Juno News - August 02, 2025


Katy Perry grabs dinner with Trudeau while on Canadian tour


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

194.65276

Word Count

8,375

Sentence Count

543


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I was just explaining that the reason why Spock has that bowl cut is because Star Trek started
00:00:06.820 in the early 1960s and that is when Beatlemania was hitting North America. Speaking of North
00:00:13.520 America, the topmost country in North America, us, Canada, we're in deep trouble. We're in massive
00:00:19.420 debt and we're making everybody around the world mad. So we got lots to talk about. Let's get this
00:00:23.960 thing started. Welcome to Off the Record. My name is Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director
00:00:32.460 for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm joined down by two of my friends from True North who
00:00:37.400 report for Juno, Isaac Lamoureux and Alex Zoltan. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us this week.
00:00:43.620 Thanks for having us. So lots of fun stuff to talk about. For folks who haven't been to the
00:00:49.120 Maritimes, there is a Jimongous bridge that connects Prince Edward Island, you know, where
00:00:55.160 Ann lived, over to the rest of the country. It's called the Confederation Bridge and it looks
00:01:01.740 really cool from this angle, I will say. But when you're actually up on the bridge, it's
00:01:06.680 kind of disappointing because you can't really see anything because there's like a kind of
00:01:10.600 a biggish guardrail on either side of it. So you can kind of sort of see the ocean, but
00:01:16.020 not really. It's not the spectacular view that you'd want to. The whole thing is, is
00:01:20.660 you actually have to pay if you're not from the island and you have to pay. I don't know
00:01:25.940 how much it was if you're actually an Islander when you leave, not when you go home, but there
00:01:31.620 was an exit toll to cross that bridge. And so I think Pierre Polyev during the election
00:01:37.280 with the Conservatives promised to get rid of it completely. And I think that Carney was
00:01:42.320 planning on just taking a chunk off of it. I need an update on this. Who wants to take
00:01:46.480 this one away? What's happening with this bridge toll in the Far East?
00:01:50.960 Well, as I understand it, yeah, Carney has committed to his pledge of reducing the toll
00:01:56.600 to $20 as opposed to Polyev who wanted to nix the toll entirely. I don't know much about
00:02:03.520 the Maritimes. I have been there. I have seen the bridge. One of the curiosities I've always
00:02:08.960 had about the Maritimes and about PEI specifically is why do they always vote Liberal? This story
00:02:14.400 about the Confederation Bridge kind of answered that question for me, realizing that these people
00:02:19.440 have to pay what I think is a fairly exorbitant amount of money just to leave the Island gives
00:02:24.400 you an indication of how isolated they really are. So that might explain why they keep voting Liberal.
00:02:29.760 I think these people are living on an Island and literally I have no idea maybe what's going on.
00:02:34.400 They're kind of being held hostage there. There's many reasons why they vote Liberal right now.
00:02:39.600 That wasn't always the case. Back when Brian Mulroney was representing a riding down that way,
00:02:45.680 that was a more blue area. Lately, though, it has been a more Liberal area. And frankly,
00:02:52.080 the Liberals have been very open with them doing so. I, of course, remember back when they said,
00:02:57.840 oh, well, you know, why aren't you doing this and that for the West? And there was a sitting MP that
00:03:02.160 basically said, oh, well, you know, why don't you just vote more Liberals in and you'll actually get
00:03:05.920 stuff done just very blatantly regionalism. And of course, the Maritimes played a pivotal role
00:03:13.600 in getting rid of the carbon tax, right? Remember the carbon tax, folks, all told that cost Canadians
00:03:19.360 more than $40 billion when you add it all up. It's now gone. Thank goodness. But the Maritimes played
00:03:24.960 a pivotal role there because for the longest time they were paying a really, really small tax. It was like
00:03:30.320 one cent or two cents per liter. And then bam, all of a sudden, one pivotal Canada day,
00:03:35.840 the Liberals thought it would be a great idea to hit them with the full force of the carbon tax. And
00:03:40.000 that's when the wheels started falling off because it's really kind of a cultural ideological stronghold,
00:03:45.200 to your point, Alex, for the Liberal Party there in that region. I was just interested in two things.
00:03:52.240 One, that the toll was still there. And two, that Carney picked up on Pierre Polyev's idea to get rid
00:03:58.560 of the toll. I'm just not sure how much this is going to help them in the long run, considering
00:04:03.280 the next election is probably three or three years away or so. Yeah, Chris, a few things I can pick
00:04:09.840 up on there. We've seen Carney in a few instances, more or less copy Pierre Polyev and the promises
00:04:17.280 he made in his campaign, for example, some of the housing taxing stuff. But Carney also seems to only be
00:04:22.720 taking things halfway, whereas on the flip side with spending, he's, of course, doubling down and
00:04:29.200 spending more than even Trudeau was going to. And we know that Trudeau, during his tenure, doubled
00:04:34.160 Canada's debt. Now Carney's on pace to increase it to, what was it, 2.3 trillion? I forgot by the year,
00:04:40.640 but during his tenure as well, I think. So that's, he's going to basically double it again. I mean,
00:04:44.960 where does it end, right, with this spending? And I mean, we still don't even have a budget. Like,
00:04:50.960 this is all just, I'll spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, and we don't even know
00:04:55.760 the actual fiscal breakdown, what is happening with the spending. I mean,
00:05:00.960 whatever the antonym for transparency, transparency, opacity, opacity. Yeah, we can, we've never had such
00:05:08.480 an opaque budget. Nice. Speaking of things that he could copy off of Pierre Polyev's promises,
00:05:14.960 if he could defund the CBC, that would be really super. I wanted to get to this because
00:05:21.040 we we're, we're always trying to hold the CBC to account both here at your North and the Canadian
00:05:26.000 Taxpayers Federation. And a reminder, the CBC this year is costing you taxpayers 1.4 billion dollars,
00:05:34.080 just an astonishing amount of money. But there's been this old kind of chestnut that's been passed
00:05:39.600 around, what I would describe as normal journalists working in normal newsrooms before they started
00:05:44.960 taking government money. And it goes something like this for every one reporter who's working
00:05:50.480 in like a private, you know, newsroom slinging away ink stained wretch. There's like four reporters ish
00:05:56.720 that show up from the CBC, including like an audio person and a producer. And for those four team members
00:06:03.200 from the CBC, there's like 12 managers hovering around them. Turns out that's true. We did an
00:06:10.080 access to information request to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. If we want to pull that graphic
00:06:13.920 back up, that would be great. And it shows just how big the middle management is there.
