00:14:21.960like if they just win too many it's going to be an unmanageable coalition well it's not an
00:14:27.880unmanageable coalition if you win a majority which is what the conservatives did the most stable
00:14:34.120conservative government we had in Stephen Harper's three terms was 2011 to 2015 when he had a broad
00:14:41.960decisive mandate from Canadian voters now that doesn't mean that everything he did in that time
00:14:47.160was perfect but when you win a majority you have a lot of latitude on what it is you can do and you
00:14:53.720know i criticize all the time decisions that are made by courts now in the last couple of weeks
00:14:58.840there have been some good ones on the liberal environmental policy but nevertheless i will
00:15:04.520point out here that for the liberals they are in the midst of right now a decline that is going to
00:15:13.080to look a lot like what they went through in 2011 when they're reduced to, I mean, in that case,
00:15:17.920it was third party status. Now, I don't know if that's going to happen quite, but it is going to
00:15:23.040be really, really bad news. And now all the journalists have to like get rid of the no one's
00:15:27.400vote for conservatives narrative and come up with another one. So now the risk is, well, we don't
00:15:32.780want them to be too powerful. So this is how things are shifting here. I mentioned earlier in
00:15:39.140the program that this is no longer an act of defiance. This was illegal a few days ago. Now
00:15:47.040I think it's fine. Now I have to do some more Christmas shopping because I had like ordered
00:15:51.140my wife, you know, a thousand plastic straws because I thought that was like the real romantic
00:15:56.100Christmas present of the Trudopian era. But now I have to go back to the drawing board. It's not
00:16:01.640as badass now that I don't have to like smuggle them in from some liberated country because in
00:16:06.820Canada, you can have your plastic straws now. The federal court has dismissed the government's
00:16:13.880plastics ban as unconstitutional. Part of it is because the government had such a broad
00:16:18.880and overreaching definition of what plastic is, but we also saw it as being tremendously
00:16:24.360unconstitutional, encroaching on provincial jurisdiction, but basically outstretching
00:16:30.620its own powers and the bounds of the law and the constitution. Now, what does this mean,
00:16:36.680especially when you contextualize it with the Supreme Court's rejection of the Impact Assessment Act,
00:16:44.060the No More Pipelines Act, just a couple of weeks ago.
00:16:48.200Joining me now is Chris Sims, our regular Monday guest here on The Andrew Lawton Show,
00:16:53.500the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:16:56.700And I actually saw Chris on the weekend in Red Deer at the Canada Strong and Free Network Regional Conference,
00:17:02.640which was always a good time, not only because we saw Chris, but that makes any good time better.
00:17:07.460Chris, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming back on today.
00:17:10.100Likewise, Andrew. Franco and I were talking this morning.
00:17:12.800What is Andrew going to get his wife now for Christmas that he doesn't have all these plastic straws to give?
00:17:18.480You could give her, like, jerry cans full of gasoline, but that's a little bit too expensive and a little bit too volatile.
00:17:25.720Home heating oil. We can import some home heating oil from Atlantic Canada. Tax-free if you get it from there.
00:17:30.460Hey, baby, it's tax-free. So this is important from a taxpayer's perspective because it's a wrap on the nose to intrusive, bigger government. And what was interesting in the ruling is some of the language used by the judge was, I'm paraphrasing here, this is problematic for federalism, meaning stay in your lane, Ottawa. You're reaching too far here.
00:17:54.780And while a lot of us, when we think of single-use plastics, probably think of exactly your plastic straws there that you're going to have to sell on eBay now, and the single-use plastic shopping bags, which are now almost gone, which causes all of us to walk out of the grocery store carrying all of our jars of food.
00:18:11.000It's also certain things like contact lenses, because it tried to declare all plastic manufactured items as being toxic and therefore worthy of regulation by the federal government.
00:18:26.420Interestingly, in this case, the judge actually cited things like contact lenses, and she basically said, to paraphrase, your definition of this is too broad, so we're striking it down.
00:19:07.560yeah and i would also point out that it's incredibly anti-business because you have i
00:19:14.420mean not only an entire plastic sector which i think the government is trying to vilify like as
00:19:18.920you know the like the big tobacco industry or whatever but you also have i think a really big
00:19:24.640problem here in that government companies have all we already had to respond to these regulations
00:19:30.580so a lot of the big grocery chains have already done exactly what you've alluded to there
00:19:34.320they phase these out. I was in Red Deer. I went to a very freedom loving restaurant
00:19:39.420when I was there. This was the day after the decision came and I got like one of those soggy,
00:19:44.760dissolving, disintegrating paper straws. And I know they didn't want to give it to me,
00:19:48.660but they've probably had to buy, you know, 10,000 of these things already.
