Juno News - December 02, 2021


Justinflation is wreaking havoc, so why is everyone ignoring it?


Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

167.89046

Word count

3,605

Sentence count

215

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Inflation is driving up the cost of almost everything in Canada. We ll talk to one member of parliament who is doing everything he can to ring the alarm bell and talk about what he calls just inflation. MP Pierre Polyev is the Conservative MP for the Ottawa-based riding of Carleton where he serves as the party s finance critic and has kept the Trudeau government accountable for the unprecedented number of new spending initiatives during the pandemic.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.320 Canada is facing an unprecedented economic situation.
00:00:03.600 There is a severe labor shortage, the global supply chain crisis is limiting the number
00:00:08.380 of goods available and sold in Canada, and finally, most of all, inflation is driving
00:00:13.760 up the cost of almost everything.
00:00:15.440 We'll talk to one member of parliament today who is doing everything he can to ring the
00:00:19.280 alarm bell and talk about what he calls just inflation.
00:00:22.760 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:24.760 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today, we've got a great show for you today,
00:00:33.140 but first I'm going to stop you right now and say if you're watching the show on YouTube
00:00:36.060 right now, please stop, please like this video, subscribe to True North and don't forget to
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00:00:47.240 it, leave us a comment and head on over to our page True North and like that page.
00:00:51.160 Finally, if you're listening to this show in podcast form over on Apple Podcasts, Google
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00:01:00.200 Malcolm Show and if you enjoy the content, if you like what we do on the program, please
00:01:04.100 consider leaving us a five-star review.
00:01:06.520 It really helps us out.
00:01:07.520 Okay, we're going to get right to the interview today.
00:01:09.400 I'm really pleased to be joined by one of the most effective communicators in parliament.
00:01:13.740 I'm talking about MP Pierre Polyev.
00:01:16.000 Polyev is the Conservative Member of Parliament for the Ottawa-based riding of Carleton where
00:01:21.100 he's been the MP since 2004, Pierre currently serves as the Conservative Party's finance
00:01:26.140 critic and has kept the Trudeau government accountable for the unprecedented number of
00:01:30.980 new spending initiatives during the pandemic.
00:01:34.060 Since the government began printing more and more money, Pierre has been one of the only
00:01:37.600 MPs in Canada who has consistently sounded the alarm bell, but not just sounded the alarm
00:01:41.920 bell.
00:01:42.920 He's done an incredible job articulating what the problem is, helping Canadians understand
00:01:46.900 because we're talking about abstract financial concepts here.
00:01:49.940 It is hard to wrap your head around it sometimes.
00:01:52.940 And Pierre does a great job of making it more easily understandable and more approachable for
00:01:58.780 the everyday Canadian who might not have a background in finance.
00:02:02.420 He cuts through the spin.
00:02:03.420 He calls out the media.
00:02:04.260 He does exactly what you want a Conservative MP to do.
00:02:06.940 And his work on inflation has been absolutely outstanding.
00:02:09.880 So Pierre, thank you so much for joining The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:02:11.900 It's always great to have you on the show and we really appreciate all that you do.
00:02:15.540 Thanks for joining the program.
00:02:17.220 It's great to be with you, Candice.
00:02:19.460 So let's talk about inflation or as you call it, just inflation.
00:02:22.760 So the government believes that this isn't a made in Canada problem.
00:02:26.660 Chrystia Freeland said this, they think that it's part of a global problem and the best
00:02:30.480 way to address these concerns is through things like childcare subsidies, housing subsidies.
00:02:35.560 So I want to ask you, Pierre, what is wrong with this approach and will the government
00:02:39.620 ever stop spending our money?
00:02:42.380 Well, let me start with the diagnosis and then we'll talk about the cure.
00:02:49.760 The Liberals want you to believe that this is just some problem that came from elsewhere
00:02:54.320 around the world and that they're doing their best to solve it.
00:02:57.260 But let's analyze that and break it down.
00:03:02.940 They say that, for example, COVID caused supply chain disruptions, which has raised prices.
00:03:09.080 Well, if that were true, then you would expect products that don't have supply chains to
00:03:14.540 have no inflation.
00:03:16.340 The most obvious example is raw land.
00:03:19.220 Raw land has no supply chain.
00:03:21.220 It's under our feet.
00:03:22.220 It's been here for thousands, maybe millions of years.
00:03:25.380 So if inflation were just the result of blockages at shipping ports long thousands of miles away,
00:03:33.220 you wouldn't expect any inflation for something like land.
00:03:36.280 Well, it turns out land prices have inflated by 20% in just one year, in other words, four
00:03:42.800 times faster than the average inflation rate as measured by Stats Canada's CPI index.
