Juno News - MONEY FOR NOTHING - Government blowing your cash while Mark Carney takes a VACATION

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Candice Malcolm Show. I'm Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian

00:00:07.200 Taxpayers Federation, guest hosting for Candice, sometimes this summer. Thank you so much for

00:00:12.000 making us a part of your week. It's really important to us in order to spread the word.

00:00:16.320 If you haven't done so already, make sure you hit that subscribe button and share this show

00:00:21.280 with your friends who want the real deal coming from independent media. Okay, so lots to do this

00:00:26.720 week and I wanted to highlight something for all of our listeners and viewers and I wanted them to

00:00:32.320 ask themselves this question. Are you getting good value for the money you pay for government?

00:00:40.560 Think of the services that you get from government. Are they top-notch? Are they gold standard? Do you

00:00:46.000 brag to your friends and family about them? I'm sorry for laughing but the answer is obviously no.

00:00:51.120 The Fraser Institute did great work the other day where they point out in their annual report

00:00:55.920 that we are paying more in taxes than we are for food, clothing, and shelter, and housing combined.

00:01:04.480 We're paying more in taxes than we are for food, clothing, and shelter. That's from three various

00:01:10.800 levels of government. So municipal, provincial, and federal. It's a disgusting waste of money.

00:01:15.600 I'm going to zero in on the federal here and I want to kick this off with pointing it out

00:01:21.120 that Prime Minister Mark Carney is taking vacation again. This is an email that was sent out to the

00:01:28.560 Parliamentary Press Gallery. Let's just read it together. To all Press Gallery members, while

00:01:33.840 remaining in the National Capital Region and surrounding area, the Prime Minister will be on

00:01:38.800 a reduced schedule in the week of August the 11th, that's today, to reflect a brief period of local

00:01:46.000 vacation. As he does so, he will remain in close coordination with his team and officials on several

00:01:52.640 economic and security priorities for the weeks ahead. Media advisories will be distributed should any

00:01:58.720 public events arise during this time. Best PMO team. PMO stands for Prime Minister's Office for folks

00:02:06.560 who aren't huge political nerds. Now, granted, Prime Minister is a human being. Human beings, if you can,

00:02:13.520 should try to take a vacation, especially when the weather is good. Okay? We get that. But couple of

00:02:19.360 things. One, Prime Minister Mark Carney already did take a vacation earlier this summer. And two, this is

00:02:26.960 where we get down to value for money and keeping promises and being accountable. Folks might remember

00:02:33.280 that during the national election campaign, we were hearing all sorts of things like, oh, by Canada Day,

00:02:39.600 I think it was, we're going to get rid of interprovincial trade barriers and problems.

00:02:43.600 Okay. Number one, anyone who's worked in government knows that that was a really silly promise to try

00:02:50.000 to make. Because actually, most of the interprovincial trade barriers we have in Canada are with the

00:02:56.400 provinces themselves. So we do have some issues with the feds getting their nose in there and screwing

00:03:01.120 things up for interprovincial trade. But a lot of it is actually on the provincial governments

00:03:05.920 themselves. So Carney shouldn't have made that promise. Also, if we take a look at what is

00:03:11.360 happening south of the border and compare to what's happening up here, you got to start asking

00:03:16.480 yourself if you're getting good value for money. Because again, taxpayers pay a ton of money for

00:03:22.720 the work of government. I wanted to pull up the schedule here. It's the calendar schedule for the

00:03:27.840 sitting of the House of Commons. So these are all the members of Parliament, okay, where they all gather

00:03:33.440 together in Ottawa. And this is when they are physically in session in the House of Commons.

00:03:38.800 The big building, the big room with the green carpet. Okay. So take a look here. Hmm. Okay.

00:03:44.560 One week tacked on at the end of May and three-ish weeks tacked on in June and nothing until the end

00:03:52.320 of August. Okay. The House will resume sitting in the fall. But I want you to ask yourself, are you

00:03:58.720 getting good value for money from those politicians? Okay. We've got more than 300 members of Parliament.

00:04:05.840 If you add up all of their base salaries, that's costing taxpayers more than 70 million dollars.

00:04:14.880 That's just the base MP salary because they're all paid more than 200 grand a year. That's not including

00:04:22.800 the cabinet ministers and the coin they make. That's not including the prime minister and the money he

00:04:28.640 makes. So 70 million dollars just in salaries for members of Parliament. And pull that, pull that

00:04:36.880 calendar back up again so I can take a look at that. And they're sitting this many days? I don't know,

00:04:43.280 man. That's not a really good return on investment. Now, to be very clear and fair, there are a couple of

00:04:48.880 committees that are squeaking in some work here and there. So I do want to acknowledge that because

00:04:53.840 people do need to pay more attention to what's happening at committee. So I was hearing people

00:04:58.000 talking about the BC Ferries deal they were making with China, etc. There were some MPs and some staff

00:05:04.240 and clerks who were working in the summer for committee. That's good. The point here is, are you

00:05:09.680 getting great value for money from your government? That's just the politicians. This might blow your mind.