00:19:52.380And the worst thing is for me that the government may get really what it wanted in the first place
00:19:59.260because they forced business to do this and now even though the law has been found to be
00:20:04.860unconstitutional a lot of businesses have already embraced these new products so Canadians are still
00:20:09.460losing out. They are but the beauty of capitalism of course and free market choice is that if enough
00:20:15.680of us complain about having paper straws disintegrating into our drinks that businesses
00:20:20.660will respond and then buy the straws or buy the spoons or the cups that we want to use
00:20:26.400when we purchase their items. Now, to your point on costs, I was reading some data coming from
00:20:32.260the restaurant industry, and you're right. The amount of money that they have had to shell out
00:20:37.120now for new clamshells, for example, what they're going to do with stir sticks, all that sort of
00:20:44.040stuff, that all costs money up front. And these are all private businesses. And so now you're
00:20:50.040right because the government stuck its nose into something so simple as to the containers we use
00:20:55.380to eat and drink, they're now going to have to alter their course. Also, this was starting us
00:21:02.560down a slippery slope because in my mom's groups on Facebook chats and stuff, a lot of us were
00:21:08.320asking, well, what's next? Are my Ziploc bags, you know, my sandwich bags that I put my kid's
00:21:14.000sandwich in for school, are they next? And all of the data I kept reading from the government was
00:21:19.000Not yet. Yet. But they were definitely establishing the precedent here from Guibo's perspective that, yes, we do have the authority to go in there and regulate what you use out of your pantry.
00:21:31.360And so this is a really nice thing to see as a correction to say no federal government, stay in your lane.
00:21:37.280This is unconstitutional. Further, this also kind of gave a spirit or a good wind, if you will, to the idea of taxing everything, including banks.
00:21:49.000and so in vancouver we saw they went so far as to try to impose a cup ban so a disposable cup ban
00:21:58.360so that we would all eventually have to use a communal pool of sippy cups the entire city
00:22:04.200i'm not i'm just imagine going into starbucks yeah i'll take my my ice latte right here please
00:22:08.760and just like you know really really squeeze the hands together so you don't lose it i forgot i
00:22:12.760forgot my reusable cup at home or into into some grody cup that's been sitting in the bottom of a
00:22:18.600backpack on some student's mapsack on the SkyTrain for years. It's just gross. But they
00:22:25.160repealed that part. They've kept their bag tax though. And now the city of Edmonton has a bag
00:22:30.920tax, no matter what it's made out of. So a paper bag in a drive-through at McDonald's, you're
00:22:36.280dinged 15 cents every single time. And they're going to jack up that price in the new year.
00:22:41.160And that might not sound like a lot, but what it does is it gives the government,
00:22:45.560it gives them free reign to intrude into your personal life in this way and tax you even for
00:22:51.940that. Even a fully recycled paper bag that's going to disintegrate anyway, they're still going to
00:22:57.920tax you for that. So this is nice to see as a correction and a movement hopefully towards more
00:23:04.320smaller and responsible government. Well, and wasn't it in Calgary where there was a store
00:23:09.440that did the thing that you're all supposed to do? They come up with this reusable bag that they
00:23:14.940will charge people for and even that was deemed too plastic by the federal government and you
00:23:20.920know that's a good good reminder that's a good freedom of information request to find out just
00:23:25.600how many bureaucrats it took to decide whether or not that it was a co-op grocery store if i'm
00:23:30.960correct in remembering whether or not so we're not even talking about these like renegade
00:23:34.400libertarians there that are like trying to screw the law these are like the do-good lefties that
00:23:38.360were trying to do everything right and probably would have even without the regulation exactly
00:23:42.520those people that like to sing in like circles and hold hands them they were the ones that were
00:23:47.320told no no no your plastic bag is too plastic also when they start looking into alternative
00:23:52.840plastics we have to keep in mind that there's pluses and minuses and wins and losses to all
00:23:58.120of these subjects and all of these materials so if you're talking about vegetable-based
00:24:03.880biodegradable plastics I've read some studies that show hey if you want to amp that up and
00:24:09.720move away from petroleum plastic and go to vegetable plastic guess what we need to grow that
00:24:16.440where on land you're going to take up arable land in order to create these plastics and you're going
00:24:23.240to take away from food production i've heard lots of warnings about that this is all to say that
00:24:28.040whenever the sorry i was getting thirsty i'm impressed you look like homer when he was trying
00:24:35.320to smoke all the cigarettes at once right so people need to keep this in mind when government
00:24:41.720comes up with these big ideas when the bureaucrats are sitting around trying to outdo each other
00:24:46.440at environment canada in ottawa or gatineau that they all have consequences they could either cost
00:24:52.200families too much money they could nuke businesses that are already on their knees after the covid
00:24:57.080lockdowns or they could even have unintended knock-on effect of hey we're taking up arable
00:25:02.760land to grow plastic bags instead of food. Yeah, I think you're, well, you're bang on there. And
00:25:09.160I think you're right to capture that bigger picture of a plastic span is just a vast expansion
00:25:14.600in the role of the state. Because really, this is central planning, the most minute things. It is
00:25:20.800what you put in your pantry cupboard. And incidentally, it's also causing more waste.
