Juno News - Liberals claim their big-spending, tax-hiking budget is about ＂fairness＂

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

00:01:19.160 by true north hello and welcome to the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent talk show

00:01:29.180 here on true north thursday april 25th and we are going to have a grand old time here as we close

00:01:35.400 out the week at least in so far as the andrew lotten show is concerned but we got off the

00:01:40.020 record coming up on uh well tomorrow i don't know why i was going to give a day of the week there

00:01:44.200 and also i should make a point of letting you know if you're in the ottawa area i'm going to be

00:01:49.460 speaking this weekend on sunday on a panel about my favorite topics free speech ethics and democracy

00:01:56.800 It's going to be at the Lansdowne Park Horticulture Building.

00:02:00.560 It's part of the Ottawa Food and Book Expo, and I like both food and books.

00:02:05.100 Ottawa, I'm a little bit iffy on, but I like food and books, and I'm indifferent to expos.

00:02:10.860 But I think it'll be a grand old time.

00:02:12.900 Julie Panessi, who has been on the show a couple of times, will be on the panel as well,

00:02:17.180 as will Randy Hillier, who dislikes me because he's always, like, firing, like, these pot shots at me on Twitter.

00:02:22.940 But I've, you know, only ever had favorable interactions with him in person.

00:02:26.040 So it should be fun, but that's going to be coming up on Sunday.

00:02:29.640 So if you are in Ottawa and you want to get some tickets, you can head over to Eventbrite.

00:02:33.720 And I think if you search my name, I believe this is the only thing that comes up.

00:02:37.100 So if there's another Andrew Lawton that's, you know, some folk singer touring Dubuque, Iowa on Sunday, that's not me.

00:02:43.900 I'm the one at the Ottawa Food and Book Expo, but that should be great fun there.

00:02:49.120 I wanted to kick things off by revisiting this capital gains increase in the budget.

00:02:53.820 Now, to be fair, when the Liberal government announced the increase to the capital gains tax in the budget that was released last week, I didn't think that would be the thing to get legs, but it has gotten legs.

00:03:04.560 It has been a thing that a lot of people have been talking about.

00:03:07.460 One of the more notable criticisms of this was from Canadian doctors who were saying, well, hold on.

00:03:13.980 I mean, doctors, if they have professional corporations, which most of them or almost all of them in private practice do, they've been using capital gains basically as their retirement plans.

00:03:23.820 So now when government is putting a pretty significant increase to the capital gains

00:03:29.220 tax, that is going to disadvantage Canadian doctors, so much so that many of them have

00:03:33.840 said they will probably shut down their practices, retire early, or leave the country altogether.

00:03:39.160 Now, this is a country in which it's very difficult for a lot of people to get a family

00:03:43.340 doctor or to get access to a family doctor if you have one.

00:03:46.720 So when you've got doctors that are, by and large, not a particularly political group

00:03:51.100 getting up and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a big problem here.

00:03:53.820 that's what the Canadian Medical Association did, governments should pay attention. But it was

00:03:59.300 amazing how one of the ministers that was dispatched to the media to defend and sell the budget

00:04:04.780 really had no answer whatsoever for this. This is the small business minister in Canada

00:04:10.420 going up against David Poutine for the CBC. Cochran, take a look.

00:04:16.020 There has been some pushback that this could affect family doctors and other professionals

00:04:20.300 who incorporate their practice for the tax advantages that a corporation would have.

00:04:25.180 So while individually, if they were, say, working in a hospital,

00:04:30.420 they would not necessarily be affected by the new capital gains inclusion,

00:04:33.240 but if their corporate structure is such that they're relying on corporate investments

00:04:36.840 to pay for their future and their retirement, they're going to be hit.

00:04:39.900 And in a country that's already struggling to have enough family doctors,

00:04:43.940 this creates a disincentive for some of them to work in Canada.

00:04:47.120 We recognize that, but one of the things that we will continue to do is encourage

00:04:51.760 foreign credential recognition to help. We know that coming out of the pandemic our health care

00:04:56.960 has really been hampered and there's a really challenge with labor, but the investments we

00:05:01.760 made with foreign credentialing, we've already made a significant investment in previous budgets

00:05:05.840 and in this year we've topped that up and we will continue to invest to ensure we're encouraging

00:05:10.560 bringing talent from other countries to get their credentials recognized and that will also

00:05:16.000 encourage them to get more jobs here and fill the desperate labor market needs that are

00:05:21.740 required in our health care industry.

00:05:23.440 No, and I understand the impetus to try to accelerate health professionals in particular

00:05:27.320 to be able to work in Canada through the standard, but if doctors who are here now, who are set

00:05:33.600 up through the existing corporate structure that relies heavily on capital gains income

00:05:38.120 for their retirement and for their future because they wouldn't have a pension in this

00:05:41.940 sort of a situation, if they balk at the situation that has been created by this change, I mean,

00:05:47.600 how do you deal with that? The goal is to not increase the gap in medical coverage, right? So

00:05:52.700 how do you respond to the concerns being raised by people in that sector that this is potentially

00:05:56.960 punitive to them? If I take a step back to what I mentioned earlier, and you heard the prime

00:06:01.380 minister said it, what we're really trying to do is really create a Canada that is fair for every

00:06:06.800 generation. So her answer to, hey, all of these doctors are concerned they're going to leave the

00:06:14.840 country. What are you going to do? I don't worry about it. We'll just make sure we bring in some

00:06:19.120 foreign doctors and that'll be that and we'll get their credentials recognized. Now, to be fair,

00:06:24.200 I don't think she's as dumb as she sounds. I think what's happened is ministers get loaded up with so

00:06:31.020 many talking points. She's been told, okay, doctors, anytime you're asked about a doctor

00:06:35.880 shortage. Talk about foreign credential recognition. And she just like only heard the word doctors and

00:06:41.960 was like going through the mental Rolodex. Hang on. I've got a talking point about doctors. I've

00:06:45.880 got no, no, no, not doctoring. No, not documents. Foreign credential. And then she just committed

00:06:51.820 to it because her answer actually had nothing to do with the federal budget. It had nothing to do

00:06:57.040 with the question that was asked. To be honest, had nothing to do with what we would argue is

00:07:01.340 perhaps common sense or reason. But you know what? She was doing her best there. The question had

00:07:07.460 doctor in it. So she found an answer that had doctor in it. And that was it. And then when he

00:07:12.740 follows up and says, well, hang on. Okay. Yeah, that's all well and good. But what about doctors

00:07:16.060 who are literally leaving the country right now? Then she says, well, it's about fair. Then at that

