Juno News - Liberal fiscal update brings more taxes, more spending, more debt

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.320 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lawton show

00:01:30.640 on true north outside the usual digs i'm going to be speaking at the jccf george jonas freedom

00:01:39.240 award dinner this evening in burnaby so now i have to contend on a live show with hotel room

00:01:45.060 lighting which is always the worst lighting imaginable although worst lighting tends to

00:01:49.900 make me look better I think because when you like see me really bright you just get terrified and

00:01:54.320 listen to the podcast so nevertheless it is great to have you tuned into the program here live on

00:01:59.560 this Wednesday November 22nd a bit of a busy week in Canadian politics with the government's fall

00:02:05.860 economic statement coming yesterday and I think any Canadian who's been paying attention to the

00:02:11.220 fiscal situation of the country is not going to be surprised by really what we've got here which is

00:02:17.300 More spending, more debt, no tax relief, no plan for inflation.

00:02:22.900 But this is how our finance minister and deputy prime minister,

00:02:26.560 Chrystia Freeland, characterizes it.

00:02:29.500 The foundation of our fall economic statement is our responsible fiscal plan.

00:02:36.200 In the face of global inflation,

00:02:38.860 our government has reduced the deficit faster than any other country in the G7.

00:02:44.880 And with inflation down from 8.1% last year to just 3.1% today,

00:03:02.880 We are taking care not to feed inflation by carefully targeting new investments towards the priorities of Canadians today

00:03:16.500 and towards the future growth that makes our finances sustainable.

00:03:23.240 I am not a finance minister, so maybe I'm just a lowly layman that can't quite do the math on this.

00:03:29.960 But by my calculation, by which I mean reading the document, it looks like the deficit is going up from $35 billion to $40 billion.

00:03:40.360 Debt is rising and interest charges on that debt are rising.

00:03:43.680 So I'm not sure how we are patting ourselves on the back for this grand deficit reduction plan.

00:03:49.520 Maybe my next guest can help me make some sense of this.

00:03:51.960 He is the conservative finance critic, Jasraj Singh-Hallan.

00:03:56.200 Jasraj, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:03:59.600 Hey, Andrew, thanks for having me on.

00:04:01.160 And you're looking beaming, by the way.

00:04:02.500 Thank you.

00:04:03.180 Were you one of the ones laughing when she was talking about the so-called responsible fiscal plan?

00:04:09.000 I think that was what all of Canada was doing when she said that they were fiscally responsible.

00:04:14.700 Explain to me, I mean, just before getting into the meat of this here,

00:04:18.560 she's saying there's a deficit reduction taking place,

00:04:21.580 and she says the government is to be commended for that.

00:04:25.100 That's not what the numbers actually show, though.

00:04:28.720 Well, let's be clear. This is another false hope update that she put forward.

00:04:35.160 Last year, she said she was going to balance the budget. That was her promise in last year's false hope update.

00:04:39.720 Then she turned around and did a massive flip-flop and poured $60 billion of new fuel on the inflationary fire that she started. 1.00

00:04:48.400 This year, we see much of the same thing.

00:04:50.340 So if a responsible government to them is spending, is putting more debt on Canadians than every single government before them combined,

00:04:57.720 combined that's between 1867 and 25 2015 they spent more more on Canadians had to put more

00:05:06.760 debt on Canadians in that time in eight years and all of those prime ministers before them combined

00:05:12.760 and then caused 40-year highs in inflation and the most rapid interest rate hikes not seen in

00:05:18.120 Canadian history if that's fiscally responsible to them I would hate to see what irresponsibility

00:05:24.920 and recklessness looks like the liberals inherited back in 2015 a fairly good economic situation and

00:05:32.360 at the time they use that as justification to spend large amounts of money justin trudeau's

00:05:37.400 argument was well we can afford it and then when the economy took a turn downward it was well now

00:05:43.080 we need to spend because we have to uh to which i would say well hang on when's the situation when

00:05:47.800 we don't spend aggressively if we spend in good times and spend in bad times but here we have the

00:05:52.520 consequences of this we've gone through a crisis when most countries around the world uh had to

00:05:57.400 spend outside their means or generally did as far as covet is is concerned but it we had no buffer

00:06:03.560 and and now we're seeing ballooning debt and as you well know the larger your debt gets the more

00:06:09.320 you have to spend a service that debt which is a basically a dollar that is being wasted it's a

00:06:14.840 dollar that's not going towards anything that canadians need we're seeing this occupy a larger

00:06:19.800 and larger share of the federal finances, aren't we? Absolutely. Now, you have to take everything

00:06:25.820 Justin Trudeau says with a grain of salt, because this is the guy that said that budgets balance

00:06:30.140 themselves. And obviously, we know that that's not true. This guy fueled the inflationary crisis

00:06:37.880 that led to these rapid interest rate hikes. And he's made things worse, where he's been promising

00:06:43.480 to quadruple his carbon tax scam.

00:06:46.640 This is the legacy of this guy,

00:06:48.780 which has led 2 million people into a food bank

00:06:51.460 in a single month in this country,

00:06:53.260 where a third of them are children.

00:06:56.160 And one in five Canadians today are skipping meals

00:06:59.000 because of these failed economic policies

00:07:01.600 of this liberal NDP government.

00:07:03.840 They need to reverse course

00:07:05.200 and do the exact opposite of what they're doing today.

00:07:08.000 The governor of the Bank of Canada,

00:07:09.360 when I questioned him in our committee,

00:07:10.620 said the same thing.

00:07:11.640 He said the government's fiscal policy

00:07:13.380 and his monetary policy of raising interest rate hikes to tame inflation

00:07:17.120 are working in opposite directions.

00:07:20.220 It's because the government continues to fuel inflation with the more they spend.