00:06:20.960 So we asked for a simple list of employees at the at the CBC who are making more than $100,000 per year.
00:06:28.320 That's typically called a sunshine list. And there are nearly 1500 employees at the CBC making that amount.
00:06:37.600 And what really blew my mind guys was that there were I think it was over 450 managers, like over 780
00:06:47.520 producers, like there were there were terms like advisor and like, you know, head advisor and architect
00:06:56.080 and head architect, like the list goes on and on and on of you can just picture it like that old,
00:07:03.360 like 1950s show The Blob, right. And it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
00:07:08.960 And it has gotten to crazy proportions. And it of course, ballooned like crazy under the Trudeau
00:07:15.120 administration. And so it was no surprise to me on two fronts. One, I've noticed that their news
00:07:22.480 coverage has gotten less nimble, okay, regardless of what you want to say about the spin they put on
00:07:27.360 it. I just mean immediate breaking news. Let's get right to it. Let's be the first up there with being
00:07:32.640 accurate. It's been sluggish for quite a while, just straight up. And so I thought maybe that was due
00:07:38.960 to management bloat, too many cooks in the kitchen. So and the cost, the cost, it's no wonder that it's
00:07:45.520 1.4 billion dollars. Were either of you gentlemen surprised to see that yes, indeed, you have data
00:07:52.000 middle management basically has its own continent at the CDC?
00:07:55.200 No, Chris, and obviously, the CTF is all over the CBC and their finances. And I'm always looking at the
00:08:02.080 reports you guys are putting out and reporting on them. But one thing I wanted to mention, because you were
00:08:08.160 talking about Carney copying Paliyev, but of course, when it comes to defunding the CBC, again, he's
00:08:13.360 doing the contrast, which is in April, he provided the CBC an additional 150 million dollars, which is
00:08:20.480 what brought the cost up to 1.4 billion, because I think last year was 1.2 billion. And these are, of course,
00:08:25.840 rough estimates or rough roundings. And then just as for the directors you're talking about, Chris, I do have
00:08:31.520 the data here. So 250 directors, 450 managers, 780 producers, those people are all making six
00:08:37.840 figure salaries. This is a quote I wanted to highlight because Jason Unrau, this is one of
00:08:43.520 the whistleblowers who recently wrote for True North. And we're seeing more and more whistleblowers
00:08:47.760 essentially talking about the insane ideological culture that is happening at the CBC where real
00:08:54.400 journalism essentially goes to die. And if you're not following the marching orders of their bosses and
00:09:00.000 writing in the exact way they want, you got to go. But what he said was, quote,
00:09:04.720 the best way to remain at the CBC, either casually or otherwise, is to tow the ideological
00:09:09.840 line. Employees tow it because the pay and benefits are fantastic, as we're covering. Then there are
00:09:16.080 the true believers at the CBC who are also in abundance. But yeah, I mean, this is crazy. And
00:09:20.640 we've seen the shift since Trudeau in spending, for example, and you highlighted this at the CTF,
00:09:26.240 Chris, only 438 CBC employees made over $100,000 in 2015 when Trudeau came into power. So that's
00:09:33.040 now more than tripled, as you can see. And that that costed taxpayers 60 million that year,
00:09:39.120 whereas the 1800 now making that much this year is costing taxpayers. I don't know, I don't have that.
00:09:46.720 But you can guess. I mean, it's just crazy that the bloat we're seeing at the CBC. And as you mentioned,
00:09:51.760 Chris, the most important thing to take away, and we've seen this, frankly, all over the public
00:09:56.480 sector, is we're spending so much more, but we're not seeing the performance improve at the rate that
00:10:02.880 you'd expect. I mean, we've seen the PBO even report on this for public sectors. They spend,
00:10:07.440 spend, spend more and more and more, but they're continuously not hitting their own performance
00:10:12.080 targets. I mean, the same can probably be said for the CBC because we see the product. So I don't
00:10:17.360 know what the answer is, but certainly spending more doesn't necessarily bring the value that you
00:10:22.320 might want. Oh, for sure. Very quickly before I get to you, Alex, on this. Yeah. What you just said
00:10:26.160 is true. You can go to their own folks. You guys can look this up yourselves. Look up CBC annual report.
00:10:32.560 Okay. Click on the quarterly reports. Okay. Control F. Look for audience share. I'm not kidding. You can look
00:10:39.760 it up yourself. It's right there. Okay. Their audience share. Okay. For CBC Newsworld,
00:10:45.520 their flagship, like their version of Fox News or CNN. Okay. 1.8%. That means that of the Canadian
00:10:54.960 television viewing public who were available with eyeballs at that time to listen or watch to TV,
00:11:01.520 98% of Canadians are choosing not to. Okay. And before you start saying, oh, well, people don't
00:11:07.680 want to watch the news because it's depressing. Okay. Let's look at their entertainment. Okay.
00:11:12.160 Their eyeballs for entertainment. The Murdoch Mysteries is still their highest viewed show.
00:11:20.400 The CBC does not produce the Murdoch Mysteries. It just purchases it and throws it on the air.