00:25:27.040I mean, one of the number one complaints that I get from people about these is the one that's so
00:25:31.780familiar which is that we all just buy these things every time we go to the grocery store
00:25:37.280because we can't hold everything and get out to our cars so we buy them and then we forget them
00:25:42.260at home and then we have to buy another one the next time we go there not only is it more expensive
00:25:45.760because these are you know like a buck two bucks a piece but also now you're producing more and
00:25:50.020more of these things when I think most families and certainly my own have like a giant bag or
00:25:56.780cupboard full of plastic bags that we reuse for things like garbage and you know household whatever
00:26:03.740walking your dog yeah now what do you do if you want you know a garbage bag to line your uh you
00:26:09.420know bathroom garbage can what are you doing you're going to the store and buying plastic garbage
00:26:15.580container liners like this is just so absurd exactly there's no there's no proof that this is
00:26:23.020fully reducing our use of such things like where are these things being made up so for example
00:26:29.340a lot of these so-called plastic or canvas or whatever bags you see i check because i want to
00:26:34.700know almost all of them that i've seen are made overseas namely china and i don't know about you
00:26:41.340but the last time i checked i don't think china has the same environmental regulations as canada
00:26:46.780it does so it also had to get here i mean even if it did it had to be shipped here look it came here
00:26:52.880on a barge and again you're right we're all forgetting them at home and so you have to really
00:26:57.420look at the knock-on effect and even if you make your own which i do i sewed a whole bunch of these
00:27:03.480bags which i also forget in my pantry before i go grocery shopping that also takes up energy and
00:27:09.280materials and resources so again this is all you know it reminds me going back to dr thomas soul
00:27:14.920who is still with us, thank goodness, 93 years old, and the gentleman just put out a book.
00:27:20.000So I wish. So he said, whenever somebody comes up with a brilliant idea, we should ask them
00:27:26.240three questions. Compared to what? At what cost? What hard evidence do you have? It looks like
00:27:34.800they failed on all three counts. And interestingly, now the court is saying, folks, stay in your lane.
00:27:41.020so here's the thing that i i have to ask before we move on from this because obviously the
00:27:47.620government doesn't really seem to be accepting that it lost this is true with the impact assessment
00:27:53.280act ruling it's true with this the government is still trying to plow ahead so are you kind of
00:27:58.960thinking that this is going to end up being a political decision that canadians will make where
00:28:02.640they have to elect a government that just says no we don't want this level of intrusion
00:28:06.340yeah i think so just from my experience on the hill and my experience as a journalist forever
00:28:12.320i see this as one of those nuisance factors so 15 cents is not the same amount as say a photo
00:28:20.700radar ticket would have been uh back in in ontario back in the day under pcs and mike harris
00:28:27.000but keep in mind the amount of intrusive nuisance factor vote that was so mike harris
00:28:33.620won for many reasons when he became Premier of Ontario. But one of the key reasons why he won
00:28:38.340is because he said, I'll ban photo radar. I'll get rid of it. And so I think this is one of those
00:28:44.520personal, my nose is out of joint. You're in my face. I'm really tapped out because you've caused
00:28:50.980inflation. You've jacked up my carbon taxes. You've increased my payroll taxes. I can barely
00:28:56.600afford groceries. And now I have to juggle all my jars of jam getting out to my car. So I think
00:29:02.780that is eventually going to be one of those issues. It's going to become a political factor.