00:07:24.460 And this fall economic update of theirs shows that they're going to continue

00:07:29.080 to run deficits and large deficits at that.

00:07:31.700 They're adding 20 billion new inflationary deficits to that.

00:07:36.540 And what is that going to do?

00:07:37.540 It's going to make the governor's job harder to bring down those interest rates. 0.98

00:07:43.380 rates. And what we need to do today is do the exact opposite.

00:07:47.220 A common sense, conservative government under Pierre Polyev would balance the

00:07:51.500 budget to bring down inflation, to bring down those interest rates.

00:07:55.500 Because today, after eight years of Justin Trudeau, Canada is most at risk

00:08:00.020 in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis.

00:08:03.060 So we need to help to save people's homes.

00:08:05.180 Number two, we need to ax the tax, get rid of this carbon tax altogether.

00:08:09.580 That's what a common sense, conservative government would do to bring down the cost.

00:08:13.380 gas groceries and home heating and we need to get more homes built in this country and our common

00:08:18.260 sense conservative leader put forward a bill inside a parliament literally called build more

00:08:23.620 homes not more bureaucracy act now when you mention balancing the budget i know the conservatives

00:08:29.940 previously campaigned i think it was the 2019 election on a law that would effectively force

00:08:34.900 the government to balance the budget now you've seen the numbers now you've seen the books you've

00:08:39.620 seen the size of the deficit how many years do you think it would take to bring the budget to

00:08:44.420 balance because i'm not sure without some very aggressive cuts that you know even a conservative

00:08:49.700 government right now could eliminate this deficit to zero and have produced a balanced budget this

00:08:54.660 year although i i would love to be proven wrong if you've got an alternative there look i don't

00:08:59.780 know if anyone can really know what this the the real picture looks like until we form government

00:09:05.780 Because even the public budgeting officer, the Liberal's own public watchdog, the finance watchdog, has said that whatever is being projected or whatever he's seen, it's still not the full picture because there's a lot more that they're not adding in.

00:09:19.700 But I will tell you what the Conservatives will do to get started. Right now, this Liberal NDP government is covering its incompetence up by hiring $22 billion a year on Liberal connected insider consultants.

00:09:35.780 These are the kind of wasteful spending that's made, that's fueled inflation and actually made Canadians' lives even worse because services has not gotten better at all.

00:09:45.120 These are the kind of things that we would do.

00:09:46.900 And like I said, here's some free advice for the Liberals.

00:09:50.740 And you don't need to pay me or any consultant for this advice.

00:09:54.420 If you ask the tax today, it would put a massive dent in inflation.

00:10:00.620 That's what the governor of the Bank of Canada confirmed.

00:10:02.500 It would take off 0.6, which means in today's date, it would bring us back down to the range for the governor of the Bank of Canada to start bringing down interest rates.

00:10:12.820 That's some free advice for the government, what they could do today.

00:10:16.020 And not only that, we could help people's paychecks, Canadians' paychecks be stronger because they could keep more in their pocket that way.

00:10:23.320 And the cost of food, gas and home heating, and that's wintertime now, would all come down.

00:10:29.640 These are the kind of things that the government needs to be doing.

00:10:32.100 But under a parapoly of government, these things will get done.

00:10:35.520 I know when we're talking about a budget that is involving spending in the billions,

00:10:39.820 it may not be the hugest amount, but we did see in the fellow economic update,

00:10:43.040 the Liberals want to put, I think it was $126 million more into bankrolling the media.

00:10:49.700 Now, I take it that's not, given what your leader has said previously,

00:10:53.360 that's not a priority for the Conservatives here?

00:10:56.720 Definitely.

00:10:57.400 Look, I will tell you that we are the common sense conservatives.

00:11:02.100 Our plan is not only to find savings and our government,

00:11:06.800 what we will do is bring in a dollar for dollar law because of the out of

00:11:11.700 control liberal NDP spending.

00:11:13.800 Canadians today have to have to cut in their own budgets and practice

00:11:18.460 austerity.

00:11:19.740 What the government should be doing the same thing today.

00:11:22.360 They need to,

00:11:23.160 we will bring in a dollar for dollar law.

00:11:25.860 any dollar that gets spent by any department they have to find a dollar of savings we need to make

00:11:30.500 sure that we're actually fiscally responsible that's how we're going to start we're going to

00:11:35.140 start balancing the budget or get to a balanced budget what we also need to look at is the other

00:11:39.780 side of the equation andrew we've seen after eight years of this liberal ndp government really bad

00:11:45.220 policy anti-energy anti-alberta anti-productive policies by these guys for instance bill c69

00:11:53.220 which was rules unconstitutional the carbon tax bill c48 we need to build build build in this

00:11:59.140 country we have we are a resource rich country we need to make sure that we're supporting these

00:12:04.580 industries and not only will we help bring powerful paychecks to our canadian people

00:12:09.860 by giving the world our clean responsible low carbon intense energy to the world we can

00:12:16.660 replace dirty coal in the world we can replace those dollars for dictators with dollars for

00:12:23.140 our canadian people those are the things that we would do as a as a responsible

00:12:28.260 common sense conservative government conservative finance critic jazz raj singh hallen always good

00:12:34.340 to talk to you jazz thanks for coming on today thanks andrew all right thanks very much for that

00:12:39.540 now interestingly enough the government is trying to uh give a very rosy picture of things and again

00:12:46.980 to give a fiscal update that is more of everything bad and uh none or less of anything good is tough

00:12:53.940 to do with a smile but uh deputy prime minister christopher freeland has certainly tried to do

00:12:59.140 that but this is like the weird talking point the liberals have tried to put out there i let me pull

00:13:04.980 up this tweet from christia freeland that went out yesterday canada is not and never has been

00:13:13.860 broken now this is a direct response i presume to pierre polyev's uh repeated comments i don't know

00:13:20.900 how recently he said it but he certainly said it a fair bit in the past that canada is broken and

00:13:25.620 if you look around at people in this country who are hanging on by a thread morally socially

00:13:31.220 fiscally it is not actually a difficult case to make that canada is broken that doesn't mean that

00:13:37.300 canada is a failed state but it means that canada needs to be fixed and repaired and rebuilt and

00:13:42.820 so too do Canadian institutions and Canadian society.