00:11:28.160 They still have a tiny, tiny fraction of the population, like less than 2% of Canada watching
00:11:35.600 that show. Okay. If you want to look into just straight up TV entertainment that is on Canadian
00:11:41.840 TV shows, The Amazing Race, always at the top. Like Global beats them all the time. CTV beats them all
00:11:48.480 the time. They don't crack the top 10. And I'm not being mean. I'm not looking at like, you know,
00:11:54.800 Netflix or American shows or something. No. Top 10 for Canadian stuff. Not even on the radar. Okay.
00:12:02.720 So this is it. We are spending $1.4 billion this year. Their news is declining. People aren't watching
00:12:10.640 it and people aren't watching their entertainment shows. And this is what gets me. They're being
00:12:15.200 unaccountable. They are refusing to say how much they're spending on advertising. Your money. We're
00:12:20.800 having to take them to court to make them tell us aggregate lump sum what they're even spending on
00:12:26.320 advertising. Alex, I'll let you look at this because were you surprised at all? Like I knew it was going
00:12:31.520 to be big and bloated, but I honestly thought there'd be like half the numbers, even half the
00:12:37.120 numbers of these producers, managers, directors would have been crazy guys, but it's more, it's double.
00:12:43.840 Am I surprised? No, because the CBC, so like the CBC never ceases to disappoint me in terms of its
00:12:51.600 ability to disappoint me. So no, I'm not terribly surprised. But I think what I am surprised by
00:12:59.600 is just the scale. As somebody who worked in finance previously, I think it's hard for people
00:13:04.160 to really like wrap their minds around how much a billion dollars is. That's a thousand million
00:13:08.880 dollars. Like that, it would be hard for the average individual to even conjure a way to spend a
00:13:15.680 thousand million dollars. It's just an enormous amount of money. And I think it was our friend,
00:13:20.400 Peter Menzies over at the hub that pointed out to me, and he may have got this info from you from the
00:13:24.960 Canadian Taxpayers Federation, that the amount of money Canadians spend, taxpayers spend on the CBC
00:13:31.760 is greater than the amount of money we spend on Canadian disability benefits and the first five
00:13:38.080 years projected of the pharma care program. Wow. No, that isn't our stat. Good for him. Wow.
00:13:46.560 Enormous amount of money on this. And to your point there, what are we getting?
00:13:51.760 I mean, there's nothing on the CBC that interests me. I actually watched the CBC fairly recently,
00:13:57.120 and I couldn't believe what I was watching. There was a program, it was like 10 minutes long,
00:14:02.480 about two spirited people that just blew my mind. It completely seemed like satire to me. It's not
00:14:09.120 even news. And that's the only thing I would watch because I'm just a news junkie. In terms of
00:14:14.160 entertainment, I mean, the last thing that I thought was entertaining on the CBC was Kenny
00:14:17.840 versus Benny. And it's been downhill ever since. It would take, I just looked this up. Okay. To
00:14:24.000 count to 1 billion, it would take, if you had a bunch of loonies like Scrooge McDuck, right? And
00:14:29.040 you're counting them all up 31 years. And that checks out because I've done the math for the trillion,
00:14:36.080 or at least, you know, I've made computers do the math for me counting to a trillion would take it,
00:14:41.440 you counting $1, $1, $1, $30,000 years. So yeah, it's taking 30 years. If you sat there,
00:14:49.600 dear listener, dear viewer, and counted up how much a billion dollars is, it would take you 30 years to
00:14:55.360 do that. That's how much we're spending on the CBC every year. A good visualization costs about a
00:15:03.120 billion-ish dollars to build a brand new hospital. Okay. So imagine building a brand new hospital,
00:15:11.120 everything's painted and ready to go, but nobody's physically in it yet. We all kiss babies and,
00:15:15.280 you know, cut the ribbon to go in, burn it down. That's how much you're spending on the CBC every
00:15:20.800 year. So it's, it's truly astonishing. I needed to get to something that's pretty depressing. And it's
00:15:26.480 on the dovetail of this huge CBC bloat that is going on where they're not being accountable with your
00:15:31.920 money. Oh, by the way, quickly, their new CEO making the same amount of money, same pay scale
00:15:37.440 as Catherine Tate. Catherine Tate's not the CEO anymore? Nope. Nope. Who's the CEO? We've got a
00:15:43.760 brand new lady, uh, from, from Quebec. Uh, and so she's still, she's making still CEO level seven.
00:15:51.680 Okay. And she's making around half a million dollars a year, around $500,000 a year. So what happened to
00:15:58.480 Catherine Tate? Did she resign or was she? No, she was at the end of her term. They're
00:16:02.400 appointed usually for five-ish or four-ish year terms, depending on what, uh, orders and council
00:16:06.960 want to do and what the government wants to do. So there's a new CEO. It's right up there in orders
00:16:12.240 and council. People can go check it out. Um, I wanted to show, I'm trying to not get upset because
00:16:18.960 I actually start getting choked up when I think about it. Um, there's a huge job lineup guys who wants
00:16:23.920 to take this one, like thousands of people long who were trying to get a summer job. I can't even
00:16:29.840 stand that 54,000 people who wants to take this one away. Uh, yeah, Chris. So, I mean,
00:16:36.240 look, this isn't the first time we've seen this, especially in Ontario. I mean, we're, we're seeing
00:16:40.800 these videos we've seen on X of these job fairs and the lineups are just kind of like that billion
00:16:47.360 dollars at the CBC, uh, hard to count. There's so many people literally like you wouldn't even be able
00:16:52.080 to guess how many people are in these lines. It's just absolutely insane. And there are a few
00:16:56.240 things I want to highlight because I don't know, there are some people on the left. He, even as
00:17:01.840 recently as that at forum that Pierre Polyev was in, which we'll talk about next story, but talking
00:17:05.920 about job shortages, what job shortages, what are you talking about? Go, I mean, just read the story.