00:05:15.840 Take a look at the permanent government cost. US President Donald Trump would call it the swamp.

00:05:23.200 I would call it permanent government. And that's bureaucracies. So it's not just the MPs, of course,

00:05:28.400 who are in the House of Commons or not. It's the bureaucrats who are working in all of these

00:05:33.200 departments. They don't run for election. They don't need to put their name on a ballot. They're making,

00:05:38.880 on average, more than $120,000 per year each. The cost of the bureaucracy for taxpayers last year

00:05:49.600 was more than $70 billion with a B. Yeah. Easy to remember this, guys. The politicians, the MPs,

00:05:58.560 they're costing you $70 million. The bureaucrats, $70 billion. So add three more zeros onto that tax bill.

00:06:08.160 So this is an outrageous amount of money. We need to demand good value for money from our various

00:06:14.720 levels of government. I wanted to point out also that we often hear things like, oh, we're in the

00:06:19.840 middle of a tariff war. We're in the middle of a trade war with US President Donald Trump, et cetera,

00:06:24.480 et cetera. As a taxpayer, I don't care about the personal, you know, behavior between two people,

00:06:33.760 if that's Mark Carney and Donald Trump. Work it out. Work it out. Because you have got millions of

00:06:40.320 people counting on your departments to work out a trade deal. The fact that we have not been able

00:06:47.280 to resolve the ongoing tariff dispute and the responses is just increasing our tariffs on both

00:06:53.680 sides of the border, that only hurts normal working people. Tariffs are simply trade taxes. That's all

00:07:01.680 that is. It just winds up costing you more money. In practical situations, it can be everything from

00:07:09.120 the extra charge now on Alberta energy, which is a huge issue, okay, to even simple little things at

00:07:16.320 the grocery store. It's one of the reasons why you're not seeing pickles on the shelf coming from

00:07:21.360 the United States. So people who are out grocery shopping can see the real effects of this happening.

00:07:27.680 And then we've got entire industries that are holding their breath. People in the steel industry

00:07:32.560 that are holding their breath, waiting to see what happens with their jobs. We've got a combination of

00:07:37.680 tariffs coming from the United States and a looming huge industrial carbon tax coming from Prime Minister

00:07:44.560 Mark Carney. And yet we look across the border and we do more than a trillion dollars worth of trade

00:07:51.200 at the United States per year. I think we have a screenshot of this. It's from the Canadian Chamber of

00:07:56.560 Commerce. I would highly recommend going to their website. Look at this. This is the numbers 1.3 trillion

00:08:05.840 in annual two way trade between Canada and the United States for investment. We're going to be

00:08:12.320 speaking about investment really soon here with Michael Campbell, more than 1.7 trillion. So 1.4 million

00:08:20.960 American jobs are supported by exports to Canada. Okay. Like cannot overemphasize this importance enough.

00:08:28.560 And what we're getting is kind of simple, dumb slogans online in the media between these two

00:08:35.440 departments and no deal. Why are we seeing US President Donald Trump inking huge deals for their

00:08:42.320 natural resources? They certainly found a market demand for their natural gas, right? He's selling,

00:08:48.640 signing these big deals and he's also getting mega corporations to come to the United States and

00:08:53.840 open up shop there. Why isn't this happening here in Canada? And the reason why it's important to focus

00:08:59.600 on this is because if you don't have big companies coming in with confidence and doing business in your

00:09:07.040 country, the government's just going to wrench money out of you. Okay. They're going to increase your taxes

00:09:13.760 even more because if you don't have good resource development and you don't have good business

00:09:18.880 investment, they're going to find that money somewhere. Okay. They're not going to try to cut

00:09:23.520 their own costs. They're going to be blood suckers and they're going to come after you. So why is it

00:09:29.280 that we aren't able to find a huge export market for our natural gas yet? We are seeing some ships head

00:09:35.120 out, which is good, but we're seeing the opposite happen. We're seeing great deals happen in the United

00:09:39.680 States. This drills down to departments doing their job well or not, doesn't have anything to

00:09:47.120 do with the political Jersey or the color of the Jersey that the prime minister or his departments

00:09:51.040 wearing. We pay people in the department of finance and treasury and international trade to deal with

00:09:58.720 this. Like this is a them problem. This is not an us Canadians problem. They need to actually figure

00:10:04.800 that out. I wanted to end on a couple of things here really quick. Okay. Again, I want you to do

00:10:10.480 a thought process and ask yourself if you're getting good value for money. We're working on our gas tax

00:10:16.400 honesty report for this, this month, highlighting how many taxes you pay at the pump. And one of the

00:10:22.320 really good things that I saw compared to last year is the consumer carbon tax is gone. And yes,

00:10:28.880 it's actually been repealed. Now it's, it's technically gone. And so at the pump, largely in most

00:10:34.560 places in Canada, it's 20 cents cheaper per liter than it was last summer. That's because the carbon

00:10:41.920 tax is gone. I did some really frightening math a few weeks ago, and I added up how much the current

00:10:51.120 government had taken from us in the carbon tax since it was first imposed back in 2019.

