Juno News - Liberals still have no plan to stabilize food prices (ft. Franco Terrazzano)

00:00:00.000 with that i want to get to some economic pocketbook issues because we might not find ourselves facing

00:00:14.360 the uh barrel of the canadian human rights commission gun but we are facing the grocery

00:00:19.060 store price tags and have you noticed things getting better uh francois philippe champaign

00:00:23.780 a couple of weeks back came out and gave this uh big long kind of he had like the mission

00:00:28.360 accomplished banner behind him basically of saying i've summoned all the grocers to ottawa and they've

00:00:33.180 all committed to lower their prices they all had a plan out by thanksgiving well it's now a couple

00:00:37.880 of weeks beyond and you know i haven't been hearing any ringing success stories from canadians telling

00:00:44.340 me wow you know what i uh you know wasn't originally going to buy a turkey but now they've uh been

00:00:48.840 slashed to 60 off and i got the turkey i got the stuff and i got everything i haven't heard much

00:00:54.100 of that and now francois philippe champaign has been taking aim at the uh grocery stores and saying

00:01:00.760 well i need a firm plan we need a firm plan where's your plan now it was a little odd because a couple

00:01:06.820 of weeks back he said that he had seen the plans take a look from the perspective of consumer you're

00:01:13.160 talking about flyers like they're a new thing how is what you are saying not deeply offensive to

00:01:18.420 canadians who cannot afford the prices they're seeing now and what you're proposing is plans that

00:01:24.620 the grocery stores already do every winter and that one professor just told me is business as usual

00:01:30.380 so how would you know what's in the plan because i'm the only one to have the plans in canada

00:01:34.220 no no i'm saying don't no no no let's let's go back you want to go to transcript i'm saying those

00:01:39.760 are examples of what we see in the plans because i want the market to compete i cannot say i received

00:01:46.920 that from loblaws i received that from metro i received that from costco i received that from

00:01:52.280 walmart or so base what i'm saying is that example no one is suggesting that flyers is new no one is

00:01:59.340 suggesting that but the question was when are you going to see impact well i say when i read what i see

00:02:04.880 from what i have in my plans or the plans that i've received i already see things that's in the plan

00:02:09.860 that are being put in action so people responding to measures that they intend to do

00:02:16.920 i feel like i was like i feel like there was a translation needed for me to understand that

00:02:22.460 although he's speaking in english i don't actually know what he said but the one part i got was him

00:02:26.900 saying there's a plan he's the only one in canada that's seen the plan he has the plan he sees the

00:02:30.820 plans already in effect and then yesterday he comes out he says oh these grocery stores need to be more

00:02:35.020 forthright with their plans maybe it's because the government has dropped the ball once again franco

00:02:41.000 terrizano joins me federal director for the canadian taxpayers federation uh franco uh did that look

00:02:47.480 like a man with a plan to you it's a plan about making a plan sometime in the future you know it's

00:02:53.280 like political theater but it's like embarrassing political theater i wanted to make an analogy that

00:02:58.480 this kind of looks like i don't know your your kids grade two theater program but even this

00:03:04.480 is worse than going to maybe your grade school your kids grade school theater production it's

00:03:10.020 embarrassing yeah i mean look i i was skeptical at the beginning when you know canadians are looking

00:03:15.360 at the government and saying you know you have to deal with inflation here i can't afford to get by

00:03:20.000 and the government immediately just finds as its scapegoat galen weston and the head of sobeys

00:03:24.920 and the head of costco and uh that's not to say these people are perfect but they made this big

00:03:29.480 huge show of summoning them to ottawa and uh demanding they produce a plan and then again

00:03:34.960 he comes out and wants to claim victory oh yes they've given the plan it's great we won

00:03:38.880 and then canadian like that you can only keep up that scam for a few days before canadians are like 0.52

00:03:43.900 well the prices haven't really changed yeah every time you go to the grocery store you know that the

00:03:50.200 government has failed to bring down prices right prices going up everything feels like it's getting

00:03:54.080 more expensive and you know this is actually worse than political theater because this could have

