Juno News - One-quarter of Justin Trudeau's time in office have been ＂personal＂ days

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all welcome back to you all or maybe welcome back to me this is

00:01:31.160 the andrew lawton show canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north i was away last week

00:01:37.800 hard at work on a very special product project i hope to be able to tell you about in just a couple

00:01:43.720 of moments but i'm a little out of practice i i gotta get a sip of water here before we continue

00:01:48.520 Just one moment. Oh, much better. You can get so much water in when you just use a straw that is

00:01:59.060 not disintegrating before you. So this was actually illegal. I mean, I always drink like

00:02:05.220 this, but this was like illegal until Friday when the federal court came down the line and said that

00:02:12.740 you can absolutely use a non-disintegrating straw. I believe that's technically what they're called

00:02:18.120 there. But the federal court made a rare good decision about the government's plastic span.

00:02:25.360 Now, this is the latest rebuke of the government's environmental policies. We'll talk about that in

00:02:30.500 a little bit of time with Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And a bit later

00:02:36.060 on in the show, we will talk about the perils of corporate welfare and how the government's

00:02:40.800 bazillion dollar, that's like the technical number, the bazillion dollar electric vehicle

00:02:45.680 battery corporate welfare plans it has are not even going towards Canadian jobs, believe it or

00:02:52.460 not. So I'd say with this government, we can probably believe it, but that's where we are

00:02:57.520 there. This is a bit of an interesting story. So Glenn McGregor in the National Post did a data

00:03:04.320 analysis of Trudeau's schedule. So he like for the last eight years went through all of the itineraries

00:03:11.120 that Justin Trudeau posts. It's difficult work. I know that because True North's own

00:03:14.980 Kosman Georgia did this a couple of years back to look at how many days Justin Trudeau took that

00:03:21.220 were logged as personal. So on his itinerary, it'll show, oh, you know, we've got a meeting

00:03:26.320 with the chairman of the World Economic Forum. We've got a check presentation to the president

00:03:32.220 of Ukraine. We've got all of these things. And then when he's not doing anything, it will say

00:03:37.820 personal. And sometimes it's personal because he's surfing on the beach in Tofino. Other times

00:03:43.060 it's because he's surfing on the beach of Tofino. Sometimes his days are personal because he is,

00:03:49.620 believe it or not, surfing on the beach in Tofino. But I'm sorry, I'm banging my straws now. That's

00:03:55.600 the problem with prop comedy. But the thing about it is that Justin Trudeau has taken 24% of his

00:04:03.120 time in office based on 2015 to the present excluding elections as personal. 24%. Now this

00:04:11.960 amounts to 22 months of personal days in the span of eight years. That is nearly two full years of

00:04:18.920 time off. Now this is for Canadians quite difficult to grasp because most Canadians will have a very

00:04:27.020 difficult time getting the time off from work. Most Canadians will also find that they have to

00:04:31.920 work second jobs on the weekends, say. So Canadians are not getting as much time off as

00:04:36.540 Justin Trudeau. Now it's easy to criticize him. It is easy for conservatives. And I see a lot of it

00:04:42.880 jumping up and down saying, oh, he's some dilettante. He's not actually interested in

00:04:47.100 being prime minister. He just wants to jet off and go on vacation and all of that. And you know

00:04:51.540 what? Fair enough. But here's the counterpoint to that. And I'm going to do the rare defense

00:04:56.980 of Justin Trudeau that you don't often get here on The Andrew Lawton Show. Don't tune out just yet.

00:05:01.920 do we want him working 100% of the time?

00:05:07.260 Like, look at all that Justin Trudeau has done

00:05:09.640 in the 76% of time that he's been on duty

00:05:14.100 for the last eight years.

00:05:15.800 Do we really want that increase to 100%?

00:05:19.020 Because I am no mathematician.

00:05:20.980 I am not great at the numbers.

00:05:22.520 I'm good with politics.

00:05:23.460 I'm good with ideas.

00:05:24.240 I'm wonderful with geography.

00:05:25.860 If you want to, like, give me a foreign flag

00:05:27.760 and say, where is this from?

00:05:29.040 I'll be like, no, no, no, that's Monaco.

00:05:31.200 that's that stuff's easy but math in a little bit but but by my rudimentary calculations if justin

00:05:38.800 trudeau were to work full time like maybe not even one let's just say 100 because i can do that i

00:05:44.480 already did that math in my head if he were to work 100 of the time that would be like 33 wait

00:05:51.200 sean's checking my math here you say it's a 50 increase no it wouldn't be a 50 increase if he

00:05:57.600 were to work uh 66 divided okay sean's confusing me with the numbers here no no no because he only

00:06:03.920 works uh 76 of the time now so if he were to do 100 that would be a 33 increase not a 50 increase

00:06:12.720 okay my math is apparently better than sean sean like got me but sean's giving me like nine numbers

00:06:18.160 in our show chat right now and like none of them are the accurate one so anyway yeah so that would

00:06:22.080 would be a one-third increase so do you want Justin Trudeau to do one-third more than he has

00:06:27.840 done right now like think of what the national debt would be if we were to add a third to what

00:06:31.700 the national debt is right now so I'll give Justin Trudeau a bit of credit and saying you know look

00:06:37.000 if you want to spend more time on Tofino that's better for Canadian taxpayers I'm going to say

00:06:42.920 like I believe you've earned more time off you've earned more vacation if you want to just do what

00:06:48.560 like unionized workers do when they're retiring and they take all their unused vacation and just

00:06:53.100 take like one nine month paid holiday I think it would be cheaper for Canada even still than what

00:06:59.400 he would do in that nine months of labor so uh that is my attempt Sean's now like editing the