00:07:21.400 point, you just go to the generic talking point. The I've run out of things to say talking point

00:07:25.360 and you default to, well, this budget is about fairness. This budget is about fairness. It's

00:07:30.640 like the old joke I told after watching an Aaron O'Toole press conference. If my wife asked me if

00:07:35.440 I emptied the dishwasher, I say, well, you know, I'm a big fan of clean dishes. And that's basically

00:07:40.160 it. And we don't need to get down into anything resembling facts or sense or a connection of the

00:07:46.200 answer to the question. But all of that is to say that the federal government right now is getting

00:07:51.420 hit from all sides on this. They're getting hit from a lot of their own wealthy elites that are

00:07:55.740 like, hang on, why are you going after my capital gains tax? And a lot of people that are middle

00:08:00.100 class Canadians. Many doctors in this country are not wealthy. They have, in lieu of fee increases,

00:08:05.240 received an arrangement by which they can make investments through their professional

00:08:09.120 corporations. And now they're going to see a steep increase in the taxes that they pay

00:08:13.820 on those. So the capital gains increase isn't just this crusade against the rich and wealthy. It's

00:08:19.900 not just about the people with yachts and private jets, as Justin Trudeau would have you believe.

00:08:24.380 It's about a group that is, generally speaking, broader than that. And the government still

00:08:29.720 keeps holding to this idea that it's about fairness. Here's Chrystia Freeland.

00:08:35.000 I asked about changes to the capital gain tax. And, you know, we've heard from local physicians

00:08:40.860 that they're concerned about how this will impact recruitment and retention. And we have doctor

00:08:45.200 shortages in Newfoundland and Labrador and across the country. What do you say to them right now?

00:08:49.580 Well, look, I would start by talking about what the objective of our budget is, what

00:08:59.900 the mission of our budget is.

00:09:02.920 And our budget is about fairness for all Canadians, about giving all Canadians, especially younger

00:09:11.120 Canadians, Millennials and Gen Z, a real opportunity to have a middle class life.

00:09:18.780 And we know that that requires investments.

00:09:21.180 It requires investments in housing.

00:09:23.540 It requires investments in affordability.

00:09:26.640 It requires investments in economic growth.

00:09:30.280 And so to make those investments, we need to find a way to finance them.

00:09:34.640 And what we're saying in the budget is we're asking those in our country who are doing

00:09:40.580 the best to contribute a little bit more.

00:09:44.880 And that really is fair.

00:09:46.700 Fairness is the name of the game. Today's show is brought to you by the letter F.

00:09:52.720 Fairness, fairness, fairness, fairness. So anytime they're facing any questions about it as well,

00:09:57.280 it's, you know, we're all about the fairness. This is not fair what we have now. And it's

00:10:02.120 the same mentality that we had in that clip I shared yesterday of Justin Trudeau talking about

00:10:06.980 how the economy is not working for young Canadians. The same people who bristled at anyone who has

00:10:12.360 said that Canada is broken are now saying that Canada is not a fair country to live in. Canada

00:10:17.640 is not fair. It's not fair to younger people. Now, look, I would agree that the deck is stacked

00:10:22.840 against them, but I would also agree that the appropriate time to talk about this would have

00:10:26.540 been years ago when other people were, and you were just saying, oh no, it's all sunny ways.

00:10:32.220 Everything's fine. Everything is all hunky-dory. And the Liberals have been so focused on pursuing

00:10:37.280 is an agenda of censorship, curtailing civil liberties, and not focused on the structural

00:10:42.540 barriers that exist between Canadians who want to live a pleasant, comfortable middle-class

00:10:48.680 existence and that existence itself. And I wanted to, just before we get into this a bit further

00:10:54.620 with Aaron Woodrick, who will be joining us in a couple of moments, and I want to talk about this

00:10:58.160 big Honda announcement as well. I wanted to bring up this clip from Australia, which I found quite

00:11:04.840 amusing. So you may know that Canada is in the process right now of trying to push forward a

00:11:08.720 rather significant curtailing of your right to speak and debate and discuss online. It's Bill

00:11:14.360 C63. I've talked about it extensively and will continue to. But one of the things that I always

00:11:20.500 bring up is that you have to trust that a government that is going to give itself the

00:11:24.880 power to regulate speech is going to be motivated by the right things to use that power. And I just

00:11:31.100 simply do not trust government to do, well, most things, but certainly to do that. So here is

00:11:35.980 Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as Exhibit A on why you should not trust governments

00:11:42.420 with this power. Media platforms have a responsibility to make sure that misinformation

00:11:52.980 isn't got out there. I noticed today, for example, on the way up here, they've removed

00:12:00.300 various sites that were up containing fake images of myself, superimposed on other people.

00:12:13.280 That's the sort of thing that is going on on social media.

00:12:17.820 Social media has a responsibility to do the right thing here.

00:12:24.600 So the Prime Minister of Australia, by the way, a far cry from former PM Tony Abbott

00:12:29.780 that we had on the show a couple of weeks ago.

00:12:31.440 I like Tony Abbott a lot more than Albanese here,

00:12:34.180 but he's basically using his example, his pride, his joy

00:12:38.580 that tech companies have taken down things he doesn't like about himself.

00:12:43.900 So the Australian government has used online harms,

00:12:47.660 online safety, misinformation as a cudgel to go after people

00:12:53.240 that post satirical images that the ruling class finds offensive to its sensibilities.

00:12:59.120 Now, whether he was personally sitting in his office and said, I want that one gone,

00:13:03.620 I want that one gone, I want that one gone, I don't know, probably not, but he is certainly

00:13:07.920 cheering for that use of the law.

00:13:10.200 So this is why I do not trust at all for a second the idea that a prime minister like

00:13:15.140 Justin Trudeau or anyone else, liberal, conservative, even some hypothetical situation in which Jagmeet

00:13:21.400 Singh manages to claim an iota of relevance and becomes prime minister himself, none of

00:13:26.740 these people should have that power.

00:13:29.120 because they're only going to use it to uphold the regime.

00:13:32.220 They're going to use it to take away criticisms.

00:13:35.060 Just one story very briefly.

00:13:37.140 I had a couple of years back the opportunity to go to London, England

00:13:40.360 for the Global Conference for Media Freedom,

00:13:43.360 which Canada was co-hosting with the UK.

00:13:46.760 And in the course of this,

00:13:48.220 Christopher Freeland got up on stage and was lauding the,

00:13:52.300 I forget his name, it was Singh Deol, I believe,

00:13:55.900 or Singh Deol, Singh Deol, Gobinder Singh Deol.