00:10:58.640 It's more than 40 billion dollars. 40 billion plus dollars. That's just the federal carbon tax.

00:11:10.640 That's not including British Columbia or Quebec. Just to do a bit of quick math, 40 billion dollars

00:11:19.040 collected in the carbon tax because they said it was super duper important could buy around 800

00:11:29.040 water bomber planes. That might've been a smart investment, but instead we're 40 billion dollars

00:11:36.240 poorer and they're not talking about it. What we do need to talk about is where Canada is headed,

00:11:43.120 how we're going to start getting good value for money out of our government and kick the government

00:11:49.040 into action and making sure that they are getting good investment in our country. How are we going to do

00:11:55.520 that? Let's find out. Joining me now is Michael Campbell. He is the host of Money Talks, and whenever

00:12:03.120 I have a business question, whenever I'm wondering to myself, do we really not have a business case for

00:12:09.120 natural gas in Canada? I tune in to what Michael Campbell is saying for real. So you can follow his

00:12:15.840 show. You can follow him online. He's, I would say, a frequent commentator on all things politics on social

00:12:21.840 media. Michael, thank you so much for joining the show and welcome to the Candace Malcolm Show.

00:12:27.120 My pleasure. It's interesting. What I look at is economics and finance, and I'd love never to talk

00:12:33.200 about politics because people sometimes are irrational about it. They have a tribalism.

00:12:38.240 You know, that's not what two plus two equals four is about when you talk about finance. But how can't you,

00:12:43.840 when you have so much intervention into the economy, you know, whether it's our standard of living?

00:12:48.560 Well, taxes are my biggest expense. That's political. You know, interest rates are the Bank of Canada,

00:12:54.560 but also influenced, of course, by, you know, fiscal policy there. Housing. How can you not talk

00:13:02.000 government if you're worried about housing? My big thing is I'm worried about our young people

00:13:07.200 looking at the highest rate of unemployment since 2010, ex-pandemic, but, you know, 14.6%

00:13:13.600 or, you know, those kinds of things. So you're forced into chatting about politics. And one of

00:13:20.080 the things politicians do very well is forget to tell us the consequences, the full story. They don't

00:13:26.160 say, okay, I mean, there's always a consequence to any policy. Then you get to decide, or I think

00:13:31.040 the public should, do I like that consequence or not? And so, yeah, just correct that. I'm in the

00:13:38.080 finance and economics, and that forces me into politics. I knew you were reluctant to get into

00:13:43.360 politics, but here you are, because as the old saying goes, you may not take an interest in politics,

00:13:48.480 but politics will take an interest in you. And that's exactly for the reasons you just mentioned

00:13:52.720 there. We've been talking for years and, you know, TransCanada, the Trans Mountain Pipeline,

00:13:57.600 that's a perfect example of where it was a private company, Kinder Morgan, that had all their ducks

00:14:02.640 lined up in a row. They're going to spend their own money twinning their own property, the pipeline

00:14:07.440 that ran from Edmonton out to Burnaby to try to get Alberta's oil and gas to market. But here we go,

00:14:13.920 we've got the Trudeau government getting involved, foot dragging, foot dragging, foot dragging,

00:14:18.560 until the company throws its hands up in the air, leaves, and now taxpayers are on the hook for it.

00:14:24.400 We had similar interference for a pipeline going out east, similar interference again with Northern

00:14:29.360 Gateway, and suddenly there's a big tanker ban. So to your point exactly, you may be reluctant

00:14:34.800 to have to comment on politics, but man, those politicians are really getting up in your grill.

00:14:39.600 And so I wanted to speak with you specifically about this, because we take a look at what's

00:14:44.480 going on right now down south. We take a look at this ongoing trade war that's going on, this tariff

00:14:49.760 war. And there's all this, you know, silly childish language of elbows up and we should be best friends.

00:14:55.520 And like, I don't care, like quit talking like an eight year old. What I care about is the fact

00:15:00.320 that we've got billions and billions of dollars on the line here. We're not getting along with our

00:15:06.000 biggest trading partner. And all we need to do is look, look at what the deals are that US President

00:15:12.400 Donald Trump is doing here. He's finding deals for his natural resources. He's convincing mega

00:15:18.880 corporations to do business in the United States, Apple for one. And I'm taking a look at what's going

00:15:25.520 on in Ottawa. I am not seeing the same up to snuff work going on here. I got to ask you because I'm

00:15:32.320 not a business person. You understand this world. Is there a market demand around the world for

00:15:38.560 Canada's natural gas? Would they buy it if we had it ready to go? Well, I think the best story we've

00:15:44.800 had economically in the last short while has to be the first shipments of LNG going to Asia.

00:15:51.520 The first boat went, of course, and it did get some coverage. I think another three, though,

00:15:55.120 are leaving right now. So there's a huge appetite. Also, it's become a recognition that if you really

00:16:01.280 want to, if your big worry is global emissions, well, natural gas is far superior to coal.

