00:02:21.660they put out the shots and say these are the people we're looking for and a lot of the times
00:02:26.060they as the old saying goes for the RCMP they get their man but that hasn't happened here and it
00:02:32.880isn't just the John A. Macdonald statue on the very same weekend there was and this is in many
00:02:38.020respects worse but we'll say as bad at least there was a statue of the Virgin Mary decapitated
00:02:44.160outside a Lebanese Christian church in Toronto the Our Lady of Lebanon parish on Queen Street
00:02:51.080And this happened on Sunday. The statue that adorned the church's exterior of the Virgin Mary had its head removed.
00:02:59.100Not only that, but taken away. No one even knows where the head is right now.
00:03:03.420Police in this case have put out a surveillance still that's very grainy of someone they believe was the decapitator.
00:03:10.680But no one is clear on where the head actually is or why.
00:03:14.200why this small church in Toronto was targeted in this way in a manner that would be a hate crime
00:03:22.520were it to happen to any other denomination any other religious institution and again when
00:03:28.380Justin Trudeau has spoken out repeatedly upon vandalism of mosques and synagogues in the past
00:03:34.880I have to wonder where is the formal big long production of a statement for this where is the
00:03:41.100support for the people of this church. And that's the part that's really shameful here is that when
00:03:48.280other religions and other religious groups are faced with these same sorts of acts, it is a
00:03:54.880federal case, it's a national case, and everyone is to talk about it. Whereas when it happens to
00:03:59.540a Christian church, even a Lebanese Christian church, by the way, no one is speaking up,
00:04:04.480no one is sounding the alarm. And it's actually just been people who are in the conservative
00:04:10.000parties of Canada that seem to be speaking up as far as elected politicians go. Why is supporting
00:04:16.000religious institutions who have been vandalized, why is that something that's exclusive to the
00:04:20.160right? It certainly shouldn't be. And in many respects, this is unsurprising because the
00:04:26.280culture that's created or that has been created, the climate that's been created by the left
00:04:30.300is one that says decapitation of a statue is the way you express yourself. This is all
00:04:34.800just a legitimate form of protest. And it's unsurprising because this is the culture we're
00:04:41.380in now where the way you express yourself is by damaging things, by destroying things, by
00:04:45.820vandalizing things. That is just political protest now. That's not vandalism. Take a look at an
00:04:51.400interview that appeared in NPR last week. It's an interview in the Code Switch series with an
00:04:57.520author named Vicky Osterweil or Osterweil who wrote a book called In Defense of Looting. Now
00:05:04.040this book just came out. Osterweil is a self-described writer, editor, and agitator
00:05:10.400who's been writing about and participating in protests for years, the interview write-up says.
00:05:16.060And this book says that vandalism and looting is basically your God-given right if you are
00:05:22.600protesting, that the rioters who smash windows and take items from the stores are engaging in
00:05:27.520a powerful tactic that questions the justice of law and order and the distribution of property
00:05:34.740and wealth in an unequal society. And if you look through this, I mean, there's a lot in this that
00:05:41.460just makes it very difficult to stomach your way through it without just smashing your head into a
00:05:46.120wall 19 times. So I'm giving you a fair warning or perhaps even a trigger warning there. But when
00:05:51.220you look at the interview what she says is that looting is all about resisting the whiteness of
00:05:58.440law and order basically because it's white supremacy and whiteness that's all happening
00:06:03.140and that's why the black uprising is important and looting is the way that you accomplish that
00:06:08.380and when you ask her as the interviewer did well what do you say to people who are concerned about
00:06:14.340essential places like grocery stores or pharmacies being attacked and then she says well you know
00:06:20.920they're not providing worker protections. It's a Republican myth that small business owners need
00:06:25.860to be respected. That's a right-wing myth. So this is, again, one book from one radical. And I would
00:06:31.460encourage you to actually look through this interview if you can manage to do it with keeping
00:06:36.720your sanity in check. The reason is that this is, despite being just one book, a mindset. A mindset
00:06:44.140that needs to be revealed here to be understood, if it can be understood, which is that when we
00:06:49.180say, well, you can't vandalize because it's wrong. We're speaking a totally different language
00:06:54.300than that of the rioters and the vandals who think that this statue is a monument to white
00:07:00.020supremacy and who think that property rights are a monument to white supremacy and who think that
00:07:04.840respecting the rule of law and public order is a monument to white supremacy, because that's the
00:07:10.060problem. So none of the arguments that we're using are working on them, which is why I criticize
00:07:15.760Justin Trudeau's line on this from the other day, which is that, well, vandalism's wrong and we
00:07:21.620shouldn't take things out this way and there are proper channels and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
00:07:25.480because I said that is not going to do anything to the protesters because he's not actually
00:07:29.900addressing the very root concern, which is the historic revisionism and the malignment of
00:07:36.660historic figures and of Canada's history and of Canada itself. So this is what you're up against
00:07:42.900here. And I want to read another point where she says, you know, there's a reason that Trump has
00:07:48.900embraced the white anarchist line so intensely. She said there, even when you're criticizing the
00:07:55.120protesters, if you point out that most of the so-called Black Lives Matters protesters are
00:07:59.080white, you're actually making the black people who are in the movement invisible. So she wants
00:08:04.140more credit to the black looters, I guess, even though most of the videos and pictures I've seen
00:08:08.760of looting is actually from white anarchists, not people who are genuinely speaking out
00:08:13.740on anything about racial injustice. And I mean, a lot of people are jumping on NPR for allowing
00:08:20.940this interview to be published and for having its writer go through the process and doing it.