00:03:58.800 real consequences for canadians uh we think things are bad now but wait until trudeau

00:04:04.340 brings forth his so-called solution remember when he first started this theatrical play

00:04:09.940 he threatened quote tax measures what do you think that means andrew it means that trudeau

00:04:16.620 is musing about a grocery tax now look i'm not losing a second of sleep over these grocery store

00:04:23.840 owners in fact it is okay to go after grocery store owners what i would do is how about we stop

00:04:29.680 giving them buckets of taxpayer cash like the time the government gave loblaws 12 million bucks

00:04:35.520 to buy some fridges but the problem is that if the government were to bring in a grocery tax

00:04:41.380 guess who would end up paying it all of us ordinary canadians every time we go to the till

00:04:47.180 because that tax would be passed on to the price of food yeah and that i mean that was the one thing

00:04:53.840 i mean he says a lot of things that i have trouble reconciling or understanding like when justin trudeau

00:04:58.620 tried to explain what a water bottle was or something like that but but when he tried to you know threaten

00:05:04.140 a grocery store tax i'm like how on earth it like like no one has ever saved money with a tax like let's

00:05:10.440 just go back to first principles here a tax by definition is a tax so the idea that like a tax

00:05:17.400 measure was going to lower the price of anything i've never like i was really interested in saying

00:05:22.680 let's just dispense with partisanship like literally explain to me your logic in saying that

00:05:28.720 yeah i mean another tax isn't going to make the box of cereal more affordable it's going to make

00:05:33.700 everything more expensive and you know what's the craziest part of all of this less than a year ago

00:05:38.440 cbc news asked trudeau about a grocery tax and mr trudeau rightly responded that a grocery tax would

00:05:47.500 just be passed on to the consumer that was less than a year ago so what has changed well the economic

00:05:54.000 realities that trudeau first described haven't changed if the government hammers these stores with

00:05:59.280 a new tax that new tax would be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices so what has

00:06:05.180 changed is the political realities it's the political science right trudeau is grasping for a scapegoat to

00:06:12.880 take the pressure off his own failed policies that is making your life more expensive and he's looking

00:06:17.540 for the scapegoat right and the scapegoat of course is the grocery stores but the real problem that the

00:06:22.980 government could fix today with a snap of the finger is the taxes that are already in place that are making

00:06:29.060 food more expensive case in point the government's own carbon tax andrew mm-hmm yeah and that's the

00:06:36.420 thing like i anytime i think you and i have actually had this discussion on the in the past on the show

00:06:40.560 like there are a lot of things that the government cannot control there are a lot of things with

00:06:44.900 inflation that are happening globally there are global economic trends now that's not to say that

00:06:49.760 governments can't do better things and whether it better but the government has some levers that it has

00:06:55.020 not even tried to pull and one of those is the carbon tax and people like the conservatives in

00:07:00.980 the past have rightly said this is a tax on everything because there's the direct tax that

00:07:05.680 you pay when you pay your home heating you fuel up your car and then there's the indirect tax that

00:07:10.320 you have to pay because when you get that papaya that papaya that had to be flown or shipped and then

00:07:16.180 driven and the grocery store that needs to power its operations and and you pay that carbon tax a

00:07:22.200 little fraction of that carbon tax at every step of the life cycle and supply chain of a product

00:07:27.820 you know what is so crazy less than 24 hours after trudeau held that press conference threatening tax

00:07:36.020 measures on the grocery store owners less than 24 hours the parliamentary budget offers officer thank

00:07:42.160 goodness for their work came out with a report that shows exactly how the government could reduce prices

00:07:47.300 scrapping the carbon tax okay the pbo's report shows that the carbon taxing

00:07:52.060 Canada is costing Canadian farmers a billion dollars through 2030 okay by making it more expensive for

00:07:59.100 them to use the dry to the natural gas and propane they use to dry grain or heat their barns well guess

00:08:05.320 what when you make it more expensive for farmers to produce food you make it more expensive for

00:08:10.440 Canadians to buy food right very simple not rocket science the carbon tax as you rightly also described