00:13:46.920 And when this came up, Justin Trudeau was so indignant.

00:13:49.500 Oh, how dare you say Canada is broken?

00:13:52.500 And now Christopher Freeland is saying the same.

00:13:55.540 And we saw a couple of other no-name Liberal MPs want to get some brownie points with Christopher Freeland.

00:14:00.300 So they were repeating the talking point on Twitter as well.

00:14:03.780 And then the, I don't know if you follow him, but the pleb reporter on Twitter, 0.81

00:14:07.500 I don't even know his, I met him, I don't even know his real name.

00:14:09.460 He's the pleb on Twitter, and he does tremendous work online at, like, just angering all the right people. 1.00

00:14:15.620 Dug up this gem from Justin Trudeau just a few years ago.

00:14:19.220 It's amazing what a difference eight years makes.

00:14:22.240 This place belongs to all Canadians.

00:14:25.320 It belongs to you.

00:14:27.400 But after a decade in power, Stephen Harper thinks it belongs to him.

00:14:32.400 So now, this place is broken.

00:14:34.940 today i'm presenting a real plan to fix it oh this place is broken surely you don't mean

00:14:46.000 canada right now in the tweet he says ottawa is broken which to be fair i don't know ottawa has

00:14:52.360 ever been functioning but nevertheless then he like points behind him to parliament hall the

00:14:56.800 seat of canadian democracy many would say and says oh this place is broken so maybe that's how he'd

00:15:02.000 weasel his way out of that. But let's also remember Justin Trudeau is the guy who a couple

00:15:06.860 of years ago accused Canada of perpetrating genocide. He said Canada was committing an

00:15:12.940 ongoing genocide against Indigenous women and girls, and then is so offended, just so indignantly

00:15:20.600 offended when someone dares to say that Canada might be broken. So the government is trying to

00:15:26.940 pretend that everything's fine. This is like ostrich parasitic syndrome, as I believe Gadsad

00:15:31.980 once said where people just stick their heads in the sand like an ostrich and uh pretend that

00:15:37.020 everything is fine everything is hunky-dory and rosy now this has been stephen gilbo's approach

00:15:41.980 now i'll talk about this i want to share my christia freeland story very uh quickly because

00:15:46.780 uh you may have seen a couple of months back it was in january i was trying to interview christia

00:15:51.580 freeland in davos and she's not a really tall woman it's not an insult she's just not a tall 0.99

00:15:57.260 a woman. But man, can she scurry when she doesn't want to talk to you, which is what I experienced. 1.00

00:16:02.440 And I didn't know if she knew me. I'm a nobody. She runs away from tons of reporters. But I saw

00:16:09.980 her a couple of weeks ago. I was in Ottawa. And if you look at her travel records, Krista Freeland

00:16:15.020 commutes back and forth from Toronto to Ottawa. She doesn't live in Ottawa. She goes back home

00:16:19.820 most days, which is great for the carbon footprint, I'm told. And so she was in the Ottawa airport.

00:16:25.220 I was in the Ottawa airport and I was tired. It was whatever time it was of day. And there was a

00:16:31.340 woman that looked up and saw me that I just saw out of the corner of my eye. And then she like 0.97

00:16:38.460 put on sunglasses and turned around, which drew more attention to this person I had noticed who

00:16:44.820 ended up being Christopher Freeland. So I was glad that I had made it in the world. She recognized

00:16:49.140 me on sight and thought she needed to hide from me. That was my latest Christopher Freeland

00:16:54.680 encounter. I didn't have my microphone. Maybe I could have like scurried after her, but I generally 1.00

00:16:58.500 speaking, I try not to accost people at airports because I don't want to be put on the no-fly list

00:17:02.800 and they, you know, of course can't really get away. So it's like, you know, shooting fish in

00:17:07.480 a barrel in a way. So maybe it doesn't seem fair, but nevertheless, that was my, my recent

00:17:12.060 Chrystia Freeland encounter. Let me talk about Stephen Gilboa. Talk about a guy who's putting

00:17:17.360 his head in the sand here. Every time he loses a court decision, he comes up with a way where it's

00:17:22.360 supposedly a win. The federal court gave a resounding rebuke of the government's plastic

00:17:28.100 span. I celebrated this by having a very, very large sip of water on my Monday show. And like

00:17:34.680 all of the environmentalists have been like terrified at, you know, how many turtles I

00:17:38.420 harmed in the making of that gag. But there is a real consequence of this. The federal government

00:17:43.100 has vowed to fight this, which means industry is once again in a very precarious situation,

00:17:48.640 not knowing if this plastics ban will live or die as of a couple of years from now.

00:17:54.420 Catherine Swift is the president of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada

00:17:59.980 and joins me now.

00:18:01.320 It's always good to talk to her.

00:18:02.440 Catherine, thanks for coming on today.

00:18:05.200 My pleasure, Andrew.

00:18:06.880 So obviously, I mean, industry in Canada was harmed by the plastics ban in the first place.

00:18:12.220 You have some companies where literally products they made were effectively outlawed overnight

00:18:17.400 or made so prohibitive for people to get in Canada.

00:18:20.720 And now, even with the court ruling,

00:18:22.600 I think on one hand, it's easy to say it's a bit of a win,

00:18:25.180 but it hasn't changed the precariousness,

00:18:27.320 which is that you have a government declaring war on plastic.