00:07:04.400 numbers he did previously to mask the fact that he got them wrong you know you can't edit I've

00:07:08.080 already read them on air Sean all right this is why we are not a mathematics program here

00:07:12.640 on the Andrew Lawton show in fact I would actually be qualified to be liberal finance minister with

00:07:17.560 my mathematics skills sean certainly would be uh qualified to be a liberal finance minister right

00:07:22.460 now but uh nevertheless it's good to have you tuned in to the program here i i all that math

00:07:28.100 i've worked up uh the need to have a bit more water here oh you got that lovely slurp into my

00:07:35.000 high-end microphone just for comedic effect there but uh nevertheless i want to talk about this

00:07:40.180 little thing that took place this morning so pierre pauliev was doing a scrum with reporters

00:07:44.640 back in Ottawa. And he mentioned something which I wouldn't have even paid attention to because

00:07:50.140 I've heard him talk about this in the past. It's not really a new idea. And he said it in French,

00:07:54.920 so I won't make you listen to it. But that wasn't like an insult to the, well, maybe it was. But

00:07:59.520 the thing is, Polyev made a comment about the Liberals being socialist. And like this is,

00:08:06.640 there's that old thing about how when a dog bites a man, that's not news. But when a man bites a dog,

00:08:13.060 that's news. Trudeau being a socialist is not news. Pierre Polyev calling Trudeau a socialist

00:08:18.740 is not really news. I wouldn't have really paid much attention to it. But there was a reporter

00:08:23.400 from the Toronto Star who did chime in and made a comment about this. Alex Ballingall said Pierre

00:08:31.100 Polyev just said the Trudeau government is socialist. And then he followed it up with a

00:08:37.800 fair enough comment on this. I've never heard any liberal in this government talk about the appeal

00:08:42.160 of overthrowing capitalism. Well, I bet they probably have, but here's some reading about

00:08:46.780 what socialism is. And then he links to a piece that was published by a professor at Stanford

00:08:53.020 University. Now, I would say that that piece was a little bit more oriented towards communism. I

00:08:58.880 think we see in a lot of countries that are very markedly socialist, but still have some level

00:09:04.560 of capitalist enterprise in them. Now, I could go on and on and on, and I'll try not to do too much

00:09:11.280 of this with discussions about, say, how the liberal government is behaving in a more socialist

00:09:18.920 way. I could talk about Chrystia Freeland's embrace of stakeholder capitalism, which 0.91

00:09:23.880 fundamentally undermines what capitalism is and what free markets are. I could talk about

00:09:29.220 the expansion of the state. I could talk about the expansion of social welfare. I could talk

00:09:34.980 about the universalization of pharma care and dental care that we get from people on the left,

00:09:40.320 including Trudeau government, I could make a detailed point by point case for why the Trudeau

00:09:47.380 government is socialist in nature. Or I could just share this clip with you. Mr. Speaker, so I was

00:09:54.840 I was sitting. I'm a liberal and a proud socialist, Mr. Speaker. But this reminds me of a certain

00:10:01.060 quote from Prime Minister Harper, who talked about the fight against climate change as a socialist

00:10:06.500 plot. That's what the Conservative Party, and here it is, you have it again, Mr. Speaker,

00:10:10.980 they do not believe that climate change is an issue.

00:10:16.960 Sorry, I'm a proud socialist. So Pierre Polyev might have been more accurate if he had said a

00:10:26.000 proud socialist government. That's like the real pride month, socialism pride for the liberals. So

00:10:32.140 that is Environment Minister Stephen Gilbeau, who I bet has probably talked about overthrowing

00:10:37.400 capitalism, if I looked hard enough, especially his time before office, getting up in the House

00:10:41.660 of Commons and saying in response to a complaint by the Conservatives that the Liberals were 0.63

00:10:47.960 socialists, well, gosh darn it, I am a proud socialist. That is Stephen Gilbeau's approach.

00:10:54.940 Now, Stephen Gilbeau is having a very, very bad couple of weeks. Stephen Gilbeau has had a

00:11:01.060 miserable time. The federal government keeps dismissing, sorry, the court system keeps

00:11:06.180 dismissing his environmental policy, the most recent of which we'll be talking about in a few

00:11:11.500 moments with Chris Sims, which is the plastics ban. But the whole point is Pierre Polyev makes

00:11:18.060 what is a factual comment that the liberal government is socialist. We have a Toronto

00:11:22.860 Star journalist trying to debunk it in some way. Now, I just responded to Alex, who I actually like

00:11:29.420 And I think it's quite capable with a link to that clip.

00:11:32.320 And then he retweeted it.

00:11:33.720 And apparently the conservatives have been circulating that clip in force when asked about this as well.

00:11:39.460 And then Rachel Gilmore, the TikTok influencer who used to work for my old company, Global News,

00:11:45.900 had said that Pierre Polyev, so we're just like saying stuff these days, A.

00:11:53.060 Well, yes.

00:11:54.420 Who is saying this stuff?

00:11:56.240 Stephen Gilbeau.

00:11:57.180 Take a look again, just for posterity.

00:11:59.420 Mr. Speaker, so I was sitting. I'm a liberal and a proud socialist, Mr. Speaker. But this

00:12:06.460 reminds me of a certain quote from Prime Minister Harper who talked about the fight against climate

00:12:12.120 change as a socialist plot. That's what the Conservative Party, and here it is, you have it

00:12:16.880 again, Mr. Speaker. They do not believe that climate change is an issue. See, socialist plot

00:12:23.460 to him is like a compliment. If you say, oh, this is a socialist plot, he'll be like, well, yes,

00:12:27.300 we need to pass it twice as quickly now. So the media is just absolutely deranged about Pierre

00:12:34.340 Polyev. Like they're, they're like this with every conservative leader. It's not particularly a new 0.99

00:12:39.200 phenomenon, but we're going to see it ramp up more and more. Now, the one thing is the media has just

00:12:45.020 been wrong about this. We had, when Pierre Polyev was elected, all of these columns from people in

00:12:50.240 the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail saying things like, I won't, I'm just paraphrasing,

00:12:54.480 but these were all things that we heard of, oh, he's too radical to win. No Canadian's going to

00:12:59.300 like him. Conservatives are going to have their worst showing yet. Remember, Jean Charest was the

00:13:03.880 guy that was going to be able to deliver a conservative victory, not this Pierre Poilier

00:13:09.600 kind of guy, whoever that is. And this was the point here. We've seen polling consistently

00:13:17.040 over the last few weeks that not only show more conservative support than liberal support,

00:13:22.980 but polling that shows massive, massive conservative margins, larger projections for

00:13:29.000 conservatives in the next election than even Stephen Harper had the year he won his majority,

00:13:35.380 2011. And then now the media has had to try to find a way to fit this into its narrative.

00:13:42.300 And it's really interesting. How do you spin really good conservative poll numbers into this

00:13:47.680 message that, oh, well, the conservatives don't have a shot? This is a great example

00:13:51.960 in the Montreal Gazette.

00:13:54.440 Are the Conservatives at risk of winning too many seats?

00:14:00.240 A row for Pierre Polyev could spell trouble for the Tories

00:14:03.200 if the result replicates the unmanageable voter blocs

00:14:06.100 they faced in the past.

00:14:07.880 You look at how the Liberal polls are weakening.

00:14:11.560 You read about how, oh yes,

00:14:13.000 the Conservatives are doing well in the polls.

00:14:14.880 The Liberals have been trounced in the past,

00:14:17.460 including in 2011.

00:14:19.480 And then they're saying, oh, well,

00:14:20.680 but for the Conservatives,

00:14:21.960 like if they just win too many it's going to be an unmanageable coalition well it's not an

00:14:27.880 unmanageable coalition if you win a majority which is what the conservatives did the most stable

00:14:34.120 conservative government we had in Stephen Harper's three terms was 2011 to 2015 when he had a broad

00:14:41.960 decisive mandate from Canadian voters now that doesn't mean that everything he did in that time

00:14:47.160 was perfect but when you win a majority you have a lot of latitude on what it is you can do and you

00:14:53.720 know i criticize all the time decisions that are made by courts now in the last couple of weeks

00:14:58.840 there have been some good ones on the liberal environmental policy but nevertheless i will

00:15:04.520 point out here that for the liberals they are in the midst of right now a decline that is going to

00:15:13.080 to look a lot like what they went through in 2011 when they're reduced to, I mean, in that case,

00:15:17.920 it was third party status. Now, I don't know if that's going to happen quite, but it is going to

00:15:23.040 be really, really bad news. And now all the journalists have to like get rid of the no one's

00:15:27.400 vote for conservatives narrative and come up with another one. So now the risk is, well, we don't

00:15:32.780 want them to be too powerful. So this is how things are shifting here. I mentioned earlier in

00:15:39.140 the program that this is no longer an act of defiance. This was illegal a few days ago. Now

00:15:47.040 I think it's fine. Now I have to do some more Christmas shopping because I had like ordered

00:15:51.140 my wife, you know, a thousand plastic straws because I thought that was like the real romantic

00:15:56.100 Christmas present of the Trudopian era. But now I have to go back to the drawing board. It's not 0.99

00:16:01.640 as badass now that I don't have to like smuggle them in from some liberated country because in

00:16:06.820 Canada, you can have your plastic straws now. The federal court has dismissed the government's

00:16:13.880 plastics ban as unconstitutional. Part of it is because the government had such a broad

00:16:18.880 and overreaching definition of what plastic is, but we also saw it as being tremendously

00:16:24.360 unconstitutional, encroaching on provincial jurisdiction, but basically outstretching

00:16:30.620 its own powers and the bounds of the law and the constitution. Now, what does this mean,

00:16:36.680 especially when you contextualize it with the Supreme Court's rejection of the Impact Assessment Act,

00:16:44.060 the No More Pipelines Act, just a couple of weeks ago.

00:16:48.200 Joining me now is Chris Sims, our regular Monday guest here on The Andrew Lawton Show,

00:16:53.500 the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:16:56.700 And I actually saw Chris on the weekend in Red Deer at the Canada Strong and Free Network Regional Conference,

00:17:02.640 which was always a good time, not only because we saw Chris, but that makes any good time better.

00:17:07.460 Chris, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming back on today.

00:17:10.100 Likewise, Andrew. Franco and I were talking this morning.

00:17:12.800 What is Andrew going to get his wife now for Christmas that he doesn't have all these plastic straws to give?

00:17:18.480 You could give her, like, jerry cans full of gasoline, but that's a little bit too expensive and a little bit too volatile.

00:17:25.720 Home heating oil. We can import some home heating oil from Atlantic Canada. Tax-free if you get it from there.

00:17:30.460 Hey, 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.

00:17:54.780 And 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.

00:18:11.000 It'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.

00:18:26.420 Interestingly, 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.

00:18:39.080 Now, interestingly, of course,

00:18:40.780 Guibo is saying the fight's not over.

00:18:42.700 I still want to climb into your house

00:18:44.500 and regulate what you have in there.

00:18:46.580 So they're probably going to appeal it.

00:18:48.580 But you're right.

00:18:49.280 On the heels of overturning Bill C-69,

00:18:52.820 at least ruling against it,

00:18:54.420 and now this plastics ban being called unconstitutional

00:18:57.780 and a threat to federalism,

00:18:59.520 this is really good news for people

00:19:01.580 who want government to be small enough

00:19:04.040 to drown in the bathtub,

00:19:05.980 as Governor Norquist famously said.

00:19:07.560 yeah and i would also point out that it's incredibly anti-business because you have i

00:19:14.420 mean not only an entire plastic sector which i think the government is trying to vilify like as

00:19:18.920 you know the like the big tobacco industry or whatever but you also have i think a really big

00:19:24.640 problem here in that government companies have all we already had to respond to these regulations

00:19:30.580 so a lot of the big grocery chains have already done exactly what you've alluded to there

00:19:34.320 they phase these out. I was in Red Deer. I went to a very freedom loving restaurant

00:19:39.420 when I was there. This was the day after the decision came and I got like one of those soggy,

00:19:44.760 dissolving, disintegrating paper straws. And I know they didn't want to give it to me,

00:19:48.660 but they've probably had to buy, you know, 10,000 of these things already.

00:19:52.380 And the worst thing is for me that the government may get really what it wanted in the first place

00:19:59.260 because they forced business to do this and now even though the law has been found to be

00:20:04.860 unconstitutional a lot of businesses have already embraced these new products so Canadians are still

00:20:09.460 losing out. They are but the beauty of capitalism of course and free market choice is that if enough

00:20:15.680 of us complain about having paper straws disintegrating into our drinks that businesses

00:20:20.660 will respond and then buy the straws or buy the spoons or the cups that we want to use

00:20:26.400 when we purchase their items. Now, to your point on costs, I was reading some data coming from

00:20:32.260 the restaurant industry, and you're right. The amount of money that they have had to shell out

00:20:37.120 now for new clamshells, for example, what they're going to do with stir sticks, all that sort of

00:20:44.040 stuff, that all costs money up front. And these are all private businesses. And so now you're

00:20:50.040 right because the government stuck its nose into something so simple as to the containers we use

00:20:55.380 to eat and drink, they're now going to have to alter their course. Also, this was starting us

00:21:02.560 down a slippery slope because in my mom's groups on Facebook chats and stuff, a lot of us were

00:21:08.320 asking, well, what's next? Are my Ziploc bags, you know, my sandwich bags that I put my kid's

00:21:14.000 sandwich in for school, are they next? And all of the data I kept reading from the government was

00:21:19.000 Not 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.

00:21:31.360 And so this is a really nice thing to see as a correction to say no federal government, stay in your lane.

00:21:37.280 This 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.

00:21:49.000 and so in vancouver we saw they went so far as to try to impose a cup ban so a disposable cup ban

00:21:58.360 so that we would all eventually have to use a communal pool of sippy cups the entire city

00:22:04.200 i'm not i'm just imagine going into starbucks yeah i'll take my my ice latte right here please

00:22:08.760 and just like you know really really squeeze the hands together so you don't lose it i forgot i

00:22:12.760 forgot my reusable cup at home or into into some grody cup that's been sitting in the bottom of a

00:22:18.600 backpack on some student's mapsack on the SkyTrain for years. It's just gross. But they

00:22:25.160 repealed that part. They've kept their bag tax though. And now the city of Edmonton has a bag

00:22:30.920 tax, no matter what it's made out of. So a paper bag in a drive-through at McDonald's, you're

00:22:36.280 dinged 15 cents every single time. And they're going to jack up that price in the new year.

00:22:41.160 And that might not sound like a lot, but what it does is it gives the government,

00:22:45.560 it gives them free reign to intrude into your personal life in this way and tax you even for

00:22:51.940 that. Even a fully recycled paper bag that's going to disintegrate anyway, they're still going to

00:22:57.920 tax you for that. So this is nice to see as a correction and a movement hopefully towards more

00:23:04.320 smaller and responsible government. Well, and wasn't it in Calgary where there was a store

00:23:09.440 that did the thing that you're all supposed to do? They come up with this reusable bag that they

00:23:14.940 will charge people for and even that was deemed too plastic by the federal government and you

00:23:20.920 know that's a good good reminder that's a good freedom of information request to find out just

00:23:25.600 how many bureaucrats it took to decide whether or not that it was a co-op grocery store if i'm

00:23:30.960 correct in remembering whether or not so we're not even talking about these like renegade

00:23:34.400 libertarians there that are like trying to screw the law these are like the do-good lefties that

00:23:38.360 were trying to do everything right and probably would have even without the regulation exactly

00:23:42.520 those people that like to sing in like circles and hold hands them they were the ones that were

00:23:47.320 told no no no your plastic bag is too plastic also when they start looking into alternative

00:23:52.840 plastics we have to keep in mind that there's pluses and minuses and wins and losses to all

00:23:58.120 of these subjects and all of these materials so if you're talking about vegetable-based

00:24:03.880 biodegradable plastics I've read some studies that show hey if you want to amp that up and

00:24:09.720 move away from petroleum plastic and go to vegetable plastic guess what we need to grow that

00:24:16.440 where on land you're going to take up arable land in order to create these plastics and you're going

00:24:23.240 to take away from food production i've heard lots of warnings about that this is all to say that

00:24:28.040 whenever the sorry i was getting thirsty i'm impressed you look like homer when he was trying

00:24:35.320 to smoke all the cigarettes at once right so people need to keep this in mind when government

00:24:41.720 comes up with these big ideas when the bureaucrats are sitting around trying to outdo each other

00:24:46.440 at environment canada in ottawa or gatineau that they all have consequences they could either cost

00:24:52.200 families too much money they could nuke businesses that are already on their knees after the covid

00:24:57.080 lockdowns or they could even have unintended knock-on effect of hey we're taking up arable

00:25:02.760 land to grow plastic bags instead of food. Yeah, I think you're, well, you're bang on there. And

00:25:09.160 I think you're right to capture that bigger picture of a plastic span is just a vast expansion

00:25:14.600 in the role of the state. Because really, this is central planning, the most minute things. It is

00:25:20.800 what you put in your pantry cupboard. And incidentally, it's also causing more waste.

00:25:27.040 I mean, one of the number one complaints that I get from people about these is the one that's so

00:25:31.780 familiar which is that we all just buy these things every time we go to the grocery store

00:25:37.280 because we can't hold everything and get out to our cars so we buy them and then we forget them

00:25:42.260 at home and then we have to buy another one the next time we go there not only is it more expensive

00:25:45.760 because these are you know like a buck two bucks a piece but also now you're producing more and

00:25:50.020 more of these things when I think most families and certainly my own have like a giant bag or

00:25:56.780 cupboard full of plastic bags that we reuse for things like garbage and you know household whatever

00:26:03.740 walking your dog yeah now what do you do if you want you know a garbage bag to line your uh you

00:26:09.420 know bathroom garbage can what are you doing you're going to the store and buying plastic garbage

00:26:15.580 container liners like this is just so absurd exactly there's no there's no proof that this is

00:26:23.020 fully reducing our use of such things like where are these things being made up so for example

00:26:29.340 a lot of these so-called plastic or canvas or whatever bags you see i check because i want to

00:26:34.700 know almost all of them that i've seen are made overseas namely china and i don't know about you

00:26:41.340 but the last time i checked i don't think china has the same environmental regulations as canada

00:26:46.780 it does so it also had to get here i mean even if it did it had to be shipped here look it came here

00:26:52.880 on a barge and again you're right we're all forgetting them at home and so you have to really

00:26:57.420 look at the knock-on effect and even if you make your own which i do i sewed a whole bunch of these

00:27:03.480 bags which i also forget in my pantry before i go grocery shopping that also takes up energy and

00:27:09.280 materials and resources so again this is all you know it reminds me going back to dr thomas soul

00:27:14.920 who is still with us, thank goodness, 93 years old, and the gentleman just put out a book.

00:27:20.000 So I wish. So he said, whenever somebody comes up with a brilliant idea, we should ask them

00:27:26.240 three questions. Compared to what? At what cost? What hard evidence do you have? It looks like

00:27:34.800 they failed on all three counts. And interestingly, now the court is saying, folks, stay in your lane.

00:27:41.020 so here's the thing that i i have to ask before we move on from this because obviously the

00:27:47.620 government doesn't really seem to be accepting that it lost this is true with the impact assessment

00:27:53.280 act ruling it's true with this the government is still trying to plow ahead so are you kind of

00:27:58.960 thinking that this is going to end up being a political decision that canadians will make where

00:28:02.640 they have to elect a government that just says no we don't want this level of intrusion

00:28:06.340 yeah i think so just from my experience on the hill and my experience as a journalist forever

00:28:12.320 i see this as one of those nuisance factors so 15 cents is not the same amount as say a photo

00:28:20.700 radar ticket would have been uh back in in ontario back in the day under pcs and mike harris

00:28:27.000 but keep in mind the amount of intrusive nuisance factor vote that was so mike harris

00:28:33.620 won for many reasons when he became Premier of Ontario. But one of the key reasons why he won

00:28:38.340 is because he said, I'll ban photo radar. I'll get rid of it. And so I think this is one of those

00:28:44.520 personal, my nose is out of joint. You're in my face. I'm really tapped out because you've caused

00:28:50.980 inflation. You've jacked up my carbon taxes. You've increased my payroll taxes. I can barely

00:28:56.600 afford groceries. And now I have to juggle all my jars of jam getting out to my car. So I think

00:29:02.780 that is eventually going to be one of those issues. It's going to become a political factor.

00:29:07.360 Yeah, I think jam juggling is going into the next election. All right, Chris,

00:29:10.500 since you brought it up, I have to ask you, who wore it better?

00:29:15.100 Oh my gosh. See, I was right. I remembered that one. I like yours. It's more relevant.

00:29:21.680 Okay. These are more deadly, according to Stephen Gilbeau. So I'll give up plastic straws and take

00:29:28.360 up smoking that'll be my contribution there uh chris sims from the canadian taxpayers federation

00:29:33.560 always a pleasure great seeing you on the weekend and we will see you next monday you betcha all

00:29:38.400 right thanks very much for that uh simpsons references are always the evergreen the always

00:29:44.760 the evergreen one i don't even get them most of the time but everyone around me does so as someone

00:29:49.600 on true north's internal discussion understood that reference so uh in any case we are going to

00:29:55.340 move on from that, but well, let's just do one more victory lap here for the road. There we go.

00:30:02.160 Apparently I need a refill. Anyway, this is a good day for taxpayers in some ways for the reasons we

00:30:08.480 were just discussing, but for others, not so much. Now, remember the billions and billions and

00:30:14.540 billions of dollars that was being spent on the electric vehicle battery plant. This was the big,

00:30:20.940 giant ambitious plan to set up a Volkswagen EV battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario.

00:30:27.380 And then Stellantis, which is the company that now owns Chrysler, said, oh, hang on,

00:30:31.320 we want a piece of this corporate welfare also, and got into it. Well, now we find out that this

00:30:37.880 money, which was defended by the government as being for Canadian jobs, is not even going towards

00:30:45.720 Canadian jobs. It's being largely used to bring in temporary foreign workers that Canadians are now

00:30:53.700 paying for. So Canadians are on net losing money entirely on this. Here was a clip of

00:31:00.220 Conservative leader Pierre Polyev condemning this revelation. Now we learn that the $15 billion

00:31:07.640 dollar grant to the Stellantis plant will fund mostly jobs for non-Canadians not immigrants

00:31:17.240 we love jobs for immigrants jobs for people who are not Canadian citizens and will not 1.00

00:31:22.760 be Canadian citizens they will come here get a taxpayer funded paycheck and take it back 1.00

00:31:30.680 to their country I love South Korea wonderful country but they don't fund jobs for Canadians 0.95

00:31:37.640 And we shouldn't fund jobs for their workers.

00:31:40.500 Our money should fund our paychecks.

00:31:43.460 Bring it home.

00:31:45.760 That's why common sense conservatives are demanding a full inquiry

00:31:49.160 into how many of these taxpayer-funded jobs are going to temporary foreign workers.

00:31:58.340 We want a commitment that none of the money should go to temporary foreign workers.

00:32:01.420 It should only come to Canadians. 1.00

00:32:02.320 This is a $15 billion grant to one company.

00:32:07.100 $15 billion works out to $1,000 for every single Canadian family.

00:32:13.580 You've got 15 million families in Canada.

00:32:16.480 You've got $15 billion for this one company.

00:32:19.780 Every family in Canada will give $1,000 to this plant.

00:32:23.520 And now we know that the majority of the jobs won't even go to Canadians.

00:32:28.360 That's specifically referring to Stellantis in Windsor.

00:32:33.460 but I think the general sense here when we talk about Volkswagen, Stellantis, all of this is that

00:32:39.080 in general corporate welfare is not a winning proposition. Canadian taxpayers, Canadian workers

00:32:45.940 really don't benefit from this. It becomes a race to the bottom. It's the big multinational

00:32:49.980 companies that are the ones cashing the checks here but in this case it really is adding insult

00:32:54.380 to injury when it's not even Canadian jobs that are ostensibly being created here. Aaron Woodrick

00:33:00.200 is the domestic policy guru over at the mcdonald laurier institute and joins us now aaron always

00:33:06.180 good to talk to you i mean this is like really a slap in the face but i'm almost glad because it

00:33:11.320 shows more ostentatiously how bad corporate welfare is yeah look for for those who are 0.96

00:33:17.700 tuning in who don't know my history on this i mean i've been a long time critic of corporate

00:33:21.060 welfare in all sectors in all places at all times i'm a big fan of free enterprise and business and

00:33:27.300 the right to earn a living and make money if you can. But you should not be getting tax dollars if

00:33:32.020 your business cannot support itself. And that's especially true of these large multinationals.

00:33:36.520 Andrew, in this case in particular, what I had a bit of a chuckle about is that, you know,

00:33:40.980 these are the same people, whenever I make my usual objections, they say, well, you know,

00:33:44.500 that's just the price we have to pay. We have to pay to play. If we want to get this plan,

00:33:49.160 we just have to outlay these billions of dollars. That's just the way it is. But if you say, oh,

00:33:53.200 So 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.

00:34:00.200 Oh, no, no, we can't have that. That's not a price we're willing to pay.

00:34:02.960 We're willing to throw billions of dollars at something that makes no economic sense.

00:34:06.380 But God forbid some of those workers come from outside of Canada.

00:34:09.160 So I thought that was a little bit rich, but it does expose the absurdity of the whole thing.

00:34:13.860 And frankly, it's just another reason why governments should not get their fingers into these business, right?

00:34:19.400 Like if a business brings in foreign workers and they're paying it on their dime, it's kind of none of our business. 1.00

00:34:24.680 But 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.

00:34:33.460 I mean, the government is basically running the company.

00:34:35.760 And then you start to wonder, I mean, for people who know, well, government runs itself.

00:34:39.420 Imagine how good a job they're going to do running a business like Stellantis. 0.92

00:34:43.240 Yeah.

00:34:43.640 And I think Pierre Polyev made a point there, which is a valid one.

00:34:46.600 I 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.

00:34:55.640 So I don't really see the argument here on how Canada should be doing this.

00:34:59.760 I mean, TFWs are already a bit contentious.

00:35:02.480 I 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.

00:35:09.000 In 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.

00:35:20.680 No, look, and when it comes to importing workers to do work in this country, they generally fall into one of two buckets, right?

00:35:25.820 You 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.

00:35:32.180 And then also what we call the low skill end.

00:35:34.180 So you've got work that Canadians don't want to do. 0.92

00:35:36.220 It doesn't pay very well.

00:35:37.300 It's very hard.

00:35:37.880 So 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?

00:36:02.260 I 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.

00:36:22.260 So 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.

00:36:34.780 Yeah, 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.

00:36:51.340 Well, 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.

00:37:03.520 I 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.

00:37:10.800 But 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.

00:37:21.440 Outside of this, I wanted to get you on the show anyway today.

00:37:24.440 You had a great piece in the Globe and Mail.

00:37:26.940 The key to saving Canada's economy is tax reform.

00:37:30.460 Now, I think it's safe to say in the last eight years,

00:37:32.260 no one in government has come up with a key to saving Canada's economy.

00:37:35.740 So I think as a Canadian, I say thank you for putting this up there.

00:37:39.840 But when you say tax reform, I mean, we often hear governments

00:37:42.780 and political parties talk about, oh, we can, you know,

00:37:45.700 add this little tax credit here, this reduction.

00:37:48.200 In some cases, even more radical reforms, like what Stephen Harper did in reducing the GST.

00:37:54.780 But when you talk about tax reform, you're talking about something a bit more radical here.

00:37:58.680 Explain.

00:37:59.740 Yeah, I say, too, the title's a little bit generous.

00:38:03.040 I argue that tax reform's a key plank in, you know, boosting our economy.

00:38:06.760 It's not the only one.

00:38:07.540 That alone's not going to do it.

00:38:08.740 I would say, Andrew, generally the, you know, the debate over taxes is about higher or lower.

00:38:12.880 And I think that's an important debate.

00:38:14.160 I come down firmly on the lower side of that.

00:38:16.080 But that's a separate debate than a complex system.

00:38:19.560 We have an absurdly complicated tax system.

00:38:22.240 Most people who have to do their taxes know this.

00:38:24.320 Don't even try doing it without a professional help or without one of those softwares that

00:38:29.100 you purchase.

00:38:29.680 It's just it's way too complicated.

00:38:31.920 There's a cost to that.

00:38:33.180 It distorts the system.

00:38:34.500 It's confusing.

00:38:35.620 It makes it hard for businesses to comply.

00:38:38.140 I think it's fair to say we should have a debate about how much money does the government

00:38:41.900 need?

00:38:42.380 And then we got to look at the fairest, simplest, most neutral way to raise that money.

00:38:46.760 And that's part of the thing that often gets left out when we're debating higher or lower

00:38:50.180 taxes is which taxes are the ones that are the best to get this money, which ones are

00:38:54.740 going to create the least distortions and do the least damage to our economy.

00:38:59.580 One of the biggest problems with taxes, in my view, well, paying them, but one of the

00:39:03.820 other biggest problems, and this is true in Canada, it's especially true in the United

00:39:07.720 States, is that we have such a path dependency in our approach to taxes.

00:39:11.600 if you were to say we're going to gather around a group of people and we're going to create a new

00:39:16.320 tax system from scratch that you know starting from zero no assumptions previously i don't think

00:39:22.160 anyone would land on what we have i don't think anyone would come up with a tax code that is just

00:39:27.120 this long in the us even longer because it doesn't make sense and because it's so complex and

00:39:32.320 convoluted yet this is what we have and and as a result changes seem to be very limited to tweaks

00:39:39.200 and like you say, higher or lower. So would you, in the ideal world, if you were at that table,

00:39:45.060 would you be changing something fundamental in how much you rely on consumption, how much you

00:39:50.580 rely on corporate, how much you rely on sales and income? What would your approach be if you

00:39:55.560 were to really blow this up and start from scratch? Yeah, that's a great question. And

00:39:59.720 you're right. It's a bit like barnacles on the hull of a ship, right? They just keep clinging

00:40:02.920 on and eventually you sort of, you drag the ship down with you. There's an inertia element to that,

00:40:07.100 right? Politicians have limited political capital. They don't want to waste all their time sort of

00:40:11.420 undoing or fixing the things their predecessors done. They want to get on with their own. So they

00:40:14.860 just end up layering it on top of things. Look, I think there's a good debate to be had about

00:40:19.280 the role of consumption taxes. You know, people don't like them because they can see them. So

00:40:24.100 they're kind of economically efficient, but they are very, very politically damaging. We saw that

00:40:28.860 with the GST in this country. We've seen it with things like carbon taxes. The other problem with

00:40:33.200 consumption taxes is rarely are they applied consistently see like you'll

00:40:36.440 you'll you'll bring in something like a GST or a carbon tax and then you'll get

00:40:39.700 all these little carve-outs right well we won't tax poor people we won't tax

00:40:42.860 pregnant mothers and we won't tax this product and so you kind of undermine the 1.00

00:40:46.320 purpose of the consumption tax and just interject there for a moment and then

00:40:50.000 you get these really convoluted debates about what a food product is you know

00:40:53.960 things like well this is a grocery product but this is a snack product so

00:40:57.980 it's not even consistent within a category yeah so I would say generally

00:41:02.900 speaking, whether, you know, if you're going to do consumption taxes, just do it blanket. Don't

00:41:07.000 have all these carve outs because otherwise you're just undermining the additional value of that.

00:41:11.140 I mean, the other debate is over the, you know, taxing things like land and housing. You know,

00:41:14.960 some people are pushing for things like a home equity tax. You can imagine how that's probably

00:41:18.660 about as, you know, popular as a snowfall in July. But I think another thing we need to really

00:41:24.940 wrap our heads around, and this is another political challenge, is this idea of when we

00:41:28.900 talk about taxing businesses. People love taxing big corporations, right? People forget that

00:41:33.780 corporations are illegal fiction. There is no thing called a corporation paying tax. In reality,

00:41:38.880 someone else is paying that tax. It's the employees of the company. It's the shareholders

00:41:42.600 of the company. It's the customers of the company. So somebody else somewhere is paying that tax. So

00:41:47.700 it's very popular politically to say we should tax, corporate tax, raise it. That doesn't hurt

00:41:53.220 anybody. Well, it actually does. Somebody else is paying that tax. And in a lot of cases, it's

00:41:57.400 better to just tax people um on their personal income tax than it is through you know if you're

00:42:02.360 if you're very wealthy you want to get a very wealthy person to pay more tax don't tax the

00:42:06.200 business they own more just tax tax above a certain threshold their income higher that's

00:42:11.000 the better way to go about that coming back to that whole um figure out how much you want to

00:42:14.580 raise and then figure out the least sort of distorting way to raise it well and to put that

00:42:18.880 into the context of our corporate welfare discussion i mean i imagine if a government

00:42:23.840 could say to a company we're going to give you zero dollars in corporate welfare but we're going

00:42:28.720 to charge you zero percent corporate tax because we know that you're going to employ all these