00:03:51.420 So we know that there is something homegrown when land prices increase that fast.
00:03:59.340 And we also know that housing price inflation is an extraordinarily Canadian phenomenon.
00:04:06.700 We have the second biggest housing bubble in the world, according to Bloomberg.
00:04:11.660 Only New Zealand, which has the restriction of being a tiny island with a finite amount of
00:04:18.860 land, has higher housing prices than Canada relative to income.
00:04:24.340 Vancouver is now the second most unaffordable housing market in the world.
00:04:30.860 And Toronto is fifth.
00:04:32.560 So those two cities are now ahead of San Francisco, Chicago, Manhattan, London, England, all kinds
00:04:39.260 of places with less land, more people and more money.
00:04:41.860 So that can only be a homegrown inflation phenomenon, homegrown being an intended pun.
00:04:50.640 And so but the government is right about one thing.
00:04:54.280 There is inflation in other countries, in those countries that have the same inflationist policies
00:05:01.220 that our government has.
00:05:02.800 So where they're printing money and running monster deficits, they're getting high levels
00:05:08.240 of inflation.
00:05:08.840 It is true that you can you have this phenomenon everywhere in the world.
00:05:13.560 It's tried, not just in Canada.
00:05:15.160 So if you chart the G20 countries and you put money supply on the x-axis and inflation on
00:05:25.640 the y-axis, you find a nearly perfect correlation.
00:05:30.400 Those countries that have had large money supply growth over the last year and a half have the
00:05:36.100 highest inflation and those with low money supply growth have the lowest inflation.
00:05:41.380 So it is the decision of countries to print money.
00:05:44.820 Now, liberals will say, we had no choice.
00:05:47.000 We had to print money and run huge deficits.
00:05:48.960 Well, we had to spend some money during the pandemic, but we didn't have to have the biggest
00:05:52.780 deficit in the G20.
00:05:54.500 And we also didn't have to print money to pay for those deficits.
00:05:57.820 We know this because countries who did not print money are succeeding now.
00:06:02.640 For example, Switzerland has 1.2% inflation.
00:06:07.600 Japan has 0.2% inflation.
00:06:11.300 Why?
00:06:11.640 Because they did not print excessive money to fund their governments.
00:06:15.580 So that's how we diagnose the problem.
00:06:18.960 They're printing money to pay their bills, which inflates the price of everything.
00:06:23.260 Too many dollars chasing too few goods.
00:06:24.960 So the second part of your question is, should they spend more money still to tackle inflation?
00:06:30.640 Well, that would be like trying to cure lung cancer by smoking more cigarettes or to cure
00:06:36.000 obesity by wolfing down more cheeseburgers.
00:06:39.400 You'd be taking the cause as the cure.
00:06:43.900 Instead, we need to do the exact opposite.
00:06:46.780 Balance our budget.
00:06:48.020 Stop printing money.
00:06:49.220 Instead of creating more cash, create more of the stuff cash buys.
00:06:52.480 Build more homes, grow more food, deliver more clean Canadian energy to consumers.
00:06:57.480 Well, it seems laughable that the solution that the Liberals have come up with is continuing
00:07:03.660 on the path of spending more, borrowing more, and printing more.
00:07:07.280 Pierre, let's talk a little bit about the theory behind it.
00:07:10.480 Because I don't think that people really recognize that this is a concerted effort.
00:07:14.940 It's a planned decision, something called the modern monetary theory, which has been embraced
00:07:20.940 by left-wing liberal governments like Justin Trudeau, like Joe Biden down in the States and
00:07:26.620 other governments around the world that you talked about have this corresponding increase
00:07:30.720 in inflation.
00:07:31.580 So can you walk us through a little bit what the thinking is?
00:07:35.040 And as a secondary question to that, I mean, they know what they're doing and they can recognize
00:07:39.760 it.
00:07:39.880 They can read the statistics just as well as you can and I can.
00:07:42.940 So why is it that they are sort of turning against the obvious answer as to why inflation
00:07:48.860 is happening?
00:07:49.340 Obviously, it's because of printing money.
00:07:51.100 Why is it that Liberals, I mean, they're smart people on the Liberal side of the aisle
00:07:54.860 there.
00:07:55.260 They must understand, be able to read charts and see the writing on the wall.
00:07:58.940 So why is it that they are sort of denying the fact that printing money correlates with money
00:08:04.640 being worth less?
00:08:05.900 Well, because they're profiting off it.
00:08:09.540 Printing money is highly profitable for big government and big business.
