Juno News - Public sector union influence is on the rise

00:00:00.040 People on the right know the mainstream media is against them. They know the

00:00:09.360 institutions that exist in the Canadian government and the bureaucracy are

00:00:13.240 against them. But there's a real threat that often goes ignored when it comes to

00:00:18.240 the potential for Conservatives to win another election. Now one of the things

00:00:22.040 we saw in the October election is that the Conservative Party of Canada can win

00:00:25.520 more votes than anyone else but still not have enough seats to form Parliament.

00:00:29.600 And if this can happen when all the stars have aligned and the circumstances

00:00:33.680 are right there, what would it take for the Conservatives to win again in Canada?

00:00:38.760 Well it's going to be very difficult if the continued trend of the rise of the

00:00:43.520 public sector keeps going on. The public sector is oftentimes the only industry

00:00:49.520 in Canada that grows and a lot of the time this happens at the same point that the

00:00:54.800 private sector is in decline or in some cases even receding. I caught up with

00:01:00.560 Catherine Swift who's formerly the head of the Canadian Federation of Independent

00:01:04.920 Business, the CFIB, and now is one of the founders of Working Canadians where she

00:01:10.160 serves as a spokesperson trying to put a pro-Canadian and pro-business mindset

00:01:16.400 towards policy and politics. Now what Working Canadians is up against is millions upon

00:01:22.480 millions upon millions of dollars put into the political process by public sector unions

00:01:27.360 almost exclusively with the goal of defeating Conservatives. This is my interview with Catherine

00:01:34.320 Swift in Alberta about how we push back against the rise of public sector political influence.

00:01:40.320 So let's talk, Catherine, a little bit about one of the biggest issues we see in Conservative

00:01:45.360 parties that are trying to campaign and finding they're up against monumental resistance from

00:01:50.160 what seems in some part of the country like the only industry that's growing which is

00:01:54.000 the public sector. How on earth can we ever break through what seems to be the trend that

00:02:02.080 left-wing parties are being championed by these massive operations, massive ad campaigns? What's

00:02:07.360 the answer to that? Well I think, Andrew, we have to go broke. No, I'm not trying to be too sarcastic or

00:02:13.680 facetious, but part of the evil part of me often thinks, well maybe we'll just go broke and then people will

00:02:19.600 ultimately understand what a huge problem this is, because you're absolutely right. We've seen over the

00:02:25.520 last 20 years or so in particular, provincially, federally and even municipally, we've seen a massive

00:02:32.320 escalation of participation by public sector unions. All of these third-party groups that often you look at them and you think,

00:02:39.200 oh, what is that all about? Oh, in Ontario it's called Working Families. Isn't that nice? Isn't that a

00:02:44.800 you know, a nice cozy little group? Of course, it's nothing but supported by unions, you know. So often

00:02:49.440 you don't even know what these entities are, but they're participating exceedingly actively, giving

00:02:54.880 money, but also putting boots on the ground in many of these election campaigns. So it's not just as simple

00:03:00.560 as the election rules that only permit a given group to spend, you know, X dollars, half a million bucks was

00:03:05.760 the federal number most recently and so on. They also do all kinds of in-kind stuff that I believe

00:03:12.320 is probably at least as valuable as the actual purchased advertising they do and that kind of

00:03:17.760 thing. So it, well, the answer is none of them are easy because a lot of it has to do with things like

00:03:23.360 rules around how, on the left, the union spending is by far the largest. It tends to be 80 to 90 percent

00:03:30.800 of the spending in any given election over the, over the last number of years. So people say,

00:03:35.440 oh, the big corporations, the big corporations aren't spending a minuscule portion of what the

00:03:40.000 unions are spending. So part of it obviously is to oppose this with groups on the other side of the

00:03:46.400 spectrum and that is happening. There are a number of groups that are springing up, but the reality is

00:03:51.920 the unions have a flow, a massive flow of money they don't earn because Canada's a unique country in the

00:03:57.600 world that permits the forcing of union dues. So if you're in a unionized workplace you have to pay

00:04:03.600 those dues whether or not you like how they're going to be spent. Zero financial accountability

00:04:08.080 on the part of those unions as to how they're spending the dues and spending them politically

00:04:13.200 willy-nilly. In many countries this would be illegal. So obviously there's a legal answer here to

00:04:17.840 some extent. I don't think that's imminent because frankly our courts have been excessively

00:04:23.920 sympathetic and positive toward the participation of unions and giving unions all this power that

00:04:29.600 frankly they don't deserve. So I don't see that, unless something changes quite radically in the

00:04:34.400 near future, I don't see that really as a solution. But I do think having groups presenting the other

00:04:39.920 side of the story is part of the answer. Part of the answer also though is getting the information out.