00:16:08.400 And so if we can ship and get China off coal, for example, that'll have a monstrous impact.

00:16:14.000 But then on the other side, Prime Minister Trudeau famously said there was no business case,

00:16:18.720 you know, looking at supplying Europe. I mean, I think it was very short sighted,

00:16:22.560 but I also look at what the US has done recently. You know, they've signed some major deals for LNG

00:16:28.480 going there. Just that it was such a glib statement, a glib attitude that was born out

00:16:32.960 of their ideology of no fossil fuels. Well, that's proved incorrect. And as I say,

00:16:37.440 thank goodness, we're doing something out of the West Coast. Could have been easier,

00:16:40.800 but happy to see it. Happy to see there is a Kinder Morgan, despite the fact that you're

00:16:44.800 absolutely accurate. I think the numbers they were throwing around when Trans Mountain, sorry,

00:16:50.160 pardon me, Trans Mountain, Kinder Morgan was talking about seven, eight billion dollars,

00:16:54.080 it ended up 34 billion. But you know what, it still makes sense. Because up till then,

00:17:00.400 we were forced to sell so much of our oil coming out of Alberta at a discount, Western Canada Select.

00:17:06.320 Well, that discount shrunk dramatically, because now we can access other markets. So I think in the end,

00:17:12.400 yeah, I'm not happy about spending about 25 billion more than we thought. But it still makes

00:17:17.760 sense economically. And so would another pipeline. And that's what they're talking about. But,

00:17:23.680 you know, as people will certainly are aware of BC Premier David Eby made the comment,

00:17:28.480 no pipelines on my watch. Absurd, but anyways, it's there. But yeah, so that's a challenge. There is an

00:17:35.840 LNG market, there is a market for our energy. And can we get it efficiently and safely in pipelines,

00:17:41.440 win the win that battle, hands down against rail or trucking or whatever way we want to do it.

00:17:46.800 I listen to your show often. And what I like about your show and your delivery is that you can explain

00:17:53.360 business situations in a way that normal people understand, even if they're not a business person

00:17:58.720 themselves, like myself included. And what you highlighted quite often is trust.

00:18:03.360 Yes. So business owners or people who want to invest need to have trust in where they're putting

00:18:10.080 their money similar to a personal relationship. Okay, you need to have trust. Can you go over

00:18:16.000 this a little bit? Where are we as a country on the trust factor? So say, you know, I've got this image

00:18:22.560 in my mind of some big rich person who's got a huge company and they want to invest their money

00:18:28.320 in Canada geographically, it could be a gold mine, it could be a fuel refinery, whatever that is,

00:18:33.680 okay, manufacturing. Where's the trust level right now with the Carney government versus the Trudeau

00:18:40.480 government? Well, I don't think there's a big change. That's the problem. There was no trust

00:18:44.640 with the Trudeau government. And I'll give you a quick example, because there has been a lot of talk

00:18:48.640 about pipelines, you know, and keep in mind, what was the experience of Enbridge at the Northern

00:18:54.000 Gateway pipeline? It went through all the hoops. It had conditional cabinet approval. I think they did

00:18:59.680 180 sort of public consultations. They had four out of five Indigenous groups supporting it. They

00:19:06.480 spent here's the key, they spent $500 million in that process. And then what happens at the end,

00:19:11.680 cabinet withdraw withdraw withdraws their approval. They put in a Northern tanker ban, which basically

00:19:17.520 said, you don't need a pipeline. Well, if I'm Enbridge, how fast do I want to get into business again

00:19:22.880 with the governments of British, sorry, of Canada? How fast do I want? And you can say, well,

00:19:28.160 no, but it's Mark Carney. Well, Mark Carney's surrounded by many of the same players in

00:19:32.640 cabinet. You know, when they look across the table, they're still looking at Chrystia Freeland,

00:19:37.120 Champagne. They're looking at, I'm just starting to think, Guibault. My goodness,

00:19:41.520 when they look at Guibault, they cry and have an excedrin break, you know. And he's already made

00:19:47.040 comments that are consistent with what he had said before. Like, we don't need another pipeline because

00:19:52.720 Trans Mountain's already full. Completely false, inaccurate, but it's the attitude. And it is a

00:19:59.840 confidence problem. And I mean, I look at confidence as an overall thing. I mean, our whole financial

00:20:05.200 system works on confidence. You put your money in a bank, you keep it there because you believe you can

00:20:09.680 get it back. If you heard rumors that you weren't going to, believe me, you'd get your money out of

00:20:14.320 there. You know, it's so when you come right down to investment decisions, I think it's important

00:20:19.840 to understand a sharp distinction between the study of economics and actual, I'm making a $500

00:20:26.800 million investment. Or if it's you and I, we may be making a $10,000 stock investment. You know,

00:20:33.200 it doesn't matter. That's where the confidence comes in. And I think that the federal government

00:20:38.800 has not, under Mr. Carney, has not been realistic about what a challenge that is. And, you know, he's

00:20:45.760 talked a big game. We're going to lead the G7. Sometimes I think, well, that's damning with

00:20:50.400 free praise when I look at what's going on in Europe. But anyways, we're going to lead the G7.