00:08:15.440 So, you know, a lot of a lot of media say, well, even the banking economists endorse this
00:08:20.060 money printing.
00:08:20.700 Well, of course, of course they endorse the money printing.
00:08:24.140 They get the money.
00:08:25.680 Where do you think the money goes first?
00:08:28.480 They are the first ones to touch it.
00:08:30.280 So this is how it works.
00:08:31.420 There is there's this thing called modern monetary theory, as you point out.
00:08:35.820 Others people call it the magic money tree, MMT, or more money today.
00:08:41.040 And it is this socialist idea that governments can just keep printing cash to pay for sumptuous
00:08:49.280 welfare state spending.
00:08:50.900 The Liberals here in Canada and the Federal Reserve in the United States have a twist on
00:08:58.200 it.
00:08:58.380 They call it quantitative easing.
00:09:00.740 So where modern monetary theory has the central bank print the money and literally just hand
00:09:05.720 it over to the government to spend the Liberal government and the U.S. government in Washington
00:09:12.600 and other central banks around the world have something that's even more devious.
00:09:16.980 And that is to allow the financial institutions to play middleman and profit off of all of these
00:09:24.140 transactions.
00:09:24.780 And they call this quantitative easing.
00:09:27.680 What a great what a great euphemism.
00:09:29.140 It sounds so calming.
00:09:30.500 And so it's so soothing.
00:09:32.480 Exactly.
00:09:33.140 Whenever they come up with a with, you know, a 15 syllable technical term that no one can
00:09:41.320 understand, you know, they're hiding something here.
00:09:44.740 But here's how it actually works.
00:09:46.340 The government sells bonds when it runs deficits.
00:09:49.920 A bond is like an IOU.
00:09:51.160 So the government says, here's a bond that I promised to it's a promise from me to you
00:09:58.680 to pay you a certain amount of money in, say, five years and to pay you interest in the
00:10:02.360 in-between time.
00:10:03.120 That's how governments have raised money for deficits for years.
00:10:07.080 But what's happening with quantitative easing is that the Bank of Canada then goes and buys
00:10:12.240 the same bond right back.
00:10:13.640 So the government goes to a financial institution, sells a bond to raise some debt.
00:10:21.180 And then within days, our central bank, which is part of the government, buys the bond back
00:10:26.660 at a higher price.
00:10:28.840 In other words, the financial institution profits off the difference between the price for which
00:10:34.440 the government sold it, the bond, and the higher price for which the central bank bought
00:10:39.940 it right back.
00:10:40.800 And the effect is to allow banks and credit unions and insurance companies, private equity
00:10:48.960 firms to profit off of the difference between what our government sells and what our government
00:10:54.420 pays for those bonds.
00:10:56.720 The other thing it does is it floods financial institutions with easy money.
00:11:01.300 If you want any proof of how the impact of this, look at the Bank of Canada's report just
00:11:07.300 last week on the investors, real estate investors, getting 100% increase in the number of mortgages
00:11:15.360 they've had in a year and a half.
00:11:17.280 That increase began in April of 2020.
00:11:22.020 Well, what happened one month earlier?
00:11:25.120 Quantitative easing began.
00:11:26.280 So all of this cash started funneling into the financial system, and it got lent out to
00:11:31.280 investors who then used it to bid up the price of real estate.
00:11:35.220 And since that time, we've had a 32% increase in real estate prices.
00:11:40.100 And that has priced poor working class people out of homes while making the existing mansion 0.99
00:11:46.740 owners or investors extraordinarily rich.
00:11:49.220 It's also ballooned the stock market.
00:11:50.780 For the first time, our stock market is worth about 130% of GDP.
00:11:56.160 So what happens is when all this cash goes into the system, it inflates the assets that
00:12:01.200 the rich own and the products that the poor and working class must buy.
00:12:07.420 So quantitative easing in the states has bipartisan support, Candace.
00:12:12.840 Democrats love it because it inflates big government.
00:12:16.840 Republicans love it because it inflates big business.
00:12:20.780 Washington and Wall Street are happy, and the working class gets screwed because it destroys 1.00
00:12:27.200 the purchasing power of working class wages.
00:12:30.460 So it's a monstrous wealth transfer from the have-nots to the have-yachts.
00:12:36.580 And so, Candace, you asked, are they smart?
00:12:39.160 Yes, they're bloody smart.
00:12:40.600 They know exactly what they're doing.
00:12:42.820 And that is, they're enriching their friends, the managerial class of CEOs, lobbyists, bureaucrats,
00:12:50.220 corporate lawyers, investment bankers, they all make off like bandits.
00:12:56.240 They're not breaking any laws.