00:18:31.260 And I think, for starters, it's based on a very false premise.

00:18:34.780 The plastics that are ending up in turtles' noses in Asia and Africa

00:18:39.120 are not coming from Canada and the United States,

00:18:41.560 which have very good waste management systems.

00:18:45.460 But it's companies in Canada that pay the price for these things.

00:18:48.680 So what has the impact been of this ban in the first place on Canadian industry?

00:18:53.840 And it's definitely companies pay, but companies also pass the increased costs on to consumers.

00:18:58.440 Let's face it, people at a time when an awful lot of small hospitality businesses, for example, restaurants, hotels and so on, are already are still struggling to get out of their pandemic, you know, depression.

00:19:12.500 uh that this increased cost because they had to replace all this stuff the alternatives are

00:19:18.480 invariably more expensive and they're often worse for the environment that was that was one of the

00:19:24.240 classic uh elements of it that was utterly ridiculous but uh it just it's just another

00:19:31.380 hit on business the other thing and and anybody that knows anything about plastics knew this from

00:19:36.420 the get-go they outlawed things like straws as you say and apparently that one picture of the

00:19:42.040 one turtle, and I love turtles. So, you know, I would sympathize with the turtle. But that one

00:19:47.200 picture of the poor turtle precipitated a ban on the entire, and the straws, the paper straws that

00:19:54.920 replaced it were found to have toxic materials in them. I mean, I shouldn't be laughing. It's

00:19:59.360 utterly ludicrous. But this is almost comedic if it weren't so serious. We have thousands of jobs 0.94

00:20:06.100 in the plastics industry in Canada. The things they banned were mere virtue signaling. They're

00:20:11.820 not the worst sources of plastic waste, for example, water bottles are. And I guess if we

00:20:17.180 were all using paper box water bottle thingies or whatever, then we should be worrying about that.

00:20:25.480 But I think they thought they'd get too much blowback from consumers. But frankly, I think

00:20:29.360 water bottles are ridiculous to use at all because they're unnecessary. We have good water in this

00:20:34.380 country. But anyway, the things that they banned were virtue signaling. They weren't realistic at

00:20:40.560 all, calling them toxic. And this, of course, is where the judge's decision came in. And they had

00:20:46.120 the bad luck of getting a judge that actually had some science background. She had a master's degree

00:20:51.260 in biology. So she actually knew some of this stuff a lot better than seemingly Minister Guiveau

00:20:56.980 did. So it was merely a virtue signaling exercise that hurt business at a bad time, not that it's

00:21:04.120 ever a good time, but hurt consumers naturally, drove up prices, therefore fed inflation yet again,

00:21:10.560 and did nothing for the environment,

00:21:12.780 but added all kinds of costs to our economy

00:21:15.960 and on very false premises as well.

00:21:18.140 And yeah, Canada isn't an offender on this front.

00:21:21.000 Plastics are eminently recyclable.

00:21:23.120 Many, many types of plastics are infinitely recyclable.

00:21:26.800 You can recycle, recycle, recycle them.

00:21:29.140 And granted, we'd have to have better facilities.

00:21:31.160 We already do some of that,

00:21:32.100 but we need to have better facilities

00:21:33.900 in the future to do that.

00:21:35.340 But to call this whole area,

00:21:38.600 which is so incredibly helpful to our society.

00:21:41.700 We would never have gotten through the pandemic

00:21:43.360 without plastics.

00:21:44.480 They're sanitary, they're sterile.

00:21:46.520 They're something that in the medical profession,

00:21:48.780 they can shape them into all kinds of interesting shapes

00:21:51.920 that suit the purpose.

00:21:55.000 They actually use less heat and energy to create

00:21:58.220 than a lot of metals do.

00:21:59.740 So they're actually better for the environment

00:22:01.820 in that respect.

00:22:03.440 And in the automobile industry, for example,

00:22:06.880 Having plastic parts, body, you know, auto body and so on means they're lighter and therefore more fuel efficient.

00:22:12.880 Well, and a couple of years ago, we were just trumpeting the innovation of 3D printers.

00:22:17.620 And now, you know, it's, oh, well, plastics are terrible.

00:22:20.060 No one should do anything with plastic.

00:22:21.800 And you mentioned earlier, and I had alluded to this, and I don't have the numbers handy,

00:22:26.300 but there was a massive study a few years back on plastic in the ocean.

00:22:31.520 And it was literally the entirety of it was from Africa and Asia.

00:22:36.460 I think it was like eight rivers in Asia that contributed to almost all of it, and then two rivers in Africa.

00:22:42.300 And a lot of it is discarded fishing gear.

00:22:44.160 It's not even trash that's thrown in the water.

00:22:46.840 But similar to with emissions, emissions and plastics are the same thing.

00:22:51.360 We get virtue signaling Western politicians that force Canadians in our context to pay for problems that, if they are problems, are being caused by the Chinas and the Indias of the world. 1.00

00:23:03.240 And it's the same as emissions.

