Juno News - Mark Carney is outspending Trudeau — and banning your car

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Happy Monday, everybody. Hope you

00:00:03.280 had a wonderful weekend. So I am not going to be hosting the show today. I am busy and I am away.

00:00:08.900 So I'm going to hand it over to a familiar face to the audience, Chris Sims from the Canadian

00:00:14.120 Taxpayers Federation. She's fantastic. She has got a great episode in store for you today,

00:00:19.460 folks. So without further ado, over to you, Chris Sims.

00:00:22.760 Hey, thanks so much for joining us. I am Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian

00:00:30.540 Taxpayers Federation. Thanks for joining us today and spending some of your time with us here on

00:00:35.940 Juneau. Now, some of the imagery coming out of Alberta right now is kind of sun-filled, right?

00:00:42.740 We have all of these world leaders gathering with our beautiful province as their backdrop.

00:00:49.060 It just makes me think of a bunch of rich men from north of Richmond gathering together and

00:00:55.340 making promises that we have to pay for, that taxpayers and normal working people have to pay 0.90

00:01:01.180 for. Now, let's hold out hope that people like Alberta Premier Daniel Smith can have a great meeting

00:01:07.260 with U.S. President Donald Trump and work out things like getting rid of all of the tariffs,

00:01:12.600 okay? Actually working out perhaps a new trade deal so we don't need to roll over and check X every

00:01:17.920 morning to see, you know, if our economy is still here in Canada. So let's hope for those sort of

00:01:23.080 things to be straightened out. My hope is that U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Mark

00:01:28.980 Carney actually talk about things like Carney's continued plan to ban the sale of normal gasoline

00:01:37.000 and diesel-powered vehicles. Like, it's one of the craziest ideas ever, and it's going to start

00:01:42.540 kicking in in six months. So in six months' time, in 2026, it's going to start kicking in so that

00:01:49.800 dealers must have 20% of their new car sales to be battery-powered cars. And if they can't sell them,

00:01:58.520 tough cookies. They just have to sit there on the lot and pile up as inventory. And if, guess what,

00:02:03.280 you want to go purchase a normal gasoline and diesel-powered new vehicle, it's going to be tough cookies

00:02:08.620 for you soon too in Canada. Why? Because the government says so. Now the reason why I'm hoping

00:02:14.000 that Trump and Carney have a conversation about this, among many other things, is that Trump,

00:02:18.420 it's one of the first things he did when he was elected. He got rid of their so-called EV mandate

00:02:23.840 in the United States. And when it comes to actual market force, we know who the big gorilla is here.

00:02:28.680 That's the United States. So hopefully that changes. But something else that really needs to change

00:02:34.080 is the affordability. I can't help but think, while I'm watching all of these fancy world leaders

00:02:39.220 and politicians, these elites from all over the planet, sitting there dining, what the tab is going

00:02:45.300 to be, right? I can't help but think about people who can't afford those fancy dinners. And I got to say,

00:02:53.280 I was doing the grocery shopping for my family recently, and I was just thunderstruck, again,

00:02:58.460 by the increased costs of things. I've got a picture here that I snapped when I was in Walmart.

00:03:05.140 And this is just a normal size can of regular coffee. Okay? It wasn't one of those big honking

00:03:10.400 ones that you'd get, you know, for the camper or something from Costco. No, it's just a normal size,

00:03:15.520 you know, can of coffee. And it's $21. $21. I used to be able to get that regular price around $9 or $10

00:03:25.460 on sale. I used to be get it get it for like $7. That was a good sale. $21. Now, it's enough to

00:03:33.460 choke a horse. I was in the mall the other day, just kind of window shopping, right? And I noticed

00:03:39.360 just a regular kid's hoodie. I'm not talking about like a big sports hoodie or anything like that.

00:03:44.200 Just a regular hoodie, plain front with $68 or $67. With tax, it would be about $70 for a little kid's

00:03:54.440 hoodie. Like, I can't understand how people can afford things right now. And the answer is they

00:03:59.040 can't. Because of course, 50% half of Canadians now say they're within $200 every single month

00:04:07.640 of not being able to pay the minimum amount on their bills. What that means in normal people talk is

00:04:13.200 they're within 200 bucks of insolvency every month. Those are working people. Those are people who've

00:04:19.380 been holding down jobs their entire lives. That's why you're seeing record demand at food banks.

00:04:25.160 And that hasn't changed. That hasn't changed just because the Prime Minister isn't talking about his

00:04:31.200 socks. That hasn't changed just because we now have a guy with a PhD from Oxford in economics at the

00:04:38.420 helm. But I hope it does. I really do hope that Prime Minister Mark Carney does the smart things.

00:04:45.580 That he stops wasting money. That he balances the budget. That he gets rid of all of his plans for

00:04:50.800 all of his hidden industrial carbon taxes. And that he stops printing money. Because right now,

00:04:56.540 we have still got an inflation crisis. And I'm going to talk to an expert in a second to explain

00:05:04.760 why inflation is still a bad thing. The next time you hear some pointy head, okay, on the media say,

00:05:11.640 oh, inflation is going down or slowing down. That doesn't mean prices are going down. That means

00:05:17.860 that we have careened to this huge high in inflation suddenly, okay, over the last few years.

00:05:24.200 And now it's still increasing. It's just increasing slower. So that's why you're not seeing prices drop

00:05:30.200 at the stores. So what is causing this huge cost increase for normal working people in Canada?