00:13:58.100 He was the Malaysian Minister of Communications or something of that sort.

00:14:03.140 And she was holding him up as being this, you know, hero to press freedom.

00:14:07.000 And I Googled for, you know, all of like three seconds or whatever and found that he had tried to weaponize Malaysia's online speech laws against a blogger who lived in a different country because that blogger was saying mean things about him.

00:14:21.340 And Malaysia is a country where the government can get away with doing that.

00:14:24.060 But we can't import that sensibility into Western nations.

00:14:27.600 So good on the Australian Prime Minister for saying the quiet part out loud, which is that he loves the government's ability to censor online because he doesn't like when people post satirical images of him online.

00:14:39.120 That is, thank you, Prime Minister, for making our point for us.

00:14:43.080 I couldn't come up with a better criticism of this bill than you saying what you've been using that law for yourself.

00:14:48.620 Well, let's shift gears here, no pun intended, to yet another big-ticket automotive funding announcement

00:14:55.840 from the federal government in Canada and also the provincial government in Ontario.

00:15:00.260 Justin Trudeau stood and made this proclamation about Honda today.

00:15:06.020 Today, Honda is making Canadian automotive history.

00:15:10.540 With this announcement, we will be investing to create Canada's first comprehensive electric vehicle supply chain from start to finish.

00:15:22.400 Today, we announced that Honda will invest to create the first complete supply chain of electric vehicles in Canada.

00:15:31.160 A whole ecosystem will be built with four new manufacturing plants in Ontario, including an EV assembly plant, a standalone battery manufacturing plant, and two plants for battery components.

00:15:46.140 These investments will create well over 1,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs as well as many, many construction jobs and, of course, jobs all across Ontario and the country for auto parts suppliers.

00:16:04.020 But this announcement isn't just about creating jobs.

00:16:07.500 It's about securing good jobs and careers for the coming decades and even the coming generations.

00:16:15.820 Honda has set a goal to make EVs represent 100% of vehicle sales by 2040.

00:16:23.220 In Canada, our target is that 100% of all light-duty cars and passenger truck sales be zero emission by 2035.

00:16:32.500 And that underlines what we've always said, climate policy is economic policy.

00:16:39.720 and with its impact on families and communities around here it's also social policy

00:16:46.100 wow it sounds phenomenal it's social policy it's environmental policy it's economic policy it's

00:16:54.080 great you notice in that announcement he mentioned that honda is investing 15 billion dollars he's

00:17:00.560 there announcing honda's investment honda's putting the money forward well look i think

00:17:05.160 of honda wants to spend 15 billion dollars and build four electric vehicle plans in ontario

00:17:09.720 that's great but it isn't just honda that is putting money towards this this part has been

00:17:15.720 buried a little bit even in the government press release it's way way way down below what honda's

00:17:20.660 putting up it's what you and i are putting up aaron woodrick is with me he is the head of the

00:17:25.260 domestic policy program over at the mcdonald laurier institute aaron what's uh what are we

00:17:30.340 missing here it's not just honda's money is it no it's not and you you wondered if it was honda's

00:17:35.320 money what on earth would all these politicians be be doing they're stepping up to a podium it's

00:17:39.380 great if you have a company that wants to invest that kind of money in canada that's a great sign

00:17:43.400 but of course the devil's in the details and it turns out andrew you and i and other taxpayers

00:17:48.560 in canada ontario we're on the hook for five billion out of that 15 billion so a whole third

00:17:53.620 of that is going to be coming out of our pockets uh to go to honda who are doing okay i checked

00:17:59.800 this morning when I saw the announcement, you know, they made $8 billion U.S. in global profit

00:18:03.940 last year. So this is not a company that is hard done by. This is clearly a company that's got the

00:18:08.300 resources to invest their own money, which is great. And they should do that. And we should

00:18:12.080 welcome that. But that does not explain why Canadian taxpayers are being forced to stick

00:18:17.340 $5 billion of their own money. You know, we pay taxes for public services, Andrew. Instead,

00:18:22.580 they're turning around and giving it to a very profitable multinational corporation.

00:18:26.360 I don't consider myself to be a mathematician. I always double check with a calculator to make

00:18:32.540 sure I'm not getting anything right. But I was told that this would create a thousand jobs. Now

00:18:37.000 you may think, okay, a thousand jobs, that's phenomenal. And I remember billions are the

00:18:40.760 ones with nine zeros. So I can work back from there. That works out to be, again, correct my

00:18:46.620 math here, $5 million per job. That's exactly right. And Andrew, it is as crazy as it sounds.

00:18:53.860 people might say, well, that doesn't sound quite right. Well, it is right. They are actually

00:18:57.700 subsidizing the equivalent of $5 million per job. So you heard the prime minister there. He said

00:19:02.640 they'd be well-paying jobs. Boy, I hope they're really well-paying jobs if we're paying $5 million

00:19:07.040 a pop just to create them. Yeah. And again, I mean, not that I'm recommending this as policy,

00:19:12.360 but it would literally be cheaper just to walk around Alveston and give everyone a million

00:19:17.440 dollars and would probably have more of an economic benefit because then at least their

00:19:21.620 people are spending it like this is absurd and there's no roi on this like you'll never make

00:19:26.220 that money back no and look uh you know the the government always has i know all the lines right

00:19:31.900 now if you're familiar with these types of announcements you can pretty much sing the song

00:19:35.540 um they're going to talk about spin-offs they're going to talk about you know other impacts in the

00:19:39.720 community but the reality is we are paying these companies to create these jobs you know andrew

00:19:43.520 when i hear politicians talk about good paying jobs and the importance of them that's always on

00:19:47.780 the presumption that they're being generated by the private sector. If you're going in

00:19:51.300 and essentially paying the salary of these people for the company, it's not really a private sector

00:19:56.340 job. It's essentially a government job masquerading as a private sector job. That has a very different

00:20:01.160 impact, a very different impact on the bottom line of the government, right? The whole reason

00:20:05.240 we want these jobs is because they generate tax revenue that we can spend on public services.

