Juno News - Liberals are capping student visas, but is it enough？

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

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 guten tag or uh guten morgen if you're on the west it was i can't you have to like roll the

00:01:31.280 r a little bit but i know i'm going to sound like i'm offending the kind people of germany switzerland

00:01:36.240 and austria if i try it is great to talk to you again back from the hometown here i'm back in

00:01:43.960 canada this is the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent talk show on true north we were

00:01:48.960 in Davos in the Swiss Alps last week, not on a skiing vacation. I would certainly break my

00:01:55.760 ankles, legs, feet, hands, neck, and probably take out a couple of people along the way if I

00:02:01.900 were to try skiing. No, we were chasing down elites on the streets of Davos, which sometimes

00:02:06.780 people were slipping a little bit. I had like one woman who I think was like the deputy head of the 0.99

00:02:11.640 World Trade Organization, just like face plant in front of me. And I felt that would have been

00:02:14.840 a rude time to ambush her so we all helped her up and she was on her merry way but if you followed

00:02:20.040 our coverage in Davos last week it was great to have you tuned in thank you so much for doing that

00:02:25.060 we will have a bit of an update on well not an update but we'll have a bit of a post-mortem

00:02:29.800 of that later on in the show also our good friend and Monday correspondent Chris Sims

00:02:34.280 from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation will be with us in I think about 12 minutes or so

00:02:39.660 to talk about the fact that, well, you and I are grappling with inflation. Members of Parliament

00:02:45.140 are getting yet another pay raise, one that is, if my math is correct, which it usually isn't,

00:02:51.080 but I think it is here, a raise that outpaces inflation. So they're actually making more money

00:02:56.640 well and above cost of living increases, even if they were entitled to that, which is dubious at

00:03:02.100 best. But I want to talk about the big news of the day first, which is the federal government

00:03:06.640 taking immigration seriously. The Liberal government is finally reining in rampant 1.00

00:03:13.300 increases to immigration, which are causing shortages of housing, of jobs, of

00:03:19.600 social welfare programs. Here is Immigration Minister Mark Miller.

00:03:24.500 I am announcing three principal measures. One, a temporary two-year cap on new international

00:03:33.480 student permits. It is the latest in a series of measures to improve program integrity

00:03:38.700 and set international students up for the success in order to maintain a sustainable level of

00:03:44.680 temporary residence in Canada as well. To ensure that there is no further growth in the number of

00:03:51.240 international students in Canada for 2024, we are setting a national application intake cap for a

00:03:56.860 period of two years. For 2024, the cap is expected to result in approximately 364,000 approved study

00:04:05.160 permits, a decrease of 35% from 2023. In the spirit of fairness, we are also allocating the

00:04:15.200 cap space by province based on population, such as that some provinces will see much more

00:04:24.560 significant reductions we'll continue to work closely with those provinces and territories

00:04:29.840 to put these measures into place as they will be responsible for determining how the cap is

00:04:34.400 distributed between its designated learning institutions that they have jurisdiction over

00:04:40.240 i've had productive conversations in particular with british columbia and ontario already and

00:04:45.440 we all recognize that more needs to be done to protect the integrity of our system while

00:04:49.440 supporting international students. In addition, effective immediately, applicants must provide a

00:04:55.920 provincial attestation with their study permit application. Oh, sorry, sorry, I fell asleep there.

00:05:05.980 Okay, no, so I may have misled you when I said there was some big, bold changes that were taking

00:05:13.460 place uh the big bold change from the government is that they are going to drop by 35 percent

00:05:21.380 the number of international student visas they're approving so they're going to have 360 000 now

00:05:29.380 instead of i think it was around 420 000 okay but the 500 000 a year uh that are coming into canada

00:05:36.740 as new permanent residents that number is still going to keep going up and the number of temporary

00:05:41.700 foreign workers that's about half a million a year that's going to continue going up uh so

00:05:45.700 whoop-dee-doo there are going to be 60 to 70 000 fewer international students coming into this

00:05:50.740 country okay um yeah you know it's funny they're trying to pretend that they're doing something

00:06:01.300 but they are not and here's the thing about this i am very much a believer in immigration i think

00:06:08.180 everyone has to be we are a country that is going to go into demographic well it is in demographic

00:06:14.020 decline we're a country that is going to cease to have a population without immigration but the

00:06:18.820 problem is that the government has used this as an excuse and a pretext to have a very irresponsible

00:06:26.260 approach to immigration because the government actually does not believe that there is anything

00:06:30.260 worth protecting in this country they believe that in the words of my old friend Mark Stein

00:06:35.140 The Canadian society can just be like the Queen's terminal at Heathrow airport where its population

00:06:41.060 is transient. It's made up of whoever happens to be walking by at a particular moment. There is no

00:06:46.580 meaning to the word Canadian to the Liberals. Now international students are not permanent

00:06:52.980 residents. There is a pathway for them to stay in Canada, many do, but at a certain point what

