00:12:19.780How are you building bridges if you're starting to make all of these lines about who does
00:12:23.900and doesn't belong in something that is supposed to be the paragon of inclusivity and tolerance.
00:12:30.000Now, this is me not, I'm not lecturing to anyone. I'm not a member of this community. I'm not
00:12:35.420lecturing to anyone about how you should or should not celebrate this season. I think, you know what,
00:12:40.400it is absolutely up to anyone to do that how they want to within the boundaries of the law. Again,
00:12:46.320I can use my libertarianism to my advantage here. I support free speech. If you want to have a pride
00:12:51.120parade, have a pride parade. Absolutely. But I can point out about the societal aspect of this
00:12:56.800that right now is clearly not working. And much like immigration, when people see something being
00:13:02.460pushed too far or too quickly, they retreat. And we see the consensus on immigration shifting,
00:13:09.240even though Canada has always been an overwhelmingly pro-immigration country.
00:13:12.860We look at this polling on LGBTQ2 rights, and a lot of people I suspect are frustrated if only
00:13:18.640because they don't understand what the q and the two and the t have to do with the l the g and the
00:13:24.000b that wasn't meant to rhyme that was just how it worked out so again we don't know what's going to
00:13:29.040happen in the future we do know that it wasn't that long ago that you saw the million man march
00:13:33.280uh pitting very different cultural groups against each other you had in many cases right-wing
00:13:38.400christians and fundamentalist muslims that were all finding support alongside parents that were
00:13:43.440not religious or not political at all but then all of a sudden you had the left start to see
00:13:50.320a fracture in its coalition the left that says well hang on we've always been pro-muslim we've
00:13:54.800always been pro-gay what do we do when these two groups are butting up against each other and i
00:13:59.440think that's also influencing in some way what's happening in this pride issue i've seen reports
00:14:05.040that attendance in schools is once again going to be challenged this year parents are going to have
00:14:10.160their kids walk out because they don't like what's being taught you can say they're right you can say
00:14:15.200they're wrong it doesn't matter these are decisions that parents should make and more importantly the
00:14:20.000coalition that we have that makes this a tolerant country is one that requires people realizing that
00:14:26.800not everyone is going to get along not everyone's going to like each other the goal should not be
00:14:31.440forcing everyone to link arms and sing kumbaya the goal should be forcing people to accept that
00:14:36.240we live in a pluralistic country they're going to be people whose religions you don't like
00:14:40.320they're going to be people whose political views you don't like and that is something that we have
00:14:44.240to accept but when you try to make tolerance a one-way street when you try to make tolerance
00:14:49.360and imposition it's not whether it's right or wrong it just doesn't work that thank you for
00:14:54.960coming to my ted talk on this i i saw the clips in philadelphia i'm like my goodness the whole
00:14:59.360thing is about tolerance and love and joy and happiness then you have people ending up in a
00:15:03.920brawl in the streets. Hardly the intended message. Thankfully, the Winnipeg one didn't come to that.
00:15:08.880It just ended up as a blockade for a time. But they managed to break up the blockade without
00:15:13.800the emergencies act coming in. So maybe we are getting baby steps towards the right direction
00:15:19.040on the civil liberties front. I am not a sports fan, but I can share in the joy that sports fans
00:15:24.960in the audience have that the Edmonton Oilers have made the Stanley Cup final. And what was
00:15:30.660interesting is that cbc decided it was going to sit this one out in a way uh chris sims is our
00:15:36.820regular monday correspondent she is the alberta director with the canadian taxpayers federation
00:15:41.020uh chris always good to talk to you thanks for coming on today well thanks for having us on
00:15:45.200this is fun so okay so what what the heck did cbc do here okay so off the top i'm not quite sure
00:15:51.440what happened here so i am going to be asking some questions of our state broadcaster maybe there is a
00:15:56.440jurisdictional or fee for carriage explanation here. All that being said, I wasn't alone in my
00:16:02.820frustration of not being able to watch the Oilers versus the Dallas Stars game. So Andrew, the
00:16:08.840Edmonton Oilers were in the Western Conference finals against the Dallas Stars. If they won
00:16:13.880this series, they would then go on to the Stanley Cup finals. So just as a bit of an explainer for
00:16:18.420background. And they did. They won last night. But on the for game, I think it was game four
00:16:24.240or game five, I think it was game five, two games ago, we go to watch the game and it's not on CBC.