00:17:11.440 Where are there job shortages? Maybe in like rural Alberta, you could make the argument, but I mean,
00:17:16.320 in main cities in Canada, there are no, there's no conceivable metric that you could say there are
00:17:22.000 job shortages. Uh, for example, we, we saw a recent, uh, briefing note from the immigration
00:17:27.200 ministry that get this. So temporary foreign workers account for 19% of Canada's private sector
00:17:34.080 workforce. I mean that, that in itself, a 19% crazy. And we saw that the notes also said that there are
00:17:41.040 about, uh, 3 million temporary residents with more than 129,000 who have illegally overstayed their visas.
00:17:47.680 And I always want to preface this saying, this is the amount they know, like the, the, the, the real
00:17:52.400 number is probably much higher, especially when we're talking about people who have illegally stayed
00:17:56.560 their visas. We we've already seen the liberals, uh, admittedly say that they, they don't really
00:18:01.120 know how many people are, are in that, um, thing. But the, the, the worst thing about these temporary
00:18:06.720 foreign workers is we're seeing like job fairs like this, where, where students are out of school,
00:18:11.440 they're looking for their first job in the market. Uh, students who are still in school,
00:18:14.880 high school students, even looking for work. The temporary foreign workers are the ones that
00:18:18.720 take those jobs up because they're coming to employer and say, Hey, you can pay me a half
00:18:22.800 of what you're going to pay him. How does that sound? And they're like, Oh, that sounds amazing.
00:18:26.080 And, and then we see these businesses even are coming out and saying, when, uh, we're talking
00:18:30.640 about cutting temporary foreign workers, they're saying we can't survive without them because we're
00:18:33.920 paying, paying them below a median wage and we, our business can't survive without doing that.
00:18:38.480 So, I mean, it's, it's just crazy. And that that's another thing I wanted to cover on immigration.
00:18:43.520 I mean, some people just seem so, uh, so wrongfully thinking that Carney has paused immigration,
00:18:50.320 for example, for example, at the forum that we're going to talk about next,
00:18:52.960 the liberal candidate, he said that, that Carney paused immigration, which is just not true.
00:18:56.960 For example, a recent study at the Fraser Institute, this is last year, found that 912,000
00:19:01.840 temporary foreign workers entered last year, entered Canada last year. But this is even more damning.
00:19:07.280 The first quarter of this year. So Carney's in power first quarter of this year. We know that 817,000
00:19:13.920 newcomers came to Canada when we're, when we're, uh, adding up temporary and permanent residents,
00:19:20.320 817,000. So yeah, we paused immigration really almost a million people in the first four months.
00:19:25.200 I mean, it's not even close and this is the result of it. Chris, we, we see, I mean, this is insane.
00:19:30.800 What do you think is going to happen when you bring millions of people to your country?
00:19:33.920 Uh, all of a sudden there are no jobs, no houses. I mean, of, of course, all of the problems would be
00:19:40.880 at the very least remedied in some fashion. If, if, if not for this bloated immigration system,
00:19:47.280 I, I could go on forever, but yeah, no, it's, and, and the government tax and taxpayers are then
00:19:53.520 subsidizing the temporary foreign workers, getting these jobs ahead of Canadian kids. Wow. Just
00:20:00.320 truly astonishing 54,000 people. And again, that was seasonal work from what I take from that people
00:20:05.840 lined up for that. If you do that's like, that's around about the population of like the Comox Valley
00:20:12.080 on bank on Vancouver Island, like picture all those people standing there, like people wanting a job
00:20:17.840 here in Canada. That's just mind blowing to me. Like I know what it's like looking for work and that is
00:20:24.000 a rough place to be. Um, Alex, do you see this turning a corner? I I've noticed a change for,
00:20:30.400 for example, I've noticed that even on mainstream media, it's becoming kind of okay to point this
00:20:37.520 out and say that this is a problem and say, you know what? Enough is enough. We're seeing mainstream
00:20:42.400 political parties talk about this now saying, why are we bringing in so many temporary foreign
00:20:47.600 workers and flooding out the market for our own folks here at home? Um, Alex, do you think this is
00:20:52.080 going to turn kind of the cultural corner? Do you think it's going to become the norm to try to reign
00:20:55.840 this back in? Well, I think it's already kind of the norm to some extent. This is not the first time
00:21:01.760 Canada has dealt with an unemployment crisis. Uh, I'm, I'm a product of, I was born in 1989. So I was
00:21:08.800 university aged, um, when the great recession happened. And I remember that time really vividly
00:21:14.160 because I remember applying for jobs like, you know, I would work at Lowe's or at Starbucks. And those
00:21:19.280 seemed like really good jobs at the time because jobs were just so hard to get. And so this, you know,
00:21:25.600 the more things changed, the more they stayed the same to some extent, but the level of scale here
00:21:30.800 with 54,000 people is really different. And it seems kind of outrageous to me, I guess if there's a
00:21:37.440 silver lining here, it's that we're now in a time where it is possible for people to get gig work.
00:21:43.200 Right. So if you can't get a job, you know, maybe you become an Uber driver or, you know,
00:21:47.280 you do door dash or whatever. I know that those basically slave wages, but that opportunity didn't
00:21:52.000 exist in 2008 when I was looking for a job. So that's kind of a good thing, but where I'm really
00:21:58.560 seeing this play itself out in a really disturbing way as a crime reporter is just in the level of youth
00:22:04.400 crime, because if young people can't get jobs, we've talked about this before on the same show with our
00:22:09.280 friend, Noah, um, the devil makes work for idle hands and you start to see just a lot more crime
00:22:15.040 that that's just predictable and that's almost an inevitable outcome. So I think that we do need to
00:22:19.920 get this to some level of order so that we don't see society completely collapse. You see this in a
00:22:26.720 lot of places around the world throughout history. I mean, at one time in Greece, I think the youth
00:22:30.160 unemployment rate was 45% and you saw the crime rate just completely explode.
