Juno News - September 29, 2023


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


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

181.38794

Word count

2,734

Sentence count

205

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

If the Canadian Taxpayers Federation were to go it alone and get rid of the $1.2B a year it gets from the government, what would it do with that money? Is it enough to cover the costs of running the entire country's largest public broadcaster?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 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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