00:05:38.960 Let's find out. Joining me now is Franco Teresano, my good friend and the federal director of the

00:05:44.840 Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Franco, lots of rich men from north of Richmond are busy meeting at the

00:05:51.500 G7 right now. That's all well and good. I know it's going to cost taxpayers a lot of money. Whenever

00:05:57.400 I see that footage, I'm just like wincing because the bill is going to be high. But I want to talk about

00:06:02.600 how this affects normal people. So we're seeing Prime Minister Mark Carney actually gripping and grinning

00:06:08.460 with US President Donald Trump. They're in the same room. They're in the same pictures.

00:06:13.140 A lot has been made about Trump's tariffs on things like steel and aluminum. But the question

00:06:19.500 here in Canada is why are we punching ourselves in the face with things like this looming industrial

00:06:25.420 carbon tax? Can you explain what this industrial carbon tax is and what the problem is with it?

00:06:33.380 Yeah, for sure. And look, I know a lot of people who are watching this show, like they know that Carney

00:06:37.560 is not scrapping all carbon taxes, right? They know that Carney just wants to change the carbon tax,

00:06:43.760 right? So he set the consumer carbon tax rate to zero. That's the one that you pay when you fuel up

00:06:49.120 at the gas station or on your heating bill. But what Carney is doing is he's shifting, relabeling,

00:06:54.840 repackaging the carbon tax into what is known as a hidden industrial carbon tax, okay? So that pun,

00:07:02.160 that's a tax on like oil and gas producers, fertilizer plants, steel companies, and many

00:07:08.280 others. But of course, it's not just those businesses that pay the tax. It's really Canadians,

00:07:13.620 both consumers and workers who pay that tax, right? So you have a lot of the media, you have a lot of the

00:07:19.820 political class all up in arms over Trump's tariffs and okay, fair enough, but we got to control what

00:07:25.540 we can control. And what the Canadian government can control is not what Trump is doing. It's how

00:07:31.360 the Canadian government is taxing Canadians. And by imposing a hidden carbon tax on Canadian

00:07:37.520 businesses like oil and gas, like fertilizer plants, like steel manufacturers, yes, that is going

00:07:43.760 to make prices go up here in Canada. But that is going to push Canadian entrepreneurs to cut production

00:07:49.540 here and then to set up shops south of the border because, oh, by the way, the White House doesn't

00:07:56.060 impose carbon taxes like Ottawa is doing. You don't need to take Franco's word for it here. Remember

00:08:03.020 just a second ago during the federal election when a labor union endorsed the conservatives? Like I said,

00:08:11.200 I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I've been in the game a long time and I've never

00:08:15.880 seen a labor union endorse the conservatives. And that wasn't the issue. The issue was why they were

00:08:22.200 doing it. And it was the steel workers around Hamilton area who were saying that the industrial

00:08:27.860 carbon tax was going to, quote, decimate their industry. And for exactly the reason you just said

00:08:34.720 on increasing the costs and making them pick up and move south. Yeah. I mean, look, the United States

00:08:40.840 doesn't have a national carbon tax, right? The White House doesn't impose a national carbon tax

00:08:45.340 and it doesn't matter who is in the White House, right? The Democrats didn't do it. The Republicans

00:08:49.740 aren't doing it. So you have that extra cost that makes Canada less competitive because we are hammering

00:08:56.700 our entrepreneurs with carbon taxes while the United States government isn't. Not to mention that if

00:09:02.460 you look around the world, it's like 70% of countries that do not impose national carbon taxes.

00:09:09.080 And then you layer that all on top of the fact that Canada is not competitive on income taxes

00:09:14.500 or business taxes. And this is just another smack in the face from the Canadian government

00:09:19.100 onto many of our Canadian businesses and therefore also our workers and our consumers, right?

00:09:25.680 The, um, that trade organization that you mentioned there, they know that when you make Canadian

00:09:30.480 businesses less competitive, well, that means fewer jobs as our tax system is pushing our businesses

00:09:36.740 to leave Canada and in some cases just increase production, sell to the border.

00:09:41.620 Big time. And then lastly, we haven't even touched on carbon tax tariffs. Like Carney mentioned this out

00:09:49.740 loud with his face during the election campaign. And in a nutshell, what that means is Carney looks

00:09:56.300 around the world and if he sees a country that doesn't have a carbon tax, that upsets him. And that

00:10:02.460 upsets him so much that when we take something in from that country, when we import a widget from a

00:10:08.160 country that doesn't have a national carbon tax, he's going to slap a tariff on that import for us

00:10:14.420 to pay here in Canada. So this, this is not over. It's yes, it is good that we have about 20 cents off

00:10:21.660 the cost of gasoline that I can see here in Lethbridge, for example, the pump that's real savings. And it's

00:10:26.520 important. But folks stay tuned on this because Carney is busy cooking up a big new industrial

00:10:33.060 carbon tax and carbon tax import tariffs on stuff. So this part isn't over. Lastly on this,

00:10:40.920 I might just be blue peeling here hoping for the perfect day. But do you think there's a chance

00:10:46.700 that Carney just wrote all that stuff in his book, Values, about things like carbon tax tariffs,

00:10:54.260 industrial carbon taxes, personal carbon emissions budgets, all carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon,

00:10:59.320 tax, tax, tax, tax. Is there a chance, do you think Franco, that he wrote that because he was

00:11:05.140 the UN envoy on this topic? And there's a chance that that PhD in economics will win out the day

00:11:12.300 and he'll actually be the Paul Martin type and start balancing the budget?