00:12:58.080 They're just profiting from a system the government puts in place.
00:13:01.720 They're perfectly honest people.
00:13:03.500 But the system is profiting them at the expense of the working class who pay the bills in this 0.89
00:13:09.760 country.
00:13:10.060 Well, you make it sound incredibly cynical.
00:13:13.440 You know, usually in politics, if the question is, you know, is something happening because
00:13:18.740 someone is evil or is something happening because someone is incompetent?
00:13:22.740 I usually tend to lean more towards incompetency.
00:13:25.820 But the way that you're painting it seems quite cynical.
00:13:28.960 I know that the Liberal government is sort of intentionally conflating two issues here.
00:13:32.960 They're sort of pretending that their printing of money and inflation is caused by the global
00:13:37.520 supply chain issues, which is a real issue, Pierre.
00:13:39.680 It is happening around the world.
00:13:41.760 I'm buying some new furniture for my house and I'm living it because everything I ordered
00:13:45.360 that was supposed to be here in November is now they're telling me, you know, you might
00:13:48.340 have it in January.
00:13:49.260 So the supply chain crisis is real.
00:13:52.980 The COVID pandemic is having an impact on that.
00:13:55.240 I'm wondering if we could switch and you could address this issue as well.
00:13:59.200 What would a conservative government do to address the supply chain issue?
00:14:02.620 Do you think that Canada needs to do more to take back and build up our own domestic manufacturing
00:14:08.720 industry, have a made in Canada solution the way that we that we see sort of emphasize in
00:14:13.720 the U.S.?
00:14:14.200 Or do you think or conservatives still sort of stand behind the free trade model of having
00:14:20.660 everything sort of imported from China and having costs go down that way?
00:14:25.740 Well, I want to just address one last point on monetary policy with regards to supply chains.
00:14:31.960 A lot of people say, well, there's nothing that the Canadian government or the bank in
00:14:36.300 Canada can do about foreign supply chain costs.
00:14:39.580 Well, actually, there is one very obvious thing, and that is if our dollar is more valuable,
00:14:43.840 then we can outbid other countries for international goods.
00:14:48.160 So while we don't in Canada set the global oil price, if our dollar were higher, then our purchasing
00:14:55.600 power for oil would also be higher.
00:14:57.620 So when governments print money, they deliberately actually devalue their currency, which reduces
00:15:04.040 the purchasing power of their money in the international bidding war for scarce goods.
00:15:11.320 Again, I go back to Switzerland.
00:15:13.200 Switzerland has supply chains too.
00:15:15.780 They have no inflation.
00:15:17.240 Why?
00:15:17.980 The Swiss franc is extraordinarily powerful.
00:15:21.340 When you have a potent currency like that, you can just outbid other countries for scarce
00:15:27.340 and obstructed goods.
00:15:30.980 So that's the first point I would make.
00:15:32.800 Secondly, on supply chains.
00:15:34.920 Well, I go back to my slogan, which was a very deliberate one in the last election.
00:15:41.260 We need an economy that makes more, costs less, with paychecks, not debt.
00:15:45.300 If we had unleashed the productive forces of free enterprise in our country, we could make
00:15:50.840 more things here in Canada.
00:15:53.080 But here it is very expensive to set up a factory.
00:15:56.280 We're ranked 36 of 37 OECD nations for the delay time to get a building permit.
00:16:03.080 So why would you build a factory or a warehouse here when you could go build it where they approve
00:16:08.080 it much quicker?
00:16:08.940 We have an extremely punitive tax regime with payroll and carbon taxes expected to rise
00:16:15.160 January the 1st, which means businesses who are thinking about setting up a factory here
00:16:20.660 or, say, Ohio, will say, well, I'm not going to move to Canada because I have to pay all
00:16:24.160 these payroll taxes and these energy taxes to produce the goods and services that the
00:16:31.740 people need.
00:16:33.220 If we unleashed our energy sector by building pipelines, we could supply more of our
00:16:38.560 domestic energy from Canadian resources rather than importing them from expensive foreign
00:16:46.100 producers.
00:16:47.360 If we reduced the penalty for work that taxes and clawbacks impose, we'd have a greater supply
00:16:53.420 of workers who'd have more powerful after-tax paychecks.
00:16:58.200 You know, we have a million unfilled jobs, Candace.
00:17:00.960 Why is that?
00:17:02.200 Well, we're paying people not to work and then punishing them when they do work.
00:17:06.960 So why are we surprised when people don't work?
00:17:11.280 You know, you get less of what you punish.
00:17:13.540 You get more of what you reward.