00:16:31.560Now, to be clear, it's Sportsnet that is producing and filming and streaming the actual game. The CBC
00:16:38.900has rights to carry it. And as far as we know, they had the option, we think, of choosing to
00:16:46.420simulcast it, choosing to bring it over onto their main net station. But it was nowhere to be found.
00:16:51.940They were playing some old just for laughs show or something like that, something that was not NHL hockey, to be clear.
00:16:59.540And so you had to rush around and scramble.
00:17:01.780And even then you had to upgrade to this like super duper level Sportsnet package in order to be able to watch it.
00:17:07.580The reason why I raise this is because Hockey Night in Canada would be far and away the top rated show that Canadians would want to watch at that moment,
00:17:17.940especially on our state broadcaster which by the way we pay 1.4 billion dollars for every single
00:17:24.960year so the question then is what were the folks who are on super fixed income who couldn't afford
00:17:31.200the extra few dollars it was to upgrade their sports net package what about the folks who are
00:17:36.360in remote areas that weren't able to watch it why couldn't they watch the game again taxpayers are
00:17:42.700paying for the cbc they're the ones that try to use hockey night in canada to promote themselves
00:17:47.540all the time. It's the show that everybody would want to watch that evening. So why did they do
00:17:52.760this? And they did it again, as far as I can tell, last night. So last night was a big win.
00:17:58.180The Edmonton Oilers won, they beat the Dallas Stars, and now they're going to the Stanley Cup
00:18:02.500final against the Florida Panthers. But what's weird here, Andrew, is that they were still
00:18:08.320carrying the New York Rangers versus Florida Panthers game on the CBC main net channel just
00:18:14.720the other day. So it's a real head scratcher why they chose, we think, to not air the two Edmonton
00:18:21.260games. Now, again, I want to be clear, there might be some weird fee or broadcast carriage
00:18:26.500agreement or something where they weren't allowed to, but we don't have answers on that yet. As a
00:18:31.140taxpayer and a hockey fan, I wanted to flag that for people because I wasn't alone. I was seeing
00:18:36.200it all over Twitter. So I do have the statement from CBC on this. It sounds like they could have
00:18:42.400played it if they wanted. So the statement which I got from Lindsay Finneran-Gingris, who is a,
00:18:49.280I believe, a journalist on Twitter, we set our schedule long before the playoffs are determined,
00:18:55.000and that schedule includes Canada's ultimate challenge on Sunday nights, as well as the
00:18:59.780Canadian Screen Awards Gala. With that context, we knew there would be occasions during the playoffs
00:19:05.320when CBC would not be carrying certain games. So their answer is that, well, they didn't know
00:19:09.820Edmonton was going to be in the playoffs. So they decided they were going to put the Canadian screen
00:19:14.360or the old Canada's ultimate challenge on. And no one thought, oh, wait, me, a Canadian team is in
00:19:19.340there. Maybe we should just preempt that a little bit. You are smashing my rose colored glasses,
00:19:24.660Andrew, because I don't give them the benefit of the doubt. They don't deserve it. I was honestly
00:19:29.920this last little shred of hope inside me was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.