00:11:17.180 Oh, yeah, I don't know, man. I think that might be above my pay grade. Look, look, I look,

00:11:21.580 I honestly don't know. I mean, look, I wrote a book. It's called axing the tax, the rise and fall

00:11:25.560 of Canada's carbon tax. You can get it now. There it is. But look, I wrote it because I believe what

00:11:31.140 I was saying, that the carbon tax always was and always will be a scam for the ordinary Canadians

00:11:36.480 who are forced to foot the bill. So I can only imagine that when Carney wrote those words in his

00:11:41.880 book Values, he meant what he was saying. And look, all I can really say for sure is what the

00:11:48.380 government has done so far, what Mr. Carney has said so far. Right. And on carbon taxes,

00:11:54.040 well, he's been very clear that he supports carbon taxes. Right. He just wanted to change

00:11:58.560 his words, the carbon tax from the consumer, the one that you see to the hidden industrial

00:12:04.480 carbon tax that will mean fewer jobs for Canadians, but also higher prices. Right. Because when you tax

00:12:10.400 a fertilizer plant, well, that makes the cost of growing food and the cost of buying food more 0.54

00:12:15.240 expensive. When you carbon tax refineries, well, that makes your gasoline and diesel more expensive.

00:12:20.360 And when you carbon tax utilities, that makes your home heating bill more expensive. Right. So look,

00:12:25.980 you know, look at Carney's own words. He wants to impose hidden carbon taxes. Now let's look at the

00:12:31.980 debt, the spending, right, the deficits. Well, if you look at his election platform, Carney wants to add

00:12:37.860 $225 billion to the debt over the next four years, $225 billion to the debt. That's on top of the fact

00:12:47.780 that Trudeau doubled the debt in less than a decade. In fact, you look at Trudeau's last budget numbers,

00:12:53.160 and he would add about $131 billion to the debt over that same time. So, you know, do a little math,

00:13:00.200 beep, boop, beep, boop. And Carney plans on adding almost $100 billion more to the debt over the next

00:13:07.480 four years. So Chris, you asked me, what do I think is in Carney's head? Well, I don't know,

00:13:12.740 right? That's way above my pay grade to try to figure out. But what I do know is what he said

00:13:17.260 and what the government is doing. And look, he's putting in a hidden carbon tax. His election

00:13:22.200 platform wanted to rack up even more debt. Brutal, brutal. I actually still can't believe that. I

00:13:28.640 remember distinctly during the election campaign when it came out that he was going to add more to the

00:13:34.020 debt than Trudeau was going to. I seriously thought I was misreading it. I'm like, no, no,

00:13:39.080 no. This must be a me thing. This can't be possible. The economist can't be worse with money

00:13:44.080 than the drama teacher. But apparently, survey says he's going to be. I wanted to shift slightly here

00:13:49.940 because before things really got ramped up, I would even say just leading up to the lockdowns,

00:13:57.000 I would say. Inflation. People were talking a lot about inflation, especially during the lockdowns.

00:14:03.280 Not that many people, I will point out. You were talking about it. You were warning about inflation.

00:14:09.260 Conservative leader Pierre Polyev, to his credit, was on national media warning about inflation.

00:14:14.880 And is it ever here? Like I mentioned during the opening, I was doing grocery shopping for my family

00:14:20.500 recently. A regular can of like Folgers coffee, okay, just a normal size can now, is $21.

00:14:28.840 That used to be $9. A normal hoodie, like not licensed, not a sports hoodie, a normal kid's hoodie

00:14:36.760 from the mall is $68. Like the costs are just astronomical. They're through the roof. Like

00:14:43.860 beef is unaffordable for people now. Like people keep saying, oh, inflation is slowing down.

00:14:50.040 I really wanted to do a quick deep dive with you on this because you explain it so well.

00:14:54.800 Why are we in the middle of an inflation crisis right now in Canada? What happened,

00:15:01.020 especially during the lockdowns? What did the government do to cause this?

00:15:05.260 Well, look, first of all, let's just cut through the spin. When you hear anyone twisting themselves

00:15:09.760 into a pretzel saying that inflation is down, what that really means is this. Prices rose by a 40-year

00:15:17.380 high, okay? And then since then, prices aren't going down. They're still going up. They're just

00:15:24.360 not going up as high as they did when they reached a 40-year high, right? So all that is to say is

00:15:30.420 that life is still crazy unaffordable, right? And everyone who is outside of the political bubble,

00:15:36.740 who goes to the grocery store, who like you, Chris, go to get your son a hoodie, they know how

00:15:41.520 expensive life is. So then the question is, well, why did inflation go crazy in Canada and around

00:15:47.740 the world? Well, guess what? You implement silly policies, you get silly prizes, okay? Now that's

00:15:53.920 a nice way of saying what I'm thinking, but here's what happens, okay? Look, what explains a general

00:16:00.060 increase in prices, so prices going up across the board, is one thing. It's the expansion of the

00:16:06.520 money supply. It is the printing press going burr, right? Is a government's central bank printing new

