta can't afford it is that their only rationale have they really defended
00:29:16.040allowing this to go back on? That's what they're trying to say. But the problem here is that the
00:29:22.740math is staring at us in the face. So great question. If they were teetering on the brink
00:29:29.100of a deficit of not balancing the budget, the Taxpayers Federation and people like us would not
00:29:35.660be clamoring for them to extend this fuel tax relief. We don't want to see deficits. We want
00:29:41.060to see them running surpluses so they can pay down the debt, okay? Because the debt is a major
00:29:45.880problem. We're spending billions of dollars on interest payments per year. That isn't the case
00:29:50.560in Alberta. We have a $5.5 billion surplus right now on the books. They have a $5.5 billion surplus
00:30:00.260after a year of not collecting this tax. So mathematically, it's a big head scratcher as well.
00:30:08.200So 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.
00:30:27.380So this is again, like politically, mathematically, we don't get it.
00:39:04.500It's weird, it doesn't make any sense.
00:39:06.260The problem is all these government regulations are gumming up the health care system.
00:39:11.080They're leading to more people depending on the public system rather than some of those people deciding to pay privately.
00:39:17.140And when that happens, you take pressure off of the public system and you reduce wait times in the public system.
00:39:23.080And that's why no other developed nation on the country with universal health care does what Canada does.
00:39:28.440They make it easy for patients to have that choice because it's better overall for results.
00:39:33.260Yeah. And I want to talk about one of those ideas in a moment.
00:39:35.580But 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.
00:39:59.700I mean, on one end, you have just people that have a friend of a friend who's a doctor that
00:40:05.080can jump the line that way. But in other cases, you have a lot of clinics that operate in a very
00:40:10.160weird legal gray area. I've talked to some people. In fact, I did a discussion on this very show,
00:40:16.340and there was a private healthcare clinic in my city that does a combination of private and public
00:40:22.340healthcare. And I had a lawyer on the same show who was saying, well, I'm not convinced that what
00:40:26.060they're doing is legal and and the owner of the clinic said well yeah we are and here's why but
00:40:30.200but people can't even quite agree with what the law says in some cases on on this stuff and then
00:40:35.920you you further add to this patients just want a solution i like patients don't care where it comes
00:40:41.760from and uh one of the points your colleague dom lucick wrote an op-ed for true north about this
00:40:46.780and he said in the european union you can go to another eu country pay out of pocket and then be
00:40:51.840reimbursed. Now, I'm never a big fan of government spending a lot of money. But my approach to this
00:40:57.820would be if the government has said that you had a right to this, and they were going to pay for it
00:41:02.480anyway, it shouldn't matter where you got it from. But that is a no go in Canada.
00:41:07.700Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's sort of like taking the horse blinders off for governments,
00:41:11.900right? We have this approach in this nation, largely where provincial governments think,
00:41:16.540okay, this is how we're going to provide healthcare to Canadians. And they're thinking
00:41:20.620within their own jurisdiction. Whereas what they do in the EU is they take the horse blinders off
00:41:25.860and they say, well, wait, we can allow patients access to the entirety of Europe and allow them
00:41:31.480if they want to go to another European country, they can go there, pay for surgery and then get
00:41:36.260reimbursed by their home government. And it's not whatever they want to spend. It's up to what that
00:41:41.700government would have spent locally. So if we give an example in Canada, let's say in Ontario there,
00:41:47.840Andrew, that you need your hip operation. And let's say that the government's going to tell
00:41:52.580you, well, they'll get to you next year. So in the meantime, you're in chronic pain, you're off work,
00:41:58.000you're not making any money, you're dependent on the social assistance, whatever. It's a bad
00:42:04.440situation all around. But if they said to you, Andrew, okay, if we give you this surgery next
00:42:09.580year, it's going to cost $30,000 for us as a government to give it to you. We're going to