00:23:04.600 you know canada is what two percent of global emissions if you think emissions are the bad guy

00:23:09.160 it's 1.5 yeah there we go so uh but but we're the ones that have to deal with the carbon tax well

00:23:14.520 china is opening new coal plants and the carbon tax is damaging our economy so badly i can't tell

00:23:21.320 you how many of our business members are leaving the country or they're maybe leaving a little bit

00:23:25.800 of a facility here but they're going south of the border for example i don't see anecdotal but

00:23:30.280 overseas that you you swear by that that companies in canada are reducing their footprint or leaving

00:23:35.640 altogether because of it totally totally and it's been going on for a number of years so you know

00:23:41.960 the the notion this is badly harming the canadian economy imports are and the the farce of it is

00:23:47.320 imports are coming in from the abusers the chinas the you know the the thailand's the malaysia 1.00

00:23:53.560 indonesia these are all the countries that are the main causes as you mentioned of of the plastic

00:23:58.520 waste in the ocean. And they're doing absolutely nothing. But our businesses are having to leave

00:24:03.560 because they're no longer competitive. And it's not just the carbon tax. That's one big factor

00:24:08.040 because the other countries don't have one. But it's also, you know, we have pretty good

00:24:12.220 environmental rules in Canada. And we have had for a very long time. Liberals can't take credit

00:24:16.620 for that. But these other countries don't. They abuse the environment like crazy. So our businesses

00:24:21.400 who are following all the rules, paying gobs of taxes, following stringent environmental procedures

00:24:26.820 and so on they have to leave because they can't they won't be able to do business anymore what a 0.96

00:24:31.780 stupid policy well and one of the challenges too is that on one hand and look i i'm a big free trade 0.99

00:24:37.620 fan and i i believe that free trade has come with some costs globalization has come with some costs 0.99

00:24:42.100 but but generally speaking we have a government that is very pro-globalization a government that

00:24:46.740 says we need to be connected with the world but doesn't want to compete against other countries

00:24:51.380 because that's the reality businesses can are very mobile now more so in 2023 than ever before they

00:24:56.740 They can do exactly what you just described.

00:24:58.460 They can pick up stakes and go elsewhere,

00:24:59.840 which means we need to compete on regulations

00:25:02.440 and on taxes with all of these other countries.

00:25:05.320 And it's so ridiculous that the government 0.70

00:25:07.500 has failed to realize that or realize it, 0.90

00:25:10.300 but is putting that virtue signaling

00:25:11.740 above the national economic interests of Canada

00:25:14.580 and its corporations.

00:25:15.140 I don't care.

00:25:15.660 I've concluded, Andrew, they just don't care

00:25:18.120 because they're so focused on their ideological,

00:25:21.900 you know, narrow ideological cause,

00:25:24.540 which is the climate.

00:25:25.440 Well, yeah, Stephen Gilboa is an avowed idea.

00:25:27.340 They don't really seem to care.

00:25:29.080 Yeah, very ideal.

00:25:30.480 Although it's quite hilarious when they saw that it was costing them gobs of votes in a liberal rich vote area of the country, Atlantic Canada.

00:25:38.800 They suddenly, all their principles went out the window and they gave them a break on heating oil.

00:25:44.700 So let's face it, the hypocrisy is overwhelming, but it's doing real damage.

00:25:51.800 And no, I don't think they even understand or care how many businesses and jobs and whatnot are being driven out of the country.

00:25:57.800 We've seen by a number of recent studies, we've seen that our GDP per capita, which is which is a source of it's a very good indicator of standard living.

00:26:06.540 It's been dropping precipitously. We've always been lower than the U.S., but now we're over 30 percent lower than the U.S.

00:26:13.900 And it continues to decline. That kind of indicator is not good for Canadians.

00:26:18.900 And if we want to enjoy the kind of lifestyle we, you know, we've gotten accustomed to, something's got to change fast.

00:26:25.580 And if business can't compete in Canada and we've got government growing like crazy and that's not something that adds to our productivity at all, quite the contrary, it's a drag on productivity, then we've got a lot of problems to deal with.

00:26:37.100 I mentioned earlier that even with the federal court decision last week striking down the plastic span we have a federal government that's going to appeal it we have a federal government that is probably going to try to put some modified version in place and then we go back to square one and we have to restart the court process so I'm not convinced it's a win and I don't want to take that away from it but I'm not convinced

00:26:59.100 it puts businesses that are concerned about this or people that are concerned about this in the

00:27:03.340 clear. So there still is this precariousness. And I wanted to ask about that because it's one thing

00:27:07.920 for a company or a corporation to say, we're leaving Canada because X, Y, Z, whatever those

00:27:13.640 things are. It's another thing for a company to say, we just have no idea what the future is

00:27:18.600 going to hold and it's safer to go elsewhere. And I think that must be happening as well.

00:27:23.980 Oh, very much so. You can see how bad investment, non-residential investment, because we know our housing market's out of control price-wise, but non-residential investment, which is a source, again, of wealth that promotes our standard of living, that's been declining for years under the Trudeau government.

00:27:40.980 And a lot of it is uncertainty. There's a lot of uncertainties in the world of business, no matter what. We don't need the government to add more and more and more. And yet that's what they've done.

00:27:50.160 And the Supreme Court, as you may recall, just about a month ago, struck down the Bill C-69, the so-called No More Pipelines Bill, and that had introduced all kinds of uncertainty for large projects in Canada.

00:28:03.260 Yeah, and that was, again, one where you've had a couple of major projects that have just said, you know, it's not worth it.

00:28:09.240 And then it was particularly bad when you had Trudeau on this side of the border and Biden on the other side of the border.

00:28:14.380 And, you know, the long, long, long anticipated Keystone project just became dead on arrival.

00:28:19.440 So, obviously, you've had the opportunity to speak to a number of political leaders.

00:28:24.620 I know Premier Danielle Smith in Alberta and Pierre Paulyev, the Conservative leader.

00:28:29.600 I mean, are you optimistic that if, I mean, in Alberta's case, where she's in government or at the national level,

00:28:35.720 where Paulyev wants to form government, that they can turn this around?

00:28:38.940 Or are the problems too great right now for a government to really solve in a four-year term?

00:28:45.280 Well, they're going to be hamstrung by our debt, for sure.

00:28:47.500 Not so much Alberta.

00:28:48.760 Alberta, the energy industry, you know, the fossil fuel industry has been doing quite well,

00:28:52.240 and that's really helped their bottom line, as well as Canada's. I found it so ironic,

00:28:56.960 laughably ironic, that the Liberals were celebrating that they had greater revenues

00:29:01.580 than they had forecast. It's all because of the oil and gas industry, which they hate.