00:20:09.900 Instead, these kinds of announcements, they are taking resources out, things we're not spending

00:20:14.380 on things like roads and hospitals and schools and the kinds of things you expect your tax money is

00:20:18.620 supposed to go towards well and the other part of it too is that the companies themselves tend to

00:20:23.660 have very little in the way of oversight to maximize how many jobs they're creating i mean

00:20:28.860 one big example this week has been the letter from the union representing a lot of workers

00:20:33.660 at the uh stellantis plant in windsor that they're being that they're building and they're saying

00:20:37.660 well hold on we were told this was going to be to create canadian jobs yet we're seeing a large

00:20:41.820 number of foreign workers that are being brought in so Korean workers are benefiting from this

00:20:47.420 money that the federal and provincial governments have given to Stellantis and LG and of course the

00:20:52.140 government says oh well it's you know specialized skills and whatnot and then you have Oakville and

00:20:57.420 Ford again a heavily subsidized EV battery plant delayed I think until 2027 so now you have a

00:21:03.660 company that is for business reasons as it's permitted to do dragging its heels on this so

00:21:08.700 So we're not even getting the benefit of these jobs that we were all promised.

00:21:11.920 And this is happening time and time again in these cases where it's not even like that core deliverable even pans out.

00:21:18.480 Well, it never does.

00:21:19.360 And it's because it comes down to the fact the government is trying to they're trying to do central planning here within it with what who's supposed to be a private actor.

00:21:25.460 I mean, that's the very fact that you're setting a number saying you have to hire a thousand people.

00:21:29.760 Well, companies normally hire based on what they need, right?

00:21:32.580 They hire or let people go based on their economic need, what makes sense for them, what they can afford.

00:21:37.080 The government sets this number.

00:21:38.320 I mean, it doesn't make sense to tell a company you have to hire exactly a thousand people or you don't.

00:21:42.840 I mean, it is just completely undermines the very ethos of like a private sector company.

00:21:48.460 The other thing, Andrew, that I noticed that was interesting is they mentioned in the press release that it's not just about the thousand new jobs, which, by the way, are often just jobs taken from other sectors.

00:21:57.320 They're not net new jobs.

00:21:58.560 They talk about retaining existing jobs.

00:22:01.460 So that starts to sound to me a lot like something like a ransom fee.

00:22:05.860 Right.

00:22:06.140 you've got 4,000 people already employed at this plant, you know, be a real shame if something

00:22:10.800 happened to those jobs, if we don't get this handout. So I find that a very troubling development.

00:22:15.820 One of the arguments that you always get from people on this, and I'm curious how you refute

00:22:20.360 it, is this idea that, well, this is just the rule, these are the rules of the game,

00:22:24.260 is that if we don't, you know, Iowa's going to, or New York State is going to, and we just don't

00:22:30.980 get any of it. And you saw this particularly exploited by Amazon when they were launching

00:22:36.480 their Amazon headquarters. And they basically just put out this open call, hey, who's going to pay us

00:22:41.340 the most to set up shop there? But what is the answer to that? Because no one likes this idea

00:22:46.840 that we just say, all right, we're not going to play this game. All right, well, everyone's going

00:22:50.580 somewhere else. Yeah, well, two things. One, it's hard to blame companies for this when governments

00:22:55.640 signal that they're willing to play the game. They get taught to do this, right? They get taught

00:22:59.380 that like I should look for the handout, frankly, because what if my competitor does and I don't?

00:23:03.120 I'm kind of, then I'm on the back foot. Look, the short answer is there's this assumption always

00:23:07.160 that we need to be in that line of work, right? Like we have to outbid the Americans on aerospace

00:23:11.560 or we won't be able to build planes here. We need to outbid the Americans on EVs or we won't be

00:23:15.400 able to, well, it's just assumed that we need to be in the business of building EVs. I'm sure it's

00:23:20.040 nice to be in the business of building EVs if it makes economic sense, but to be in it for the sake

00:23:24.920 of it, if it costs you more to be in it than you get from being in it, it doesn't make any sense.

00:23:29.620 And the example we always use, and others have pointed this out, is Australia. I mean, Australia

00:23:33.180 used to be a place where they built cars. Eventually, they just gave up because they

00:23:37.360 didn't want to play this game. Guess what happened? There was no recession. There was

00:23:40.780 no mass unemployment. It's just that the capital went into other industries and jobs and companies

00:23:45.960 were created in other sectors. So this myth that if we lose building cars, we don't build cars in

00:23:51.880 Canada there will be this huge hole it's simply not true it is not played out anywhere else and

00:23:56.820 you know we have to start pushing back on this assumption that we must be in the business of

00:24:01.280 doing this one specific thing well and the other aspect too and I played that clip before you came

00:24:06.320 on of Justin Trudeau saying this isn't just an economic policy but it's an environmental policy

00:24:10.480 and a social policy I mean he thinks that's a good thing I think that makes it worse because

00:24:14.780 it means the government is trying to inject almost like a a social engineering into what

00:24:19.620 could be and should be economic policy and i think on electric vehicles that's particularly

00:24:24.500 concerning because we have huge issues with electric vehicles you have a declining consumer

00:24:29.860 interest in them it's not to say that they won't eventually become the thing that everyone uses but

00:24:34.260 we're not there right now so government is trying to manipulate the market and create a supply when

00:24:41.300 there isn't a demand there so it's not even like for setting aside the moral question of whether

00:24:46.180 uh you know corporate welfare is good it's not even like they're targeting it in a way that

00:24:50.820 is particularly sustainable this is still an emerging industry absolutely they're wasting

00:24:55.620 a vast amount of resources pursuing that social goal and i mean you can agree or disagree with

00:24:59.620 that goal but the amount of resources they're deploying uh towards it are massive right i mean

00:25:03.780 i followed the bombardier file for close to a decade and the amount of money we're talking

00:25:07.780 about on the ev files about 10 times you know what what what sunk into bombardier which was

00:25:12.580 itself a disaster so it's it's a huge sum of money in pursuit of a goal that you know i don't think

00:25:18.340 i mean i don't have a problem with electric vehicles but the you know they're going to become

00:25:21.780 prominent when the market says so when they make sense for most people when the price comes down

00:25:26.020 when the infrastructure is in place it's not going to happen by government fiat it's not going to

00:25:29.780 happen because the government subsidizes the heck out of the production and the purchase uh you know

00:25:34.580 and and lays down this fiat that's saying we have to have it by this date so this government is

00:25:38.660 trying to speed something along that has to happen at its own pace that the market is going to see to

00:25:43.060 it and they're wasting a massive amount of resources along the way. Aaron Woodrick from

00:25:47.940 the Mcdonald-Laurier Institute, always a pleasure sir. Thanks a lot Andrew. All right thank you.

