Juno News - Liberal cabinet spends $275,000 on inflation summit (ft. Kris Sims)

00:00:00.000 If you were to go into government and you were to do nothing else but get rid of CBC's subsidy,

00:00:15.100 which doesn't mean shut it down, it just means let it find money on its own or lay people off

00:00:20.360 and roll back operations to keep costs in check, you would save $1.3 billion a year. That's

00:00:27.540 astronomical. But then you also take into account CBC's holdings and you say, okay, we're going to

00:00:32.500 sell these all off. Well, boom, you make $444 million, which is not bad if you are working

00:00:40.860 towards balancing the budget, which admittedly does seem like it's going to take the better part of

00:00:46.280 two thirds of a century to get to. So I was watching with interest when these documents,

00:00:52.040 which came out from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation originally and were also added by

00:00:57.880 an order paper question that was submitted by Conservative MP Adam Chambers. And they were

00:01:02.940 looking at all of this and finding this is just for 12 properties, 12 corporation owned properties

00:01:09.620 across the country. Now you throw in other assets into the mix, like perhaps their camera equipment

00:01:14.580 and some of their audio equipment and Peter Mansbridge's old hairpiece. I believe it's actually

00:01:20.000 been donated to a museum, but you never know. All of this stuff is part and parcel of where we are

00:01:25.180 going to be getting the money from CBC if we decide to cut the cord on this. Chris Sims joins us

00:01:31.720 every Monday from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Chris, not that we want to go and start picking out

00:01:37.300 the furniture here, but have you set your eyes on anything? Right? Some of those desks look pretty

00:01:42.860 fancy. The ones that light up from inside. Also, the nerd in me wants that robot. I don't know if

00:01:49.860 it's still in on duty, but do you remember when we were kids, Andrew, we found out about these two

00:01:54.640 kind of roller robots that deliver all the mail to all the CBC employees at that front street location.

00:02:02.980 So like you just pointed out, it's the downtown Toronto location that takes the lion's share of

00:02:08.300 this money. I think it's something crazy, like $300 million or so. So yeah, if they still have those

00:02:14.360 two little bots that roll around like R2D2 delivering people's mail, I'd probably get my dibs on that one.

00:02:22.160 Well, to be honest, I mean, the bots could probably do a better job anchoring, I think, than a lot of the

00:02:27.060 people they have on air. So maybe we just, you have to forgo the robot and you instead get Rosie Barton

00:02:32.240 and, you know, you'll just basically do a little swap there. But, you know, I look at this and look,

00:02:38.400 downtown Toronto real estate is important. I mean, most media companies want to be downtown

00:02:42.600 because they, you know, will get more access and it's easier than just like plopping it out in,

00:02:47.760 you know, like Huntsville, Ontario or something. But we know that CBC is incapable of doing anything

00:02:53.460 affordably. And this is a day and age in which, I mean, True North has been growing as a media

00:02:58.380 organization with an all remote operation. I know you're doing this show as you do a lot of your work

00:03:03.040 from home in Alberta. You know, it's not to say they could switch to all remote, but they could

00:03:07.680 probably do with a lot less and choose not to. Yeah, they really could. We have different examples

00:03:13.400 across Canada of journalist-owned TV stations, for example. There's one in Victoria where it was

00:03:20.100 going to get shut down and the journalists got together and they said, hey, we don't feel like

00:03:24.060 being unemployed. How about we actually buy into this thing? And it's a very humble, modest operation,

00:03:30.400 but they get their news out every single day and it works that way. And that's what's funny about it

00:03:35.640 is that whenever we start going after the CBC, Andrew, saying, hey, you guys take $1.2 billion

00:03:41.280 per year. For folks who can't quite figure out what a billion is, picture a brand new hospital.

00:03:48.380 That's how much money this costs, right? Building a brand new hospital every single year. That's what

00:03:52.980 the CBC costs. And when we start getting onto them about that, they'll say something self-serving like,

00:03:58.720 oh, well, what about, you know, First Nations programming? Uh-uh. When you actually check the

00:04:03.720 documents, they spend more on their executive suite pay, Andrew, than they do on First Nations

00:04:11.280 programming. And instead, when you turn on something like APTN, for example, which takes a fraction of

00:04:18.100 the taxpayer dollars and does way more with it, I think they broadcast in 12 different First Nations

00:04:24.080 languages. So the CBC will try to cloak itself in this, you know, essential service, you know,

00:04:29.900 Canadian fabric thing. And it just isn't that anymore. And the example of that downtown Toronto

00:04:35.420 location is exactly it. Well, and the one thing I would point out too is that CBC likes to hide

00:04:42.220 behind that. They like to hide behind their Northern coverage and their rural and remote coverage. By the

00:04:47.780 way, most folks in rural parts of the country want nothing to do with CBC, but that's neither here nor

00:04:52.140 there. But you go to cbc.ca and none of that stuff is what's on the homepage. They've got their latest

00:04:57.860 news story in which they're competing with private media outlets. They've got commercial advertising,

00:05:02.980 again, competing with private media outlets. I'm scrolling down here. They've got CBC Gem,

00:05:09.520 so, oh, I can watch some Dragon's Den or some 22 Minutes. Okay, well, you know, 22 Minutes is an

00:05:15.820 example of something the market wouldn't provide. So probably for other reasons. But the things that they

00:05:21.080 like doing are the things that are the popular stuff that competes with private players. I mean,

00:05:26.700 they want to play the Olympics and they want to hold the Oscars. That's what they want to be doing.