00:06:58.020 we have to realize here is that international students are coming to Canada because oftentimes

00:07:03.860 they are looking for a way into the country that has nothing to do with their studies. Fraud in

00:07:08.660 the international student world is incredibly, incredibly rampant. The government has investigated

00:07:14.460 this. They found that there are these pseudo phony colleges that are operating out of strip malls in

00:07:19.920 Brampton that are just giving out letters of acceptance. And the government has been going

00:07:23.840 along with this. The government has been issuing people these visas. But for legitimate international

00:07:28.980 students, you have universities that view them as major, major cash cows. These kids are paying

00:07:35.500 $50,000 a year in tuition and none of the expectations that are there for domestic

00:07:41.680 students exist for international students. So universities love this. They'll just churn out 0.99

00:07:46.400 letters of acceptance left, right, and center. And as a result, you have at universities like

00:07:50.780 the U of T and Queens and Western and UBC, students that don't even have a basic proficiency in

00:07:56.160 English that are being accepted and kept in and eventually graduated without ever actually

00:08:01.720 developing a proficiency in English because the universities know they can profit. They can profit

00:08:07.460 hugely from international students. So this has become, and again, there's nothing wrong with

00:08:12.860 being an international student that says, I want to go to Western. Someone I knew somewhat well

00:08:18.420 was from Germany, went to my alma mater. I knew someone from Sweden there. They all went for the 1.00

00:08:23.840 right reasons. They took what they learned. They went elsewhere with it afterwards. But you have

00:08:28.140 students that are using international student visas to do an end run around Canada's immigration.

00:08:34.800 And many of them are being sold a bill of goods, which is absolutely shambolic here. I have,

00:08:41.320 for example, in my own community, I have a college that has a number, a huge number of

00:08:46.300 Indian international students. Students are going to this school and they are living in absolute 1.00

00:08:52.500 and abject poverty. If you order food delivery, it's one of these students overwhelmingly no

00:08:57.080 matter what day or time that's going to be delivering it to you. You have students that

00:09:00.620 are staying in illegal housing situations because it's all they can afford. So they're shoving

00:09:05.380 multiple beds into basement rooms. They don't have windows illegally passing them off as bedrooms

00:09:10.340 because they can't afford to be here. And all of this is because you have universities, colleges,

00:09:15.560 and the government that are juicing the numbers without any regard for what the situation on the

00:09:20.760 ground looks like. Now, Conservative leader Pierre Paliyev did a press conference this morning

00:09:24.580 and he touched on that somewhat. Take a look. The question is, how do we get into this mess?

00:09:32.220 We didn't, you know, most Canadians didn't even know there was an international student program

00:09:35.920 eight years ago because it was so peaceful. They might have seen students happily walking off to

00:09:41.040 class who were from another country, but we didn't think it was a problem because it wasn't. It worked.

00:09:46.140 we had the most successful immigration system in the history of the world here in Canada.

00:09:52.740 There are nations around the world that come to study how we got it so right for so long.

00:09:59.140 And then along came Justin Trudeau, and through his total incompetence and irresponsibility,

00:10:04.960 through his endless and nauseating virtue signaling,

00:10:08.620 has destroyed that common-sense consensus on immigration.

00:10:13.820 Immigrants, international students, and temporary foreign workers are not to blame for his incompetence.

00:10:19.020 He is to blame.

00:10:20.180 He is the one that caused this mess.

00:10:21.820 He is the one that brought hundreds of thousands of people here without homes to cram 16 or 17 into a one-bedroom or basement apartment.

00:10:32.100 He is the one that granted the study permits.

00:10:36.980 That is a federal responsibility.

00:10:38.700 He and Sean Frazier granted the study permits for tens of thousands of students to come and go to fake colleges that the Liberal government now admits are, were, quote, puppy mills.

00:10:53.820 He did that.

00:10:55.120 So let's not blame the students.

00:10:57.480 Let's not blame other levels of government.

00:10:59.940 Let's blame the one man who is responsible for this disaster, and that is our incompetent Prime Minister.

00:11:09.280 That is a very valid point.

00:11:12.160 Actually, it's a series of very valid points.

00:11:14.600 What Pierre Palliev is saying there is what I've been talking about,

00:11:16.980 what a number of people have been talking about.

00:11:19.000 He takes the view that, look, we shouldn't blame the students for this.

00:11:22.720 I would blame the students who knowingly engaged in fraud.

00:11:26.880 I would blame the students that were going to do an end run around the immigration system,

00:11:30.960 signing up for a school that there was no earthly reason to want to travel across the world to attend

00:11:35.880 or a school that just blatantly didn't exist.

00:11:38.580 So those students I do blame.

00:11:41.040 But students that have done the right thing, that have signed up for a university or college,

00:11:44.900 wound up in Canada and only to find that, oh, well, I can't afford an apartment.

00:11:48.980 I can't afford to buy food.

00:11:51.300 I'm going to go to the food bank.

00:11:52.580 I'm going to find social services.