00:25:53.220 Well we will move from one form of social engineering to another. We have spoken a fair

00:25:58.740 bit in the last few weeks about immigration in Canada which is often defended most significantly

00:26:04.180 by governments who point to a very low birth rate in this country and use that as an excuse

00:26:11.140 to basically say that we can't do immigration. So we're going to play in a little bit an interview

00:26:16.280 I did with Jenny Roth on that. Do stay tuned for that. But I want to first and foremost talk about

00:26:21.220 the other thing that government does that they pretend is scientific. They pretend is science

00:26:26.500 based policy, but is actually anything but. And this comes from the environment. Now we have all

00:26:32.640 heard time and time again. In fact, maybe someday we should put together a montage. Anytime there's

00:26:37.260 any weather event in Canada that takes place, it is linked to man-made climate change that can only

00:26:43.400 be solved by a carbon tax. If it's really windy one day, well, that was climate change. If there

00:26:49.120 are wildfires, that's climate change. If there is flooding, if there's water, it's climate change.

00:26:54.080 If there's no water, it's climate change. Snow, rain, wind, fall. They've taken like the old USPS

00:26:58.900 slogan, which I'm trying to remember now. Let me look it up because it'll be funnier if I do it

00:27:03.760 right. Never mind. I can't find it. The old like, oh, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of

00:27:08.580 night stays these couriers. Well, for the government, it's snow or rain or heat or gloom

00:27:13.220 of night is all climate change. That's basically the Stephen Gilboa approach to this. Now,

00:27:17.840 never mind the fact that in Alberta, we had from officials yesterday, a rather shocking

00:27:24.060 announcement, although maybe not too shocking, depending on where you stand on this, that all

00:27:29.040 of Alberta's wildfires in 2024 were human caused. Every single one, except for a couple of smaller

00:27:37.240 ones, was caused by man. And this is not man-made climate change. This is man-made wildfires that

00:27:44.300 are often blamed by federal officials on climate change erroneously to justify their policy. So

00:27:51.520 the reason I bring this up is to say that we should probably have a look at the data. And there

00:27:56.520 was a study from the Fraser Institute that came out, I think, late last week, that all of these

00:28:01.640 assumptions and assertions made by lawmakers on weather extremes, increasing in frequency and

00:28:06.940 severity, spurred on by humanities, greenhouse gas emissions, that that actually doesn't hold

00:28:12.720 water at all. That is the contention put forward by Kenneth Green, who is a senior fellow at the

00:28:19.600 Fraser Institute, and joins me now. Kenneth, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on

00:28:23.640 today. Good to be with you. So this is, we hear this time and time again from politicians. It's

00:28:29.220 used to justify whatever ham-fisted climate policy they're putting on us. Usually it ends

00:28:34.540 with a carbon tax. We have wildfires that we're told are the cause of climate change. We have

00:28:40.240 rain, snow, doesn't matter. You're saying that, by the way, even the increased frequency is not

00:28:45.780 valid that they're hinging on this well that's right um we we should start at the beginning

00:28:50.820 which is there is some there is evidence that the climate is getting warmer the atmosphere is getting

00:28:55.060 warmer satellite uh satellite recordings suggest that the climate has been warming about 0.15

00:29:00.340 degrees centigrade per decade since they started taking those measurements in around 19 around

00:29:04.980 1980 um but the the subsidiary weather events uh that relate supposedly related to the increased

00:29:12.180 warming um are much much more ambiguous sorry ambiguous and ambiguous in terms of of being

00:29:20.100 able to see trends that that correspond to the warming so uh when you look at trends in wildfires

00:29:25.460 they're actually down over the last several decades in both number and the area of the of the

00:29:30.500 countries burned in canada and the us um now there are there are anomaly years that are higher than

00:29:35.940 than normal but but the anomaly doesn't set the trend right so if you look at hurricanes for

00:29:40.580 example, tropical cyclones, there's not evidence of increasing severity or number, but in fact

00:29:46.580 decreasing severity and number. If you look at flooding and droughts, the evidence on flooding

00:29:51.860 and drought are similarly contradictory. Drought is not seen generally around the world as increasing

00:29:58.500 nor flooding. And so the extreme weather that's being pounded on by people like Minister Gabo

00:30:05.780 and others as being absolute proof that climate change is happening now and is being destructive

00:30:11.220 now and therefore we can't wait to act we must act immediately with everything we have all at once

00:30:16.980 um that that's simply not based on uh actual empirical reality and an observation of real data

00:30:23.780 and one of the things that i i find interesting here is that there is no i mean this is a political

00:30:29.980 question so you can self-select out of answering if you'd prefer but they act like there's so much

00:30:35.140 certainty on this they don't even say listen it's possible and we're concerned and there could be

00:30:39.620 they they come out and it's that same fervor that you and i have spoken about that they exhibited

00:30:43.620 with covid policy as well they they believe they are the sole truth tellers and that they don't

00:30:49.140 even leave any room for doubt so when you come in here with your uh pesky facts uh you know someone

00:30:54.660 would look at this and be like well what on earth are they trying to sell us right um well i mean

00:31:00.580 that's a that's a point i make often i think i've made before with you which is

00:31:04.340 I don't tend to speak in terms of governments and places and politicians as being as lying so much

00:31:10.340 about climate change as simply exaggerating that what's known and how well it's known.

00:31:16.020 And this is where the IPCC, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

00:31:20.500 falls short of being a really clear source of the sciences because they also overstate their

00:31:30.100 certainty um and confidence and if you question them that gets you an automatic label of denier

00:31:36.500 and uh and you're cast out of polite discourse um but but there was there is no question that

00:31:43.380 these claims of what we know about extreme weather are exaggerated we just we don't our

00:31:47.620 data is not that good really we haven't been monitoring the entire earth in detail via robust

00:31:53.620 satellites and technologies for more than 50 years right it really only started in around 1980

00:31:59.940 and with a decent measurement.

00:32:02.800 So we're talking about limited data, a very big planet,

00:32:06.800 and the data is almost all in the developed countries,

00:32:10.340 the high-resolution data.

00:32:12.100 And so to talk about that information

00:32:15.420 with such overwhelming confidence

00:32:18.400 that you can't be challenged and you are absolutely right,

00:32:22.480 it's intellectual and political hubris, really.