00:05:31.840 Because then, so you get into this vortex of them trying to do stuff that's popular so they get people

00:05:38.900 to watch them, but them also not providing the things that they actually are supposed to do through

00:05:43.940 their mandate. And so it's this vicious little cycle that goes round and round. And they've already

00:05:48.800 lost hockey night in Canada. Why are they duplicating the things that private enterprises

00:05:53.720 are trying to now compete with them with? It goes back to, you remember a few years ago before the

00:05:59.180 COVID mess hit everybody, when it came to light that it's their online print, it's their online physical

00:06:05.920 typing that you can read on their website that gets the most eyeballs. Well, that's not in their mandate.

00:06:11.500 Their mandate was to broadcast, that's why it's the Broadcasting Corporation, to Canadians.

00:06:17.600 And then they really rubbed it in the newspaper website's faces. They started saying things like,

00:06:23.720 no paywall. Okay. So we've got private media organizations, both right and left. We don't

00:06:30.200 care. Private media organizations that are paying their journalists, who are then having a subscription

00:06:36.240 fee so you can read their news online because they got to eat. They have to pay the bills. CBC takes

00:06:42.760 money from government, takes money from taxpayers, posts the same story, sometimes duplicating the

00:06:49.020 same story, by the way, and then actually rubs it in and says no paywall. So they're really eating the

00:06:55.160 lunch in many cases of private media organizations. And now again, this isn't the smoking gun, but it

00:07:01.980 really adds to the narrative that the CBC is big and bloated and it is not delivering the programming

00:07:08.800 that people expect them to. Yeah. And I would also add to that as well, that when we're talking about

00:07:15.440 the galvanizing of private media, this is the government that as you and I have spoken about,

00:07:20.720 is putting in Bill C-18 because they believe it's the responsibility of big tech companies to save

00:07:25.920 media in Canada and that the government is the one that should just play with the puppet strings here.

00:07:31.360 Well, if you were to take out this big competitor, that's, that's basically big footing them,

00:07:36.720 that would help them more than C-18 will, which is effectively banned them from social media.

00:07:41.680 Yes. And to make it worse, C-18 will actually give the CBC the lion's share of that money.

00:07:49.360 So at first this was basically- Oh no, no. I asked Pablo Rodriguez about that. And he said,

00:07:54.240 the Australian experts say it won't. Oh, well then if Australia is doing it,

00:07:58.480 then we don't need to discover it anymore. Stop studying everybody. We're good.

00:08:02.880 Seriously. This is how this works. I've spoken to the people who actually helped read and write

00:08:06.720 the legislation. It's the cumulative amount of links that are posted. And so if you add

00:08:11.840 all of those up in like a little bucket, like we were just describing with their eyeballs,

00:08:15.280 they get for online print, guess what? They get the lion's share. Now at first this was big tech

00:08:20.640 versus media. So we're like, not exactly taxpayers, but now it's big tech being forced to pay money to

00:08:28.080 government media, to the CBC, which is just a wing of the federal government.

00:08:32.480 So now this is a tax issue. Wanted to turn away from CBC for a moment,

00:08:38.000 although I should point out that Pierre Pauliev has said he can't wait until this Toronto real

00:08:43.200 estate is given up to Canadian families as housing. So if you're looking for a condo on Front Street,

00:08:48.880 when Pauliev's in there, you might be able to get one. You can do the Man's Bridge suite and the

00:08:52.720 Barton suite. It'll be wonderful. With the robot.

00:08:55.280 I want to ask you about this cabinet retreat. The liberals got together in PEI a little while back,

00:09:00.640 spent $275,000 on this retreat. Now this was cabinet. This wasn't the big caucus retreat for

00:09:08.960 all 170 of them or whatever. This was, or no, there weren't, there aren't that many now,

00:09:13.280 but however it is, this was just the cabinet, $275,000. Like how much is lobster going for?

00:09:19.200 This is what they were billing.

00:09:20.240 This was just brutal. And so credit where it's due, our folks at Black Locks Reporter dug up

00:09:25.840 these documents and you're right. This was, get this folks. So remember last summer when inflation

00:09:32.080 was really bad? I mean, it's really bad now, but it was really bad at the grocery store. It was a

00:09:36.080 real fight to try to afford even hamburger for your cart. Remember also that's when interest rates

00:09:41.680 started skyrocketing. Okay. Things were tough. A year ago, the cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's

00:09:47.600 government got together and said, holy smokes, look at all this wreckage. Let's have a, an inflation

00:09:52.960 summit. Okay. That's a good idea. But instead of having the meeting in one of the dozen meeting

00:09:58.320 rooms that they have access to in Ottawa, they jetted out. Actually, this one, Andrew was in

00:10:04.080 Vancouver. Oh, this was the band. This was last year. Sorry. My mistake. Yeah. So this was at the

00:10:08.320 Hyatt in Vancouver, right? They're not schlepping it on the East coast. They're on the expensive West

00:10:12.800 coast here. They blew, like you said, $275,000, but get this $46,000 was on catering, catering.