00:16:13.100 dollars out of thin air. In the case of Canada, you had the perfect storm for inflation. On the one

00:16:19.300 hand, you had the government's central bank, the Bank of Canada, print up during the heart of the

00:16:23.920 pandemic, anywhere from about $300 to $400 billion. And it did that with a stroke of a keypad buying

00:16:32.100 financial assets, largely government of Canada debt, okay? That is the inflation tax. When the

00:16:39.060 central bank, the Bank of Canada, finances Ottawa's deficits by printing up new dollars, okay? And the

00:16:46.560 problem is this. You can't print up farmland out of thin air. You can't print up refineries out of

00:16:53.840 thin air. But the government can print up new dollars out of thin air, okay? More dollars chasing fewer

00:17:00.580 goods. And then here's where you get the flip side of the equation, right? Where during the pandemic,

00:17:06.120 when we were going through, what, three years of revolving lockdowns, businesses, the economy,

00:17:10.920 wasn't producing as much as it normally would. So we weren't producing as much of the stuff that money

00:17:16.840 buys. So when you had the printing press on overdrive, and you had our economy locked down, you had the

00:17:23.480 perfect storm for inflation, which is too many dollars chasing too few goods.

00:17:29.620 Was that a choice that the government made? Because you hear apologists all the time, they make it sound as if a

00:17:35.680 volcano went off or something. It's like, no, dude, you made that choice.

00:17:39.620 Yeah, of course it is, right? This is a decision by the government central bank, by the Bank of Canada, to finance

00:17:46.020 massive government deficits, right? Inflation isn't like a natural disaster. It's not an act of God.

00:17:53.000 Inflation is a deliberate policy that helps politicians who have out-of-control spending,

00:17:59.140 who don't want to rein in the spending, and who quite frankly want to try to hide the costs,

00:18:03.960 right? Because the inflation tax is also a fundamentally undemocratic tax, right? It's a way

00:18:09.820 to finance deficits or finance massive spending without actually increasing tax rates, right?

00:18:16.620 Everyone knows who's at fault when politicians increase income taxes or increase sales taxes,

00:18:22.900 but it's very hard to find the culprit if you're just an ordinary person, when the government is

00:18:28.700 rising inflation stealthily through the Bank of Canada or through any other central bank.

00:18:35.260 This is a loaded question, and I don't actually know your answer to it, which is rare.

00:18:39.820 I get a treat whenever I pick up Franco from the Calgary airport. I get an economics lesson. It's awesome.

00:18:46.320 So is there a way out of this? I hear, sorry for the layman's terms, but I hear pointy heads on TV

00:18:54.300 say, oh, we can't have deflation. That would be a bad thing. And in my brain, I'm like, wouldn't that

00:18:59.720 make prices go down? Isn't that a good thing? How do we get out of this? Is there any chance that we're

00:19:05.680 going to see a normal price, what we would call normal for kids clothes and groceries and all of

00:19:11.560 the stuff that we have to spend money on? Is there a way out of this to make prices go down?

00:19:17.800 Well, look, first of all, prices going down is not a bad thing, right? I mean, it makes your life more

00:19:22.560 affordable as a consumer. But then also businesses, when you look at profits, what they really are is a

00:19:27.160 margin. So if businesses input costs are going down, that doesn't mean that they now can't succeed

00:19:32.600 because prices are going down because what they're paying to produce those goods is also lower,

00:19:37.720 right? And like also too, if you shrink the money supply, the only thing that is really happening

00:19:43.220 is that you're shrinking it after the government artificially increased it. Okay. Remember that,

00:19:48.880 folks. So to your question, like what can the government do? Well, there's a few things. Number

00:19:53.440 one, stop printing money, right? Like that's number one, because when you print more dollars out of

00:19:59.000 thin air, too many dollars chasing too few goods means you have the inflation tax. Um, so get the

00:20:05.060 federal spending under control. Stop accumulating the massive borrowing, the tens of billions of

00:20:10.140 dollars of deficits every single year. But then the flip side of the equation is like, look, we got

00:20:15.620 to get our economy firing in all cylinders. We got to be able to produce the stuff that all that extra

00:20:21.360 money buys, right? So, you know, you have to get your fiscal house in order when it comes to the

00:20:26.100 government of Canada. And you have to be able to create the conditions to allow job creators to

00:20:31.580 come here to get our natural resource projects built and to actually build the stuff, grow the

00:20:36.520 economy, uh, to essentially sop up all that extra money. I'm picturing it almost like we need fresh

00:20:42.360 mop heads. Like all of the water has cascaded around the kitchen. It's everywhere. It's a flood.

00:20:47.600 We need fresh mop heads and towels soaking up all of that extra cash. And those are widgets.

00:20:53.480 Those are actual things that we can use. Is there a way, this is probably a stupid question.

00:20:58.660 Is there a way for the government to reduce the money supply or is there just, do we need more

00:21:03.980 stuff to spend money on for the money to go? Or is there a way for them to reabsorb it?

00:21:11.060 Look, I think here's the two most likely things, right? So number one is like, if you're digging,

00:21:17.520 if you're in a hole and you're trying to get out, the first rule is just to stop digging,

00:21:20.800 right? So if you're doing something dumb, the first thing to do is stop doing that dumb thing.