00:32:26.840 And I wanted to point out here as well,

00:32:28.900 you're not drawing your data from, you know, Bobby Joe's science blog. You're drawing data from,

00:32:36.260 just to read through some of the footnotes here, the World Meteorological Organization,

00:32:40.320 the Royal Society, the Journal of Hydrology, the World Meteorological Organization as well. I mean,

00:32:46.200 it's their own data that are showing what you're describing here, which is that, you know, we're

00:32:50.800 not seeing an increase in droughts. We're not seeing an increase in hurricanes. We're seeing

00:32:54.980 a decline in flooding so how is the data from all of the how are the data from the official sources

00:33:01.940 getting reinterpreted as saying really the opposite of what they say well that and that's

00:33:08.100 a problem again with with the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change

00:33:13.060 communication process as well as just the broader climate change literature which is um these these

00:33:20.020 data sources are generally covered by those those groups that are reported in climate change but

00:33:24.500 they also do bring in the other sources they bring in other other anecdotal and smaller sample size

00:33:31.540 studies there are many many studies on these things so the United Nations IPCC does their

00:33:37.380 report summarizing the literature yes they will refer to the same things I did which are actually

00:33:42.820 the just the hard data I'm looking for when I'm when I'm reporting my data I'm just looking for

00:33:48.340 measurements using robust technology, not small studies of modeling of change, for example. Most

00:33:55.860 studies, when you look at for wildfires and things, they're computer models of what they

00:34:01.460 think has happened in the trends, not actually measurements. So that's why it gets distorted in

00:34:08.500 the political process because they don't limit themselves only to these sources that are measured

00:34:12.500 data they bring in a whole bunch of modeled computer studies that are both retroactive

00:34:17.380 retroactive and prospective that what's going to happen in the future and they match them together

00:34:21.940 as if they're all equally robust as going out and counting and measuring something uh when they're

00:34:27.460 not and they tend to be they tend to easily be exaggerated in the in the direction of of of um

00:34:34.100 bad change right negative change so they get published a lot too uh i think the the wildfire

00:34:39.940 one I always find the most interesting because when there's a flood, you generally don't assume

00:34:44.120 that some guy in Somalia left the tap on too long and it caused the ocean to flood. I mean,

00:34:49.000 you can't really blame the flooding on individuals, but with wildfires, you can. And we know

00:34:53.200 increasingly that intentional or accidental forest fires are quite commonplace. And in Canada,

00:35:00.680 we've seen this when there were wildfires in Quebec, they were linked back to arson in Alberta.

00:35:04.560 I mentioned a few moments ago, the government has come out and said almost all of their wildfires

00:35:08.840 as of late have been human caused and and this is not something where there is at all an increase

00:35:13.880 but even with arsons there has been a decline in wildfires over recent decades yes there's been a

00:35:20.200 there's been an overall decline in number and area extent burned even with increasing arson

00:35:25.320 assuming it's increasing we don't know i mean i haven't looked at arson uh arrest data so we don't

00:35:30.520 know if there's more or if it's always been this way and there have been a lot of fire bugs what

00:35:33.960 which we called him when I was a kid.

00:35:35.820 But one of the things about wildfires, as well as drought, and as well as floods,

00:35:40.340 is that these are multifactorial things.

00:35:43.020 We're talking about them in the context of climate change,

00:35:45.020 and that's how politicians are wanting to talk about them,

00:35:47.480 as part of the climate crisis and all of that.

00:35:49.860 But what causes more fires are forest management as well is a big factor.

00:35:56.360 Land development is a big factor.

00:35:58.960 Deforestation can be a big factor.

00:36:02.180 The same is true of drought, which is changes in the land from developing areas, converting to

00:36:07.460 farmland from forested areas. These are multifactorial things that have human elements

00:36:13.780 far beyond the emission of greenhouse gases that warms the climate a little bit and then comes back

00:36:18.660 down somehow, changes the hot weather pattern so it's a little hotter every summer or in summertime

00:36:24.020 and you get more fires. It's a very simplistic connection they have made between greenhouse

00:36:30.100 gas emissions and climate change and changes in weather events drought flooding hurricanes

00:36:36.420 uh there are far more factors involved in that well fascinating stuff as always you can head on

00:36:41.860 over to the Fraser Institute's website and read this report extreme weather and climate change

00:36:46.900 uh Kenneth Green always appreciate the truth telling and narrative shattering you provide

00:36:51.460 so thank you so much thank you Andrew it's always good to be with you all right Dr Kenneth Green a

00:36:55.700 a pleasure as always. Well, one, we did things a little out of order here. Kenneth was early,

00:37:00.220 so I was glad we could bring him on early. But I did want to share this interview I did with

00:37:04.140 Ginny Roth last week. She is with Crestview Strategies. But we were talking about birth

00:37:08.520 rates. And again, there are some things in here you might find uncomfortable because anytime the

00:37:13.000 question is about should government do something, I understand the impulse to say no. So it was at

00:37:17.960 least worth exploring because government uses low birth rates as justification for high immigration.

00:37:23.580 But is that really saying that they could or should be doing something on the core demography of birth rates?

00:37:30.060 That was at least the starting point for this conversation we did at the Canada Strong and Free Network Conference in Ottawa.

00:37:38.520 Very pleased to be sitting down right now with Jenny Roth, who is a partner at Crestview Strategies,

00:37:43.900 also one of the preeminent conservative commentators of the era.

00:37:47.080 You see her work all over, including in the hub.

00:37:49.340 You see her on TV panels, and we are pleased she is gracing us with her presence today.

00:37:54.060 Jenny, good to talk to you. Thanks for sitting down.

00:37:56.000 Very nice to be here.

00:37:57.020 So I wanted to talk to you as someone who has written about some pretty complex and sometimes controversial issues,

00:38:03.200 but someone who's also worked very much in mainstream politics about how we navigate what is often seen as a third rail,

00:38:10.060 which is family policy, and there are a lot of places to go within that in the current political context.

00:38:15.580 And I'll ask you first off, what a conservative policy on family would look like that you would champion

00:38:21.620 that would also be viable within the political confines we have today?

00:38:26.820 Sure, yeah. Look, there's no question regular people get a little bit nervous when you start talking about family

00:38:31.660 because it feels like something that's kind of private, it's people's own personal decision.

00:38:35.980 And ultimately, if you, like me, believe that we should err in the direction of sort of freedom

00:38:41.340 and letting people choose things for themselves and not imposing things from on high,

00:38:46.160 then you have to be thoughtful about family policy.

00:38:48.640 Look, I think there's cultural things conservatives can do,

00:38:51.420 like make the argument for families, make the argument for a culture that supports families.

00:38:55.880 But that's a little bit high-minded.

00:38:57.560 There are also practical things we can do.

00:38:59.500 So at the federal level, the liberals are doing their own family policy, and I think it's bad.

00:39:06.020 I think their child care, very, very one-size-fits-all.

00:39:10.400 It has to be between nine and five.

00:39:13.280 There's a massive shortage of supply.

00:39:15.740 So there are all these subsidized spaces, not enough supply to actually give families spots in most neighborhoods.