00:22:34.800 My concern is, is that we're headed towards that trajectory. And I tend to agree with Isaac,
00:22:38.640 but the only way that we can remedy that at this point would be to make some serious changes to our
00:22:42.880 immigration policy. I study the history a lot, including the decade of the 1960s in the United
00:22:50.080 States. You want to talk about a politically fraught pivotal moment in Western history, go read up on
00:22:56.480 the 1960s in the United States and look what happened there with not just the civil rights movement,
00:23:00.800 uh, but the assassinations, et cetera, and the huge kind of labor riots that they were having,
00:23:05.840 um, huge upheavals. Okay. Between people who couldn't find jobs and, uh, those who were trying
00:23:11.360 to provide them. So, and at the time, uh, there was also a youth unemployment spike. So you're that tracks,
00:23:18.560 as the kids say, uh, you, you quite often will see those two lines go up at the same time. You will see
00:23:24.880 crime lines go up around about the same time that you see really high youth unemployment, because like you said,
00:23:30.640 idle hands and yeah, for the record, uh, we did a pinch Noah Jarvis from true north. He's now the
00:23:36.720 Ontario director for the Canadian taxpayers federation. So you will see him back on this
00:23:40.880 show just with a different hat on. So, uh, thanks so much for letting us borrow him. Um, I wanted to
00:23:47.360 get to just, just, just a few things I wanted to mention. Uh, yeah, no, I wanted to mention one
00:23:51.680 thing. Cause Alex actually taught me this. I think it was about bill C 75. That's of course the bill
00:23:55.120 reform. Uh, well the catch and release system more or less. And I just wanted to say that,
00:23:59.840 that bill certainly plays, I think into, um, youth crime rates because, uh, Alex was teaching
00:24:06.240 about this, about, uh, the indigenous crime rates because they're essentially held to a lesser
00:24:10.160 standard in courts. So criminal organizations target them because they know if they get convicted,
00:24:15.920 they'll just get out on bail and they can keep selling drugs or doing whatever they're doing.
00:24:19.600 And I, I, I feel like the same could be applicable to youth for these criminal organizations, especially
00:24:24.400 if they know they're going to get out on bail the next day. And then one more thing I wanted to add
00:24:28.640 just in regard to immigration, because we saw this, I don't know if this was first said by Pierre
00:24:33.680 Paliyev at the forum on Tuesday and cameras, but he has begun the call for a negative immigration
00:24:40.560 rate that being reducing Canada's population. So I think the first time he made that was mentioned
00:24:45.920 was on Tuesday, but he's starting to talk about not reducing immigration, reducing population as a
00:24:51.680 whole. So stopping immigration completely until our numbers go down, which I think is a big move
00:24:57.520 on his part. Alex? Well, and actually the issue of indigenous people being given lighter sentences
00:25:03.680 goes back even further than bill C-75. It goes back to something called the Gladue principle,
00:25:08.880 which has been around for, for decades. And, and to your point, Isaac, though, that the problem that we
00:25:14.240 have here is, is that we have a very, very high youth unemployment rate. And we also have a revolving
00:25:18.640 door justice system that treats, especially youth offenders, very leniently for committing crime. So
00:25:24.720 it's kind of a perfect storm. Like you don't give a young person a job, you don't give them anything to
00:25:29.120 do, but they're allowed to commit crime almost with impunity. Like the results are actually very
00:25:34.400 predictable when you think about it logically. And so I'm not, yeah, not terribly surprised that we find
00:25:40.000 ourselves in the situation. We do so much needs to be fixed about all of this. Um, I wanted to get
00:25:45.360 to, uh, just near where my cousin lives up near Stetler, Alberta. Uh, so there is a by-election happening
00:25:52.960 there. Uh, Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservative Party is actually running there and
00:25:58.560 he's running in a by-election and they actually had a, an all candidate. It was an, an all candidates
00:26:03.440 debate, Isaac. You were actually there where, can you paint a picture for me? Uh, well, Chris, let's,
00:26:08.080 uh, let's just say it was not an all candidates debate because of course, as we know, there are
00:26:11.680 209 candidates in the riding hockey rink for that. Yeah. A few people joked about that. They said,
00:26:17.680 because you can see where these people live, these candidates, they don't live in Alberta,
00:26:21.680 by the way, they live in Quebec, Ontario, all over the place because you don't need to live in the
00:26:25.360 riding evidently to run. You don't. So some of the, no. So some of the candidates joked about that.
00:26:29.920 They said, these people aren't showing up. They'll never step foot in Alberta. Like it's, it's ridiculous.
00:26:34.480 Just a sec. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I actually, wait, wait, I've been a scrutineer in elections. I actually
00:26:38.560 didn't know this. You don't, I thought you at least needed to have like a hydro bill and be
00:26:42.560 renting a place in the riding. Well, no, I mean, technically Paul Yev doesn't live in the riding
00:26:47.040 either. Well, no, I thought that he would have gotten an apartment in like a hydro bill. Like I said,
00:26:50.960 what? No, you don't. Holy snickle pie. Okay. These people just essentially, there's that one guy,
00:26:56.640 Thomas Zewinski. I forgot his last name off the top of my head, but he, he's the candidate or the agent
00:27:02.320 representing all of them. And they just, all you basically need is a hundred signatures.
00:27:05.920 It doesn't even need to be unique signatures. They don't have a unique agent. These are the
00:27:09.040 things probably I was trying to fix. And by the way, when I was writing my last article,
00:27:13.040 I actually found this out. So Thomas Zewinski or whatever, who's representing all these guys,
00:27:17.440 his brother is the guy who sued the attorney general in 97, I think to essentially, which is why
00:27:24.880 candidates don't need to pay money because he sued the attorney general back then when you had to pay
00:27:28.960 a thousand dollars, uh, to, to run as a candidate. And the attorney general basically said, yeah,
00:27:33.360 that violates the charter or something. So that's why candidates do not need to pay to run. And that's
00:27:37.840 actually, uh, one of the many reasons why this longest ballot committee is happening, but, uh,
00:27:44.320 without getting into too much detail there, I'll just, uh, take us through what happened there.
