Juno News - October 21, 2023


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


Episode Stats

Length

12 minutes

Words per Minute

184.3347

Word Count

2,344

Sentence Count

10

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

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
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
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
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
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