00:19:34.640But you know what makes this even worse, Chris? They paid for the rights and aren't even using
00:19:39.460them those rights are not cheap these things cost i would presume in the millions and millions of
00:19:44.660dollars and they're not even playing all the games oh yeah we're gonna find out brother i'm putting
00:19:50.360in freedom information requests to find out how much we paid for those rights and for them to
00:19:54.920choose to not air the edmonton oilers playoff game again something that the vast majority like every
00:20:02.820hockey fan in canada would want to watch that even if you're not a huge oilers fan a lot of people
00:20:08.140if their team doesn't make it they go for the last canadian team that's still in the playoffs
00:20:13.180so they would have had tons of eyeballs on their screen but instead they decide to play some awards
00:20:18.620show that i would argue few people outside of the arts community want to watch and some other old
00:20:23.820show like that's bizarre so yeah that's that's terrible i was giving them the benefit of the
00:20:27.900doubt and that's even worse so yeah we should find out exactly how much we paid for the game they
00:20:32.380didn't air now i one thing that's kind of interesting here is i mentioned this i believe
00:20:37.820earlier on so we have at true north a pool uh for the the playoffs um where you decide you know which
00:20:44.220hockey player is going to get the most touchdowns or something i don't know um but i i don't like
00:20:48.540feeling left out so i did i i made what's called a parenth sorry not a parenthesis a bracket right
00:20:54.300and uh i you did the bra and you have to like pick who's gonna win and in how many games they're
00:20:58.540going to win and by the way so after round one guess who was winning the true north nhl playoff
00:21:04.140pool it was yours truly all of these hockey fans were were put to shame because they had no idea
00:21:10.540what they were doing and i had no idea what i was doing but they thought they knew what they were
00:21:13.660doing so i i came up with like a very weirdly mathematical way i nailed the eastern conference
00:21:19.340and i got like all the games right uh you know i you know i i had you know florida and five and
00:21:23.900and Boston in seven and Rangers in four and Carolina in five.
00:21:27.240I got all the winners right in the Western Conference,
00:21:29.880but I didn't get the number of games right on Dallas and Colorado.
00:21:33.980So I completely screwed up the second.
00:21:36.660So I had the Canucks beating the Oilers.
00:22:13.180I looked, so there, there, I, it was, I came up with like my own little system where I
00:22:18.120looked at uh the win win loss uh record from this general season and i just picked whichever one had
00:22:23.880the highest in the regular season of the two okay that's good so i again i i separated emotion from
00:22:31.640it because i don't have a team i actually didn't care i think i think the emotional attachment to
00:22:35.320teams is what gets people making bad decisions on these picks but anyway uh speaking of bad decisions
00:22:41.400let's talk about government bonuses what happened so very quickly andrew um they do have entire
00:22:46.120lottery systems based on sports ball games and even if you don't like sports ball games you
00:22:51.320should probably try this because it's i'd rather i'd rather bet on like political outcomes this is
00:22:56.360it gets you money though man okay um speaking of money uh remember the bank of canada yeah them so
00:23:02.600one of their main jobs is to keep interest rates low so they really failed on that so usually when
00:23:11.240somebody really really you know screws up their job and they fail they don't get a bonus not so
00:23:16.840fast for government employees uh access to information requests uh by our team there in
00:23:21.960ottawa franco terrazzano and ryan thorpe they dug this up apparently the bank of canada handed out
00:23:27.640around 23 million dollars in bonuses last year in 2023 so that whole time that people were you know
00:23:35.480sweating and having their interest rates going up and all this stuff happening end of the year
00:23:39.080before that, they gave them out bonuses. So it doesn't look like they've missed one year of
00:23:43.940bonuses, Andrews, at the Bank of Canada. So you can continue to fail upwards as long as you have
00:23:50.060a government job, apparently. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing this across departments. I mean,
00:23:55.420CBC, I know, has been notoriously evasive on this and actually was a little bit snarky about the
00:24:01.020Canadian Taxpayers Federation last week. I don't know if you saw that. They were upset about
00:24:04.460basically misinformation circulating about their refusal to hand over data but this is a problem
00:24:11.120in other government agencies the departments as well there's just this general chasm between the
00:24:15.660way ordinary people in the private sector are and the way people who work for government in some
00:24:20.180capacity are yeah exactly and what's weird is that the government will often show us like their
00:24:26.300performance like metrics and even what's strange is that they'll show us this stuff they'll show us
00:24:33.140these numbers and like where they're trying to hit their target and the targets will be something
00:24:37.320really middle of the road, super vanilla, really easy to do. And most of the time, these employees
00:24:43.340still aren't meeting their targets and they're still getting bonuses. Like, for example, even at
00:24:49.240the top of the CBC, and I didn't see that misinformation thing, I'll have to dig that up