00:27:48.000 So I went to the camera, uh, the, uh, all candidates debate, the candidates debate,
00:27:51.920 there were 10 candidates at the forum on Tuesday in cameras. So I went there and, uh, I mean,
00:27:58.000 it was pretty good. Uh, but I talked to a bunch of people, uh, at the debate. And then I also went
00:28:02.880 to Stetler the very next day and just did streeters with people walking around Stetler, asking them if
00:28:07.600 they wanted to talk about the by-election and everyone's so friendly. Uh, some people didn't
00:28:11.200 want to talk to me, of course, but, uh, lots of them did, but three key themes emerged for every
00:28:16.240 single person I talked to. They talked about these three things. So firstly, Damien Couric. I mean,
00:28:21.520 everyone loves the guy, absolutely loves the guy. He got, I think 83% of the vote share in the,
00:28:26.640 in the by-election. And obviously he stepped down so that Pierre could run and everyone just
00:28:29.920 loves him and thinks that he did such an honorable thing. And no one really seemed to have a problem
00:28:34.000 with Pierre coming in to, to run in the riding. And in fact, this is pretty interesting. Damien Couric
00:28:39.120 was at the, uh, debate in Tuesday. He was just sitting in the crowd and Paliyev said, uh, he's still
00:28:44.640 mentoring him along with Kevin Sorenson, who held the seat between 2000 and 2015, uh, as a conservative
00:28:51.120 candidate. He's also mentoring Paliyev. So Paliyev is getting, uh, a double mentored by,
00:28:55.840 by past candidates in the riding. So he's definitely, uh, uh, learning some, some good
00:29:00.320 things there. And I mean, look, this is Albertan tactics. Nice. Yeah. I went to Camrose and Stettler,
00:29:06.080 which hardly covers the 52,000 square kilometer riding. I don't know where it ranks in Canada in
00:29:12.960 terms of area and largest ridings, but it has to be up there. But the by-election's on August 18th.
00:29:18.320 And, uh, in my opinion, based on the sentiment I got and watching the debate, uh, Pierre will
00:29:23.840 easily win. I, I expect him to get a similar vote share to Couric in the 80%, 80 percentile,
00:29:29.200 maybe higher. I don't know, but, uh, I, I definitely think he'll win, especially after
00:29:33.120 watching that forum. Uh, a few other things that came up, not much. Those were the, the three key
00:29:38.560 themes, but some, some people talked about Canada's debt and, uh, I mean, feeling voiceless in
00:29:44.560 rural Alberta. So it'll, it'll definitely be interesting to see how, how Pierre can
00:29:49.120 uh, I guess, bring a voice to the riding because at the forum, he did talk quite a bit about
00:29:54.640 being a party leader and bringing the local issues to a national frame frame point. Uh,
00:30:00.160 he of course talked about, uh, the, the gun control and things like that, things that would,
00:30:04.240 you would think would matter to local residents. I'd be curious to know because, um,
00:30:08.960 Polyev represented a riding that was kind of adjacent to Ottawa. So not right downtown,
00:30:15.600 but back when he was, uh, winning it, when he was a young, young kid there in his twenties,
00:30:20.480 it was a lot more farmy. I would put it that way. And of course, as the city expanded, it became
00:30:27.280 more and more full of bureaucrats, people who work at the federal government. Um, and so he always was
00:30:32.880 kind of walking a line of saying, you know, we need to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.
00:30:39.280 Now he's running in battle river Crowfoot. You can't really get much further away from downtown
00:30:44.800 Ottawa and the guy that came before Carney. Okay. He will not yet be named, um, added like 99,000 people
00:30:54.240 to the federal bureaucracy, like almost a hundred thousand human beings. Like the cost of the
00:31:00.320 bureaucracy has gone up more than 70%, seven zero. So I'm just curious if Polyev is taking a bit of a
00:31:09.600 sharper view towards the size of government. Was he saying at all, was there any, uh, like language
00:31:15.360 at all there a lot the other night, Isaac, about reducing the size and cost of government, like
00:31:20.000 cutting bureaucrats? Of course he, he talked about inflation and essentially just what a bloated
00:31:25.600 government does to the economy. He, he, as you, as you might know, he talked about that at length. One
00:31:29.840 funny anecdote I'll give you guys is one of the other candidates. I forgot who he said we were, we
00:31:35.680 were, we were having a drinking game and then he said water, but he, he said, we're having a drinking
00:31:39.040 game out back. We were saying, uh, every time Pierre says woke, we have to have a drink, but he hasn't
00:31:43.760 said it. So I don't think, interestingly, I don't think Pierre said woke one time, but he did of course
00:31:49.600 talk about bloated government at length, as you might imagine. Oh, that's interesting. Alex.