00:29:06.180 So, I mean, talk about hypocrisy. But I mean, of course, things can be turned around. And we

00:29:11.780 showed it back in the 90s. And that was a Liberal government, that the largest cuts in government,

00:29:16.880 and the left loves to say,

00:29:18.180 oh, the Conservatives will cut, cut, cut.

00:29:19.760 It was Liberals that did it

00:29:20.840 and they did it because they had to do it.

00:29:23.100 Whoever was in government at the time

00:29:24.340 would have had to do it

00:29:25.460 because we were up against it financially big time.

00:29:28.560 But that's going to happen again, I'm afraid,

00:29:30.580 because our debt is so high.

00:29:32.360 So yes, things can be reversed,

00:29:34.100 but not quickly.

00:29:35.020 It's going to take time and it's going to hurt.

00:29:37.840 All right, Catherine Swift,

00:29:39.280 always good to talk to you,

00:29:40.260 President of the Coalition of Concern Manufacturers

00:29:42.700 and Businesses of Canada.

00:29:44.100 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:29:46.880 Thanks, Andrew.

00:29:47.920 All right.

00:29:48.800 This is the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:29:51.100 Now, I'm just getting some kind of flashes on my screen that there's been some incident in Niagara.

00:29:57.960 I want to get the details.

00:29:59.260 I mean, it is a live show, so we don't normally do breaking news.

00:30:02.240 But I just want to make sure I know what's going on before I share anything on that.

00:30:06.820 But I do want to talk about some of the anti-Semitic incidents that we've been seeing across this country.

00:30:12.660 I shared yesterday a clip of what looked like a young boy making a call for violence against Jews and Israelis, leading a crowd in a chant of intifada, revolution, resistance, from the river to the sea, all of these catchphrases.

00:30:27.720 And the thing about it is that these ideas will get cheered on.

00:30:32.760 They're not controversial now in Canada.

00:30:35.560 Anti-Semitism, Jew hatred, these are all too common things.

00:30:40.120 And I don't think this has just been created in the last few days. I think in the last few weeks, rather, I think it's been awakened. I think people have become very, they felt like they do not need to hide or conceal these views and values, which is even more concerning about it.

00:30:57.120 Now, I don't know what's happening here. This incident is apparently at the US-Canada Rainbow Bridge crossing in Niagara Falls, a vehicle explosion that the FBI are investigating. The bridge is closed. We'll try to keep an eye on details there. And again, I never like saying what something is in the first 24 hours because it almost always becomes something else. But we are keeping an eye on that.

00:31:23.280 But one of the things when you look at it, I mean, certainly we have university and college campuses, which are hotbeds of anti-Semitism and Jew hatred.

00:31:31.340 And it's a lot of these, you know, white, decolonial, post-colonial study lefties that try to take their very distorted worldview and put it on to these situations in the world.

00:31:42.520 But you also have to look at immigration.

00:31:44.200 And I was glad that Barbara Kay, who's a tremendous columnist with the National Post, put this in context so well.

00:31:51.240 in a piece she wrote this week,

00:31:53.600 how Quebec turned into a hotbed of anti-Semitism.

00:31:57.140 Barbara Kay joins me now.

00:31:58.860 It's always good to talk to you, Barbara.

00:32:00.080 I know this has been a difficult month and a half

00:32:02.840 for you as a Jewish woman.

00:32:04.420 And I know for you as someone who I think

00:32:06.380 has warned about these things for so long

00:32:08.380 when nobody was paying attention.

00:32:10.620 Yes, thanks, Andrew.

00:32:11.840 It has been a difficult time

00:32:13.260 and it does make it more difficult.

00:32:15.800 The frustration of having for the last 20 years

00:32:20.260 been very aware of what's been happening in europe uh and you know a sort of a foretaste of uh what

00:32:28.340 we could have figured was going to happen here as our immigration patterns were echoing those of

00:32:35.140 europe so uh yes uh frustrating but uh at least it's better we're talking about them now than

00:32:43.940 never and and now's unfortunately a very good time to be talking about immigration patterns

00:32:49.540 And you look at, in a Quebec context, 1970 to 2005, so a 35-year period here.

00:32:57.060 What happened there, and how has it led, in your view, to what we're seeing now?

00:33:02.600 Well, Quebec nationalism was very hot in 1970, I'm sure you remember.

00:33:07.760 I mean, maybe not.

00:33:09.060 I read about it.

00:33:09.960 I don't remember, but I know about it.

00:33:13.100 Anyways, it was, you know, nationalist sentiment was running very high,

00:33:16.600 And particularly, and as always, when nationalism is high, fears about the French language declining are high.

00:33:24.040 So the government quite understandably decided that they did need immigration.

00:33:30.420 But why not? Why not choose immigrants that are already fluent in French rather than bringing in non-French speaking and spending years, you know, bringing them up to speed? 0.99

00:33:39.400 I get that. I understand it.

00:33:41.360 So the government started looking, kind of throwing open their doors and making it very easy for immigrants who were who were French speaking to come here.

00:33:52.140 And that made it very logical to look for a look at former French colonies.

00:33:57.840 So a lot of people came from, you know, Vietnam and Haiti.

00:34:02.900 Those immigrants didn't have a problem with Jews.

00:34:05.680 But the French colonies that were the source of a lot of immigration from North Africa and the Middle East did and do.

00:34:14.180 So we had a lot of immigration from Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Jewish immigrants also from Morocco, especially Tunisia.

00:34:25.040 And they brought with them attitudes.