00:20:55.120 And we're going to do this and that. Well, everyone doesn't matter your political stripe. It doesn't

00:20:59.920 matter who you voted for. It starts with capital investment. Whether you want to start your own

00:21:04.720 store. You know, you said, I want a hair salon. You know, I want a nail salon. Well, it takes capital. 0.97

00:21:10.560 It doesn't matter what the situation. So if you want to grow the economy, it starts with capital

00:21:16.080 investment. Canada has a significant trust issue. And sorry, I know I'm going on, but reputation.

00:21:24.720 That guy can never stop talking for goodness sakes. But let me add one more thing that's

00:21:29.200 underappreciated. We are in a competition for capital. No different. Again, if you were selecting

00:21:35.280 a stock, you would have a whole universe of things to put your money in. You know,

00:21:39.520 if you're selecting an investment property, same thing across the country, maybe you go internationally.

00:21:45.280 Well, it's the same with major investments. They have tons of selection. And unfortunately,

00:21:50.160 we're against President Trump and the US. Well, what have they just done? Talked a big game

00:21:57.760 and followed through on reducing corporate taxes, keeping them attractive on talking about reducing

00:22:04.240 the cost of regulation. If you just stood back and said, well, which sounds a little more likely

00:22:08.720 that I'll make a profit. Unfortunately, the US wins. And now they're adding on to it, by the way,

00:22:13.920 it's an interesting aspect of the tariffs. And we saw that with Apple saying, you know,

00:22:18.880 we're going to manufacture in the US. So we don't even have to talk about tariffs for that product

00:22:24.400 and makes a deal around it. And there's other companies doing it. So Canada has to first

00:22:29.280 appreciate how intense the competition for capital is. And we have a bad reputation on that score.

00:22:37.280 And it doesn't matter, again, who you voted for. That's the reality. We've seen it in the capital

00:22:40.800 investment numbers. I'd put it this way for people who don't, you know, invest in stocks and things.

00:22:46.400 Just imagine if you were trying to buy a second house. Imagine if you're trying to buy a second house

00:22:50.880 and you wanted to say, do it for rental. You wanted people to rent your home. You would look

00:22:56.720 at the crime stats. You would look at the neighborhood. You would find out how often

00:23:00.880 garbage is picked up around there. You'd find out if there's schools, you do the tire kicking

00:23:06.160 on the neighborhood before you put your money into it. And now there you go. And now we've got

00:23:11.680 companies that are kicking the tires on Canada saying, I'm not so sure about this. I wanted to touch on

00:23:16.880 something here because you are in British Columbia and you do follow stuff very closely. And you

00:23:21.920 mentioned in the case of Northern Gateway where they had four of the five First Nations groups on board,

00:23:27.680 but it still turned into nothing. Are you following this decision, the so-called Cowichan situation,

00:23:33.920 where it looks like a judge has, I'm just paraphrasing, basically said, yeah, private property

00:23:40.240 rights do not trump Aboriginal rights when it comes to land. So this set off a whole bunch of alarm

00:23:47.520 bells late last week. And, you know, the taxpayers federation are keeping an eye on it because this

00:23:52.880 could obviously have huge implications on private property, which you pay property taxes for at the

00:23:57.680 very bare minimum. So are you following this? Is this making a lot of headlines in BC?

00:24:03.440 Absolutely. But it's right back to what you said. Think about the uncertainty that's produced.

00:24:08.000 This was a 600 page judgment and I hope it gets appealed, but people will sift through it. What

00:24:14.560 does it mean? In the meantime, all about uncertainty. And the problem is it comes on the heels of last

00:24:20.240 year when the government tried to push another similar kind of bill that gave First Nations the

00:24:28.640 right of consultation. Like we had to get First Nations. Look what Prime Minister Carney just said about,

00:24:33.680 you know, national projects have to have the cooperation of First Nations. Whether you think

00:24:38.880 that's a great policy or not, you should appreciate that that adds a level of uncertainty again, especially

00:24:45.280 against the backdrop of experiences like the Northern Gateway pipeline and others. You know, this is,

00:24:51.600 this is, you know, BC cannot afford to have a weak economy. Watching across the country may not be aware

00:24:59.360 of the significant problems with the debt in BC. I mean, the British Columbia debt in the two years

00:25:05.680 under Premier, NDP Premier David Eby is up about 45% in two years, up 45% for goodness sakes. You know,

00:25:15.840 you can't have that in any way sustainable without economic growth. Well, this is negative. Again,

00:25:22.400 I would challenge anyone, again, regardless of whether you think this is a good policy or not,

00:25:27.760 to tell me how that encourages capital investment and will encourage economic growth, because it

00:25:33.520 absolutely doesn't. Starting with even you asking the question, it shows the uncertainty and the

00:25:39.360 prominence of this. And believe me, there's no one considering a significant investment in the

00:25:44.160 province of British Columbia, who's not first looking at this, and wondering about it, and

