Juno News - Self-Inflicted Wounds and Forgotten Principles

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juneau News. Alexander Brown here, host of Not Sorry, director of the National Citizens

00:00:07.660 Coalition. I'm a columnist, a campaigner. Thrilled to be back with you to end another

00:00:12.520 week here. We like to talk Doug Ford on Fridays when I record this, and we have much to talk

00:00:18.220 about. But first, oh, Canada. We're a nation of so much potential, but we continue to be

00:00:24.380 held back by those who have lost the plot, don't share in our principles, or who are

00:00:28.940 perhaps too thick to know the difference. Even in our period of remembrance, those in

00:00:34.220 power in our broken institutions, they're getting it wrong. In fact, a Saskatchewan

00:00:39.120 prosecutor was just barred from wearing a poppy in court, as if that in any way perjured

00:00:44.620 proceedings. Lana Morelli, a veteran prosecutor, refuses to accept this institutional betrayal, 0.93

00:00:51.660 and rightfully so. We have freedom of speech because of what these brave men and women

00:00:55.960 have done for our country, she's quoted as saying. And not being able to honor them by

00:01:00.340 wearing poppies while I'm arguing for freedom and protection tugs at my heartstrings. I have

00:01:05.420 grandparents that have fought in the war. I have family members that are part of the Legion,

00:01:09.360 and I did go to school in the States, and I had many friends that were in the military and went

00:01:13.120 overseas to fight for freedom. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston is stepping up in response to seeing

00:01:19.560 this, announcing that Nova Scotia will move to enshrine the poppy's protection from such

00:01:25.660 un-Canadian dictates such as this. At a moment where a percentage of Canadians claim to again

00:01:31.460 care about our national symbols and our flag, we have to get this right. That talk, perhaps from them,

00:01:39.140 is proving cheap, and we know where the cultural defenestration of the last 10 years has gotten us.

00:01:44.620 Our culture and our symbols need to be protected, even if by law. And we cannot deny the sacrifices

00:01:52.560 and the concerns of our veterans. We cannot let those sacrifices be in vain. I want you to watch

00:01:57.980 these touching remarks from 100-year-old World War II veteran Alec Penstone in Great Britain.

00:02:03.400 Arguably now, and sadly so, you could describe Great Britain as once Great Britain.

00:02:08.180 What does Remembrance Sunday mean for you? What is your message?

00:02:12.720 My message is, I can see in my mind's eye, there were rows and rows of white stones of all the

00:02:22.720 hundreds of my friends and everybody else that gave their lives for what? A country of today.

00:02:31.560 No, I'm sorry. The sacrifice wasn't worth the result that it is now.

00:02:38.180 Oh, well, I'm sorry. What do you mean by that, though, at this point?

00:02:44.380 Well, what we fought for, and what we fought for was our freedom. We find that even now,

00:02:52.020 it's a darn sight worse than what it was when I fought for it.

00:02:56.900 Oh, Alec, I'm sorry you feel like that, because I want you to know that all the generations

00:03:02.860 that have come since, including me and my children, are so grateful for your bravery

00:03:09.280 and all that for service personnel. And it's our job now, isn't it, to make it the country

00:03:15.280 that you fought for. You absolutely fought for.

00:03:18.600 That is it.

00:03:19.400 And we will do. We want to...

00:03:20.920 I'm so wonderful to know there are people like you that can spread the word around.

00:03:26.320 We're not getting it right. Not for Alec, not for our great heroes and veterans,

00:03:33.860 our past and present future generations. And on not getting it right and in shifting gears,

00:03:41.300 but very much in theme with losing the plot and perhaps not sharing in the principles that we

00:03:46.800 should. Canada's self-proclaimed economic engine, home to three consecutive progressive

00:03:52.820 conservative majorities, it too remains in crisis. And it's not just Donald Trump's fault. This was

00:03:59.100 our great veterans, our great Ontarians. They were insulted by five years of John A. MacDonald

00:04:07.500 being boarded up at Queen's Park. They can't just blame Donald Trump. Ontario's fall economic

00:04:13.200 statement, it isn't the course correction the province needs. The trend lines remain poor. For

00:04:19.000 all the bluster, the parlor tricks, and the political gamesmanship, let's talk to the man

00:04:24.780 behind the tweet here, Noah Jarvis, formerly of True North. He's the Ontario Director at the

00:04:29.480 Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Let's commit to doing better for our provinces, for our country.

00:04:34.880 And first, a word from our sponsor.