00:21:25.520 And when it comes to the federal government, there's a lot of dumb things going on,

00:21:28.580 but like, let me just, let me just say two things that the government can do, right? Um,

00:21:34.180 first of all, just stop running up the debt, right? Interest charges on the debt are already

00:21:38.440 costing us more than a billion dollars every single week, right? That's a brand new hospital.

00:21:43.440 That's not getting built every week because the feds are paying interest charges on the debt.

00:21:47.820 So number one, you got to get the out of control borrowing, the out of control spending,

00:21:52.240 right? You got to get that under control, uh, so that we're not seeing any of the printing press

00:21:57.360 used to finance Ottawa's deficits. But number two, like stop throwing up roadblocks to development,

00:22:03.220 right? We don't need government in the business of business. We need government to get out of the way, 0.68

00:22:08.620 right? You know, then the, no more pipelines law to discriminatory tanker ban, the fact that the

00:22:13.160 government, uh, move the goalposts, the regulatory goalposts on the energy East pipeline, right?

00:22:18.920 Uh, rejecting Northern gateway. It goes on and on and on. So in addition to just getting your spending

00:22:24.680 under control, the government has to just stop throwing up roadblocks, unnecessary red tape

00:22:29.460 that has made it almost impossible for Canada to get large major projects done and built here.

00:22:36.280 That's a big one. And the energy cap, we've got an energy cap.

00:22:39.560 There you go. $20 billion hole. And that isn't our numbers. That's the parliamentary budget officer

00:22:44.740 that is saying that Ottawa's cap on Alberta's energy, they call it an emissions cap, but it's

00:22:50.100 really a production cap is going to blow a $20 billion hole in the Canadian economy over the

00:22:55.280 next few years and cost something like 40,000 jobs or something. It was crazy. So these are just,

00:23:01.240 you'd think seemingly simple things that the feds can do to take their foot off of our necks.

00:23:07.220 Do you see this happening? Do you think that if we yell loud enough and long enough, I mean,

00:23:12.640 we got the consumer carbon tax reduced down to zero, you know, there's a chance that if we get

00:23:17.380 people up on how much they're spending on the debt, a billion dollars a week, folks, a billion dollars,

00:23:23.600 picture a hospital, poof, gone every single week. That's how much we're spending just on interest.

00:23:29.460 Do you think there's a chance we can get people riled up enough that we can make Kearney move on this?

00:23:33.900 Well, yeah, like, I'm glad you brought up the example of this consumer carbon tax, because to me,

00:23:39.900 that's actually an example of, you know, David beating Goliath, where, you know, Goliath, you had

00:23:44.620 all of the taxpayer funded political elites, the bureaucracy, those politicians, right? You had the

00:23:51.780 academics, you had many in the media, who essentially were telling Canadians to sit down,

00:23:56.060 be quiet and pay your carbon tax bills, right? Look, I even remember there was an opinion piece that

00:24:00.640 was published, I believe, in the Globe and Mail, and it said something to the effect after the last

00:24:05.000 2021 election, where it was like carbon tax, the fight against the carbon tax is over, carbon taxes

00:24:09.940 are here to stay. Well, in a few short years, from massive pushback from Canadians, from a lot of 0.97

00:24:16.620 premiers out there, Brad Wall, he did a great job fighting the carbon tax since day one. Obviously,

00:24:22.400 Mr. Polyev, like, he was fighting the carbon tax harder than I've ever seen any federal politician.

00:24:28.080 But because of the massive backlash, beginning with ordinary Canadians, you forced the liberal

00:24:33.340 government to back down on their own favorite tax, right? The consumer carbon tax, right? Up until

00:24:38.500 about what, six minutes ago, they were saying how good the carbon tax was for you. And Canadians,

00:24:45.120 a couple of those good politicians, they forced the liberal government to back down on their own

00:24:49.400 consumer carbon tax. Now, look, I know the fight against the carbon tax is not over, but it's just a

00:24:54.200 good example that even if things look really bleak today, the political landscape can shift so quickly

00:25:01.420 that if you keep applying the pressure, you can push the government to actually move in the right

00:25:06.980 direction. So yeah, folks, I mean, look, politics is a participation sport. And even if you don't care

00:25:13.040 about politics, those politicians care about your wallet. So you have to get involved, you have to get

00:25:18.720 off the bench. Franco, thank you so much for your time. That is why we have a debt clock and we drive

00:25:23.760 it around the country to show people how much this debt is costing them. Thank you so much for your

00:25:28.640 time. Hey, always a pleasure. Once again, that was Franco Teresano, the federal director for the

00:25:33.600 Canadian Taxpayers Federation, highlighting the fact that we are in deep trouble. We have a huge debt in

00:25:39.940 this country. It is now more than a trillion dollars. The Trudeau government alone doubled

00:25:46.200 the national debt. That's kind of incomprehensible, but kind of do a little mental exercise and picture

00:25:53.000 it. Think back all the way down our national railway, all the way back to Sir John A. Macdonald,

00:25:58.180 that prime minister's government. Now roll yourself forward. Okay. Mackenzie King and Diefenbaker

00:26:04.860 and Mulroney and the first Trudeau. Okay. Picture all of those governments that were there during

00:26:11.440 world wars, that were there during the great depression, picture all of those debts, double

00:26:17.800 them. That's what Trudeau did. That's what Trudeau did in nine years. I never thought as a Western

00:26:25.680 Canadian kid that was raised in the eighties, that I would see a worse government than the first Trudeau

