Juno News - November 10, 2022


LAWTON： This is so insulting

Topics
Chrystia Freeland Disney Plus subscriptions inflation high prices government struggles
Mentioned
Chrystia Freeland Bridge
Trudeau told Ford police didn't need more ＂tools＂ to deal with protests Ottawa spends while Canadians pay (ft. Franco Terrazzano)

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

155.12

Word count

1,511

Sentence count

78

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about the cost of living crisis in Canada, and how the government is trying to solve it by cutting Disney Plus subscriptions. I also talk about how the Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, needs to recognize her own privilege.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 As we talk about what happened in Windsor, which was a very different animal from what happened in Ottawa, one of the big things that the government really held to was the cost of trade, the value of trade that was moving across that border every day, supposed to be moving across the Ambassador Bridge, which was brought to a standstill for that one weekend.
00:00:21.420 And I don't want to diminish this because what happens across the border is incredibly significant. I am from southwestern Ontario. I've crossed the Ambassador Bridge many times in my life. You always see trucks that bring them back, auto parts, groceries, a number of other things, billions of dollars worth of trade, or actually, as the new unit of metric goes, millions of dollars worth of Disney Plus subscriptions, millions of Disney Plus subscriptions every day cross the border back and forth.
00:00:50.000 That is the new unit of measurement in the inflationary economy. How much does it cost? $14? No, no, no. Give it to me in Disney Plus subscriptions.
00:00:59.500 This is, of course, courtesy of Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister who's been posting deficits worth many, many Disney Plus subscriptions, talking about what Canadians can do to withstand these inflationary pressures.
00:01:15.720 This was our Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister's advice.
00:01:20.000 I personally, as a mother and wife, look carefully at my credit card bill once a month. And last Sunday, I said to the kids, you're older now, you don't want to watch Disney anymore. Let's cut that Disney Plus subscription. So we cut it. It's only $13.99 a month that we're saving. But every little bit helps.
00:01:41.320 Now, Chrystia Freeland makes somewhere in the range of memory serves of like $270,000 a year. So not an insignificant sum. $270,000 a year divided by the $13 a month for a Disney Plus subscription.
00:01:56.960 That is 20,769 Disney Plus subscriptions a year that Chrystia Freeland makes. Now, she was roundly mocked for this comment online. And I'd say rightfully so. And to be fair, the advice itself of auditing your household expenses and cutting what you don't need is not bad advice.
00:02:16.500 The problem is that Canadians are already doing that. Canadian mothers, Canadian fathers are already faced with it. The problem is not that they don't know what they're spending money on.
00:02:27.480 The problem is they know exactly what they're spending money on because every time they go to the grocery store, things that they used to be able to buy without even looking at the price are now things where they have to question, is this really something I need?
00:02:38.580 And with Christmas coming up, the issue is not going to be solved by just cutting the Disney Plus subscription. So as I said on Twitter, Disney Plus is the new avocado toast, where it's the thing that someone from a place of economic privilege tells you is really this superfluous, extraneous thing that you don't really need that doesn't actually deal with what the source of your problems are.
00:03:02.940 Now, to Minister Freeland's credit, she seemed to understand this. And when you're getting attacked by the left and the right in this country, generally speaking, I think it's safe to say that you are not the bastion of unity.
00:03:14.160 You are just someone who has managed to step in it profoundly. But she did amend her comments yesterday by talking about, in true woke language, how she has to recognize her privilege.
00:03:25.720 I think I want to start by really recognizing that I am a very privileged person, for sure.
00:03:39.160 However, like other elected federal leaders, I am paid a really significant salary. And I know that that puts me in a really, really privileged position.
00:04:03.720 And I really recognize that it is not people like me, people who have my really good fortune, who are struggling the most in Canada today.
00:04:23.320 The people who are struggling in Canada today, with today's high prices, aren't people like me. They're not federally elected politicians.
00:04:35.980 They are people across the country who earn a low income, who really do find that today's high prices mean they have to make difficult choices about what food to buy, about whether to buy groceries or pull together the money to pay the rent.