00:04:45.120 I think if most voters knew these are self-interested unions that basically want to pick your pocket even

00:04:50.640 more than they're already picking it, they're the ones that are trying to sway your vote then getting

00:04:55.920 that word out much more effectively than has been done to date is a really key part of this as well.

00:05:01.920 Of course ultimately the ideal would be get rid of things like forced union dues, impose transparency

00:05:07.680 because I think a lot of union members if they had a clue how much of their money was being spent

00:05:12.400 on partisan political activism they would be pretty disgruntled with that and start to demand some

00:05:18.080 changes. So you know those are just some of the solutions that I think are feasible. I don't

00:05:22.480 think in the short term though the sort of legal side the ultimate answer is the legal stuff that

00:05:26.480 will actually constrain this kind of spending completely. But and and perhaps that's you know

00:05:32.720 again if you could if you could manage to do it to prevent any spending by unions or even corporations.

00:05:39.040 We've gone a little bit to that because we now you know only permit individuals to donate to certain

00:05:44.000 candidates campaigns and so on but I think we could go further but again the beneficiary governments

00:05:49.920 get elected are they going to enact these changes of course not because they're the ones that are

00:05:53.760 benefiting from it. The flip side that you hear from the unions is that they obviously have a reason

00:05:59.680 to get involved and that's that they're voting in their self-interest most people vote in their

00:06:03.280 self-interest and they say it's a free speech issue why shouldn't they be allowed to enter the

00:06:07.760 process so what's your answer to that why not just open the floodgates let unions get involved let

00:06:12.080 corporations get involved let any group that has the resources put them towards that process.

00:06:17.600 Because and I'm a big free speech advocate so don't don't get me wrong on that front

00:06:21.680 but in this case they're not equal players these are not equal players here as I mentioned earlier

00:06:26.560 the unions have this guaranteed flow of money that frankly they could not lift a finger and they

00:06:31.200 would still be getting billions of dollars if you add it all up across the country it's billions of

00:06:35.840 dollars every single year to spend however they choose a corporation is not in that position

00:06:41.600 if they do something stupid they might go out of business they might severely see their stock price

00:06:45.840 drop they you know they might lose a lot of investors and on and on and on so they're not

00:06:49.680 equal players that you can apply these free speech arguments to in a fair you know level playing

00:06:54.800 field kind of way the other thing to look at which I think is probably the most important one

00:06:59.040 is what is the ultimate end game for society and given that the unions their only growth source

00:07:05.360 right now is government unions are dying in the private sector they can't compete they you know they were

00:07:10.080 fine back in the sort of heavy industrial age and then so on so forth now that globalization and

00:07:15.520 of course technological change has really taken a bite out of their bottom line you know you'll find

00:07:20.880 the unions are moving so much toward the government side and of course the ultimate impact of having

00:07:26.960 public sector union friendly governments in power in perpetuity is we do go bankrupt as a country in the

00:07:33.840 interim you have we already have the the the reality that a government worker makes considerably more

00:07:39.840 money than the identical job in the private sector would pay they have much better pension arrangements

00:07:44.560 that by the way are are increasingly going broke these days as the population ages so we are paying

00:07:50.160 more and more we we the private sector taxpayer paying more and more for that so again I think to

00:07:54.560 look at what the end result is of just letting letting a rip in terms of what everybody um you know what any

00:08:00.720 group is is spending out there you have to look at how destructive the impact of that is at least

00:08:06.240 businesses do contribute to society to our tax base to the bottom line unions do not they just take the

00:08:13.280 money and all the union funded groups as well because frankly when you look at where all the money's

00:08:17.680 coming from it's not exclusively unions but the vast majority of it is so I think it has to be focused on

00:08:22.720 and people need to realize yeah free speech is one thing hugely important of course but the the pernicious

00:08:29.280 impact of letting this on you know unfettered spending coming from this this part of the economy

00:08:37.440 is so destructive to our our society and our economy ultimately as a whole that it can't be treated equally