00:10:23.920 The, the tone deafness, the let them eat cake level of this is almost vicariously embarrassing.

00:10:31.120 You're looking at it saying people are struggling. They're lining up at food banks. They're cutting

00:10:35.280 coupons. They can barely make it. And you blow 46 grand on catering to yourself.

00:10:39.520 And there are 39 cabinet ministers. So that is more than a thousand dollars a person on food alone.

00:10:47.920 Yeah. That's a lot of money. That's like King Henry, the eighth level eating. Like we need to

00:10:53.680 monitor them for gout because that's a lot of shellfish that they'd be eating right now.

00:10:58.720 I'm just, I'm just picturing like the old medieval banquet style of, I don't know, like, you know,

00:11:02.720 uh, Pablo Rodriguez, just gnawing on like a giant turkey jump drumstick and be like, bring me,

00:11:08.640 bring me some more mead. There's like a goblet in one hand and this big bone meat in the other hand.

00:11:14.160 Yeah. That's what it would have been like. And this is where it gets gross.

00:11:17.760 King Harry does Canadian politics or something. Exactly. This is their job to care about the mess,

00:11:24.160 frankly, they created through both money printing and carbon taxes. So this is their mess inflation

00:11:30.240 and it's their job to deal with it. They make around close to $300,000 each for salary. All of their

00:11:37.440 expenses are always paid in Ottawa, but instead to talk about this critical issue of affordability,

00:11:43.920 they jet out to Vancouver and stuff themselves as 46 grand worth of catering. It's really bad.

00:11:49.760 I should tell that this is a silly story, but I think it's an interesting one. The Liberals in 2015

00:11:54.960 had a caucus retreat, so they weren't in government yet in London, Ontario. And this is when I had the

00:11:59.840 opportunity to interview. The only time I've ever interviewed Justin Trudeau was at this point.

00:12:03.520 I remember that. And I didn't go too well for them. But Sun News was around. They played that

00:12:08.080 tape until it broke. It was great. But I was out and randomly, I was at a mall, which is out

00:12:13.120 uncharacteristic for me. And there was a Liberal MP, Judy Scrow there. And she was coming out of the 0.92

00:12:18.080 bay and she didn't know me. I said, oh, Judy, Andrew Lawton, I'm a radio host in London. I didn't

00:12:22.880 expect to see you here. And she launched into this stump speech about, well, we're out here stimulating

00:12:27.760 local economies. Well, I was just saying hi. But it was interesting because it sort of occurred to me

00:12:33.680 that if we are going to have these retreats and we're going to spend money, why not spend the money

00:12:38.320 in places where it's going to really help? Why are they not having their retreat in some rural

00:12:43.840 community where the factory is closed if they're really committed to it? It's because they're not

00:12:47.680 actually interested in solving these problems. They want to have a really, really glitzy getaway.

00:12:53.440 And that, I mean, there's no earthly reason that you should have a retreat in Vancouver,

00:12:58.400 which is going to cost you more than anywhere else in the country.

00:13:01.920 Yeah. It's not so fun to go to Moose Town, right? Well, why go there?

00:13:06.480 Yeah. Where's the caucus retreat in Lethbridge?

00:13:08.880 Exactly. Don't give them ideas and then I'll have to hammer them with questions. But you're right.

00:13:14.400 They could be doing something like that in order to do that. But also we start worrying about cost

00:13:19.200 there because then you're hop, skip and jump flying. Just have them in Ottawa, for goodness sake.

00:13:25.200 Taxpayers pay a lot of money to maintain these buildings. They're all staffed. Everything's

00:13:29.840 transcribed. They already have hot meals delivered to them every day up on Parliament Hill. Why outsource

00:13:36.800 this to a different location and then charge people more money? And the very fact that this was a special

00:13:43.040 inflation summit in order to deal with the little people's problems, this was straight out of Orwell. 0.96

00:13:49.280 You know, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. It's that scene at the

00:13:54.080 end of the book where they're peeking through the window and they can't tell the difference between

00:13:57.680 the pigs and the farmers. You misunderstand, Chris. They're trying to show us how bad inflation is

00:14:02.160 by spending so much because this is just, it's tough for a Liberal cabinet in this economy. I think we

00:14:07.200 should actually just do full convergence here. Next Liberal cabinet retreat, have it at CBC

00:14:11.520 headquarters. We've already paid for it. Done. And already catered to by the robots.

00:14:15.760 All right. Before it gets kicked out and converted to housing. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers

00:14:21.280 Federation. Always great to talk to you. We will see you next Monday. You betcha.

00:14:25.920 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:14:37.200 www.tnc.news.app.mem.gov

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Juno News - September 29, 2023

Liberal cabinet spends $275,000 on inflation summit (ft. Kris Sims)

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