00:25:49.040 thinking again, there's other jurisdictions that don't have this roadblock. This is it. And I think

00:25:54.160 some when people picture this ruling, which is again, 600 pages, it's a huge ruling. So we definitely

00:25:59.520 need to follow it. When they picture the ruling, they might imagine somebody with, you know, a house

00:26:04.080 in Richmond, you know, tripping their heads, paying their taxes, which is fine. But there's the business

00:26:10.000 issue there, too, like you just mentioned, like, for example, I know for a fact that the

00:26:15.040 the Trans Mountain Pipeline, the one that Kinder Morgan wanted to twin, like I mentioned, they pay

00:26:19.840 property taxes, because the pipeline physically goes through land, okay? Like, these things have

00:26:27.200 ramifications on businesses too, right? It isn't just somebody who's a homeowner in Richmond, it's a

00:26:33.040 business who might be looking at that region of BC, right?

00:26:35.760 Yeah. And again, I'd say, it doesn't matter who you voted for. When you put your money somewhere,

00:26:40.880 you want it back, and plus a return. Whether you call that a bank, or a credit union, or a major

00:26:46.240 investment, or you've bought a warehouse, and you're starting a business. All of that now has been put,

00:26:51.680 the very, this is getting talked a lot. You asked, is it on the agenda? It absolutely is. And it started

00:26:57.280 again with Vancouver Suns Von Palmer going back last year, who did some great work. And I think that work

00:27:03.280 was pivotal in derailing a similar potential impact on the province of British Columbia, again,

00:27:10.160 giving First Nations sort of the right of refusal to projects. And that, again, the uncertainty kills

00:27:16.800 them. And this is going to be talked about a great deal more, because I think people appreciate,

00:27:22.000 especially you've brought, you've, these guys have now drilled it down to my home. Oh, I understand

00:27:26.480 that. I may never want to do a business, you know, major project, a plant, you know, the equipment that

00:27:31.360 goes into it, whatever. But I got a home, and they're telling me that my legal rights are superseded,

00:27:38.560 you know, by First Nations issues. Well, I'm just saying, that doesn't make anybody comfortable.

00:27:44.240 A lot of questions. Speaking of comfort and business cases, I wanted to shift gears here,

00:27:48.960 no pun intended, to the looming ban on the sale of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. People often

00:27:55.920 refer to it as the EV mandate. But I find sometimes when we call it that it kind of slips past people.

00:28:01.840 And if you actually visualize this as a ban by the government on the sale of a regular internal

00:28:07.760 combustion engine, that's a bigger deal, you can kind of imagine that better. And again, if people

00:28:13.040 choose to buy an electric vehicle, like that's on them, that's totally up to them, it may suit their

00:28:17.760 needs, that's fine. The issue here is twofold. One, the government shouldn't be telling you what kind

00:28:23.200 of vehicle you can drive. But two, especially from the Canadian taxpayers' perspective, we don't have

00:28:28.640 the energy or the money for this. Like the math is not mathing here. But I wanted to ask you about the

00:28:36.240 business case here, because last I saw the last quarterly report, I think the sales of electric

00:28:42.640 vehicles are at 9%, single digit, 9. Starting in five months time, the federal government is going to

00:28:50.400 mandate that be 20% of new vehicle sales. Is there a business case here to force people to buy battery

00:28:57.440 powered cars? Well, there's not a practical case, that's for sure. They can't do it. I mean, no,

00:29:01.760 but flat out, they can't do it. As you say, 20% of sales by in 2026, 60% nationwide. In British

00:29:09.120 Columbia, it's 90% by 2030. So we're talking four and a half years from now. And then 100%, I think it's

00:29:16.400 100% by 2035. But again, what they're talking about is of new vehicle sales. So if I already have

00:29:23.040 an internal combustion engine, it's not impacting me, the resale value, I think that's it. Pretty

00:29:27.920 good. But the other thing they've done it, they've done it at the same time, both federally and again,

00:29:32.480 out in British Columbia provincially, they've removed the rebates. So they've taken away the incentive to

00:29:39.280 compensate me. And then the mandates and they have been, I mean, there's been so much blowback from

00:29:44.960 the industry itself saying this is literally impossible. But they still are saying they're

00:29:50.720 sticking to their guns. And can I add one more aspect to this? We don't have the charging stations.

00:29:56.880 You know, where are you going to charge your car up? And then the power demand that you've described

00:30:01.520 is absolutely accurate. There's nothing practical in this. Forget we could have the sort of philosophical

00:30:07.360 debate about internal combustion engines and the emissions and all that. And that is an important

00:30:12.640 discussion to have. I'm just saying practically, it can't happen.

00:30:16.240 I correspond with a gentleman named Blair King, who follows a lot of fuel and you know,

00:30:21.680 that sort of business, you're probably aware of him there. He's in BC as well. And he did the math,

00:30:25.840 to be fair, many years ago. So the adjustment for inflation and that might be changed. But he did the

00:30:30.960 math and he said just to change over ground transportation. This wasn't full like, you know,

00:30:35.840 factory heating or anything like that. But to change ground transportation, I believe he included

00:30:40.720 commercial. British Columbia would need like nine new Site C dams, which is just coming online now.