00:31:55.600 You look like you wanted to jump in there. No, not necessarily. I mean, I think the whole thing
00:31:59.680 is just a complete joke, really. Like the longest ballot initiative is sort of hilarious. Um, if it
00:32:06.800 wasn't so undemocratic in spirit, I mean, the people who are doing it are really saying the quiet part
00:32:12.160 out loud, which is that they would prefer a broken democracy over a democracy that yields a resolve they
00:32:18.080 don't like. Yeah. I'll say a few things about the longest ballot committee that, uh, I think is
00:32:23.200 important for listeners first thing. And this is a key thing. Elections Canada last year recommended
00:32:29.200 to the liberals electoral reform so that they would stop the longest ballot committee. And they did
00:32:34.080 nothing because people are getting mad at elections Canada, but they're basically saying, look, you need
00:32:37.760 to pass an act in parliament. We can't do anything, get it done. Uh, and now Pierre, uh, Pierre Pelleve and
00:32:43.680 Michael Cooper last week wrote a joint letter to, uh, the house leader with three demands again,
00:32:49.680 essentially demands that would, uh, consist of electoral reform so that the longest ballot
00:32:55.840 committee could no longer operate how it is. I forgot what the three demands are off the top of my
00:32:59.040 head, but I think like, for example, you can't, you need unique signatories. So the same hundred people
00:33:04.560 couldn't sign for 200 candidates, a unique agent, I think. And then a few other things, or, well,
00:33:08.640 there are three, but I think maybe even a candidate fee. I'm not sure, but yeah, I mean, look, and I
00:33:14.160 was asking people about this in the writing, like, here's what happened. Here's what Elections Canada
00:33:18.080 has said. Here are the facts. Do you think the liberals are going to change it? And essentially,
00:33:20.880 everyone said, no, like, why would they? Uh, it suits them. The longest ballot committee are
00:33:24.800 clearly targeting Pierre Pelleve, not the liberals. We saw Mark Carney had no protest candidates run
00:33:33.200 against him in the election. In fact, uh, at true north, we wrote an exclusive about someone who
00:33:38.240 a whistleblower who essentially went on the record and said the longest ballot committee told him
00:33:41.920 that he'd be running against Carney, but tricked him and he was running against Pelleve. So, I mean,
00:33:45.840 it's just insane. Like, of course they're targeting him. And, uh, I, if the liberals do nothing, it's,
00:33:50.640 it's only going to work out in their favor. So we'll have to see what happens because, uh,
00:33:55.120 did I see this right, Isaac? Are they now changing so that you write in who you want? Oh yeah, I should,
00:34:01.680 I should have said that too. I talked to some people about that. So basically the ballot was, uh,
00:34:06.080 like seven feet long or two meters long because there's so many candidates. So what Elections
00:34:10.000 Canada did is said, okay, we're not doing that. You're going to have to write in the name. It is
00:34:14.320 what it is so that we can just use a small ballot. And when I was talking to people about this,
00:34:19.120 raising concerns, I mean, if you, because Elections Canada said, if you spell it wrong,
00:34:23.120 but it's still obviously Pierre Pelleve, it'll be fine because that's another interesting thing I did,
00:34:27.200 Chris, every single person I interviewed at the end of the interview, I said,
00:34:30.160 Spell Pelleve. One person got it right. That's it. So no one knows how to spell his name. No one
00:34:35.840 knows how to spell his name. Uh, I wrote a joke about this. I said, if the longest ballot people
00:34:44.000 really wanted to crank their trolling to the next level, they should find another guy named Pierre
00:34:48.480 Pelleve. Yeah. But Elections Canada said it won't matter. We'll see. Apparently you can't write
00:34:53.520 conservative on the ballot though. And I think he's the only conservative candidate. So I don't know why
00:34:56.800 that would be, uh, it doesn't really make sense to me, but, uh, yeah, we'll have to wait and see
00:35:00.800 because I don't know that it'll be that big of a problem, but at the same time, if, if it can
00:35:07.360 definitely cause issues. So I will have to wait and see again, the elections on August 18th. So if they
00:35:12.160 have unique initials, could you just put PP? Like if there's no other with 209 candidates, Alex,
00:35:18.000 there has to be someone with PP. I could look, I'm just curious. Huh? Wow. That is messy. Um,
00:35:25.680 now this might've changed because apparently I didn't realize that you can't just even have an
00:35:30.640 apartment in a hydro bill or something in the writing. That's kind of different. Uh, but there
00:35:35.120 are scrutineers that are standing there with eyeballs who are, who look at the ballots as
00:35:39.600 they're counted from all parties. It's actually quite an amazing part of the electoral system.
00:35:43.360 It's kind of beautiful. So paper ballots, people dump out the box and they count them with like somebody
00:35:48.080 from the liberal standing there like a hawk NDP, you know, conservative, and they all watch. And so in that
00:35:54.000 situation, no matter who it was, say you had a candidate from the NDP who had, you know,
00:35:58.320 a name that was difficult to spell the last one, the agent there from the NDP could argue and say,
00:36:03.360 no, come on, man, that's clearly our candidate. You need to be able to count it. So it isn't just some
00:36:08.080 kind of cold robot that is saying yes or no, there's human beings, unless things have changed
00:36:13.600 with eyeballs, uh, who, who are making those judgment calls. Um, Isaac, do we want to get into,
00:36:20.160 um, that pop star?
00:36:21.920 Yeah. I mean, yeah, that pop star.
00:36:26.560 All right. Just trying to have a little bit of fun, I think at the end of it, because, um,
00:36:32.000 somebody started telling me about this and I couldn't help it. I'm like, tell me less,
00:36:36.640 but I'm going to tell you about it now. Uh, apparently, uh, former prime minister,
00:36:42.720 Justin Trudeau, uh, is hanging out with Katy Perry, who is a pop singer. Sorry. I'm like a Gen X.
00:36:50.640 So I barely remember who she is. I think she, I know she sang with Elmo,
00:36:55.520 like shortly after my kid was born in like 2009 or something. Um, but apparently she's hanging out
00:37:01.360 with, uh, with Trudeau. And, uh, apparently he was also spotted at one of her concerts
00:37:08.400 in the front row. Um, somebody told me, and I have not yet confirmed this, that he was even
00:37:13.840 wearing a t-shirt that said strong and free on it, which is super interesting for a
00:37:20.400 prime minister who invoked the emergencies act against the constitution. It was found.
00:37:24.880 So isn't that fun? I just try to say, you know what, we could have saved ourselves a lot of money
00:37:29.680 because our front row ticket to the Trudeau show cost us $640 billion. Cause the guy doubled the debt
00:37:37.440 and then hit us with the carbon tax. So would have been nice for him just to hang out with Katy Perry
00:37:41.760 starting in 2014 instead. Um, who wants to jump in on this, Isaac, were you surprised?