00:11:54.000 Or I'm just going to shirk my studies because that's the only way I can get a job to afford to stay here

00:12:01.620 and maybe hopefully cobble together an education.

00:12:04.600 So students have been put into the middle of this.

00:12:07.700 But I think we cannot exonerate from this the universities and colleges themselves,

00:12:13.600 which have completely abandoned their mandate, which is to provide an education.

00:12:19.360 And look, I've seen this.

00:12:20.540 I've talked to students and heavens, I've talked to professors who have seen this decline,

00:12:26.140 this decline in the caliber of the international students over years,

00:12:29.260 because they know the universities are putting their bottom line above their mandate of providing an education.

00:12:35.120 Now, as long as one of these international students doesn't misgender someone, they will be fine even if they don't speak English and are unable to pen an essay that would be expected of anyone else to get a passing grade in the class. 0.99

00:12:47.760 So no, when the government just wakes up one moment and says, hmm, I think we're going to drop it to 35% without doing anything else on immigration, I just have to roll my eyes and say, are you frigging kidding me? 0.95

00:13:03.560 because Canada has a population trap.

00:13:07.620 Even, you know, economists who are not right-wingers

00:13:09.940 are acknowledging this,

00:13:11.300 where the government is saying,

00:13:12.700 all right, well, no one's having kids.

00:13:14.680 We don't want our population to be in decline.

00:13:16.640 So we're going to bring in immigrants.

00:13:18.400 Okay, great.

00:13:19.960 And then they say, oh, well, no,

00:13:21.080 the immigrants don't have houses. 1.00

00:13:22.980 We aren't building enough houses.

00:13:24.580 Let's build houses.

00:13:25.520 Oh, well, there's no one to do the construction.

00:13:27.640 So we need more immigrants to build the houses. 1.00

00:13:30.360 Okay, let's bring in more immigrants. 0.94

00:13:32.100 Oh, great. We've got some more houses. Oh, wait, no. But now we need more for those immigrants to 1.00

00:13:38.440 build those houses to live in. And you end up in this seemingly endless cycle where we have a

00:13:44.420 country that keeps rapidly increasing its number of immigrants every year while not being able to 1.00

00:13:50.720 scale up all of the things you need to integrate immigrants into Canadian society, both economically

00:13:55.400 and in terms of housing and jobs. And the thing missing from this, which I've talked about on

00:14:01.160 the past and no one else wants to talk about is that there is a non-economic dimension to

00:14:06.000 immigration as well. There is a cultural and a social aspect to immigration, which no one,

00:14:12.840 liberal, conservative, or otherwise wants to talk about. I shouldn't say that. The liberals want to

00:14:16.840 talk about it because they just want to call anyone racist if they bring it up. So I guess

00:14:20.320 they do want to talk about it, but not in a constructive or productive way. But there is a

00:14:24.700 cultural and social aspect to this. And I would say that most hardworking immigrants in this

00:14:29.860 country are well aware of that because they came here because there is a work ethic and a set of

00:14:35.060 values that they wanted for themselves and their families. And they, these people, these immigrants

00:14:41.440 are the ones that oftentimes raise the biggest objections when people come here who do not want

00:14:45.600 to integrate in the Canadian way of life. And to be honest, I can't blame them because we have a

00:14:49.580 federal government, a media culture, an academic culture, which doesn't even seem to want to concede

00:14:54.700 that there is a Canadian way of life that is worth protecting. We have a war on Canadian institutions

00:15:00.320 from the government, so how can we expect immigrants to this country to want to uphold 1.00

00:15:04.760 or protect any Canadian institutions? I mean, we can't even fly the flag at full mast in this

00:15:10.200 country for long periods of time, so how could we expect anyone who comes here to be proud of that

00:15:15.680 flag and the country and what it stands for? So all of that is to say that absolutely there has

00:15:22.040 been a tremendous erosion of the immigration consensus and it's coincided with the Canadian

00:15:28.000 values consensus and this goes back far I mean look this is a bigger problem than Justin Trudeau

00:15:33.900 because we're talking about a cultural phenomenon here but Justin Trudeau has certainly taken that

00:15:38.840 cultural phenomenon and embedded it into the Canadian political and legal framework here which

00:15:46.220 is why we have these immigration numbers that have been so catastrophic for this country so 1.00

00:15:51.320 yeah, whoop-dee-doo, a 35% reduction in international student visas. It's not going

00:15:55.600 to amount to a hill of beans. One thing I wanted to talk about, all of these politicians that

00:16:00.880 have presided over this decline have gotten a pay raise. Have you gotten a pay raise yet this year?

00:16:06.460 I don't see a lot of hands out there. I mean, I'm looking at a camera, but I'm imagining

00:16:10.540 that if you're sitting in your living room or driving around, you probably wouldn't have

00:16:15.080 raised your hand for that had I actually asked you to in a serious way. Well, parliamentarians

00:16:21.820 play by different rules than we do. Much as the folks we scrummed on the streets of Davos last

00:16:27.620 week, it's rules for me and rules for thee. Never the twain shall meet. Just to look at the numbers

00:16:34.060 here, courtesy of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, MP pay increases are going up between $8,100

00:16:40.480 and over $16,000, depending on whether you are

00:16:44.340 a lowly backbench MP, then you're on the bottom end

00:16:47.260 or if you are Justin Trudeau, he's on the top end.

