Juno News - Katy Perry grabs dinner with Trudeau while on Canadian tour

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 1.00

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. 0.83

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 0.68

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 1.00

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? 1.00

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, 0.97

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 0.74

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 0.94

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, 1.00

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 0.98

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 1.00

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.

Juno News - August 02, 2025

Katy Perry grabs dinner with Trudeau while on Canadian tour

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