00:30:48.080 Like W.A.C. Bennett was the first premier who mentioned Site C because he already had A and B

00:30:54.560 lined up for folks who don't know BC politics. That's why it's called Site C, because it's the third

00:30:59.360 one. They just got that thing going now. I think they first started talking about that, Michael.

00:31:03.760 Oh, 20 years ago. I don't, I can't even do the math on that one.

00:31:07.440 25. I think I was graduating journalism school back then. And so my point here is like,

00:31:11.920 we don't have the energy and we don't have the money to build the energy, do we?

00:31:15.520 But it's a typical example. And I can give you many more. And this is where I am critical.

00:31:21.200 Because when common sense gets thrown out, my, you know, I love my example coming out of Germany,

00:31:25.760 when they closed down their nuclear plants and never thought about, well, where did we replace that power

00:31:30.560 with? Like, are you crazy? You know, or, you know, or gee, I didn't know that the sun and wind were

00:31:36.400 intermittent power sources and we needed a backup. Really? Well, I've got a four-year-old grandson

00:31:40.560 who understands the wind doesn't blow every day. It's that caliber of thinking. And in this case,

00:31:46.160 fine. If you want to do that, the electric vehicle thing, have a plan for the infrastructure.

00:31:51.920 You know, I like to start with, and it's huge. I mean, that's a huge challenge there. Like,

00:31:58.640 there's no practical way this is going to happen. That's what's going to be interesting,

00:32:02.560 but it's going to really hurt the car dealers because they get penalized if they don't meet

00:32:07.520 that mandate. 20% of their sales has to have been. It's not the consumer. It's the, it's,

00:32:12.880 I'm a car dealer. 20% of my sales must be EVs. And as they say, that's next year. And 60% by

00:32:21.520 2030 and 90% in BC. I mean, there's just so much impractical about it. I can't resist giving

00:32:28.640 everyone a headache with this stat. Think about this. They want us all in electric vehicles.

00:32:34.080 Okay. So what do they do? Put a hundred percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles,

00:32:39.840 which we'd be selling. We're about half the price with high quality choices there.

00:32:45.280 You know, so wait, we're going to make it more expensive,

00:32:48.720 more less likely that people will adopt and we'll get rid of the rebates to make sure they don't

00:32:53.760 adopt. And then we see it in the sales figure. It's almost immediately, you know, the plunging

00:32:58.720 EV sales without the rebates. It just doesn't make sense. I'm not even getting into the philosophical

00:33:04.880 debate or whether we should or shouldn't. I'm saying what they've proposed, you know,

00:33:09.280 I know we want people to buy cars. We'll make it even less attractive if they do.

00:33:13.200 This is what's mind blowing to me. We only have a couple of minutes left here,

00:33:18.400 but I wanted to point out two things. One, Natural Resources Canada has already outsourced a project

00:33:25.920 on this and done the math. That report, which is on the Government of Canada's website,

00:33:31.520 says that transitioning to electric vehicles is going to cost upwards of $300 billion with a B.

00:33:41.280 This is in a situation where a country has un-money, okay? The Trudeau government doubled our debt.

00:33:47.280 We're more than a trillion dollars in debt. The interest payments alone on our doubled debt now,

00:33:53.120 our $1.2 trillion debt, is a billion dollars a week.

00:33:58.160 To visualize this, folks, imagine every Saturday night, instead of gathering around the hockey game,

00:34:04.000 we picture a brand new hospital, all full of bells and whistles and paint and stuff ready to go.

00:34:09.040 Instead of cutting the ribbon and going in, we burn it down. We burn it down. That's just the interest.

00:34:15.520 This is a huge discussion about the debt. Now give people quickly. It's no different in your own life.

00:34:21.120 If you borrowed $100,000 and threw a hell of a party, that's the limit of it. So it's that we

00:34:26.640 have borrowed a lot of money and much of it is not productive. It's not got into productive

00:34:31.520 exercises. It's not like a company borrows and says, I'm borrowing at 5%. I think I'll make 15% on that.

00:34:37.760 No, that's not what we've done. I think what we've just hit on though,

00:34:41.280 is the biggest unappreciated story in the country today. We're looking, we do not have a federal

00:34:46.800 budget. I was looking to do some analysis just yesterday. Couldn't do it because I needed the

00:34:51.600 budget numbers. And I wanted to see what are the interest expectations forecast as we go out.

00:34:58.000 Because we know that Prime Minister Carney's agenda is about double the cost in terms of debt of

00:35:04.160 Prime Minister Trudeau's. Okay. So let me see the numbers. So that's a big one. But $92 billion,

00:35:10.640 that's the CD Howe Institute came up that for a deficit this year. Then I thought, well, no wonder

00:35:15.120 they're not having a budget. They don't want us talking about that. But I think this is a very serious

00:35:20.000 case because this idea that we can run up these numbers without consequences is absurd.