00:04:36.560 I want to give a quick word from our sponsor, Albertans Against No Fault Insurance. So did

00:04:42.240 you know that the Alberta government is overhauling its auto insurance system? Under a new model

00:04:46.400 called Care First coming into effect in 2027, most Albertans injured in car accidents will

00:04:50.700 no longer be able to sue the at-fault driver. Instead, decisions about your care and compensation

00:04:55.320 will be made by the insurance company, not your doctor, not the courts. Critics say this

00:04:59.440 system puts insurance companies first and removes key rights from victims and their families.

00:05:04.580 Noah Jarvis joins us today, Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. You can find

00:05:10.260 us on Twitter at Noah R. Jarvis. Noah, thank you.

00:05:12.940 Thank you for having me on, Alex. I appreciate it.

00:05:15.940 We're taping this on Friday and these are quickly becoming, to me, Ford Fridays, where you get to

00:05:20.260 unpack all the issues in Ontario, all the issues you want to be better, all the matters of a

00:05:25.780 conservative government. You're hoping to be a little bit more conservative. And the topic of the day

00:05:30.500 is this sort of win McGinty-esque spending that seems to be continuing, that world-beating subsovereign debt,

00:05:38.260 the Ford government is adding $31.6 billion to the debt this year, set to hit $459 billion. What are your

00:05:46.100 comments? Well, I just got to say the fall economic statement does not present good news. As you said,

00:05:52.100 they are adding $31.6 billion to the debt. That's far more than the Ford government led us on to believe

00:05:59.860 when they were first elected in 2018. I mean, they were elected on a platform of ending the party with

00:06:06.980 taxpayers' money, ending the party with taxpayer money. But instead, we've seen the party continue on.

00:06:13.620 We've hit $459 billion in debt. It's set to exceed $500 billion in just two years. And that's money

00:06:21.620 that you, the Ontario taxpayer, are going to have to pay back. And we're paying it back

00:06:25.940 right now. This year, we're spending $16.2 billion on debt interest charges. That's more than we spend

00:06:32.820 on post-secondary education. That's about half of the sales tax revenue. So every time you go buy a

00:06:38.900 coffee at Tim Hortons or you go buy a laptop or whatever, just remember that about half of that

00:06:45.380 money is going towards bondholders on Bay Street. It's not going toward your key government programming.

00:06:51.460 And that's because the Ford government has continued to borrow massive amounts of money. So

00:06:58.660 just in general, the fall economic statement, not good news for taxpayers.

00:07:03.620 Yeah, I think we expected it to be grim, but I didn't expect such an addition to that debt clock

00:07:08.820 you guys are famous for. I think you're running out of room on how to keep that going on the

00:07:13.860 on the billboard there. The unemployment rate has also been revised to worsen from 7.6% to 7.8%

00:07:22.260 and is predicted to remain higher than the 2025 budget forecast through to 2028. This is already a

00:07:28.500 province of record youth unemployment. There are more than 700,000 unemployed Ontarians at last estimate.

00:07:35.140 The truer number that takes into account the sort of the more fulsome employment in the gig economy

00:07:40.900 era is believed to be much higher. Ontario can't just blame a pandemic or a US president. So what's

00:07:47.140 your concern there? Well, you're exactly right. We cannot just blame a US president. We've been dealing

00:07:52.820 with this unemployment problem for many years now. And the foreign government, they elect this claim

00:07:58.900 that all of this deficit spending, all this debt spending is going to help fix the unemployment

00:08:04.180 problem. This year, they're giving out $11.9 billion in corporate welfare. These are subsidies to

00:08:11.220 corporations who the foreign government claims are training people for jobs and are able to help inflate

00:08:19.540 these employment numbers. But we haven't really been seeing those results. And even if this were

00:08:26.900 delivering results, I still wouldn't be in favor of this corporate welfare, but it's not. So it's not

00:08:31.140 even justifiable based on their own criteria. So when young Canadians are seeing that they're not able

00:08:38.180 to get a job, plus they're being saddled with just thousands upon thousands of dollars per person debt,

00:08:44.340 purpose and debt has exceeded $28,000 in Ontario. Plus, you have to consider all the federal debt that

00:08:51.540 the federal government has been saddling Ontarians with. Once you consider all of that, you'll

00:08:56.260 understand that these governments aren't actually looking out for the interests of the individual

00:09:01.060 taxpayer. They're just trying to come up with a new program so that they can hold a press conference

00:09:07.460 and maybe dump out whiskey or eat a Klondike in front of the press and make themselves look good. 0.94

00:09:16.020 No, I keep waiting for him to light a Jeep on fire at this point, where it's easier to engage in a

00:09:22.260 stunt, a parlor trick than to actually seemingly unlock the conditions for an economy that can grow in

00:09:31.140 a healthy way. Now, where do you come down on the ongoing controversy surrounding the Skills Development

00:09:36.740 Fund? There are those in proximity to government who are making excuses. Perhaps they're seeing

00:09:41.540 something we're not. They're quick to dismiss it. You know, it's just this is the way things go now.