00:26:31.520 government. But here we are. So we have got a doubled national debt. The interest payments on

00:26:39.200 the debt are costing taxpayers, you right now, today, a billion dollars a week. And the problem

00:26:47.880 here is that while, yes, we're seeing more of a mature comportment coming from Prime Minister Mark

00:26:55.060 Carney. He's not sillily saying things like the budget will balance itself. He's not pointing out

00:27:00.940 his socks on a world stage to grown up people. So that's an improvement. But this can't just be

00:27:07.700 image based. This has to be real. The problem is we are not hearing real change coming from Prime

00:27:15.640 Minister Carney. Case in point, we don't have a budget. There should be a budget right now. And for

00:27:22.540 the folks at home who are trying to give him the benefit of the doubt saying, oh, well, he's new to the

00:27:26.240 job. And he just got there. And how could they possibly get that done in time? Yes, I understand

00:27:31.200 why you think that. But here's the thing. There's something called the permanent government in Ottawa,

00:27:36.340 the bureaucracy. And yes, all of those smart kids in class in the finance department and at the

00:27:41.580 Treasury Department, they have all these numbers. Basically, what a budget is, is revenue in spending

00:27:48.880 out. It's all it is. It's basically two big graphs. Okay, that's all they really need to do. They need

00:27:55.460 to tell us how much they're taking in tax revenue and other revenues. They need to tell us what they're

00:28:00.180 spending money on. That's it, including things like debt interest payments. And they're not opening up

00:28:07.320 and saying, you know what, we've sobered up, the party's over, kids have gone home. Now we need to

00:28:12.420 balance the budget. Here's how we do it. Let's get rid of stupid ideas like the pipeline ban. Let's get

00:28:19.380 rid of a stupid idea like the cap on energy. Let's get rid of a stupid idea like banning the sale of

00:28:26.800 normal gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. Because not only is that way too big of a government

00:28:33.200 telling you what you can and can't drive and interfering with the market for dealerships and

00:28:38.160 salespeople, but it also is going to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars that we don't

00:28:44.860 have. So how are we going to fix this problem? Let's find out. Joining me now is a good friend of

00:28:52.320 the program, Dan McTague. Dan is a longtime former Liberal Member of Parliament. He knows his stuff,

00:28:59.080 especially when it comes to things like finance and the automotive sector, which is why we've got him

00:29:03.680 here on the show as the president for Canadians for Affordable Energy. A little bit of inside

00:29:08.820 baseball. Whenever I needed the second carbon tax explained to me in British Columbia, I would text

00:29:15.880 poor Dan at any time at night saying, how on earth do I make sense of all these carbon credits and all

00:29:21.900 this nonsense and make it make it make sense? Dan, thank you for joining us today.

00:29:27.220 Great to be here. Thank you for me, Chris.

00:29:28.640 I wanted to get into the fact that this government is very soon going to be banning the sale of what

00:29:37.480 I would call normal gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. Now it's going to be a hundred percent

00:29:43.860 ban, meaning all new vehicles must be an electric vehicle or battery powered vehicle by 2035. And for

00:29:51.560 folks who say, oh, that's 10 years, that's forever. The Trudeau government was in power for 10 years.

00:29:57.520 That goes by like this. So I wanted to get into this with you right off the top. When are we going

00:30:03.780 to see these restrictions start coming into force at the vehicle sales lot?

00:30:10.180 Well, on the vehicle lots across the country, you're going to have to have one in five vehicles,

00:30:14.220 not just on the lot, but Chris, one in five have to be sold. In other words, for you to sell

00:30:19.120 five vehicles, one of the five has to be electric vehicle or you simply can't sell it. You'll

00:30:24.480 defy your own quota. Now whether that's arranged at the manufacturing level or whether that's

00:30:30.240 arranged at the marketing level, there's a lot of questions as to how appropriate this is, given

00:30:36.740 that there isn't the take up. Right now we've seen actually a decline in sales, especially when

00:30:40.400 there's no more subsidies or subsidies are being removed from consumers, both federal and provincial.

00:30:46.460 Quebec, British Columbia, you know, $7,000, $10,000 to $12,000, some money even for some used

00:30:53.140 vehicles. Good luck with that, by the way. But at the end of the day, if you're going to increase

00:30:58.560 and ratchet this up, you know, 10% every year with mandates of 20% beginning next year on January 1st,

00:31:05.960 good luck. I think the automotive sector is already starting to say it. And you see companies have been

00:31:10.480 known for their grift. General Motors, hey, this is not such a great idea. We have to get rid of this.

00:31:14.560 Ford, hey, we're not building an EV. We're going to take the Oakville plant, which I live very close

00:31:19.480 to here. We're going to convert that back to an F-250 because we're not stupid. We're tired of losing

00:31:24.520 money. My old company, Toyota. Yes, I did media relations for that company. Not a small company.

00:31:30.100 It's the number one exporter of automotive products to the United States. Never really got on this stuff.

00:31:35.500 Didn't want part of the grift and wasn't going to go along with the happy-go-lucky crowd who basically

00:31:40.680 thought we could subsidize and blast our way into selling vehicles that no one wants. And now

00:31:45.720 with the United States firmly walking away from electric vehicle mandates, basically in one fell

00:31:51.480 swoop, Trump had said he was going to do a certain election. He recommitted to it after he was elected

00:31:55.760 and he made it good the other day with the EPA regulations, the waiver so-called. In one fell

00:32:01.080 swoop, there is no more market for electric vehicles in the United States and therefore no market for

00:32:05.500 Ontario's manufacturing sector when it comes to EVs. I hope Doug Ford is listening.