00:37:46.400 Yeah, no, I just, uh, I, when I found out about this, I looked up a few things. Firstly,
00:37:50.480 I was like, is Katy Perry Canadian? Cause surely if she was, she would know how hated this guy is
00:37:54.480 and how bad it would be for her image and et cetera, et cetera. And I'm sure she wouldn't be hanging out
00:37:59.760 with him, but interestingly, she's actually from California, which I think is like the most democratic
00:38:04.640 state. So, uh, take that for what you will. It's essentially what Trudeau's Canada, I think,
00:38:11.680 uh, the closest state to it anyways. So yeah, other than that, I mean, I think she's just on
00:38:15.920 tour right now and maybe, uh, she was in, uh, Trudeau's hometown and he's messaged her. I guess
00:38:21.920 maybe he has her number or Instagram DM'd her like, Hey, Katy heard you're in town. You want to hang out?
00:38:26.480 I mean, I don't know how, how it came to be that these two people are hanging out, but, uh, I certainly
00:38:32.880 think, uh, from a Katy Perry's perspective, she would be settling, uh, hanging out with Trudeau there.
00:38:40.240 So, uh, yeah, good for Trudeau, I guess. Uh, he, he definitely, uh, reaching for the stars there,
00:38:45.440 but, uh, he, he made it happen. I mean, yeah, all the power to him. Right. Cause I, I just don't
00:38:50.720 know what Katy Perry was thinking though. And, and Katy, if you're watching this, like call you,
00:38:55.760 don't take it personally. Yeah. Hey, if you'll settle for Trudeau, surely I could, I could do as well.
00:39:00.960 Right. I'll, I'll put in a good word for you, Alex. I'm, you know, I'll find a sparkle phone and phone
00:39:07.200 her. Um, Alex, any thoughts on this? I'm just happy that taxpayers aren't paying for it. You
00:39:13.040 know what? I'm just, well, we are still because we paid him his severance. He's not old enough for
00:39:19.440 his pension yet, but we did pay his severance, but, um, yeah, I'm just happy that he can't expense this
00:39:24.000 ticket. And it's not the worst thing I thought he was going to do with his pension money. I mean,
00:39:29.120 really, I, I really don't have much to say about it. Chris, much like you, I'm kind of pop culturally,
00:39:33.920 like out of the loop. So I don't really know much about Katy Perry. I have a Katy Perry story. One day
00:39:39.200 I was sitting, this was like maybe seven years ago. I was waiting at a bus stop and I heard that roar
00:39:44.400 song being blared really loud. And I said, where is that coming from? And I looked over and it was a
00:39:49.040 full patch hell's angels guy on his motorcycle, blaring Katy Perry's roar. I don't know why I felt
00:39:55.840 the need to share that story. It's just the only Katy Perry story I have. And I had, for some reason,
00:40:00.480 like, I thought they kind of like made the song cool to me. So now I listen to it every now and
00:40:05.040 then. But other than that, I know nothing about this person. And the less I hear about Justin Trudeau,
00:40:09.360 the better. You looked up and you saw it was a full patch tells angel biker, and then you politely
00:40:15.120 averted your gaze. No, not really. Like, I mean, we made eye contact and it was like, I see you.
00:40:22.800 And then, but then I like, kind of like thought about it. And I was like, actually, you know what,
00:40:26.080 that song is kind of not that bad. Like, I know that song and fireworks is the only two songs I
00:40:32.480 know. Fireworks sounds like my ears are bleeding. But Roar is decent. The song I know about Katy
00:40:38.880 Perry is when she's saying she kissed a girl and she liked it. And we of course saw that.
00:40:42.560 Is that her too? That's her song. Yeah, I was like, I really hope so. But yeah,
00:40:47.360 we know we saw that joke circulating online because people said she's back to kissing girls,
00:40:51.600 of course, being there with Trudeau. Now, I remember when her eye got stuck,
00:40:57.600 like I think her eyelash glue got stuck to her other eyelash glue, and it was making the rounds.
00:41:05.040 So again, I can barely do my own hair and I'm not into pop culture. So she apparently had this
00:41:11.520 like makeup malfunction. That's the only thing I remember from her. And yeah, again, it would have
00:41:16.720 been nice if Trudeau, who very recently remember when he said that there was no business case for
00:41:22.480 natural gas to sell to Europe and Southeast Asia. Yeah. Notice how US President Donald Trump is inking
00:41:29.920 deals worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars with a B. Yeah, three,
00:41:34.800 three quarter trillion. I mean, no big deal, right? Yeah. So again, it would have been good to have
00:41:40.320 somebody who wasn't economically illiterate, leading the country for the last 10 years,
00:41:44.960 maybe you wouldn't have the debt be doubled. Okay. Maybe you wouldn't have 50% of Canadians
00:41:49.840 within 200 bucks of going broke every single month. So it actually just makes me mad when I see pictures
00:41:54.880 like that. So you say that Chris, but most people say Carney isn't economically illiterate. But again,
00:42:00.240 as I said earlier, he's also going to double the debt, it looks like. So it's not all about literacy.
00:42:06.720 I can't even guys, I'm holding out hope that his PhD in economics and his work at both the Bank of
00:42:14.800 Canada and the Bank of England will kind of pull him back from him being the UN special envoy fluffy
00:42:19.680 fluff, that that was all just to write a book, and that his dollars and cents common sense will take
00:42:24.800 back over. I have to. It seems like ideology always trumps economic knowledge. So yeah,
00:42:31.200 when you're not ruled by logic and data. Give her Alex. Sorry, go ahead.
00:42:35.280 Pretty fairy story. If she's looking for advice on makeup, she definitely found the right man.
00:42:39.520 On that note, thank you so much for joining us here. Remember everything that we just said
00:42:46.320 is off. Alex, that joke yourself. That's a good one.