00:24:52.720because that's actually a pretty loaded word right now in federal politics. With the CEO of the CBC,
00:24:57.960Catherine Tate their viewership is just tanking like by most normal people's metrics she is not
00:25:05.740succeeding at her job so their viewership their ratings are tanking they're taking a nosedive
00:25:11.220they're taking more and more taxpayers money they're choosing to not air hockey night in
00:25:15.900Canada when there's a single Canadian team left in the playoffs like bonehead moves like that
00:25:20.420but they still hand out bonuses so regardless of how they're actually performing and how what kind
00:25:25.540job they're doing they're still handing out bonuses again if this were a private company
00:25:29.940a few would care who cares but this is taxpayers money because these are crown corporations
00:25:36.900well and the thing too is that the government i mean the bank of canada has there's an argument
00:25:41.540to be made that they shoulder a lot of the blame for the inflation crisis that they are responsible
00:25:46.980at least in a way for what canadians are dealing with as far as this cost of living and inflation
00:25:52.500issue is concerned so when they're cashing out tens of millions of dollars in in bonuses it's
00:25:57.420a particular sting even more than if you know i don't know department of fisheries bureaucrats
00:26:02.400were getting big bonuses yeah great point it's not just interest rates it's the fact that they
00:26:06.880printed hundreds of billions of dollars during the lockdowns and all of that and that was used
00:26:12.320largely to buy up government debt government debt of course if people don't know has now doubled
00:26:18.440since 2015. We're now at about $1.2 trillion. And during the lockdowns, especially, they just
00:26:25.120fired up the printing press and they used that newly printed money to buy up government debt.
00:26:30.900Franco explains this very well because he does have an economics degree or two. And so it again,
00:26:36.320it has caused a lot of these critical problems. And again, leading people to think that interest
00:26:41.640rates will be low for long. No worries. Don't worry about it. And then all of a sudden they
00:26:45.700erupted. And this is particularly interesting. And I did earnestly want to warn people,
00:26:51.120they're going to have their rate announcement this Wednesday. So I know that causes a lot of
00:26:55.620stress for a lot of people for various reasons with lines of credit and variable mortgages and
00:27:01.600all that stuff. It's super important. They are going to be making a rate announcement on Wednesday,
00:27:05.920no prediction which way that's going to go. But it does add sting to it when we see them still
00:27:10.260taking in these massive bonuses, when by most normal people's metrics, they're not doing a very
00:27:15.060good job so is there a policy solution to this could the government and is this something that
00:27:21.420the taxpayers federation is advocating for just say hey bureaucracies don't get bonuses yeah
00:27:26.240yeah for sure uh if they super wanted to argue that they deserve it then maybe we could start
00:27:32.280from there but yeah this should start back at zero for sure and then if we want to argue years later
00:27:37.620that hey we are doing an awesome job look at all these metrics look at all these performances that
00:27:41.740we've been hitting maybe we can have a discussion after that but as a baseline yeah we shouldn't be
00:27:46.660handing out bonuses to bureaucrats and to crown corporations well we're going to be talking with
00:27:51.320with aaron woodrick in a few moments about the work from home edict which has become this like
00:27:56.500incredible source of offense for much of the public sector but one of the things that aaron's
00:28:01.760raised and i think would apply here as well is have pretty clear clearly delineated performance
00:28:07.480metrics not things that are done because you know you can clear the bar but things that actually
00:28:12.760involve it i mean i'd be fine with bonuses based on how much money you're saving like if hey for
00:28:17.240every 10 of taxpayer money you save you get a dollar okay fine we save a dollar less for every
00:28:22.52010 but we're still saving the nine buck like like i'm not proposing that as a policy but something
00:28:27.080like that because there's right now no incentive to actually pay pay for things to use taxpayers
00:28:32.840money responsibly anywhere in government. That's a great point. Reagan had something very similar
00:28:38.500to that in the 1980s when he was trying to tackle their deficits. So he brought in people, if I
00:28:43.500recall correctly, who were specialists from their field, begged them to come in and take a government
00:28:47.920job for a year and find savings. And I think bonuses were given based on the dramatic amount
00:28:53.940of savings that were found in different departments. In a reverse way, that's often what balanced
00:28:58.700budget legislation does. So for a long time, the province of British Columbia, for an example,
00:29:03.780had balanced budget legislation where the minister's department came in with a deficit,
00:29:10.120meaning they're spending too much money. That minister took a 10% pay cut. Yeah. So if they're
00:29:16.720not doing their job, they get money clawed back. So it's kind of, you know, a different direction
00:29:21.340from what you're talking about, but the same sort of incentive structure. So that sounds really
00:29:25.280smart. If that's something that MLI is looking into, that'd be great. It's interesting. You're
00:29:29.560speaking with Aaron Woodrick, who of course was with the Taxpayers Federation for many years.