00:35:24.720 So we should be looking, okay, what are the consequences of running up those numbers?

00:35:29.040 What are the other variables, i.e. you have to have economic growth if you're adding that much debt?

00:35:34.320 That's certainly debatable. Right now, we're having an economy that's slow to shrinking,

00:35:39.440 actually. You know, unemployment numbers are up, all of that stuff. And as I say, it merits

00:35:44.720 a very focused discussion because I think we're just being glib about it at this point. It's being glossed

00:35:51.120 over. And the last thing I'll finish with is, again, another example of how young

00:35:56.480 Canadians are not on the agenda. Guess who's paying it off? Look at me. Look at my gray hair

00:36:00.880 here. I'm not paying that off. I'm not paying the interest for maybe for another week. Let's hope I

00:36:07.280 live a little longer. Yeah, let's go with that. I mentioned my grandson. He'll be paying off the

00:36:12.000 debt. They are running up for 80 years. Yep. We'll never get off it. Nope. We shouldn't be quite so

00:36:18.240 casual about it. But again, now that's a political statement on my part or a philosophical value-related

00:36:23.680 statement. I can't believe how it's ignored, but we really have to have a more focused discussion

00:36:28.640 on the amount of debt that the federal government's running up. Speaking of debt,

00:36:32.640 this is my last question for you. And I guess it's me pinning my hopes on something.

00:36:38.000 That Mark Carney, when you look at him compared to what our previous prime minister's qualifications and

00:36:43.760 capacities were. Mark Carney is the former governor of the Bank of Canada, the former governor of the

00:36:50.720 Bank of England. He holds a master's degree from, I think it's Harvard, and then a PhD from Oxford

00:36:58.080 in economics. Okay. So my point of all of this is, is this guy's no slouch. Okay. He should be able to

00:37:06.320 understand hard math. And when push comes to shove, as Ben Shapiro says, facts don't care about your

00:37:13.840 feelings. We have got a critical problem with our debt. We've got a serious confidence problem when

00:37:20.240 it comes to investors, as you point out very well, people not wanting to do business here.

00:37:25.760 So some rubber is going to have to hit the road here. Do you think that Mark Carney is going to cause

00:37:31.920 a change when they come back in the fall and they start sitting, do you see him shifting gears of

00:37:37.600 this government? Well, first thing is I'll be looking to see if he does, you know, he's got,

00:37:41.600 we all we've done is so far as talk. And I know for some Canadians, that's, that's plenty enough.

00:37:46.880 You know, that's good enough. I'm much more practical. And I know I frustrate some people that way.

00:37:51.440 I I'm, as I keep joking, I'm from Missouri, the show me state, show me, you know, get rid of the 0.67

00:37:57.200 obstacles, the legislative obstacles to, you know, a new pipeline, for example, or the oil and gas

00:38:03.520 industry. Let's see lower corporate tax rates so we can compete for capital. And let's see a lower

00:38:08.800 regulatory burden. Again, I agree with you. He understands those things, but I still need to see

00:38:14.640 some action here. And we haven't seen any. And I think so much of our future, my, my children,

00:38:21.760 grandchildren's future rests on our ability to do it. I'm not willing to bet whether he is or not,

00:38:27.120 I'm willing to just see how it goes, but there will be some specifics. We will have to get beyond

00:38:32.160 the happy talk soon. Again, that's not what investors are looking for is more happy talk.

00:38:39.360 They are looking specifically, does this project make sense? Does this investment make sense?

00:38:45.360 What are my costs? Reduce their costs, especially against a US government that's competing for capital

00:38:51.040 so aggressively with ours. So we'll see. Michael, this is why I count on you

00:38:56.240 for things like this, because you won't tell me what I want to hear. You'll just bring the data

00:39:00.000 and you'll look for it. Michael Campbell, host of Money Talks. Thank you so much for joining us

00:39:04.720 today on the Candace Malcolm show. My pleasure.

00:39:08.880 Folks, once again, that was Michael Campbell. He's been in the arena for a long time. He hosts a

00:39:14.160 great show called Money Talks. You can follow him on social media as well. Got a lot of really sage

00:39:19.120 analysis there. And I wanted to introduce him to the show because I've been following his stats and numbers

00:39:24.400 for a long time. And this is where we get down to brass tacks because it is super important for

00:39:30.320 voices like this to get out to ears like yours through independent media. It is critically important

00:39:37.840 that we grow our network, that we grow our base of independent media that asks hard questions, that does

00:39:46.560 deep dives and brings you hard data. And that is what we're doing here on the Candace Malcolm show.

00:39:52.640 So if this episode was interesting to you, if you feel like this is ringing some alarm bells and you

00:39:58.320 want to send this to your friends who need a big wake up call, do it. Share this show. Subscribe to

00:40:05.440 the show. Better yet, make a donation and support Juno News.

Juno News - August 11, 2025

MONEY FOR NOTHING - Government blowing your cash while Mark Carney takes a VACATION

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