00:08:17.560 is hammering the truck drivers every time they fuel their big rigs with diesel and when you make it

00:08:23.420 more expensive for truckers to deliver the food you make it more expensive for Canadians to buy the food now

00:08:30.160 what is so frustrating is that the carbon tax is making life more expensive in Canada and is doing

00:08:36.240 absolutely nothing zero zilch for the environment right because making it more expensive for Canadians to fuel up

00:08:44.020 our cars or to fill up our grocery carts does absolutely nothing to reduce emissions in places

00:08:49.720 like China or Russia or India or the United States I'm told by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland we're

00:08:57.320 being a little bit too gloomy here let's get her to weigh in Calgary Forest Lawn finance minister is known

00:09:03.720 for speeding up just for the wrong reasons by adding more debt than every government before them combined

00:09:08.580 she she put the pedal to the metal on her deficits and revved up inflation and unlike an Alberta highway 0.98

00:09:13.860 the consequences of her spending isn't just a speeding ticket it's a bigger deficit higher inflation that led to higher interest rates

00:09:20.560 putting Canada most at risk in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis after eight years they're definitely not worth the cost

00:09:26.860 is the finance minister going to blow through her budget deficit projections again by more than six billion dollars yes or no

00:09:34.020 the honourable deputy prime minister and minister of finance

00:09:43.320 mr. speaker

00:09:46.020 our government will provide an update on our fiscal position on expenses and on revenues in the fall economic update

00:09:58.600 in due course this fall but I do want to be very very clear on Canada's fiscal position I was at the IMF

00:10:07.820 World Bank finance ministers meeting just last week and that is where it was so clear that Canada has the best

00:10:17.660 the lowest deficit the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the G7 our position is enviable mr. speaker

00:10:24.140 well what do you think Franco are we in an enviable position financially

00:10:30.440 I think anyone who has been to a grocery store a gas station or just left their house in the last

00:10:38.360 what couple weeks knows that we are not I mean come on the parliamentary budget officer again just

00:10:43.940 produced another report okay it's fiscal update seeing where the government's finances are and as bad

00:10:49.960 as the budget was from Freeland everything's even worse it's been six months since Freeland tabled her

00:10:56.340 last budget and her deficit is already 16% higher interest charges those are up folks we're paying 0.99

00:11:03.580 almost four billion dollars every single month just to cover the interest charges on the on the

00:11:09.520 government credit card almost four billion a month not going to hospitals not going to roads not hiring

00:11:14.120 more teachers not lowering taxes going to the bond fund managers on Bay Street does that sound good to you

00:11:19.700 four billion a month wasted on interest charges oh how about this their fiscal anchor right debt to GDP

00:11:25.480 ratio going down Freeland broker fiscal anchor debt to GDP ratio going up we're now what 1.2 trillion

00:11:32.760 dollars in debt by the end of this year which is almost 30 000 for each and every Canadian we've seen

00:11:38.440 the carbon tax go up we've seen a second carbon tax come in we've seen alcohol taxes go up we've seen

00:11:43.760 payroll taxes go up now the government says it's going to hit us with a digital services tax

00:11:48.240 folks does this sound like good news to you no of course not the only person who could think that

00:11:54.220 we're in a good situation is a person on a minister's salary who has taken not one not two not three but

00:12:01.200 four pay raises over the last couple years yeah and uh very well said on all accounts there and I think

00:12:07.800 that you know the the envy like it's really interesting because everyone made fun of Christopher Freeland for

00:12:12.960 that old Disney plus comment she made a little while back but I think that was like that was a picnic

00:12:18.880 compared to the tone deafness of saying how enviable Canada's fiscal situation is Franco Terrazano

00:12:24.360 federal director for the CTF always a pleasure sir thanks so much Andrew thanks for listening to the

00:12:29.940 Andrew Lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:12:35.960 www.tnc.news

00:12:38.960 www.tnc.news

Juno News - October 21, 2023

Liberals still have no plan to stabilize food prices (ft. Franco Terrazzano)

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