00:29:33.280They just put out, I'm sure you saw it because I think you signed it, the Ottawa Declaration on
00:29:37.960not giving government money to media organizations, which is an excellent thing to see. If people kind
00:29:43.540of team up on this stuff and really take a stand, we might actually get some work done here.
00:29:48.320Well, that's certainly the hope. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Always a
00:29:52.560pleasure chris we will talk to you next monday you bet take care all right thanks very much chris
00:29:57.220sims the alberta director and star of that uh ai generated song of what was it the voice of alberta
00:30:02.900i think that was the name of it uh for crew we won't play it but uh i rachel emmanuel my colleague
00:30:07.840at true north she is because i may again i went on like a tear with the ai generated songs admittedly
00:30:13.400i i did a little bit more than i probably should have with it because everyone around me was like
00:30:17.460just stop with the damn song so rachel i made one for her show and i just did it for her and then
1.00
00:30:21.980she put it in the show. And I think it's very polarizing. Some people don't love the AI
00:30:26.040generated theme music. So we haven't embraced an AI generated theme song just yet. That voice you
00:30:31.260hear is a real man, a real voiceover guy. The music was made by, I mean, it was probably made
00:30:35.620on a computer, but it wasn't made by a computer. I did see something quite interesting the other
00:30:41.460day circulating of someone saying, you know, don't let me use AI to make my art so that I have more
00:30:47.020time to do laundry. Like let AI do my laundry so I have more time to make art, which was a nice
00:30:51.560little philosophical spin on the way AI is going because we're now seeing like AI generated statues
00:30:57.360and AI generated this and AI generated music and AI is not doing my dishes on its own I still have
00:31:03.640to go and load them in manually and take them out when it's done so all of that notwithstanding a
00:31:08.920little bit of a busy day I just want to mention this briefly and I'll do a little bit more on
00:31:12.300this as the week progresses in British Columbia politics now I confess fully British Columbia
00:31:17.700politics has been an underexplored area on the show because historically there weren't really
00:31:22.540great options. You had the BC Liberals, which kind of had like a semblance of some conservative
00:31:28.200thought every now and then. And then Christy Clark just took the only bit of conservatism
00:31:32.760there out to the woodshed and shot it when she wanted to cling to power. And then you had the
1.00
00:31:37.020BC NDP. And it's only been relatively recently that there's been this conservative resurgence,
00:31:41.860or maybe insurgency is a better way of putting it, in BC. So we're actually working out,
00:31:46.860we're going to have John Rustad, who's the leader of the BC Conservatives, on the show
00:31:50.560in the next couple of weeks. And I'm looking forward to that. But another floor crossing
00:31:54.800today of a BC United, formerly BC Liberal MLA, joining the Conservatives. There was one last
00:32:00.460week as well. There are rumblings that there are going to be perhaps a couple of more. So this is
00:32:05.000shaping up to be just the complete decimation of what was once the BC Liberal Party. But
00:32:10.900let's get back to the public sector here. Aaron Woodrick is the director of the Domestic Policy
00:32:16.380program for the mcdonald laurier institute and joins us now uh aaron it's always good to talk
00:32:21.420to you so this story i find just fascinating the federal government says civil servants have to go
00:32:26.940back into the office three days a week it's not even like they're being forced in five days a
00:32:31.580week like they were up until march of 2020 three days a week and it's as though you've committed
00:32:37.340this just grave injustice against public sector unionized workers in ottawa what the heck is going
00:32:43.900on here? Yeah, it does speak to an entitlement issue, right? I mean, you got to have perspective.