00:09:47.460 It worries me. And as a director of the National Citizens Coalition, I know we have our concerns that

00:09:53.140 that Bay Street is turning into K Street, that this lobbyist model is further insulating government

00:09:58.660 from accountability and from the public. And the kind of pay to play model that seems to me

00:10:04.420 similar to liberal cronyism federally. You know, we have our concerns. Do you or the CTF?

00:10:10.900 Well, we absolutely do. I mean, the Skills Development Fund is just another one of the

00:10:15.300 four governments corporate welfare programs. And if companies are giving donations to the PC party

00:10:22.340 and then they are able to extract millions of dollars from the Skills Development Fund, I mean,

00:10:27.380 that's pretty concerning. But it's not just that, you know, there's maybe a pay for play model. I mean,

00:10:32.900 this is just a massive amount of government waste. We recently heard about the story of $10 million

00:10:38.660 going to fund a strip club. I mean, like when you're really paying your taxes and you're filling

00:10:45.300 out your income tax form and you're seeing that you're giving away about like 40 percent of your

00:10:50.580 wage to the government, you don't expect them to then turn around and spend that money on strip clubs 1.00

00:10:55.300 and, you know, helping, you know, the skills of the strippers. I mean, look, I'm sure it's not easy

00:11:03.940 work. You know, I definitely can't do it and I definitely wouldn't want to do it. But I mean,

00:11:08.900 if we're trying to really help train Ontarians with and help develop their skills, I don't think

00:11:15.060 we should be helping develop the skills of strippers and taxpayers definitely shouldn't be the ones 0.98

00:11:20.580 contributing to it. No, that's a tax trough situation that I've never heard of. I mean,

00:11:25.140 it's going to, you know, they're barbers. They're they're not there. Let's say gentlemen's

00:11:29.860 establishments. It's going to friends. And, you know, it's good to look after your friends, but

00:11:36.180 they don't need those handouts. There should be a better checks and balance system. There

00:11:40.020 shouldn't be preferred access. It's the role is supposed to be to embolden an economy that where

00:11:46.500 you're out of the way and people can go out and, and, you know, make their claim for their own.

00:11:52.500 You joined myself and others in attendance for the project in Ontario event on September 30th.

00:11:58.340 Did our groups did that gathering in those panels of conservatives, legacy conservative organizations,

00:12:04.260 small C organizations, libertarian minded concerned citizens, did they strike you as radical or Yahoo-esque

00:12:11.460 as the premier so flippantly put it, or are conservative concerns and criticisms

00:12:16.420 of this government warranted? Well, I think criticism of any government is warranted,

00:12:21.460 especially a government that is so blatantly driving up the debt and really not adhering to

00:12:27.300 their promises of ending the party with taxpayer dollars or delivering significant tax cuts as

00:12:33.380 were promised in 2018. I mean, the way we come from at the CTF is we'll work with any organization,

00:12:41.380 any like-minded people who want to see the problems in this province resolved or want to see taxes come

00:12:48.820 down in this province to help put more money in the pockets of taxpayers, want to see even business

00:12:53.860 taxes come down so that we can actually compete with American businesses in the face of American

00:12:59.380 tariffs instead of sending out billions upon billions of dollars in corporate welfare. I mean,

00:13:05.380 anyone and any organization who wants to help us fight that fight will definitely partner with,

00:13:11.060 and it definitely didn't seem like a bunch of radicals. It was just people who wanted to find

00:13:16.020 solutions for Ontarians, people who want to help deliver for the young people of Ontario who are

00:13:21.860 concerned of the massive amounts of debt that we are saddling on young people. I mean, look, when you

00:13:28.580 have a government that sees a decrease in revenues by $4 billion and is instead increasing spending by

00:13:37.220 $7.3 billion, you definitely have a problem, and I think a lot of people are recognizing that.