00:34:28.320 uh so it it some of them really uh you know look most of these immigrants it has to be said again 1.00

00:34:36.760 and again and i say it because i mean it most of these immigrants do not present a problem most of

00:34:41.800 them just want a good life they're peaceful they're apolitical but if even one percent of many

00:34:47.260 many many many thousands of people are activists and do harbor uh certain hatreds and want to see

00:34:55.220 those hatreds expressed in action that that's not good because it doesn't take very many to make

00:35:00.980 trouble uh so you know we have seen several really bad actors in quebec and uh many people of my age

00:35:09.060 certainly remember or not even my age um ahmed rasam the millennial bomber who uh made he set up

00:35:17.220 in montreal montreal is an ideal place if you're into that business because it's very close to the

00:35:22.180 us it has a good international airport um and it's uh you can melt into the crowd very easily

00:35:29.700 uh so i once asked a former thesis director uh we haven't had we haven't had incidents of

00:35:34.660 terrorism in montreal he said no why why would they it's an ideal place to operate from so what

00:35:41.540 you've got are a lot of a lot of uh islamist activists in montreal uh directing funding

00:35:49.620 for other groups, helping to plan operations elsewhere, and radicalizing youth very successfully

00:35:58.340 in their mosques and via internet forums. So as a result, we've seen a certain amount of sense,

00:36:07.140 and certainly right now there are demonstrations every single week, and some of them

00:36:11.380 have been, you know, we've had bullet holes in Jewish schools. We've had Jewish-owned businesses

00:36:21.100 vandalized. We've had a hit list of, well, I don't know if it's a hit list, but a list of Jewish-owned

00:36:27.740 enterprises circulating. One restaurant in my vicinity, which has a very big Jewish clientele,

00:36:35.560 has had a demonstration every single week right outside its windows unfortunately the police would

00:36:42.660 not even put a perimeter and very hostile he's lost a lot of you know a lot of money because

00:36:50.160 when they assemble like that the the guests can't get out of their their underground garage they

00:36:56.020 can't exit into the street so they're causing a lot of trouble and I do feel that it it has that

00:37:03.060 feeling of something much worse. You know, when you put bullet holes in a door, you're really

00:37:08.000 saying to the people whose kids go to that school, this time, you know, we shot into the door at

00:37:13.860 night when nobody was there. Next time, well, you know, maybe there will be somebody there. I think

00:37:20.440 Montreal Jews are extremely fearful. We have no quarrel at all with Monsieur Legault. Premier Legault

00:37:29.600 has made many, several statements that are absolutely, you know, perfect, says he's,

00:37:39.700 you know, won't be tolerated. And I do, I believe he feels that way. Monsieur Legault is a big

00:37:46.480 supporter of Israel. They have, Quebec was about to open an office in Israel, you know,

00:37:54.640 a quebec israel bureau uh that unfortunately will have to be postponed until after the war

00:38:00.120 but so you know on on a on an official level everything's very cool uh in terms of relationships

00:38:06.640 between the jewish community which is 90 000 people you know next to toronto the biggest um

00:38:13.800 but we're fearful we're fearful i want to go back i mean one of the things that i mean you and i

00:38:20.420 both know Mark Stein and one of the things that he has done very well going back to America alone

00:38:26.020 in 2006 was explained that a lot of this is just about numbers and and you said that as well I mean

00:38:31.800 if you bring in thousands and thousands of people one percent is you know a small number if you look

00:38:36.420 at the stats but in raw numbers that's enough to cause serious problems I mean we've seen

00:38:40.580 significant terror attacks that have evolved one person like you do not need a lot of people to

00:38:45.780 cause a lot of harm in a country. And when we look at anti-Semitism, I think the best case 1.00

00:38:51.580 scenario is that if someone has some anti-Semitic beliefs and they emigrate to Canada, that the

00:38:57.960 country itself has sufficiently said, these are not tolerant here, that you shut up about it.

00:39:03.380 And it just becomes this private bigotry that you hold that doesn't do anything. And

00:39:07.760 the problem is we're seeing in the last six weeks, a lot of people who do not feel that need. They do

00:39:14.000 not feel the need to hide it. They've now been celebrated and cheered on. I mean, people at

00:39:18.980 these rallies, like that child I showed a clip from yesterday that can call for intifada, call

00:39:23.900 for violence against Jews, and they're getting cheered on by thousands of people. You saw in the 0.94

00:39:28.520 UK, 100,000 people take to the streets a couple of weeks ago. Of those, is it 1% that supports

00:39:34.620 violence against Jews? 10%? Either way, you're talking about hundreds, if not thousands of

00:39:40.940 people. And as you well know, when you're talking about immigration, the time to deal with it is 1.00

00:39:47.980 before you open the doors. Afterwards, especially if people have gone through the process and become

00:39:53.660 citizens, you really don't have any response to this as a society or as a country, do you?

00:39:59.160 Well, no. And I don't personally understand how you can... I mean, I guess you have to have a very

00:40:07.260 sincere belief that people, when they cross your borders, they're going to leave all their 1.00

00:40:13.080 prejudices behind, no matter what they are, they're just going to, you know, and you think

00:40:19.340 that multiculturalism is just a question of, you know, people getting along and diversity,

00:40:25.340 all these superficial words. Well, and these people say it's offensive to insist that there

00:40:30.300 is or should be something that we would call a Canadian value, that that's even a part of,

00:40:35.400 or should be a part of that process? Well, I should think that one of our values that in any

00:40:40.340 democratic country would be that people from various backgrounds and religions and, you know,

00:40:45.520 should be able to get along with each other without one group fearing that because, you know,

00:40:51.660 that they have been collectively tarred as inferior or worthy of extermination. I mean,

00:40:58.960 one would think that would be a basic value for any democratic country. So if you know that you're

00:41:05.260 importing people who have grown up with i i've had countless middle easterners tell me who they

00:41:13.740 themselves have sort of managed to divest themselves of these old prejudices but they