00:17:15.220 We should reward work with lower income and payroll taxes instead of rewarding non-work
00:17:21.300 with greater welfare programs.
00:17:24.640 Well, and it's even worse than that, Pierre.
00:17:26.680 I read the other day about how the CERB, which was intended for people who had lost work,
00:17:31.300 that there was about six times as many people collecting it as there were job losses due
00:17:35.880 to COVID.
00:17:36.560 So, you know, what happens when you pay people not to work?
00:17:40.620 People are going to take advantage of that.
00:17:42.040 And sadly, it looks like that's what we see.
00:17:43.820 And then on the other side, you know, my mother-in-law owns a small business in Toronto and she can't 0.84
00:17:47.760 keep employees because, like, why would anyone go out and work if they can make the same amount
00:17:52.700 of money staying at home getting paid by Justin Trudeau?
00:17:55.820 So I want to ask you a final question here, Pierre.
00:17:59.820 I know, OK, so last week, you know, Parliament's back.
00:18:02.200 Last week, the media and the Liberals were completely obsessed with this idea of finding
00:18:06.760 out every individual personal health story of Conservative MPs and finding out why they
00:18:12.440 had exemptions and who was vaccinated.
00:18:14.680 It was a total distraction.
00:18:15.800 And you rightly called out one journalist for falling into a Liberal trap.
00:18:20.300 This week, it seems like the House of Commons is completely distracted by a disingenuously
00:18:24.920 named bill called the Conversion Therapy Bill, but it had unanimous support in the House.
00:18:31.140 Why is it that the issues that we're talking about right now, the things that really matter
00:18:34.360 to Canadians, every time I talk to someone, they're talking about the cost of living.
00:18:37.400 They're talking about how expensive it is to get gas, how expensive it is to go grocery
00:18:40.440 shopping.
00:18:41.240 And yet, when you look at Ottawa, you look at politicians, the media, the government, they're
00:18:45.080 talking about issues that just don't matter at all, that are totally relevant to Canadians'
00:18:50.300 day-to-day life.
00:18:50.920 So you work in politics, you've been on the Hill for a long time.
00:18:55.180 Why is Ottawa so out of touch?
00:18:58.880 Well, the press gallery is largely bought and paid for by the state.
00:19:03.840 CBC, of course, is the state broadcaster.
00:19:07.700 Then they pay journalists from other outlets to do extremely lucrative commentary on the
00:19:16.580 network.
00:19:17.060 Very few people watch it, but it still pays a handsome sum.
00:19:22.380 And so all of those journalists then have to tow the CBC line if they want to keep getting
00:19:26.460 the gravy.
00:19:27.660 And then there's a half billion dollar subsidy for the rest of the outlets.
00:19:33.720 So basically, you have an ecosystem of media who live off big government.
00:19:39.860 And they don't, therefore, want to report on any of the painful consequences of big government.
00:19:45.340 Of course, big government overspending is causing this inflation.
00:19:49.580 A half trillion dollars of deficits mean more dollars chasing fewer goods, driving higher
00:19:55.040 prices.
00:19:55.580 And those who live off of the ecosystem of big government don't want the average Joe on
00:20:03.280 the street to know the reason he's paying more is because the state is spending more.
00:20:11.660 So, you know, they want to talk about every distraction they can conjure up so that nobody
00:20:18.640 realizes why and how the system is screwing them.
00:20:22.760 And so the important thing for us is to call it out, be very honest and very blunt when
00:20:30.140 you get these distracting, phony questions like I did.
00:20:33.980 You know, journalists saying, what are the medical exemptions that four or five Tory MPs
00:20:39.780 have to avoid the vaccination?
00:20:43.740 Are you serious?
00:20:44.960 Like as though I would call people up and ask them their deeply sensitive private medical
00:20:49.840 information, as though that is my job as a member of parliament and finance critic, that
00:20:55.420 is how crazy it's gotten.
00:20:56.680 That's why it's so important to have independent media that doesn't rely on the state and doesn't
00:21:02.360 just toe the government line like your publication.
00:21:07.680 Well, I really appreciate that, Pierre.
00:21:09.680 And it's always a pleasure to have you on.
00:21:11.360 We appreciate your time.
00:21:12.420 I know you're busy.
00:21:12.980 But thank you so much for joining the show, supporting True North and coming on today.
00:21:17.600 I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas holiday and we hope to see you again
00:21:21.080 in the new year.
00:21:22.080 Excellent.
00:21:22.540 Merry Christmas to you and your family.
00:21:24.540 Thank you so much.
00:21:25.400 All right.
00:21:25.640 Thank you for watching.
00:21:26.360 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.