00:08:44.400 to other players in the mix you look at cities like edmonton london hamilton a lot of these suburban

00:08:51.360 communities the only industries growing in these cities are public sector social services federal

00:08:57.840 provincial municipal government what's the short-term and long-term impact of this trend when you see in

00:09:03.440 alberta for example economic downturn in the private sector but government still manages to grow yeah well

00:09:09.520 of course in alberta they uh you know that election of that ndp government which i'm sure a lot of people

00:09:15.280 are regretting uh now um it was a big factor there because you even had a premier whose whose spouse was a

00:09:21.760 public sector union leader so you know where is their bread going to be buttered not not much of a shocker

00:09:26.240 there uh but you're right it's very worrisome the trudeau government has loved to boast about job

00:09:31.280 creation but when you when you look down where the jobs are being created so many of them are public

00:09:35.520 sector or quasi public sector or so-called social enterprises which are which are kind of which which

00:09:41.760 is a new insidious form they sort of pretend to be businesses but they're basically supported by

00:09:46.480 government so they're not true businesses but the proliferation of all of these entities uh it is again

00:09:53.280 it's a drag on our economy on our on our society and and ultimately too they tend to drive out the 1.00

00:10:00.400 truly private businesses who are the big the big contributors to our bottom line as a country as a

00:10:05.680 province you know as any as any government so again the the end game is not pretty i often wonder i often

00:10:12.480 wonder if any of these public sector entities ever think out more than the next couple of years or maybe

00:10:18.560 their next collective bargaining agreement because when you look at the countries that actually have

00:10:22.800 gone broke or the jurisdictions detroit's an example greece of course the infamous grecian formula as i

00:10:28.080 like to refer to it you know and other countries that have teetered on the brink who's who ends up

00:10:33.440 suffering the worst the public sector workers do because suddenly they see those pensions they were

00:10:38.000 counting on sliced in half i recently i spoke at this conference to a woman who has relatives in ireland and

00:10:45.040 they were visiting recently and there was some teachers there it just so happened we're expecting

00:10:49.520 to retire at 54. they just recently found out that's going to be 68 now because their pension is

00:10:54.880 so badly underfunded i mean these are anecdotal but this do you think that's not going to happen here

00:10:59.680 in canada a lot of these pension plans and public sector workers are are in danger so you know obviously

00:11:05.520 we need we need a little more perspective here into looking out a decade or two not just you know the next

00:11:11.280 year or so but but yeah it's it's it's a very worrisome trend that you end up with the government

00:11:17.440 sector or the sort of quasi government sector growing and growing and growing because once

00:11:22.640 again let's look through history uh do we see this as a successful strategy for any country for any

00:11:28.240 economy the old east german model that was a fiasco the old you know the old line about socialism

00:11:34.080 is sharing misery equally it comes to mind so um it is these are very very worrisome trends they should

00:11:40.400 worry all canadians including those who currently say hey i'm in government i'm good i got job

00:11:46.000 security got this big fat pension well folks uh the bottomless pit of taxpayer you know pockets

00:11:53.040 isn't really bottomless it can be you know the bottom can be reached and uh unfortunately we see

00:11:58.320 a lot of surveys now that say things like you know an inordinate number of canadians are 200 bucks

00:12:03.760 away from you know bankruptcy or you know everybody's worried the last election everybody

00:12:08.800 was worried about uh you know sort of just bread and butter cost of living uh affordability issues uh

00:12:15.360 and and so uh in in canada i think we're not too too far from some really worrisome trends and of course

00:12:21.200 a nice whacking great recession uh is a trigger unfortunately that could set a lot of this mess in

00:12:27.760 motion so yeah it's there's no easy answers because obviously we need to you know the average voter also

00:12:33.600 needs to say uh even if they're not a government worker or whatever that gee oh yes this this um

00:12:38.720 political party has promised me the moon and of course even the conservatives were doing it in the

00:12:43.200 last federal election all this spending planned but ultimately it's all coming out of our pockets yes

00:12:50.080 here at true north we are putting forward a perspective that you just aren't getting from the

00:12:54.000 mainstream media we can't do this alone if you can chip in a few dollars a month to support the work

00:12:58.960 we're doing by going to tnc.news and joining the andrew lawton heritage club it would be

00:13:04.560 mightily appreciated for true north i'm andrew lawton

Juno News - November 24, 2019

Public sector union influence is on the rise

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