00:13:41.860 They're trying to propose solutions, and I don't think the foreign government should be demeaning

00:13:45.700 people for trying to find those solutions. No, and these are legacy organizations and those who very

00:13:53.140 much respect the legacy of the common sense revolution and who just wish to see a reorienting

00:13:59.860 towards some more conservative principles, some fiscally responsible principles, because as to your

00:14:05.140 point about young people, Ontario is in the grips of a provincial housing disaster that spurred in part by

00:14:11.860 continued fallout from mass immigration, but also because the province isn't building homes. Housing starts

00:14:18.340 are off a cliff and heading for just, in accordance with the fall economic statement, just 65,000 starts

00:14:26.020 a year at a time when Ontario sort of haphazardly is accepting so many temporary residents, permanent

00:14:32.420 residents, asylum seekers. Ford tried to give out more work permits to those asylum seekers. They sat back

00:14:39.380 as the diploma mills exploded the last few years. Where would the CTF like to see adjustments on the

00:14:45.220 housing file or say the conditions for the housing file? Well, first of all, we have a situation in this

00:14:52.500 province where municipalities are levying extraordinarily high development charges on builders who are just

00:14:58.820 trying to build new homes, who are trying to expand the housing supply. I mean, developing charges is such a

00:15:05.380 creative euphemism. It's really just building taxes. It's taxes on building new homes. And when you explain it like

00:15:11.540 that to most Ontarians, you'd find that they are against placing taxes on just builders who are trying

00:15:18.420 to build affordable homes for everyday Canadians. And municipalities are profiting, in the case of the

00:15:24.820 city of Ottawa, about like 10 to 15 percent of their revenues coming from the development charges. And the

00:15:30.980 province is the one who creates these municipalities. Municipalities are creatures of the province. The

00:15:36.020 provinces aren't creatures of the federal government in the same way that municipalities are.

00:15:40.180 So the province has the power to force municipalities to cut their development charges, to reform development

00:15:47.060 charge policies and to incentivize them to maybe cut their development charges. But instead,

00:15:52.980 this fall economic statement is concerned with spending billions upon billions of dollars. There was not

00:15:58.660 any mention of reforming development charge system in this province. And if we continue to increase

00:16:05.300 development charges as, say, the city of Toronto has indicated, or other big municipalities have

00:16:11.140 indicated that they'll continue increasing development charges, we're not going to see that increase in

00:16:16.100 supply in the housing supply. So there's both sides of the token to the housing crisis, whether it's

00:16:24.260 supplier demand. But on the supply side, governments can really help out builders by making it more affordable

00:16:32.500 to build homes. And they're just not doing it. No, they're not. And that leads to

00:16:39.060 so many downstream issues for our young and working age. There is a tweet today from Harrison Lohman,

00:16:47.060 editor, deputy editor of The Hub, where he was going through John Ibbotson and Daryl Bricker's new book.

00:16:53.300 And that book, I guess, through Bricker's polling found that 47% of Torontonians aged 20 to 34 still live with

00:17:01.860 their parents. That is the highest in modern history. They say that young Canadians are trapped in an

00:17:08.340 extended adolescence. If you were a conservative government, say, a progressive conservative

00:17:13.620 government, would that number not strike you as a failure to provide those proper conditions for growth?

00:17:19.620 Well, absolutely. I mean, if you are a young person and you're having trouble finding a job and then,

00:17:26.100 say, you eventually get a job, you're probably dismayed at the fact that the cost of housing is

00:17:31.460 so high because of these development charges that your wages, like about 20 to 30 percent of your

00:17:36.580 wages are garnished just if you're in the first income tax bracket. I mean, and if you are a more

00:17:43.300 successful young Ontarian, someone who has a lot of skills to offer to this economy, you might not

00:17:50.260 want to stay around. I mean, I always share the story of my friend who I grew up with through middle

00:17:57.060 school and such. He's a really talented guy. He got a, he didn't even get a computer science degree.

00:18:03.140 He's so, he was so good at this. He just taught himself and just went straight into the job market.

00:18:09.460 And what he found was that living in Canada was so expensive on the cost of living side. And he's

00:18:15.220 having so, so such a large portion of his wages garnished by the government that he decided, hey,

00:18:21.140 going to the United States and pursuing computer programming over there is a far more profitable

00:18:27.460 endeavor. So what did he do? He packed his bags and he went to New York City. It's not like New York

00:18:32.660 City is well-renowned for having low taxes and affordable housing. But the situation in Canada,

00:18:40.980 the situation in Toronto was so bad that moving to New York was a far better option for him when it

00:18:47.540 comes to the cost of living, when it comes to keeping a greater portion of his wage. So I feel as if

00:18:54.340 policymakers are really missing the mark when they aren't trying to deal with the productivity crisis

00:19:00.900 by cutting taxes, because people don't want to have more than 50% of their wage taken from them

00:19:07.540 when they are producing, you know, contributing so greatly to the economy.