00:32:49.300And I think if there's any allegation, and people will know this from my days advocating with the
00:32:52.740Taxpayers Federation, I've been tough on the public sector at times, right? And that's largely because
00:32:57.700I don't think sometimes folks in the public sector appreciate how good they have it. I mean,
00:33:02.160even when you think about things like defined benefit pensions, which are basically extinct
00:33:06.260in the private sector, the level of job security. I mean, these are pretty important things that a
00:33:12.340lot of people would give the right arm for. And so I think at times when the public sector
00:33:17.040complains about things not being as, you know, optimal for them, they need to recognize that
00:33:24.160there's an audience out there of Canadians that don't have anywhere near those things. And so
00:33:28.200they, you know, it comes across sometimes a little bit toned out. Yeah. And I mean, look,
00:33:33.040I think there are arguments to be made about whether, with work in general, of whether work
00:33:38.540can be rethought, whether traditional offices, nine to five jobs can be rethought. But the idea
00:33:43.280that government gets something that basically the private sector never will, or government workers
00:33:48.700get something that most private sector employees never will, is always the part that rubs me the
00:33:53.200wrong way about this. I mean, we talked about this in the context of executive bonuses with Chris
00:33:56.860Sims a few moments ago, but it's especially true on an arrangement like this. Like any private
00:34:01.440sector office worker that I've spoken to, with few exceptions, so I shouldn't say any, most of them
00:34:06.640are looking at this and are like, give me a break. I had to go back to the office a year and a half
00:34:10.620ago. Yeah, absolutely. And in a lot of cases, the response I always used to get from, you know,
00:34:16.340people in the public sector or the union leaders in the public sector as well, the government is
00:34:21.460being the leader in this, right? When I'd say, well, we can't afford to find benefit pensions,
00:34:24.760they say, well, it's the private sector should have them too. Well, and the obvious reason,
00:34:28.380Andrew, that they don't have them is they can't afford them, is that unlike the government,
00:34:31.560businesses don't have unlimited funds, right? They have to stay afloat. And so I think sometimes
00:34:36.620Again, in the public sector, they need to recognize that they're not facing the same kind of constraints that those in the private sector have. And that while I never begrudge any group sort of banding together to try and get the best deal they can have, they often have power and negotiating power that people in the private sector just don't have.
00:34:54.420And they don't have a lot of sympathy for people that are crying about things and saying, oh, you know, boo-hoo, you have to go in three days a week instead of two.
00:35:02.420I've been going back five days a week for years.
00:35:05.180It just strikes the ear wrong, I think.
00:35:07.720So you offer in the hub what I think is an olive branch, and I suspect the Public Service Alliance of Canada might not see it that way.
00:35:15.400But you say federal public servants can get their remote work, but in return, they should expect more rigorous performance reviews.
00:35:24.060Yeah, this is a bit of a contrarian take, and some people were surprised to see me say this.
00:35:29.560But I think part of the issue we have right now is this, is that the people in public service, they really like the remote work, just like a lot of people who enjoy the remote work.
00:35:39.420Now, does that mean they should always get it?
00:35:40.860Not necessarily, but I do think we should acknowledge the type of white-collar work, the type of work at a computer.
00:35:46.160That is the ideal type of work for remote work, if you're going to have it at all.
00:35:49.800And most of the public sector is that kind of work.
00:35:52.180most of the government jobs in Ottawa involve the type of work where you log onto a computer
00:35:56.320and type at a keyboard. I think we should be open to remote work in those cases. The other thing I
00:36:02.320think is a lot of the thing that is motivating both the government and the public to want to get
00:36:07.340public servants back to work has nothing to do with whether or not they need to be there.
00:36:13.000It's more a sense of, I think you're lazy and I'd rather have you at a desk. And my response to that
00:36:18.560is, first of all, I will defend civil servants on that. Are there bad ones? I'm certain there
00:36:22.620are who don't work. But otherwise, I think many of them are happy to do their work. And I think
00:36:28.640if your real concern is that civil servants are lazy, well, I can tell you, they'll probably be
00:36:33.000lazy sitting at their desk downtown at the office just as much as they will at home. So that doesn't
00:36:36.860solve anything. Even worse, because now you've got the social aspect, the coffee station, the
00:36:41.140Well, this is it. And Andrew, I almost think like, look, let's be honest, for some people,