00:16:50.480 This is a 4.2% pay raise starting April 1st.

00:16:56.140 Well, that is, as I understand it, larger than inflation.

00:16:59.780 So we're not even just talking about keeping up

00:17:01.400 with cost of living.

00:17:02.240 We're talking about actually getting more money

00:17:04.740 for a job well done.

00:17:07.700 I'm not exactly sure about that.

00:17:10.040 Chris Sims is sure of most things, though, in this world.

00:17:12.360 She is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and back with us as on every Monday.

00:17:18.020 Chris, I'm not messing up the numbers here, right?

00:17:20.700 This is more than inflation for the last year.

00:17:22.760 As far as we can tell, yeah.

00:17:24.620 We have to also keep in mind how much these MPs are paid for things like housing, right? 0.61

00:17:29.600 All of their bills are paid, their travel is paid, all that stuff that you and I will have to, you know,

00:17:35.540 save money for, things like your heating bills or transportation, anything like that,

00:17:40.460 your rent, your mortgage, the vast majority of that is covered courtesy of the taxpayer.

00:17:46.960 And we really need to stress here, the Prime Minister is now going to be making,

00:17:51.680 as of April 1st, once these pay raises kick in, the Prime Minister is now going to be

00:17:56.340 paid more than $405,000. So just like picture what you make,

00:18:04.280 quadruple it, more than quadruple it. Imagine yourself as the taxpayer, which you probably are

00:18:10.540 and you're working, you know, nine to five, you're working 40 hours a week. You probably work pretty

00:18:14.940 hard for what you do earn. Now picture $405,000 plus expenses. So we have to keep in mind that

00:18:22.500 he gets to stay in a mansion, which is called Rideau Cottage, but it's not a cottage right next

00:18:26.740 to the governor general. And we pay for this massive lake house at Harrington Lake and we pay

00:18:32.440 for all of his transportation. So again, $405,000. This is what's annoying though, is that we're not

00:18:40.520 hearing enough Members of Parliament, Andrew, speaking up against these pay hikes, including

00:18:46.600 from some of the usual suspects that we would be expecting to speak up against these automatic pay

00:18:51.400 increases. So we want to see Members of Parliament really walk the talk here. If they want to truly

00:18:58.120 save taxpayers money, they should do leadership things and lead by example and say, you know what,

00:19:04.340 I'm going to donate all of my pay raise to charity. And as soon as my team, we don't care

00:19:09.620 if it's the blue team or the orange team, as soon as my team is in power, I'm going to stop these

00:19:15.040 MP pay increases and perhaps even cut member of parliament pay. That would be novel. And that's

00:19:21.220 something we want to see coming out of Ottawa. And one thing that I would point out here as well

00:19:26.980 is that this is exactly the problem of automatic increases.

00:19:30.840 I don't think there should ever be an automatic escalator

00:19:33.320 on a tax or on a pay increase

00:19:36.600 because it lets politicians do exactly what they're doing now,

00:19:39.360 which is say, oh, I didn't do it.

00:19:40.740 I didn't vote for it.

00:19:41.720 I mean, they should really have to vote for this

00:19:43.200 every time they want to do it

00:19:44.420 and own why they are, in fact, doing it.

00:19:48.020 Yeah, we need to zero in on that as well

00:19:50.040 because we'll sometimes hear politicians say,

00:19:53.040 oh, well, exactly what you said.

00:19:54.280 I didn't vote for this.

00:19:55.720 Yeah, we know.

00:19:56.400 There's a law that automatically increases your pay on April 1st, no fooling, and you don't need to trot yourself into the House of Commons. You don't even need to sign up through Zoom or whatever terminology they're using there and vote for your own pay increase.

00:20:12.200 But what's really disingenuous is when they throw their hands up in the air metaphorically and say, oh, what are we to do? It's automatic. They work in the legislature. They are legislators. They create law. They could stop this tomorrow if they felt like it.

00:20:31.820 So it's not as if some sort of alien god of government is forcing Prime Minister Trudeau to take more than $405,000 home every year and is foisting this upon him unwillingly.

00:20:44.980 That is not happening.

00:20:46.600 He is the Prime Minister.

00:20:48.300 They could stop this tomorrow if they felt like it.

00:20:51.180 Apparently, though, they just don't feel like it.

00:20:53.840 And it's always bad when politicians are taking big pay hikes.

00:20:57.460 But especially now, as my friend Franco Terrazzano points out, people are struggling to afford hamburger.

00:21:05.380 Like I was just doing my family grocery shopping last night and I noticed a family ahead of me.