00:41:20.220 have told me you just have no idea how common anti-semit it's it's like a given it's just a

00:41:28.380 I know that in Egypt, for instance, which has had a cold peace with Israel since 1979, you'll still find on the street people selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It's very popular, you know, and this is, this is, these myths and horrible blood libels are considered common knowledge in amongst, you know, in parts of the Middle East. That's how it is. 0.55

00:41:55.700 and it's up to the government to know that if they're importing people from one part of the

00:42:04.900 world investigate what are these people's cultural values I know we're not supposed to say that but 0.69

00:42:12.160 you know what now that people are running around the street saying Jews are horrible gas them or

00:42:16.160 whatever I think I can say and you can say or whoever wants to can say you know not all cultures 0.90

00:42:23.880 are equal. And not all cultures can be counted on to produce people who have respect for the

00:42:33.640 beliefs or for other people, you know, as individuals and not according to biases that

00:42:41.100 they've inherited from their culture. So, you know, Angela Merkel admitted finally after she,

00:42:48.440 you know, brought in a million North African migrants, that it just wasn't working out so

00:42:55.900 well in terms of anti-Semitism in Germany, which was exploding amongst that population.

00:43:02.320 And we also saw sexual violence just absolutely spike in that time. Yeah.

00:43:06.400 So when you say here, we've seen anti-Semitism rising like crazy. Well, come on, let's get

00:43:15.560 epidemiological about it what is the source of this rise and this sudden rise in anti-semitism

00:43:21.640 is that you know where is the hatred coming from uh where where is the actual the stuff that is

00:43:28.920 criminal where is that coming from um and and let's talk about it i think we have to be very open

00:43:36.520 otherwise we're not going to be able to start uh dealing with it in an educational way it's no good

00:43:44.520 to just say yeah we're gonna have holocaust education uh for everybody that doesn't work

00:43:49.960 by the way you know a lot of the holocaust education is um obligatory throughout europe

00:43:57.240 especially in germany they kids every german every kid in germany gets a lesson a vivid

00:44:03.720 lesson they go to they're taken to the camps so they know their holocaust education it has not 0.83

00:44:09.400 stopped antisemitism uh well and we have not the answer and we have the federal liberal but i know

00:44:15.640 one answer is to start looking at who we're bringing in from where and um what kind of biases

00:44:23.000 they have about uh about jews because that's the primary vector um you know for trouble uh from 1.00

00:44:32.520 you know especially amongst islamists i mean is islamists tell us we don't have to guess

00:44:41.960 they're very open about it they hate jews and they say so yeah uh so well we have the federal

00:44:48.600 government ignoring that why are we pretending that islamophobia is just as big a problem as

00:44:54.680 anti-semitism it just isn't it isn't uh people don't like islamism that's not a phobia they

00:45:01.480 don't like it because it's horrible um but we should be able to talk about this well the federal

00:45:10.200 government this week redoubling its commitment to regulating online hate as though the internet is

00:45:15.080 just you know the source of anti-semitism without talking about this this immigration side it was a

00:45:20.680 great column uh you wrote barbara k thank you very much for coming on i i feel you might not be able

00:45:25.400 to hear me right now but uh nevertheless we were at the end of the interview anyway so i appreciate

00:45:30.360 your time uh barbara kay columnist with the national post thank you very much for that

00:45:35.640 uh we are just keeping tabs here out of the the corner of my eye on what's happened at the rainbow

00:45:41.800 bridge the last update i got is that there was a vehicle explosion uh that entered into the united

00:45:47.960 states from canada and then exploded on the american side of the bridge so we have american

00:45:54.520 media outlets i understand there's a video clip of some kind i haven't seen this clip but sean said

00:45:59.640 we had a video so let's put this up

00:46:14.280 yo call steve tell him to come back

00:46:18.600 that uh i don't know what was in that video certainly a bit of the aftermath

00:46:22.600 on the explosion that was from colin rug on twitter

00:46:26.280 Now, Colin Rugg has said that earlier today, CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge warned of an increasing terrorist threat to New York State tied to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

00:46:39.060 Now, again, I've not been able to verify any of this directly, but now we have this report that I saw quoted in that tweet.

00:46:47.720 An increase in civilian casualties raises the likelihood that violent extremist threat actors will seek to conduct attacks.

00:46:54.160 I've been briefed on the incident at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, and we're closely monitoring it with state agencies on site and ready to assist.

00:47:03.700 That's a statement from the governor of the state of New York.

00:47:08.440 I've crossed that bridge many times.

00:47:11.080 We also have this image here, which seems to show a bit of the aftermath of this smoke.

00:47:17.460 I don't know about injuries or fatalities yet.

00:47:19.480 We have our reporters on top of this.

00:47:21.480 So please do stay connected and tuned into tnc.news this afternoon. Obviously, these sorts of things, you never want to commit to a path until you know what's happened. That's generally speaking where people in the media get into trouble. But it certainly is consistent with other terrorist incidents we've seen in the past, people using vehicles, although this one at an international border crossing, certainly unique in the Canadian context.

00:47:47.600 So TNC.News will have that.

00:47:50.520 I will talk to you.

00:47:52.040 We have a special edition of the program tomorrow,

00:47:54.620 a sit-down with Magna Executive

00:47:56.960 and I'll say a titan of industry in Canada,

00:47:59.380 Frank Stronach, about his vision for Canada

00:48:02.660 and an economic charter of rights, he says,

00:48:04.880 Canadians need and deserve.

00:48:06.420 We have a full sit-down tomorrow on The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:48:09.620 That's it for us today.

00:48:10.800 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:48:14.120 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:48:16.200 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:48:46.200 We'll be right back.

Juno News - November 22, 2023

Liberal fiscal update brings more taxes, more spending, more debt

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