00:19:12.420 No. And he, well, he might have to move back after mom, Donnie got elected. It might get,

00:19:16.180 it might get a little expensive for him, or maybe he'll go to Calgary or go to Florida. Maybe,

00:19:20.740 you know, like at this point, if, you know, big city mayors, I mean, even across North America are

00:19:28.420 raising taxes, they're going to move to lower tax jurisdictions. But in Canada, we don't have a

00:19:35.060 provincial government, at least in Ontario, that is willing to cut taxes. I mean, Ford said he would

00:19:40.180 be willing to cut taxes in 2018. Those didn't manifest. And we don't have a federal government

00:19:44.180 that's committed to cutting taxes either. I mean, Carney did deliver a very modest 0.5%

00:19:50.820 income tax cut for the lowest quintile earners, but that isn't significant. It doesn't change the

00:19:56.500 overall high tax environment that we have in this country. And it is forcing a lot of people to

00:20:02.260 consider their options abroad. Yeah. Especially coming out of the federal budget that we finally saw,

00:20:08.660 which of course has all kinds of people concerned for all kinds of reasons. I had Ian Lee, the

00:20:14.420 associate professor from Carleton on this week, who wasn't totally dooming it, but it's still,

00:20:19.620 it's as if the middle class in Canada doesn't exist anymore or isn't supposed to exist. You see these

00:20:25.540 these gestures for the lowest income and then protections for the highest income. And then there's

00:20:30.260 just the social mobility just is not taken into account for anybody else. And so I wanted to touch on

00:20:37.860 Ontario's EV subsidy protection model racket. One may call it multiple things. And then you kind

00:20:45.220 of have this name calling aimed at West where Ford talks about how, well, Daniel Smith has something

00:20:50.020 that people actually want in oil and gas. Should Ontario not be abandoning this, this costly sort

00:20:56.500 of Trudeau allied boondoggle to, to pursue better conditions for growth and a healthier economy?

00:21:02.820 Well, absolutely. They should be abandoning it. I mean,

00:21:05.540 the provincial government and the federal government together, they contributed billions

00:21:08.900 of dollars to Stellantis, formerly Chrysler. And what did Chrysler announce just about a month ago?

00:21:15.300 They announced that they're going to be moving jobs from a plant in Ontario, I believe in Ingersoll,

00:21:21.700 to the United States. And that is because we have a hostile business environment in this country.

00:21:28.180 The corporate tax rates are quite high. If Ontario just replaced its corporate subsidies,

00:21:33.780 $11.9 billion this year with a corporate tax. You could cut the corporate income tax rate by about

00:21:39.940 four, 4.5%. The Montreal Economic Institute, they did a really good report to that effect. And it would,

00:21:49.860 it would bring Ontario's corporate tax, combined corporate tax rate into, in line to be competitive

00:21:56.980 with many jurisdictions in the United States. But instead we are just filing out billions upon

00:22:02.580 billions of dollars to these companies who then turn around and decide that they're going to just

00:22:07.860 move their production elsewhere. So I don't believe in these big taxpayer boondoggles promising

00:22:13.460 thousands upon thousands of jobs for Ontarians. And then they turn around and they're actually

00:22:18.180 shipping out thousands upon thousands of dollars. Look, we shouldn't be picking and choosing winners in the

00:22:24.580 marketplace. We should be, consumers should be deciding for themselves what car companies they

00:22:30.580 want to support with their hard earned money. And if they decide that they want to make Ontario more

00:22:38.340 competitive with the United States when it comes to auto production, they should instead be creating a

00:22:45.140 less hostile business environment. That's great advice. I hope they listen. Noah Jarvis, CTF. Thanks for

00:22:51.060 joining us. Thank you for having me on, Alex. Did you like this episode of

00:22:54.340 Not Sorry on Juno News? Take advantage of our promo code. Go to junonews.com slash not sorry for 20%

00:23:00.500 off. You're going to get access to all the terrific work here. Thrilled to be a part of it and I'll see you next week.

Juno News - November 08, 2025

Self-Inflicted Wounds and Forgotten Principles

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript