Juno News - Ottawa spends while Canadians pay (ft. Franco Terrazzano)

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:08.560 Chrystia Freeland says, oh yeah, we're on track to balancing the budget.

00:00:11.640 Don't worry about those hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:00:13.740 Sorry, you know, tens of billions of Disney Plus subscriptions of deficits

00:00:19.600 that the government has been racking up.

00:00:21.940 We're on track to balance it by 2027, 2028.

00:00:25.860 So she's convinced that in the next seven years, we'll be at balance.

00:00:31.320 Well, if you talk to the Parliamentary Budget Officer,

00:00:33.600 which is ideally more responsible about its calculations

00:00:37.200 because it's not rooted in partisanship,

00:00:39.460 they're saying that the revenue in that budget is going to be $11.1 billion lower

00:00:45.360 than what the government is projecting.

00:00:48.160 And interest charges are going to be $2.8 billion higher,

00:00:51.540 which means the year of balance budget in 2027, 2028

00:00:56.140 that Chrystia Freeland is promising is going to be a year

00:00:59.040 with a little tiny, teeny, itsy-bitsy $10 billion deficit.

00:01:04.140 A $10 billion deficit.

00:01:05.700 Or to keep with the trend here,

00:01:07.400 that is a $83.3 million Disney Plus subscription deficit.

00:01:13.340 My mask's a little rusty there.

00:01:14.720 You'll have to bear with me.

00:01:16.420 Franco Terrazzano joins me on the line now,

00:01:19.060 the Federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:01:22.680 Franco, good to talk to you.

00:01:24.340 How bad was this update in your view?

00:01:27.440 Oh, it was really bad.

00:01:28.600 You know, I was expecting it to be bad,

00:01:30.320 but I wasn't expecting it to be this bad.

00:01:32.540 And before we really get into the nitty-gritties,

00:01:34.300 I have to address the opening segment off the top

00:01:37.820 with the finance minister's gaffe

00:01:40.160 because there's also four points

00:01:42.260 that all taxpayers need to remember

00:01:44.140 when we hear this statement from Freeland.

00:01:48.440 Number one, Freeland, as a minister,

00:01:51.720 her annual salary is just under $280,000

00:01:55.480 to your earlier point, Andrew.

00:01:57.900 Number two, Freeland, like all other members of parliament,

00:02:02.160 gave themselves three pay raises during the pandemic.

00:02:06.120 So are we really all in this together?

00:02:07.940 I don't think so.

00:02:09.380 Point number three,

00:02:10.820 Freeland's talking about the increasing cost of living.

00:02:13.100 Well, Freeland is making life more expensive in Canada

00:02:17.120 with her tax hikes, carbon tax up,

00:02:20.540 payroll taxes up, alcohol taxes up,

00:02:23.360 and her crazy out-of-control deficit spending.

00:02:26.440 Point number four,

00:02:27.700 and this ties into the fiscal update,

00:02:29.880 we're hearing Freeland talk about finding household savings

00:02:33.540 in her household budget, right?

00:02:35.060 Disney Plus.

00:02:36.300 Well, why can't she do that in the federal government budget? 1.00

00:02:38.560 Yeah, I want her to cancel the government of Canada's 0.99

00:02:42.460 Disney Plus subscription.

00:02:43.660 I don't care what she does in her own household budget, 1.00

00:02:45.800 and I'm not sure she's doing that.

00:02:47.540 I mean, the obvious comparison is CBC,

00:02:50.720 which is $1.4 billion a year, depending.

00:02:54.380 I mean, 1.2 to 1.4.

00:02:56.040 So I, as a Canadian taxpayer,

00:02:57.940 would happily cut my portion of the CBC subsidy

00:03:00.880 before I cut my Disney Plus or my Netflix

00:03:03.720 or whatever else I'm subscribed to.

00:03:05.360 Crave, maybe?

00:03:06.820 Yeah, well, absolutely.

00:03:07.980 And here's the thing, right?

00:03:09.480 Leading up to this fiscal update,

00:03:11.240 we heard Freeland talk about

00:03:12.380 the government's fiscal restraint,

00:03:14.400 how they're going to be spending with prudence.

00:03:17.160 We didn't see any of that in the fiscal update.

00:03:19.180 Here's what we saw.

00:03:20.600 Somehow, Freeland is going to spend $20 billion over budget.

00:03:25.880 Let me just read you the numbers.

00:03:27.060 Let me break down the numbers here.

00:03:28.660 In the April budget,

00:03:30.220 Freeland said the government would spend $452 billion.

00:03:33.040 Now, in the fiscal update, seven months later,

00:03:37.080 Freeland says the government will spend $472 billion.

00:03:41.140 So the math is simple here.

00:03:43.060 Freeland is spending $20 billion over her budget.

00:03:47.340 Now, this was a budget that she penned seven months ago.

00:03:50.860 And it's not like that budget in April

00:03:52.420 was this extreme austerity budget.

00:03:55.800 No, no, no, no.

00:03:56.440 The government was going to spend $90 billion more

00:04:00.100 compared to pre-pandemic and all-time highs, right?

00:04:03.620 So she's overspending her own budget 1.00

00:04:05.980 just seven months ago by $20 billion, Andrew.

00:04:11.500 Yeah, and I think that it's very important to note

00:04:14.720 that we haven't seen many radical

00:04:16.980 or at least unpredictable changes

00:04:18.920 in the financial situation in that time.

00:04:21.520 We've known where interest rates were trending.

00:04:23.780 We've known where inflation was trending.

00:04:26.020 So this was, I think, entirely foreseeable.

00:04:30.100 Well, and here's another thing, too.

00:04:32.320 You know, you've mentioned this,

00:04:34.020 but I don't think taxpayers should buy the spin

00:04:37.220 that the government is going to balance the budget in 2027.

00:04:39.720 I mean, we'd love to see a balanced budget,

00:04:41.680 but if you just look at the numbers,

00:04:43.080 I don't think that is credible at all.

00:04:45.200 Because as you mentioned,

00:04:46.400 the parliamentary budget officer

00:04:47.800 released its budget projections only a few weeks ago.

00:04:51.780 And it shows that in 2027,

00:04:54.760 well, Freeland's fiscal update

00:04:56.280 is overestimating revenues by $11 billion,

00:04:59.040 underestimating the interest charges on the government debt

00:05:01.700 by just under $3 billion.

00:05:04.420 So in 2027,

00:05:06.060 if you use the parliamentary budget officer's revenue

00:05:08.700 and interest charge figures,

00:05:10.400 instead of balancing the budget,

00:05:12.180 the government would have a $9.4 billion deficit.

00:05:16.300 And of course, Andrew,

00:05:18.580 the Trudeau government has not seen a budget

00:05:20.840 that it couldn't blow, right?

00:05:22.640 Remember back in 2014,

00:05:24.200 Trudeau said the budget will balance itself.

00:05:26.080 Well, what time is it right now?

00:05:27.760 What, 4.17 p.m. November the 8th, 2022?

00:05:31.320 The budget still hasn't balanced itself.

00:05:33.840 Remember when Trudeau was first running for prime minister,

00:05:36.320 he said he'd run a few modest deficits

00:05:38.620 and then balance the budget in 2019.

00:05:41.360 Well, he missed that by $20 billion,

00:05:44.140 even before the pandemic.

00:05:46.300 Yeah, and I think that's an important caveat.

00:05:48.920 And you and I have spoken about this in the past,

00:05:50.920 that the government has used the pandemic as cover

00:05:53.160 for its spending without acknowledging openly

00:05:56.380 that the spending was already pretty out of control beforehand.

00:06:00.640 And I think that there is a general tendency

00:06:03.240 for the government here to not accept its own role.

00:06:06.220 And I think that point of Chrystia Freeland

00:06:07.880 is an important one for us to acknowledge

00:06:09.580 because she's talking about combating inflation

00:06:12.160 as though it's the kind of thing you do

00:06:13.440 on an individual level by making choices.

00:06:15.400 But that is not dealing with the causes of the problem

00:06:19.560 that are within the government's control on a macro level,

00:06:23.040 like, for example, the carbon tax,

00:06:25.120 which is a purely discretionary tax.

00:06:27.860 There is, this is money that the government

00:06:30.200 is putting forward, not for revenue collection,

00:06:32.900 according to its own definition,

00:06:34.280 but because they're trying to change behavior,

00:06:36.200 which means the government could live without that money

00:06:38.560 because they're claiming that it's not even a tax.

00:06:40.580 Did I hear you correctly, Andrew?

00:06:43.700 Did I hear you say that spending before the pandemic

00:06:47.080 was pretty out of control?

00:06:49.040 That was, that might be the biggest understatement

00:06:51.120 I've ever heard.

00:06:52.380 Before the pandemic, the Trudel government

00:06:54.720 was spending all time highs,

00:06:56.740 even after including inflation and population differences.

00:07:00.080 So that means that the Trudeau government in 2018

00:07:02.880 spent more money than the feds did

00:07:05.500 during any single year during World War II.

00:07:08.340 Inflation and population adjusted.

00:07:11.160 Before a pandemic, before any countrywide recession,

00:07:14.980 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent more money

00:07:16.980 than the feds did during any single year

00:07:19.360 while we were fighting the Nazis.

00:07:21.160 Okay, so we were spending all time highs

00:07:23.500 before the pandemic and then a pandemic comes around.

00:07:26.680 Well, I think most Canadians understand that,

00:07:28.800 look, if you have a legitimate problem,

00:07:31.100 if you have a leaky roof, let's say,

00:07:33.940 you fix the leaky roof,

00:07:35.680 but you don't go pull out the credit card

00:07:37.640 and blow money that you don't have on a new flat screen,

00:07:40.940 a couple ATVs and brand new BMW, right?

00:07:43.700 You prioritize.

00:07:44.860 But we didn't see the federal government

00:07:46.300 make any tough decisions.

00:07:48.520 Even the parliamentary budget officer says that

00:07:50.860 of all the new spending that has been announced

00:07:53.180 since COVID-19 started,

00:07:55.180 $200 billion had nothing to do with COVID-19.

00:08:00.000 Now, I'm glad you brought up the carbon tax

00:08:01.780 because you know what?

00:08:03.300 I think the Trudeau government,

00:08:04.680 every time they pass a gas station,

00:08:07.120 they pat themselves on the back

00:08:08.520 because they see the high pump prices.

00:08:10.720 Because a carbon tax, its objective

00:08:12.520 is to raise the price of gasoline.

00:08:15.000 And while Ottawa has continued to raise taxes

00:08:17.660 on Canadians,

00:08:18.860 we identified 51 other national governments

00:08:21.960 that actually did the right thing

00:08:23.440 and cut taxes during the pandemic

00:08:25.400 or to combat inflation.

00:08:28.740 Yeah, I think that's very, very important.

00:08:31.440 And it's funny,

00:08:32.060 when you talk about these issues,

00:08:33.580 the government gets very sensitive about them.

00:08:36.820 I want to play a clip from your testimony

00:08:39.600 before a parliamentary committee the other day.

00:08:42.580 And I'll let you explain

00:08:44.120 and contextualize it afterwards here

00:08:46.000 because sometimes people just need to see

00:08:47.780 the brazenness with their own eyes first.

00:08:49.540 The increases in premiums for EI and CPP

00:08:53.820 are needed to make sure

00:08:54.720 that when people lose their jobs,

00:08:56.400 in the case of EI,

00:08:57.460 or when people retire,

00:08:58.620 when our seniors retire,

00:08:59.820 that the funds are there

00:09:00.760 to ensure that they can collect their pension

00:09:02.740 or in the case of EI,

00:09:03.680 that they can collect EI.

00:09:05.820 So the effect of not increasing those premiums

00:09:09.220 with the demand for those for EI and CPP

00:09:12.320 would mean that when people retire

00:09:13.820 or when people lose their jobs,

00:09:15.380 they would not have the funds needed

00:09:17.100 to collect EI.

00:09:19.360 The funds wouldn't be there

00:09:20.100 certainly to keep up with demand,

00:09:21.760 their needs,

00:09:22.660 but also with inflation.

00:09:24.060 And that would apply to CPP as well.

00:09:26.740 Are you concerned about that?

00:09:28.940 What I'm so concerned about

00:09:31.700 are so many Canadians

00:09:33.560 who in the private sector

00:09:35.440 just took it on the chin

00:09:36.980 for two plus years

00:09:39.100 while the people who are supposed

00:09:40.380 to be their representative

00:09:41.460 gave themselves pay raise

00:09:43.220 after pay raise after pay raise.

00:09:45.400 And not just that,

00:09:46.600 raise the carbon tax,

00:09:47.960 raise payroll taxes,

00:09:49.060 raise alcohol taxes,

00:09:50.240 and then play word games with Canadians

00:09:52.640 using magic math

00:09:54.160 when the government's own

00:09:54.960 independent budget watchdog

00:09:56.240 shows that the cost of these tax hikes,

00:09:58.420 like the carbon tax,

00:09:59.680 is costing the average household

00:10:01.440 hundreds of dollars this year

00:10:02.940 even after the rebates.

00:10:04.620 I'm concerned with the tax hikes.

00:10:06.260 I'm concerned that

00:10:07.000 all of this burden is falling on

00:10:08.840 those hardworking Canadians

00:10:10.320 who lost their job

00:10:11.260 during the pandemic

00:10:12.080 while members of Parliament

00:10:13.440 gave themselves pay raises,

00:10:15.140 while 300,000 bureaucrats

00:10:17.540 received pay raises,

00:10:18.860 while failing crown corporations

00:10:20.400 gave out bonuses

00:10:21.780 and pay raises during the pandemic.

00:10:23.560 So I'm very concerned

00:10:24.300 about the tax hikes.

00:10:24.680 Thank you very much.

00:10:25.260 I've heard you.

00:10:25.900 So I hear that you're not concerned

00:10:27.160 about the pensioners 0.99

00:10:28.080 and the PEI recipients

00:10:29.080 who wouldn't receive their funds.

00:10:30.320 That's what I've heard you just say.

00:10:31.580 It sounds to me like

00:10:32.540 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

00:10:34.720 is actually not supporting

00:10:35.920 the very taxpayers

00:10:36.620 who would struggle the most

00:10:39.360 in an inflationary environment

00:10:40.640 in a circumstance

00:10:41.360 where they do retire

00:10:43.100 and where they do lose their jobs.

00:10:44.780 And I think that's really,

00:10:45.620 really disappointing.

00:10:46.800 I'd like to move on to

00:10:47.680 that wasn't a question.

00:10:49.340 Ooh, stone cold.

00:10:50.820 That wasn't a question.

00:10:51.900 So just that little grenade

00:10:53.640 that they throw

00:10:54.320 and don't even let you respond.

00:10:55.400 When was that, by the way?

00:10:57.320 Oh, this was just,

00:10:58.200 I think this was what,

00:10:59.380 October the 26th,

00:11:00.600 I think is when I was presenting

00:11:01.820 in front of the Finance Committee

00:11:03.080 on the CTF's budget recommendations.

00:11:07.160 And why was it

00:11:08.820 that you think

00:11:09.800 that's such a sore spot

00:11:10.900 when you point out

00:11:11.780 what the government's payroll taxes

00:11:13.580 are doing to people

00:11:14.640 that they're claiming to protect?

00:11:17.100 Oh, well, I know exactly why.

00:11:19.020 I was essentially there

00:11:19.940 telling them they're doing a bad job,

00:11:21.660 saying, hey,

00:11:22.180 you're wasting way too much money

00:11:23.580 and you're raising taxes

00:11:24.500 at the worst possible time.

00:11:26.120 Andrew, remember,

00:11:26.900 at these type of like

00:11:27.860 build the budget type meetings,

00:11:30.540 they hear,

00:11:31.200 these members of parliament

00:11:32.060 hear from what,

00:11:33.180 hundreds of individuals

00:11:34.460 and groups asking for more money?

00:11:36.440 Well, I was there

00:11:37.140 on behalf of the

00:11:37.760 Canadian Taxpayers Federation

00:11:39.020 telling them to spend less money,

00:11:41.360 telling them to stop wasting money.

00:11:43.020 So I told them,

00:11:44.300 hey, stop spending 8,800 bucks 0.66

00:11:47.160 on a sex toy show in Germany. 0.64

00:11:49.680 Yeah, that happened.

00:11:50.460 Stop spending nearly $100,000

00:11:53.420 on fancy airplane food

00:11:55.460 during a week-long trip, right?

00:11:57.440 Don't spend $6,000 a night

00:12:00.060 on a hotel room.

00:12:01.440 Stop giving former governors general

00:12:03.740 a $200,000 expense account for life.

00:12:07.260 You know, stop taking pay raise

00:12:08.820 after pay raise after pay raise

00:12:10.740 while the people

00:12:11.360 that you're supposed to represent

00:12:12.500 struggle through a pandemic.

00:12:14.140 And, you know,

00:12:14.480 stop giving buckets of cash

00:12:16.540 to big corporations.

00:12:17.580 Like, no more announcing $295 million

00:12:20.340 for the Ford Motor Company

00:12:22.120 or more than $300 million,

00:12:25.860 sorry, for Bombardier.

00:12:27.380 So I was essentially there saying,

00:12:28.940 hey, you guys are doing a bad job.

00:12:30.480 You're wasting money like crazy

00:12:31.700 and you're raising taxes,

00:12:32.840 making life much more difficult

00:12:34.880 for so many Canadians.

00:12:36.100 So that's why they're getting a little,

00:12:37.720 or trying to get a little feisty with me.

00:12:40.080 I just have to point this out.

00:12:41.800 I just got a push notification on my phone

00:12:43.940 because the market's closed,

00:12:45.340 of course, half an hour ago.

00:12:47.580 And for the Wall Street Journal,

00:12:49.280 costs tied to Disney streaming service

00:12:51.180 weighed on earnings,

00:12:52.120 even as theme parks

00:12:53.020 brought in record revenue.

00:12:54.320 Shares fell 6% after hours.

00:12:56.560 Look at what,

00:12:56.960 she's tanking the Disney share price 0.99

00:12:59.220 by telling Canadians

00:13:00.400 to get rid of their Disney Plus subscriptions.

00:13:03.400 Frank Ote-Terrazano,

00:13:04.500 federal director

00:13:05.120 of the Canadian Taxfares Federation.

00:13:07.440 Always a pleasure.

00:13:08.340 Hope they invite you back

00:13:09.160 to Parliament soon.

00:13:10.840 Hey, so do I.

00:13:11.620 Thanks for having me on, Andrew.

00:13:12.480 Thanks for listening

00:13:13.280 to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:13:14.880 Support the program

00:13:15.700 by donating to True North

00:13:16.940 at www.tnc.news.

00:13:20.340 www.tnc.webs.com.

00:13:23.780 www.tnc.webs.com.

00:13:25.100 www.tnc.webs.com.

Juno News - November 11, 2022

Ottawa spends while Canadians pay (ft. Franco Terrazzano)

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