00:21:10.360 The mom was putting away the grapes and putting away the stuff that she could, you know, eke out and do without with her kids that week. 0.98

00:21:17.900 These are the people paying for these politicians' pay increases.

00:21:22.860 So that's pretty gross and we want to see them stopped.

00:21:26.380 A lot of us, I can't speak for you, but a lot of us in the private sector during the lockdowns and the madness that was happening over the last four years, right in the heat of it and the teeth of it, at the worst of it, a lot of people in the private sector took pay cuts.

00:21:42.240 They probably took pay cuts for a long time.

00:21:44.640 In some cases, they even lost their jobs.

00:21:46.920 And now just imagine the small business owners who were completely locked out, frozen out, lost everything.

00:21:52.280 these are the people who are paying for these politicians pay increases they've not missed one

00:21:57.720 i was just going to bring up the seba payouts i mean we have businesses across this country that

00:22:02.960 cannot afford to pay back the i think it's forty thousand dollars in a lot of cases if people took

00:22:07.840 the full amount uh in seba loans now look they took this back they took this money they knew

00:22:12.980 they were going to have to pay it back but you have businesses that are saying i literally cannot

00:22:16.620 afford this well governments are finding uh room in their budget to pay mps more and i i don't

00:22:22.220 want to do the math here, but you even take that lower number, $8,000 and multiply it by 338.

00:22:27.820 That's massive. Yeah. It's an enormous amount of money. And as far as the, you know, the 0.1.2

00:22:34.100 trillion dollar debt goes, it's not going to balance our books, but it leads by example.

00:22:39.880 And if we saw politicians and MPs leading by example and saying, you know what, I'm going to

00:22:46.660 take a pay cut. Here's my stipend. Here's my pay stub. I'm taking this pay cut, or I'm going to

00:22:52.040 campaign on cutting everybody's pay. I'm going to make sure that we actually put our time and

00:22:56.680 our dues in too. That would go a long way. And to your point on folks who were taking CERB,

00:23:03.420 yeah, that needs to be payback, but we need to be as compassionate and kind and patient as possible

00:23:09.780 because in many cases, these businesses were forced to lock down. They were forced to shut

00:23:16.580 down. This is not something that they just woke up in 2020 and said, you know what? It feels like

00:23:21.260 a fun idea. I'm going to completely freeze out all of my employees. I'm going to close the

00:23:26.360 restaurant that I worked for for 20 years. They didn't, no sane person does that. So by and large,

00:23:33.260 most of the folks who were taking those payments were doing so to keep the lights on somehow,

00:23:38.440 to keep even their credit rating flowing in hopes that they could one day open up again. So yes,

00:23:44.580 they do need to pay it back, but we need to be as calm and reasonable and kind as possible.

00:23:49.300 and that is not something we're seeing coming from this federal government it really reminds

00:23:53.320 me and to remember back in the before times when the cra was shaking down waitresses for every

00:24:00.200 single dollar tip they got yeah they were going after girls working at the mall andrew saying

00:24:05.420 did you get 40 off that pair of slacks well that's a taxable benefit like this is crazy these are the

00:24:12.200 same people jetting off to places like you just got back from and thank you yeah you know well

00:24:17.340 We'll talk about that in a moment.

00:24:18.700 I just, I wanted to ask you the devil's advocate position here, because we do hear sometimes

00:24:22.760 people say, listen, if you want to attract good people in politics that aren't there

00:24:27.480 for the money, there needs to be some fair compensation.

00:24:31.580 And I'm sympathetic to the argument in some way.

00:24:34.840 I mean, not everyone can afford to do the Donald Trump thing and say, I'm going to donate

00:24:38.060 my salary to charity.

00:24:39.820 Or I think Javier Malay in Argentina, I think he did like a raffle for his salary, which

00:24:44.180 which was like, again, it sounded impressive, like, you know, 25, you know, 2.5 million pesos,

00:24:48.320 but it was like $2,000 or something. But, but, but how should this be dealt with? Because

00:24:52.880 obviously you can't just bake in a salary in, you know, 1867 and never increase it. So how

00:24:58.980 should this be dealt with? As minimally as humanly possible. So let's start even from the

00:25:04.960 ground up from local politics. Okay. Unfortunately, now you're seeing at local city halls in places

00:25:11.280 like Calgary and Edmonton, the mayors being paid more than the premiers. You are seeing

00:25:16.580 councillors whose life goal it is to park their butts at city council for the next 10, 15, 20

00:25:22.300 years and make a career of it. That was never the role of local government. Local government was

00:25:28.600 always staffed by people who were former teachers, retired police officers, current shop owners,

00:25:36.120 people who were either directly currently invested in what was going on in their neighbourhoods,

00:25:40.820 like a shopkeeper, or had already worked most of their lives and now had time to give back.

00:25:47.420 That is the entire reason why we call it public service. They should be paid a stipend for showing

00:25:55.100 up to those meetings and doing the homework and writing the reports. That should not be a career

00:25:59.740 goal of a four-year undergrad in poli-sci and city planning degree person. That is not what

00:26:05.620 that is supposed to be for. That's where the rot starts. It's that level of entitlement and

00:26:10.680 permanent government that leads to this sort of nonsense. Then you jump up provincial. It's

00:26:15.100 slightly better, slightly worse than city politics, by and large. Now you're at the federal level.

00:26:20.800 I would turn the question around and say, are you getting good value for money?

00:26:26.420 So when you think of all the different services you have from private corporations, whatever it is,

00:26:32.380 internet service, food production, delivery time, all that stuff, airplane tickets,

00:26:38.300 think of all of the services that you actually use and get over a calendar year. Ask yourself

00:26:44.700 if you're getting good value for the money that you pay. Be as honest as you can. Now ask yourself

00:26:50.440 if you're getting awesome value for money from your federal politicians. I'm venturing a guess

00:26:56.760 that the answer is usually no. So the whole argument of, well, we need to attract good people,

00:27:01.880 are we all right i have one weird idea i want to run by you okay i part of it i don't like but i

00:27:09.240 think there's something to it if we massage it a little bit for every dollar you cut in spending

00:27:14.800 you get 10 that goes to the house of commons as salaries

00:27:19.160 i'm gonna have to think about that but i like it yeah it's you have like your base salary is like

00:27:26.740 you know, a hundred dollars a week or something, but for every dollar you save that year, uh, you

00:27:32.140 know, 10 cents of it goes into a pool that pays MPs, but you only get it if you voted in favor

00:27:37.680 of the spending cut. That's so smart. Otherwise like everyone cuts spending and then the NDP

00:27:42.400 gets to like benefit from the, uh, the spending cut commission. I don't know. I, there's something

00:27:46.420 to that. I've got to figure out the fine tune details. Have you bought the domain name yet

00:27:50.280 or no i don't know what what's the domain name like uh cuts cuts for paychecks cuts for cuts

00:27:57.140 for yeah what is it uh that's for cookies when do you get your cookie when you made your cut

00:28:01.420 something like that yeah oh man i'm trying yeah i'm trying to think of uh all right we'll try to

00:28:06.980 come up with a snappy name and we'll book the domain by the way i would never normally tell

00:28:12.180 a lady to disrobe but i have to point out that the way your jacket is it was saying fund cbc the

00:28:17.580 entire interview. Oh, no. Let's not do that. No. Although we did it. One of my colleagues did

00:28:23.280 email and say he wanted that shirt. Oh, nice. Well, we don't make money off of them. They're

00:28:28.840 at cost. I think they're only 20 bucks. Just go to our website. Everything is included. We don't

00:28:33.420 make money off of it. We just want to spread the good word that we should defund the CBC,

00:28:38.880 not fund. You actually had a... I haven't read it yet, but you flagged a CBC story for my producer.

00:28:43.940 what's going on there very quickly and we can touch on this again next week uh while you guys

00:28:48.260 were out holding truth to power and speaking truth to power thank you very much and davos for doing

00:28:52.900 that because that's where a lot of bad ideas come from folks we need to cut them off there so thank

00:28:56.820 you for doing that um black locks reporter uncovered the fact that uh you know how the cbc

00:29:03.300 talks about how vitally important they are for indigenous programming well apparently point three

00:29:10.180 70%. So 0.3% of their money goes towards Indigenous programming. And Black Locks found 0.98

00:29:19.040 that they cut that budget, the Indigenous programming budget, by about $25,000 last year.

00:29:25.440 So the next time that the bigwigs at CBC try to say, oh, we're essential. No, you're not. And in

00:29:31.880 fact, you cut that funding. Nice. Well, I think that is definitely something we should look into.

00:29:38.000 Yeah, CBC always loves to do the glitzy, glamorous stuff

00:29:41.640 and not the things that are actually in their mandate.

00:29:45.380 We will let you go there.

00:29:47.320 Chris, I got it.

00:29:48.380 Chops for checks.

00:29:49.640 Nice.

00:29:50.880 Yeah, Chops for checks. 0.96

00:29:52.380 That's the initiative.

00:29:53.400 It's like better than voter recall.

00:29:55.120 You have to make chops to get your check.

00:29:56.960 And if you do it, then we can talk.

00:29:58.920 But Chris Sims, Alberta Director

00:30:00.800 for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:30:02.760 Always a pleasure.

00:30:03.700 And we will talk to you next Monday.

00:30:05.580 You bet.

00:30:06.800 All right.

00:30:07.160 Thanks very much.

00:30:08.000 Chris. That's got a nice ring to it. Chops for checks. All right. Well, I'm probably going to

00:30:11.800 forget by the time we get off air. So I'll let you do the domain name searching there. As you know,

00:30:17.360 if you've watched this show for any considerable length of time, I don't do sports coverage. And

00:30:22.120 when I do, it angers the people that like sports out there, of which I'm told there are two or

00:30:27.120 three. Now, I don't know if UFC is itself a sport. When I first heard people talking about UFC,

00:30:32.600 I thought they were talking about like the barcodes you scan at the grocery store, but I'm

00:30:35.360 told that's, uh, UPC, but I know Sean saying MMA, I know what MMA is. It's a degree in

00:30:40.540 multimedia arts. Um, Oh, sorry. No mixed, uh, mixed martial arts fight. I see Sean's giving

00:30:46.000 me all these acronyms. He's like MMA, UFC, LMAO. Um, but, uh, the, the point of this is that there

00:30:52.940 is this big, huge, uh, fighting championship UFC. Uh, I've heard little snippets of it last week.

00:30:59.000 I think there was some guy that was going off against Justin Trudeau. So it broke from the

00:31:02.960 sports world into the political world. And that was how I was able to learn a bit. But there was

00:31:09.400 this chant that was taking place at a UFC match last week, which I will share a redacted version

00:31:16.120 with you for. Now, it's no fun when you have to bleep out the good word, but they were all saying

00:31:30.000 F. Trudeau. F. Trudeau, it's reminiscent of F. Joe Biden, which was, or let's go Brandon,

00:31:36.280 if you're that one reporter, that became a common refrain at NASCAR. Now, I don't believe in the

00:31:42.000 incivility and profanity there, but it was, I shouldn't say I don't believe in it. I've used,

00:31:46.620 I've used dirty words. Sorry if my mother's watching, but the point is here, this is what

00:31:51.440 they've decided to do. I believe Trudeau's son, Xavier, was actually at that match. So I don't

00:31:57.100 know if he was joining in the chant or if he was like just looking away, hoping that no one would

00:32:01.020 notice him. But UFC has become now a little bit of a linchpin of the culture war against Trudeau.

00:32:07.700 Real people that are out there that aren't a fan of Canada's prime minister. You had that one UFC

00:32:12.560 fighter last week that was criticizing him. And then there was a reporter that decided to bring

00:32:17.180 up this political aspect, not Trudeau specifically, but the politics of what UFC fighters can say

00:32:24.780 to dana white who's the head of the league you obviously give a long leash to your fighters

00:32:31.620 about you know what they can say when they are up there with the ufc microphone and you are

00:32:36.760 getting into territory of homophobia transphobia like is there i don't give anybody a leash well

00:32:42.500 i'm saying you a leash i'm like free speech control what people say gonna tell people what

00:32:50.820 to believe going to tell people i don't tell any other human being what to say what to think and

00:32:57.080 there's no leashes on any of them what is your question i was asking that question i'll move on

00:33:05.140 though yeah probably a good idea that's ridiculous to say i give somebody a leash free speech brother

00:33:11.740 people can say whatever they want and they can believe whatever they want

00:33:14.460 i like the sheepishness at the end of like what was your question oh that was that was my

00:33:20.800 question, but I'm going to move on. Yeah. So right there you had, I mean, because again, I get a

00:33:26.300 sense from people that watch sporting events that athletes are very tightly constrained in what they

00:33:31.300 can say generally. And they're very heavily regulated and they get punished and penalized

00:33:35.620 and sanctioned if they say the wrong thing. And it's kind of refreshing that here we have the

00:33:39.100 head of this league saying, yeah, they can say what they want. It's free speech. He thought it

00:33:42.520 was just an absurd question. So if a UFC fighter wants to get up there and talk about how he doesn't

00:33:47.040 like Justin Trudeau and taking him at the media for being Canadian, then that is absolutely

00:33:52.500 something that is within their prerogative in this league. I mean, clearly the fans themselves

00:33:57.120 are on board and the woke-ification of sports is a big reason that a lot of people are tuning

00:34:02.140 out pro sports. So that's the one thing I've learned about it anyway. And then every now and

00:34:05.800 then someone will tell me something and it'll be about the sports themselves. And I'm like,

00:34:09.700 I'm sorry if I deceived you into thinking that I cared for a moment. I only care about

00:34:13.620 the stuff of it that is like nothing to do with sports.

00:34:16.380 So I'm like the one that watches.

00:34:17.960 The Super Bowl is one exception.

00:34:19.260 I will watch the Super Bowl and enjoy the Super Bowl.

00:34:21.400 And no, I'm not one of these people

00:34:22.540 that just watches it for the halftime show. 0.92

00:34:24.240 I actually know how football works.

00:34:26.080 But nevertheless, I'm going to do a little bit of a debrief

00:34:29.000 on our week in Davos last week

00:34:31.640 because we did have a great time there.

00:34:34.120 I certainly did.

00:34:35.060 We were able to ask questions to a lot of people

00:34:37.260 like the head of the World Health Organization,

00:34:39.780 Tedros Adenham Ghebreyesus.

00:34:41.640 I spoke to the Queen, Her Majesty, the Queen of the Netherlands.

00:34:45.380 She was not in a chatty mood.

00:34:47.440 Spoke to Australia's chief internet censor.

00:34:50.020 Sorry, I mean e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

00:34:53.540 Spoke to a number of people.

00:34:54.980 We have a couple of interviews we'll share with you over the days that come.

00:34:58.560 But I wanted to bring this up again because I think there was a big takeaway from all of this,

00:35:02.480 which is that the World Economic Forum and its elites have been put on notice here.

00:35:06.640 They are not used to, even though we've been doing this now for three years, being asked questions.

00:35:11.360 They're used to Davos being their little safe space where no one can penetrate it

00:35:15.720 because the World Economic Forum makes it very difficult to get there.

00:35:19.900 It's very expensive to fly to Zurich.

00:35:21.940 You've got to travel a bit from Zurich to get to Davos.

00:35:24.820 Finding accommodations is next to impossible.

00:35:27.440 Getting in and out of town is very difficult, and they like that.

00:35:31.800 Because do you know who it's not difficult to get in and out of town for?

00:35:34.580 People that take a private jet, then hop into a helicopter, and then have a limo pick them up.

00:35:38.920 And those are the people that dominate the group that we collectively refer to as the self-styled Davos elites.

00:35:46.040 So we had this.

00:35:47.700 Chrystia Freeland did not make a public appearance that I saw.

00:35:50.560 She spoke on stage, did not see her on the streets, did not see her going in and out through the public entrance,

00:35:55.820 which makes me wonder if perhaps she just did not want to be speaking to people,

00:36:01.080 did not want anyone to ask her a question like I attempted to do last year.

00:36:05.180 Pierre Polyev, the Conservative leader, had criticized Chrystia Freeland for being there.

00:36:10.660 A spokesperson from his office referred to it as being high-flying, high-carbon hypocrisy was the line that they used.

00:36:19.680 And then Polyev put out this tweet taking aim at the Davos billionaires boarding their private jets after lecturing the world's working class about heating their homes and driving to work.

00:36:29.260 He reiterated his ban on all ministers from being involved in the World Economic Forum.

00:36:35.000 So I think it was important to be there. I caught up with Avi Amini and Ezra Levant from Rebel News, who were also on the streets doing some of this work and wanted to share that with you today.

00:36:48.880 Oh, we might not have that interview.

00:36:53.420 Okay, apparently we don't have that interview. My apologies. So we will share that with you at another point.

00:36:58.420 But the reason that I bring this up to you is because we have all of the, really all

00:37:06.420 of the arguments that exist about the World Economic Forum, all of them tend to be broken

00:37:12.600 down into two main camps.

00:37:14.300 You have on one side of it, people that say, okay, this is an important group.

00:37:19.580 It's the way we get things done.

00:37:21.040 It's the group of people that matter.

00:37:23.280 They make the differences.

00:37:24.680 The, you know, the Klaus Schwab, the future is built by us.

00:37:27.460 And then on the other hand, you have people that believe things that I would say are conspiratorial about it, people that believe things that are blatantly untrue, and even a lot of the legitimate criticisms of them. I've had this conversation with people about things they've said tend to get blown out of proportion.

00:37:44.180 So own nothing and be happy. The World Economic Forum never said we are advocating for a future

00:37:50.880 in which you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. They published an essay from a woman. She was an

00:37:55.740 MP, I believe in Finland, or it was some Nordic or Scandinavian country. And she had sort of

00:38:00.620 given her prediction for the future. And that was that. Now, does that excuse the bonkers idea? No.

00:38:07.160 But I think it means you need to have a little bit of nuance with it. Same as the Juveliza bugs.

00:38:11.620 I mean, you can buy meat in Davos. They're all eating meat. They've never said, okay, all of you

00:38:16.860 are going to live without meat. No, it's a lot more subtle than that. But the point that I've

00:38:21.320 always made is that those sorts of ideas, those sorts of ideas have a home in Davos. And they

00:38:29.020 have a home among the people that fly in those circles. And if you look at the things that they

00:38:33.620 say very blatantly and brazenly, they are all incredibly fervent in their advocacy for a

00:38:39.640 transition away from oil and gas. I mean, you don't even need to be conspiratorial to find the

00:38:43.260 danger in that. And so few people, as I talked about on one of my shows last week, are willing

00:38:47.920 to stand up and say, whoa, hang on. This just is not going to fly. This just will not work.

00:38:55.660 And that's why when you had someone like Javier Malay go in there, drop the mic and say,

00:38:59.680 we reject socialism, we defend free markets, we defend capitalism, we defend profit. A lot of them

00:39:04.760 are like, oh, well, we've never really heard anyone talk to us like that before. And I've

00:39:09.620 I don't know if he's going to be invited back.

00:39:10.920 Maybe they will just to sort of tell people,

00:39:12.540 oh, no, see, we entertain all perspectives.

00:39:14.480 But nevertheless, we'll have more as the week continues.

00:39:17.020 This is Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North.

00:39:20.040 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:39:23.400 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:39:25.400 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:39:39.620 We'll be right back.

00:40:09.620 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 22, 2024

Liberals are capping student visas, but is it enough？

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