00:29:07.360Yeah, I think jam juggling is going into the next election. All right, Chris,
00:29:10.500since you brought it up, I have to ask you, who wore it better?
00:29:15.100Oh my gosh. See, I was right. I remembered that one. I like yours. It's more relevant.
00:29:21.680Okay. These are more deadly, according to Stephen Gilbeau. So I'll give up plastic straws and take
00:29:28.360up smoking that'll be my contribution there uh chris sims from the canadian taxpayers federation
00:29:33.560always a pleasure great seeing you on the weekend and we will see you next monday you betcha all
00:29:38.400right thanks very much for that uh simpsons references are always the evergreen the always
00:29:44.760the evergreen one i don't even get them most of the time but everyone around me does so as someone
00:29:49.600on true north's internal discussion understood that reference so uh in any case we are going to
00:29:55.340move on from that, but well, let's just do one more victory lap here for the road. There we go.
00:30:02.160Apparently I need a refill. Anyway, this is a good day for taxpayers in some ways for the reasons we
00:30:08.480were just discussing, but for others, not so much. Now, remember the billions and billions and
00:30:14.540billions of dollars that was being spent on the electric vehicle battery plant. This was the big,
00:30:20.940giant ambitious plan to set up a Volkswagen EV battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario.
00:30:27.380And then Stellantis, which is the company that now owns Chrysler, said, oh, hang on,
00:30:31.320we want a piece of this corporate welfare also, and got into it. Well, now we find out that this
00:30:37.880money, which was defended by the government as being for Canadian jobs, is not even going towards
00:30:45.720Canadian jobs. It's being largely used to bring in temporary foreign workers that Canadians are now
00:30:53.700paying for. So Canadians are on net losing money entirely on this. Here was a clip of
00:31:00.220Conservative leader Pierre Polyev condemning this revelation. Now we learn that the $15 billion
00:31:07.640dollar grant to the Stellantis plant will fund mostly jobs for non-Canadians not immigrants
00:31:17.240we love jobs for immigrants jobs for people who are not Canadian citizens and will not
00:31:22.760be Canadian citizens they will come here get a taxpayer funded paycheck and take it back
00:31:30.680to their country I love South Korea wonderful country but they don't fund jobs for Canadians
00:31:37.640And we shouldn't fund jobs for their workers.
00:32:02.320This is a $15 billion grant to one company.
00:32:07.100$15 billion works out to $1,000 for every single Canadian family.
00:32:13.580You've got 15 million families in Canada.
00:32:16.480You've got $15 billion for this one company.
00:32:19.780Every family in Canada will give $1,000 to this plant.
00:32:23.520And now we know that the majority of the jobs won't even go to Canadians.
00:32:28.360That's specifically referring to Stellantis in Windsor.
00:32:33.460but I think the general sense here when we talk about Volkswagen, Stellantis, all of this is that
00:32:39.080in general corporate welfare is not a winning proposition. Canadian taxpayers, Canadian workers
00:32:45.940really don't benefit from this. It becomes a race to the bottom. It's the big multinational
00:32:49.980companies that are the ones cashing the checks here but in this case it really is adding insult
00:32:54.380to injury when it's not even Canadian jobs that are ostensibly being created here. Aaron Woodrick
00:33:00.200is the domestic policy guru over at the mcdonald laurier institute and joins us now aaron always
00:33:06.180good to talk to you i mean this is like really a slap in the face but i'm almost glad because it
00:33:11.320shows more ostentatiously how bad corporate welfare is yeah look for for those who are
00:33:17.700tuning in who don't know my history on this i mean i've been a long time critic of corporate
00:33:21.060welfare in all sectors in all places at all times i'm a big fan of free enterprise and business and
00:33:27.300the right to earn a living and make money if you can. But you should not be getting tax dollars if
00:33:32.020your business cannot support itself. And that's especially true of these large multinationals.
00:33:36.520Andrew, in this case in particular, what I had a bit of a chuckle about is that, you know,
00:33:40.980these are the same people, whenever I make my usual objections, they say, well, you know,
00:33:44.500that's just the price we have to pay. We have to pay to play. If we want to get this plan,
00:33:49.160we just have to outlay these billions of dollars. That's just the way it is. But if you say, oh,
00:33:53.200So some of that outlay has to go to, you know, say the South Koreans want to bring in some experts from Seoul because they're the only ones who can do this.