00:39:22.300 It's just not going to satisfy people in the long run.

00:39:25.160 But, you know, the Harper era subsidizing people and giving them checks if they have kids,

00:39:32.180 which, you know, to Trudeau's credit, he actually, first he leaned into that policy.

00:39:36.560 Then he went with this one-size-fits-all child care.

00:39:38.920 I think if we can go back to that, this idea that money follows the family, and that certainly

00:39:45.080 that you're not penalized for having kids, and there are some penalties that we should

00:39:49.200 remove, but also that you're encouraged to, and you're going to be supported if you do,

00:39:52.660 because it's hard, and especially in the cost-of-living crisis, it's especially hard.

00:39:57.580 And then there are a couple things I think we do at other levels as well.

00:40:00.220 So to go back to some of those Harper policies, I mean, the one that comes to mind immediately

00:40:04.120 is the child fitness tax credit.

00:40:06.040 That's a very family-oriented policy.

00:40:08.000 It makes things easier for families.

00:40:09.960 Income splitting, which was a bit more contentious than the Harper government,

00:40:12.620 that's, again, an issue that makes things easy.

00:40:14.500 But a lot of the problems with these issues is that they don't actually go to the core of building families.

00:40:19.100 They certainly don't encourage people to have families.

00:40:21.180 And, you know, on one hand, the idea of government centrally planning family

00:40:24.760 just terrifies me as much as government centrally planning anything else.

00:40:28.380 But on the other hand, we do have a problem.

00:40:30.260 I mean, we do have a birth rate issue in Canada,

00:40:31.940 and I don't think there's been a time that I can recall a Canadian politician talking about it.

00:40:36.320 But it is a factor there.

00:40:37.680 So what role should government have, if any, in correcting that?

00:40:41.480 And if so, what's the mechanism you can get there that doesn't necessarily look like government trying to go around and manage people's family compositions?

00:40:50.640 Sure. Well, I actually think income splitting could make a huge difference.

00:40:55.180 And the reason I think income splitting is powerful is because it tells families, we're going to tax you as a family unit, not as individuals.

00:41:02.700 And I don't know about other people.

00:41:04.120 I find when I go to file my taxes, it's weird to file taxes as an individual.

00:41:07.300 That's not how we run our household.

00:41:08.620 We run our household as a family, and we should be kind of taxed that way.

00:41:11.860 And if there's a way you can structure your family because one of you wants to stay home

00:41:14.640 part-time or full-time, and that means someone has a disproportionately lower income, being

00:41:19.880 able to not be penalized for that effectively and making that choice just a little bit easier

00:41:25.320 for people, I think could actually be pretty powerful, not just for the literal policy

00:41:30.300 outcome, but because of the cultural message it sends, which is as a government, as a country,

00:41:36.160 We value families.

00:41:37.820 I think that you see Hungary experimenting with,

00:41:40.900 I think it's like after a certain number of kids,

00:41:42.760 it's either four or five or something,

00:41:44.020 they just pay no income tax.

00:41:46.200 That I think is meaningful, right?

00:41:47.700 Like you may choose to have four kids just because,

00:41:51.060 it's like if the government's gonna make it that easy for me,

00:41:52.960 maybe it's worth doing.

00:41:54.540 And I wonder if if you were to do things like that,

00:41:56.680 it would have trickle down cultural impacts

00:41:58.880 so that you'd end up being in environments

00:42:00.340 that are more kid friendly.

00:42:01.500 It wouldn't be so weird if your kid's crying on a plane.

00:42:03.620 Maybe you apologize if your kid's crying.

00:42:05.240 Like, what kind of society is that?

00:42:06.780 Yeah, and there's also, I don't want to put the blame squarely on government here,

00:42:11.040 even predominantly on government, because there's a tremendous cultural and societal problem.

00:42:14.720 I mean, you certainly don't have big role models and popular culture figures

00:42:18.840 that are speaking up and bolstering the idea of family.

00:42:21.480 If anything, it goes the other way.

00:42:22.820 You get, you know, Meghan Markle does an interview or something

00:42:25.120 and talks about how, you know, children are terrible for climate.

00:42:27.700 So you do see these cultural forces that try to discourage and disincentivize.

00:42:32.960 And that's, I guess, the big problem is that you don't have anyone that's really leading the charge and saying families are important.

00:42:39.160 And historically, that's been the domain of, I'd say, a subset of the political class that's often not really all that mainstream.

00:42:46.360 That's right. And, you know, when you think about the subtle influences that culture has, there is a role for public policy to play in that.

00:42:52.440 I think about schools and curriculum. You know, our kids are spending hours and hours, you know, the huge portion of their day in school is being taught curriculum by teachers.

00:43:00.600 And today, I think they're being taught climate change is threatening the planet, and if you

00:43:05.520 have kids, you're contributing to that.

00:43:08.500 And so just letting parents choose what schools their kids go to and therefore what curriculum

00:43:12.800 they consume.

00:43:13.800 I mean, I'm from Ontario.

00:43:14.800 We don't have that option.

00:43:16.400 In Alberta, at least, if you're a parent who wants your kids to be exposed to the kind

00:43:19.880 of values that would support family formation, you can choose to do that.

00:43:22.540 You can send them to a classical school.

00:43:23.780 You can avail yourself of school choice.

00:43:25.100 We don't have that option in Ontario and a number of other provinces across Canada,

00:43:29.160 and I think that could make a big difference.

00:43:30.360 I don't want to do like the safe, safe, conservative leader thing of making everything about the economy.

00:43:34.720 But I also do think that economic policy can be and often is family policy.

00:43:38.940 Like if you're looking at inflation, cost of living, all of these things, that is a very real consideration.

00:43:44.320 If you've got a family with two kids that's struggling to put food on the table as it is, the incentive to have a third kid is just not there.

00:43:50.740 Absolutely not. Yeah. Look, the birth rates crowd would resist that argument a little bit because a lot of the research they do says that people fundamentally,

00:43:59.080 it's not about economics it's about culture having said that i think economics impacts culture it does

00:44:03.640 it does and so you know pierre paulia spoke earlier today and he said i can't remember the

00:44:07.560 percentage was but there's a huge terrifying percentage of young people who've just given

00:44:11.880 up completely on being able to have a home house um a house and maybe therefore a home right and

00:44:17.560 if you are psychologically accepting that you will never be able to afford a house

00:44:22.680 at what point do you say well i'm probably not gonna be able to have time to have kids

00:44:26.760 Which means, like, is there really a point in getting married?