00:05:00.800 So I 100% recognize that. And in fact, it is that recognition which shaped so much of the fall economic statement.
00:05:14.860 To be fair, I don't think there's anything wrong with what she said right there. I mean, the fact that she has this condescending tone whenever she says anything might just be an aspect of how she communicates and how she delivers remarks. 0.60
00:05:28.280 I think it was a much more tone-aware and self-aware comment than her comment about how, oh yeah, we're all struggling.
00:05:36.740 You know, I could only afford 21,000 Disney Plus subscriptions, so we decided to cancel our Disney Plus subscription last month.
00:05:43.840 And by the way, I mean, there's a difference between doing it because you think it's prudent budgeting and doing it because you have to.
00:05:52.920 And that was why the remark was so tone-deaf because we're not talking about cases right now where people are looking at which discretionary items they want to live without to save a bit.
00:06:02.940 We're talking about people that don't even have the benefit of discretion, where they have already trimmed down their expenditures so much because they have to,
00:06:13.420 not because they want to, not because they're choosing to, because they are being forced into this.
00:06:18.640 And I'm sorry, but when people are going to the gas station and not able to afford to fill up their tank because they just went grocery shopping or vice versa,
00:06:29.880 they, you know, can't afford to go grocery shopping because they decided that they could get to the grocery store and that used up all their gas,
00:06:35.980 especially in rural areas where people who want to load up on Costco runs or whatever are driving an hour, an hour and a half.
00:06:42.460 This is not an inexpensive thing. And people are forced to make very difficult choices.
00:06:48.380 And to be fair, when Chrystia Freeland was asked, what's your advice to those people?
00:06:55.220 There isn't any because the problem is not the people's. The problem has not been brought on by these people.
00:07:01.620 The problem has been in part unleashed by global economic circumstances, but exacerbated by government.
00:07:08.160 A government that has increased the carbon tax this year, a government that talks about tax relief and giving people their own money back,
00:07:15.240 but a government that isn't actually interested in not spending money, a government that is adding to these pressures.
00:07:22.840 So there is no answer. And that's why things are going to get, and I hate being the bearer of bad news,
00:07:28.580 so much worse before they get better because we're not at the point where some little nifty household budgeting tip
00:07:34.880 is going to get you out of this financial hole.
00:07:38.220 Government, which has stopped you from working, if you've worked in certain sectors for much of the last two years.
00:07:43.900 Government, which is putting more regulatory charges and more taxes on you while claiming it's not.
00:07:50.580 Government, which is still spending money it does not have.
00:07:54.080 And taking that money in the form of just running off the cash printing machines and also taking it from people
00:08:01.440 that are ostensibly, in the government's eyes, able to withstand a little bit of an extra tax burden,
00:08:07.420 but are still themselves struggling.
00:08:09.420 It's that government that has to own up to its role in this.
00:08:14.300 And it's so insulting that this minister, this finance minister, thinks she can relate to what ordinary people are going through right now.
00:08:27.640 And she says, oh yes, it's her privilege and her understanding of how difficult it is that has informed the fall economic statement.
00:08:34.700 Well, let's look at the fall economic statement because Chrystia Freeland says, oh yeah, we're on track to balancing the budget.
00:08:39.980 Don't worry about those hundreds of billions of dollars, sorry, you know, tens of billions of Disney Plus subscriptions of deficits that the government has been racking up.
00:08:50.400 We're on track to balance it by 2027, 2028.
00:08:54.480 So she's convinced that in the next seven years we'll be at balance.
00:08:59.780 Well, if you talk to the parliamentary budget officer, which is ideally more responsible about its calculations because it's not rooted in partisanship,
00:09:07.520 they're saying that the revenue in that budget is going to be $11.1 billion lower than what the government is projecting.
00:09:16.680 And interest charges are going to be $2.8 billion higher,
00:09:20.220 which means the year of balance budget in 2027, 2028 that Chrystia Freeland is promising
00:09:26.140 is going to be a year with a little tiny, teeny, itsy bitsy $10 billion deficit.
00:09:32.600 A $10 billion deficit.
00:09:34.020 Or to keep with the trend here, that is a $83.3 million Disney Plus subscription deficit.
00:09:41.820 My math's a little rusty there.
00:09:43.200 You'll have to bear with me.