00:34:00.200Oh, no, no, we can't have that. That's not a price we're willing to pay.
00:34:02.960We're willing to throw billions of dollars at something that makes no economic sense.
00:34:06.380But God forbid some of those workers come from outside of Canada.
00:34:09.160So I thought that was a little bit rich, but it does expose the absurdity of the whole thing.
00:34:13.860And frankly, it's just another reason why governments should not get their fingers into these business, right?
00:34:19.400Like if a business brings in foreign workers and they're paying it on their dime, it's kind of none of our business.
00:34:24.680But once our money is engaged, once taxpayer money's invades, you've got the government going in there saying, well, you have to put the plant here and you have to have this many employees and you have to produce.
00:34:33.460I mean, the government is basically running the company.
00:34:35.760And then you start to wonder, I mean, for people who know, well, government runs itself.
00:34:39.420Imagine how good a job they're going to do running a business like Stellantis.
00:34:43.640And I think Pierre Polyev made a point there, which is a valid one.
00:34:46.600I mean, South Korea, I don't know much about their domestic politics, but I suspect they're not giving companies large bailouts to bring in Canadian workers, nor should they.
00:34:55.640So I don't really see the argument here on how Canada should be doing this.
00:34:59.760I mean, TFWs are already a bit contentious.
00:35:02.480I mean, the argument is that, well, they only exist because there are jobs that Canadians just can't do or more specifically won't do.
00:35:09.000In this particular case, when companies are given money that governments are turning around and defending by saying it's going to create Canadian jobs and it's creating South Korean jobs, it just doesn't really square there.
00:35:20.680No, look, and when it comes to importing workers to do work in this country, they generally fall into one of two buckets, right?
00:35:25.820You have people who are very rare skills that are highly skilled that we just don't have enough of those people on the high end.
00:35:32.180And then also what we call the low skill end.
00:35:34.180So you've got work that Canadians don't want to do.
00:35:37.880So those are the two sort of high end and low end. Now on the high end, you know, if you're in a, you know, you're looking for nuclear physicists, right? There's just not that many. There's not that much you can do, but that's not very many jobs. On the low end, the challenge we have is people, employers say, well, we can't find any workers, even if we raise our wages. You know, in some cases, that's true. But my response there is, well, what kind of entitlements is the government offering that will keep people out of these jobs?
00:36:02.260I mean, the reality is if people, if we live in a country where the social safety net is so comfortable that you can actually choose to work or not, and I'm not saying all people do this, of course, some people can't work and have legitimate reasons not to work, but especially in certain regions of this country, it's well established that there are people that are prepared to work less or work part of the year because the entitlement system is so generous.
00:36:22.260So my argument is if you actually make that entitlement system a little bit less generous, create some better incentives for people to work, you'll have more people going into those jobs, you'll have less need for temporary foreign workers, and this problem largely goes away.
00:36:34.780Yeah, and I hate to keep beating people over the head with the obvious point here, but there is a difference between a company that says, look, we have this need, we believe it can be best filled or only filled by foreign workers in this market, and a company that does that well, the government is paying for it.
00:36:51.340Well, exactly. We're paying for the privilege. And if a business wants to do that sort of thing, boy, they should be running as far away as they can from any handout because obviously this objection and politicians are right.
00:37:03.520I mean, at least in this instance, you have governments now saying, well, we want to make sure the taxpayer money is well spent on a subsidy in a different way.
00:37:10.800But nonetheless, I mean, you can see how any politician worth their salt is going to see the alarm ringing here saying this is not going to go over well with anybody if this money is actually leaving the country.
00:37:21.440Outside of this, I wanted to get you on the show anyway today.
00:37:24.440You had a great piece in the Globe and Mail.
00:37:26.940The key to saving Canada's economy is tax reform.
00:37:30.460Now, I think it's safe to say in the last eight years,
00:37:32.260no one in government has come up with a key to saving Canada's economy.
00:37:35.740So I think as a Canadian, I say thank you for putting this up there.
00:37:39.840But when you say tax reform, I mean, we often hear governments
00:37:42.780and political parties talk about, oh, we can, you know,
00:37:45.700add this little tax credit here, this reduction.
00:37:48.200In some cases, even more radical reforms, like what Stephen Harper did in reducing the GST.
00:37:54.780But when you talk about tax reform, you're talking about something a bit more radical here.