00:32:10.860 I hope he is too, frankly, after what we saw during the last election and the fact that he was failing

00:32:16.760 to hold Mark Carney to account on his industrial carbon tax plan. I thought I was having an out-of-body

00:32:22.760 experience, Dan, seeing some of those steel workers endorse the Conservatives, like a Labour union

00:32:28.140 endorsing the Conservatives. Why? Because they said that Carney's industrial carbon tax was going to

00:32:34.920 decimate their steel industry and the Premier of Ontario saying absolutely nothing about it.

00:32:41.400 That was wild. So I sure hope that Premier Ford's listening to this conversation and to this issue.

00:32:47.220 Now, was that a game changer when Trump came out and said, you know what, this is off the table.

00:32:51.600 We're not doing this anymore. I mean, they've just got such a huge market force there.

00:32:56.500 Big time. And for four years, it's gone. I mean, you know, that means that anything that we've

00:33:01.100 decided to do based on Biden's, you know, Inflation Reduction Act, spending, you know,

00:33:06.740 up to trillion dollars of money they don't have to borrow when they're at 38 trillion in the hole,

00:33:12.080 just didn't make any sense. And we knew it was going to end. A lot of people recognize this is

00:33:16.680 just not going to happen. And at a practical level, you know, people are buying because they're

00:33:21.460 getting five, 7,000 bucks. But now when you take that away, you know, that move into the market of

00:33:26.480 10% is now dropped back to 8, 7% car dealers across the country. Go talk to them. They can't

00:33:33.260 sell these things fast enough and they give massive discounts. No one wants them. There are real

00:33:37.800 concerns. They're very costly. They're very hard to maintain. They're not as efficient as an internal

00:33:43.420 combustion engine. And they're sure as hell aren't well suited for Canadian cold climate. And I say

00:33:48.260 that because anybody who takes his little iPhones out of their smartphone, leave it out in the cold for

00:33:53.280 about three hours and see how much battery power you have left. So look, the idea is nice. It's

00:33:57.300 novel. It's great. But if you want an over-glorified scooter, then to go around the city, take public

00:34:03.360 transit or buy an e-bike. But trying to force me and a lot of other people to pay for this at a time

00:34:10.180 in which it's pretty clear, no one wants these things. Battery companies are going bankrupt.

00:34:14.920 Major automotive companies are smelling the coffee and realizing they're going to lose too much money.

00:34:18.660 It's time to back off on this. If not, if you really want these things, take the damn sanctions

00:34:23.760 off China. Let them bring in their BYDs and their jillies. They're a lot cheaper. If that's what 1.00

00:34:29.020 you really want to drive around in, you don't have any concern about elbows up when it comes to China,

00:34:33.680 then why would you punish Western Canadian canola farmers with significant and silly tariffs on

00:34:39.260 protecting an industry that shouldn't survive unless it can stand on its own two feet?

00:34:43.280 That China element is a great point. I really wanted to stress this on, so for the practical 0.91

00:34:49.120 person who, imagine you're going to a car lot and you want to buy a new vehicle, what is this going to

00:34:56.460 do on the ground at these dealerships? Will they just pile up and sit there and then what, the dealer

00:35:03.040 won't be permitted by the government to sell a Ford F-150 or a gasoline-powered vehicle? Is that what's

00:35:09.680 going to happen? Precisely. They won't be allowed to sell the internal combustion engines provided

00:35:14.360 they meet that quota. And the quota means that unless one in five at the end of the year or end

00:35:19.860 of the month, whatever the period of one in five, that will soon be, you know, while two in five and

00:35:25.560 then three in five. And then by 2020, by 2035, by the way, we're planning already for 27 models,

00:35:31.900 it's even 25. It means that by 2033, you're going to start to see a lot of sales drop. You're going to

00:35:38.640 see a lot of people, you know, basically running to the repair shops to fix their old internal

00:35:43.540 combustion engines or buying their product in the United States. Whatever the case may be,

00:35:48.060 I'm sure they'll try to find a way to regulate that. At the end of all of this, who the hell's

00:35:52.220 going to pay the fuel taxes to pay for the infrastructure in this country? Who's going

00:35:56.260 to pay the road taxes, the federal excise tax of 10 cents a liter, the provincial tax of 9 cents a

00:36:01.940 liter in my province? It can be as high as 19 cents a liter in Quebec. Look, I think we are living

00:36:06.640 in a delusional world because we simply forgot that it's no longer 2025, 2015. It's not 2025.