00:42:14.700you the option of going somewhere else and you'll have access to thirty thousand dollars in
00:42:20.140reimbursement well you might decide well look you know i've got a cousin in lithuania i'd love to
00:42:26.300see that cousin i'm going to go over there see that cousin and at the same time i'll get my hip
00:42:31.820operation because i can get it done for maybe 25 000 canadian and uh you know i'll actually save
00:42:37.900the government some money well you'd have that option you could recover your cousin's place
00:42:42.220whatever or maybe you go to tennessee or wherever you would have that option suddenly as a patient
00:42:46.940you'd have access to thousands and thousands of places to get that surgery done around the world
00:42:53.820and for the government it's it's positive because they can get you back to work faster you can start
00:42:59.660working again paying taxes and so forth they're paying the money say this year instead of next
00:43:05.740year in that example of lithuania you know they'd actually save a bit of money maybe if you went to
00:43:10.940Tennessee it was 30,000 or maybe 35,000 it was 35,000 well then you're paying
00:43:15.620that difference between the 30 and 35,000 but it's good for the government
00:43:20.180because it helps helps them get you the care you need faster like so you get
00:43:25.580back to work for other patients who decide not to go abroad for surgery well
00:43:29.660they benefit too because now Andrew Lawton's not ahead of me in line he's
00:43:33.200gone on to somewhere else I don't want to travel I want to get my surgery in
00:43:36.420Ontario well it's still good for me because now I get to move up a spot in
00:43:39.860line. So it's good for patients too. It's not a magical solution, but it can help in a time of
00:43:45.400crisis. We're in a time of crisis. So it's an idea that we think that governments should give a look
00:43:50.520at here in Canada. We've actually seen some governments kind of do this in Manitoba. They've
00:43:55.360been sending patients all over the world to Ohio and California, British Columbia, and I believe
00:44:01.620Alberta as well, sending them to private facilities where they can get their hips and their knees done
00:44:07.120and whatever. That was one thing that they did to try and get their backlog down. And they've had
00:44:11.460some positive results in Manitoba. The numbers are down about 21% for the surgeries that they
00:44:17.620provided data for. So I think it's an option that could help. Yeah, very well said. You can read all
00:44:24.260of this and more over at secondstreet.org. The president, Colin Craig, always good to talk to
00:44:28.680you, sir. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me, Andrew. Thank you very much. I will say
00:44:33.880on the note of fee-based service, I wasn't going to tell this story because, well, it wasn't mine
00:44:38.920to tell, but I think, I don't think she'd mind. My wife, when we were over in Egypt, which I
00:44:43.420mentioned at the beginning, got quite sick. And we were at this one hotel. This is just before we
00:44:48.540came back and we were kind of in the middle of nowhere. Like we were, there was nowhere to go
00:44:52.060and no good way to get around. And she was sick, like not like critically ill, but like just needed
00:44:58.640some drugs from a pharmacy. And I was like, I don't, didn't know where the pharmacy was,
00:45:03.200how to go to the pharmacy. Uh, so the front desk was very helpful. They said, well, there's a
00:45:06.740pharmacy, uh, not far from here. They'll deliver it for you tonight. And he gave me the number and
00:45:12.160you know, I called up the guy and it was like, you know, she needed a couple of, uh, it was like
00:45:16.580cough syrup and ibuprofen basically. And, uh, they said, we'll deliver it in 20 minutes and it's
00:45:23.780going to cost you 180. And I was like, Ooh, that's a bit steep, but you know what? For like
00:45:28.340delivery that seems, you know, whatever. And we were a bit desperate and they meant 180 Egyptian
00:45:33.380pounds, which was $5 for the drugs and the delivery fee. So, uh, sometime, not, not that
00:45:39.440Egypt's healthcare. I don't, I don't know if it's good or bad, but, uh, sometimes you can get things
00:45:43.180for a bit cheaper than you think, uh, elsewhere. So, uh, welcome to you all. If you're coming in
00:45:48.140and happy new year, we will talk to you in just 23 hours and 15 minutes with more of the Andrew
00:45:53.380Lawton Show on True North. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to
00:45:59.280the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.