00:44:29.300 Is there really a point in dating and having serious relationships?

00:44:32.400 Like, I think that has a really corrosive impact on even the really early stage choices you make around potentially having a family.

00:44:39.760 And it concerns me that today we don't even know yet, I think, what Gen Z is going to do when it comes to childbearing.

00:44:45.840 And I think we could see birth rates plummet even more.

00:44:48.460 Well, and Paulie has joked about it, but there's a serious point here.

00:44:51.520 I mean, if you're 25 and living with your parents, your dating life is probably going to be a bit cramped.

00:44:56.500 I mean, I would love to have been able to blame my dating issues on that when I was single, but I had myself to blame.

00:45:01.720 But there is a real thing about if you're delaying your entry into adulthood, in a way, you're delaying everything else.

00:45:08.920 And then at a certain point when you might be married and have a house and have a career, oh, you're 35.

00:45:13.280 And sure, you can have kids at that age, but it's a much different calculation internally than if you're there 10 years earlier.

00:45:18.940 That's right.

00:45:19.260 If you're a woman in her late 20s and you're trying to date and you're dating pool, these men are living in their mom's basements.

00:45:24.860 and who can blame them. They can't afford to live anywhere else. That's not conducive to the kind of

00:45:30.640 becoming an adult, going through those life stages, dating, successfully getting married,

00:45:36.500 that would then go on to, and to your point about this sort of fertility window question,

00:45:40.400 it's awkward, I think, for people to talk about. But I think culturally, we cover that up a little

00:45:44.440 bit too much. If you go to a doctor's office as a woman, they'll bend over backwards to tell you

00:45:49.100 how to avoid getting pregnant, right? And that's fine for many women in many situations. I'm not

00:45:53.360 saying that shouldn't be the case, but there's almost no education you get as a woman about how

00:45:58.340 to get pregnant. God forbid, you know? And then a lot of women find themselves at 35, sort of,

00:46:04.940 you know, maybe grateful they're able to have one child or in unfortunate situations, really wishing

00:46:10.640 that they'd been able to start earlier. So you worked with Pierre Polyev in his leadership

00:46:14.480 campaign as his director of communications. He's certainly been unafraid to tackle some

00:46:18.120 bigger issues. I've not heard him go down the birth rate road, but I'm curious, do you think

00:46:22.600 to put on your pundit hat here for a moment is he capable of having that conversation and

00:46:28.800 it's not even just a him question is canada capable of having a politician talk about this

00:46:33.940 so it was interesting in his speech today you know i think he's very careful to stick to the big

00:46:40.700 tough problems for which there are solutions right and for which he can if he were to win

00:46:46.140 and become prime minister he can kind of work his way through solve solving some of the basic

00:46:49.760 problems. Because I think he has some faith that if we, I mean, take crime, right? We talked about

00:46:54.340 housing, we talked about the economy. Well, there's a family policy for you right there.

00:46:57.860 Imagine if you could, I live in a neighborhood with lots of families and they're frankly up in

00:47:01.780 arms because we have a so-called safe injection. I don't think it should be called that a

00:47:06.540 consumption site in our neighborhood and kids are picking up fentanyl patches in the playground.

00:47:11.580 So I think his view is if we can get some of those basic things right, everything else will

00:47:15.980 kind of work itself out.

00:47:18.100 And I think he's careful to be consistent

00:47:20.280 in being that kind of conservative.

00:47:21.480 And I think he knows that if he gets sort of too

00:47:24.080 prescriptive about, and it's because I want people

00:47:27.040 to have more kids, or because I want to have

00:47:28.580 some sort of top-down solution that's gonna drive

00:47:30.360 family formation, that's gonna narrow his appeal.

00:47:34.320 And that's not what he wants.

00:47:35.180 He wants to be able to win the kind of mandate

00:47:36.940 where he can actually make a difference in people's lives.

00:47:38.840 And I think that's wise, right?

00:47:40.640 Honestly, it's why I'm glad that CSFN has this,

00:47:44.060 and why True North exists, right?

00:47:45.820 why we have all these players in the movement,

00:47:48.280 so that we can have some of the conversations that maybe

00:47:50.300 are appeal to a narrower group of people

00:47:52.520 and start to drive some public demand.

00:47:54.580 What I would really love to see is if, in a few years,

00:47:57.440 we can tell a story to the public where they go, yeah,

00:48:00.800 actually, I'm concerned about birth rates,

00:48:02.700 and there starts to be that demand,

00:48:03.940 then politicians can respond and meet that demand

00:48:05.920 with solutions.

00:48:06.520 Yeah, it's that old downstream of culture attitude.

00:48:08.320 Yeah, exactly.

00:48:08.860 And so let's let, you know, Polyev should

00:48:11.080 let us impact culture.

00:48:12.480 You and me, Andrew, we'll do it, just the two of us.

00:48:14.700 And then he should tackle politics.

00:48:16.760 All right.

00:48:17.120 Yeah.

00:48:17.320 And that's the thing.

00:48:17.960 A lot of people will look to politicians.

00:48:19.420 I don't want to let politicians off the hook entirely, but a lot of people will look to

00:48:21.980 them and say, why aren't you doing this?

00:48:23.420 And, you know, they can turn back and say, well, why aren't you doing it?

00:48:25.340 Why don't you prove there's some support for this?

00:48:27.200 And then I can go there.

00:48:28.360 So, all right.

00:48:29.160 Well, glad you're not afraid to take this on.

00:48:31.340 Jenny Roth, always good to talk to you.

00:48:32.840 You too, Andrew.

00:48:37.300 Jenny Roth, partner at Crestview Strategies.

00:48:39.660 Great writer, great contributor.

00:48:41.280 We've always had, whenever we try to get her on the show, there's always like a time

00:48:44.680 issue so uh it's hard to evade that when you can just like pull someone in the hallway at a

00:48:49.320 conference which is why uh it's just a horrendous thing that we all had to be uh zoom for everything

00:48:54.120 for like three years so uh good to have the return of the in-person world that does it for us for

00:48:59.380 today and for this week uh see some of you on sunday at the ottawa book expo that'll be a lot

00:49:04.940 of fun and we will see you tomorrow on off the record right here on true north and then back on

00:49:10.160 regularly scheduled programming on Monday. So lots coming up. Thank you. God bless and good

00:49:14.900 day to you all. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by

00:49:20.120 donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:49:40.160 We'll be right back.

00:50:10.160 We'll be right back.

Juno News - April 25, 2024

Liberals claim their big-spending, tax-hiking budget is about ＂fairness＂

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