00:36:14.580 And for that reason, I think people need to give their heads a bit of a shake and demand of Mark

00:36:19.300 Carney that he get rid of these EV mandates in the same way that we had to get rid of carbon taxes

00:36:23.200 because they were extraordinarily detrimental to the economy. This is another facet of that very

00:36:28.320 dangerous policy agenda called net zero. And it's going to fail both Canadians commercially and

00:36:35.260 financially. I'm going to get into the finances writ large in a second. I just wanted to finish here

00:36:40.680 on EVs because we drilled down on this, on how much this is just going to cost. Number one,

00:36:47.540 just on the lot, still with the rebates, and imagine the rebates were all still there for what

00:36:52.240 they were giving them for. A Nissan Leaf, which is a very simple sort of a runabout sedan car,

00:36:57.540 not a super fancy car. The electric Nissan Leaf was still about 15 grand more than what a comparable

00:37:05.600 was for an internal combustion engine. If you are in the market and you're a working class family and

00:37:11.280 you want to be able to get a new car, which comes along with a lot of guarantees, right? And maintenance

00:37:16.140 and all that stuff. Lots of folks want that, especially if they have to commute. They don't have the extra 15

00:37:21.660 grand. Like the price differential for the sticker difference was still big there. And then we start

00:37:26.820 getting into these mandates where I'm just envisioning these business people who are trying

00:37:32.480 to sell vehicles, who are now having to answer to the federal government with a tally at the end of

00:37:37.200 every month. And then what happens to their inventory? Like this is going to be crazy. And to your point,

00:37:42.140 if I drive across to Montana and go down there and try to buy a normal vehicle and bring it back across

00:37:47.460 the border, they're just going to nail me with some sort of, you know, environmental import tariff or

00:37:52.280 something, it gets pretty wild. I started doing the math because here in Alberta, it sounds strange

00:37:59.420 because we're supposed to be this energy capital. But in the winter, we will literally get like

00:38:05.000 warnings on our phone. Don't use your toaster. Everybody stop using your hairdryer. We're going

00:38:10.860 to have a blackout on the grid. And then I'm sitting there thinking, how is this going to work?

00:38:16.120 I can't make my kids toast in the morning in January, but I'm supposed to, everybody's supposed

00:38:20.380 to plug in their EVs. It makes no sense. So I sat down and did the math then. Say Santa Claus brought

00:38:27.180 everybody an EV. So all of the ones that we privately own right now that are in our driveways

00:38:31.880 and in our garages that are internal combustion engines, say they magically changed to battery

00:38:37.360 powered. We would need three huge can-do nuclear reactors just to power those vehicles. Like number 0.99

00:38:47.260 one, we're not building those. Two, they cost billions and billions of dollars and about 10

00:38:53.080 years each to build. So the energy is not there. And don't take my word for it. Natural Resources

00:38:59.180 Canada, the federal government said the transition is going to cost anywhere between 300 and 400

00:39:06.480 billion dollars. Just for the province, yeah. We have un-money right now, Dan. How on earth

00:39:13.220 are the feds, seriously, how are the adults in the room in the federal government expecting Canadians

00:39:19.420 and taxpayers to be able to afford this transition? Creative financing based on flawed science and

00:39:27.380 ignorance of the realities about the loss of thermodynamics and energy. Look, I always keep this

00:39:36.020 with me. It's my little coin, my commemorative coin from Pickering, Ontario. It's when it was first

00:39:41.480 commissioned back in 1965, which is my old riding. They weren't worried about climate. They were just

00:39:47.680 worried about being able to provide energy to make Ontario a powerhouse to respond to the fact that

00:39:51.820 they didn't have the same hydrology as Quebec. It didn't have the energy that Alberta was starting

00:39:56.060 to show at that time. So we came up with good technology that worked and has worked for the past 60

00:40:00.840 or 70 years. And so, you know, for me, it's pragmatism has to come back into how we do these

00:40:06.420 things. And someone who tells me that, you know, that driving a vehicle is somehow going to cause the

00:40:12.260 weather to change, I suggest they come here to Ontario where it's been really cold. Although next

00:40:16.100 week we'll get 33 degree weather. I'm sure the climate bedwetters will be telling us that the world

00:40:20.840 is coming to an end. But at the end of all of this, for a country that's, you know, 1.4 trillion

00:40:27.280 dollars in the hole, which, you know, Canadian Taxpayers Federation has really emphasized,

00:40:31.600 a country that's facing a possibility of having to pay 70 billion dollars of good money just to

00:40:37.360 service that debt and a possibility that we have a deficit that's much higher than that. We thought

00:40:41.480 72 billion was a lot. Wait till we see what happens, which is why Mark Carney doesn't want to

00:40:45.500 have a budget. How in goodness name can we afford what the Royal Bank of Canada said a few years ago

00:40:50.360 to bring 90% electrification to the country would cost two to three trillion dollars? We don't have it.

00:40:56.140 My grandfather used to say, I say so politely, look, in Canada, we have got a pot to piss in

00:41:01.260 or a window to throw it out of. That is perfectly said. Okay, I'm just going to hit pause for a

00:41:06.180 second there because I'm desperate for blue pills right now. I've been eating black pills for the

00:41:10.600 last few weeks. Okay, but I'm going to, folks who are listening and watching, you got to hang around

00:41:15.840 for this. Okay, you have to listen to Dan's analysis of where do we go from here? Is there light

00:41:21.260 at the end of this tunnel? Is Carney truly going to be the adult in the room? I mean, the dude has a

00:41:26.060 PhD in economics from Oxford. He's got to know his way around an abacus. But to do that, you have to

00:41:31.620 subscribe. So head on over to Juno News and become a subscriber and a supporter of the Candace Malcolm

00:41:37.040 show. And we're going to pick this up in a second.

Juno News - June 16, 2025

Mark Carney is outspending Trudeau — and banning your car

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