00:42:33.120 people who are going to pay corporate tax and your executives are going to pay income tax or income

00:42:37.040 tax rather uh and and you know that there's i don't know how much money that works out too

00:42:41.760 because it depends on the company but there's a very real chance that that would give them more

00:42:46.880 than corporate welfare does and it's an incentive that doesn't cost taxpayers money

00:42:52.480 right well look and incentives matter right i've often gone to these debates about people say well

00:42:56.480 you support tax cuts isn't that the same as corporate welfare right i mean you're giving

00:42:59.760 the company money and my response is pretty straightforward right there's a big difference

00:43:03.440 between if you run a business and you earn money that's your money and you get to keep more of it

00:43:08.400 right that's or that's money you had to go out and earn in the marketplace that's different than the

00:43:12.320 government coming along and saying we're just going to sprinkle this money on you you just

00:43:15.440 get this money whether you sell stuff or not and only just some companies well exactly is across

00:43:20.560 the board that's where the fairness thing comes in but i mean just um you know conceptually they're

00:43:24.960 very different for you to believe that a tax cut is the same as corporate welfare requires you to

00:43:29.360 believe it's actually the government's money in the first place right and they're just letting

00:43:32.560 you keep some of it so i find that um you know we can debate i'm not a big fan of boutique tax cuts

00:43:37.360 either i think you should treat all businesses equally you shouldn't sort of single different

00:43:41.120 ones out but letting people keep more of their own money is a very different thing than giving

00:43:45.200 them a bunch of money that was never theirs in the first place well and this is where we get to i i

00:43:49.440 I think the biggest issue here,

00:43:50.820 and I realize that you're in a very good position on this

00:43:53.460 because you work in policy,

00:43:54.960 but the politics and the policy of taxes and economics,

00:43:58.540 I think are oftentimes in direct conflict.

00:44:01.060 And this is, I mean, we can talk about

00:44:02.320 the liberal government's financial mismanagement,

00:44:04.240 but I think the conservatives are particularly bad historically

00:44:07.820 at wanting to embrace these boutique tax cuts,

00:44:10.540 because it's very good politics.

00:44:11.900 If you can say to a single mom,

00:44:13.880 you know, we're gonna do this for you.

00:44:15.180 Or if you can say to a family with kids in sports,

00:44:17.600 we're gonna give you this money

00:44:18.600 for your kids to do sports. But then what you've done is you've added more and more complexity,

00:44:23.440 more carve outs, and less universality to the tax system. Absolutely. And you saw this argument

00:44:29.080 during the conservative years under Stephen Harper, they added a lot of boutiques credits.

00:44:32.420 And who's going to argue with that? Who's going to argue with the idea that, you know, giving

00:44:35.500 families a tax credit to put their kids in sports is a bad thing. The problem is, what I found

00:44:41.300 ironic was that people at the time argued that, well, you know, if we just cut, if we just cut

00:44:45.720 income taxes the liberals would come along and reverse that whereas if we put these little

00:44:49.240 things in the tax code for the reasons we talked about earlier they'll stay there what ended up

00:44:52.740 happening ironically as Justin Trudeau comes into office one of the first and best things he did in

00:44:56.940 my view is he actually he got rid of those credits and he actually just cut taxes so it's been a long

00:45:01.340 time since uh since early 2016 when he did those great tax measures Andrew but I do remember back

00:45:06.720 in the distant history that there was actually a couple of good tax policies under Justin Trudeau

00:45:11.500 But then your fiscal honeymoon ended

00:45:13.220 when he still continued to ramp up spending

00:45:15.340 for the next eight years.

00:45:16.600 Yeah, it ended pretty fast.

00:45:17.500 That nominal tax cut.

00:45:18.460 Yeah.

00:45:19.000 Well, I hope that the Aaron Woodrick vision

00:45:21.480 finds a home in someone who's in a position

00:45:24.120 to put it there where it needs to be on the books.

00:45:26.560 Aaron Woodrick from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

00:45:28.880 Great piece in the Globe and Mail.

00:45:30.580 And thanks as always for coming on today.

00:45:32.540 Thanks a lot, Andrew.

00:45:33.500 All right.

00:45:34.060 That does it for us for today.

00:45:36.040 I will say it's going to be a regular week for the show

00:45:38.680 and I'm very excited about something we have

00:45:40.500 for you on Thursday, which touches on the idea of economic rights for Canadians. We'll have a bit

00:45:46.340 more information about that as the week progresses. But I am going to be in Burnaby, British Columbia

00:45:51.800 on Wednesday for an event hosted by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. I'll be

00:45:57.980 speaking alongside Rav Aurora and Amy Hamm and the great folks at the JCCF. Now, I do sit on the

00:46:04.800 board, but I don't think that I didn't make them invite me as a speaker. They did that on their own.

00:46:09.400 So that wasn't like my, you know, big defiant act as a board member.

00:46:12.380 So that'll be good.

00:46:13.980 And I know a lot of you are in British Columbia.

00:46:16.220 So if you want to come out, they have tickets available at jccf.ca.

00:46:20.300 Hope to see you there.

00:46:21.300 And as always do, come and say hello.

00:46:23.260 Every time I say that, I mean it because I had people in Red Deer come and say hello

00:46:26.500 and I appreciated it.

00:46:27.740 So that does it for me for today.

00:46:29.800 We will be back in just 23 hours and 15 minutes here on Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,

00:46:36.220 The Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:46:37.480 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:47:07.480 We'll be right back.

00:47:37.480 We'll be right back.

00:48:07.480 We'll be right back.

Juno News - November 20, 2023

One-quarter of Justin Trudeau's time in office have been ＂personal＂ days

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