00:08:26.040I'm generally of the mindset that showcasing a perspective should not be seen as endorsing it.
00:08:32.160I mean, in this case, NPR really does seem to be trying to give a red carpet treatment to this view that looting is something to be defended and something to be protected.
00:08:44.360And that is, I think, a big danger because now all of a sudden there's like a moral justification.
00:08:49.300If you want to go and burn buildings and destroy things, there's a moral justification to do that.
00:10:44.340And this is just going to be the way things go.
00:10:47.440I mean, if you do a full complete top to bottom, east to west, north to south audit of street names in most Canadian cities, you're probably going to find that a lot of the people after whom these streets have been named are problematic, as they say, especially all of those streets named after English dukes and earls like, you know, Wellington, York and Trafalgar and all of these other ones.
00:11:09.280so this is a Trafalgar is not a duke but you know what I mean so this is going to be where
00:11:14.840this goes and we need people who are going to be strong leaders to stand up against it
00:11:20.720and push back and in the case of the John A. Macdonald statue I said on Monday this is an
00:11:27.500attack on history itself you look at the Our Lady of Lebanon parish and it's an attack on the people
00:11:33.960of that church. It's an attack on people of faith, but the impetus behind it is the same, which is
00:11:42.060that we now have a generation of people that feel this is the way you express yourself, and that
00:11:48.040isn't to say they're victims of their culture because they're still making a choice. They should
00:11:51.960be knowing better. They're old enough to know better, but they are themselves part and parcel
00:12:18.400more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:12:22.240You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:12:24.860you know there are a few certainties in the world of the few one of them is that government will
00:12:31.860always choose the least convenient most nonsensical and most indefensible position whenever given the
00:12:38.500option in this particular case it is Toronto's ban on what are called secondary suites forcing
00:12:44.660a man to kick his father out of his home essentially if you look at this story it's
00:12:51.280actually just one that makes you shake your head for many many reasons. It involves Rod Wilson
00:12:56.780who decided he would do the right thing and be very kind and very nice and Rod Wilson had his
00:13:04.460father come live with him at a little building on his property. Now I'm going to show you some
00:13:11.240pictures of this because I think that this is very relevant to the story here but the rationale
00:13:15.800now behind it is that Bill Wilson was two years ago losing his wife and daughter in a very short
00:13:22.600period of time and Rod Wilson had a home in Toronto and said hey you know what why don't you come live
00:13:27.800with me dad and it was a match made in heaven everyone was happy the reason is because Rod had
00:13:32.700in his backyard something that from the outside looks like a barn of sorts but on the inside is
00:13:39.160actually quite beautiful it has a kitchen it has a living room it has a bathroom it has two stories
00:13:45.040So this is like a fully furnished loft in Toronto, which is very rare and very hard to come by.
00:13:52.160It had electricity, it had heating, it had all the things you'd need, and his father was going to live there and he was going to be a good son and that was that.
00:14:00.260But oh no, then the NIMBYs come around and the busybodies come around and someone in the neighborhood complained to the city who did an investigation and found that this is illegal because you can't have a separate living space on your property.
00:14:14.720unless it backs onto a public laneway.
00:14:18.460And given that this was in the backyard,
00:24:24.680So if someone just kind of takes that figure and digests it a bit,
00:24:28.100That's nearly $40,000 paid to the government.
00:24:31.120And I don't want to say it's for nothing because, yes, there are services that people avail themselves out of.
00:24:35.640But did you get $40,000 out of value from the government as a family last year would be the question I'd ask a lot of people.
00:24:41.580And I'm not sure the answer is going to be yes.
00:24:44.680Yeah, I mean, ultimately, that decision is up to each person.
00:24:47.500They can weigh how much they get in services and the quality of services versus how much they're actually paying.
00:24:52.740But what we do see is, you know, just because you're spending a whole bunch of money doesn't necessarily mean that it's the most effective, efficient way to do that.
00:24:59.880There is plenty of potential for government waste.
00:25:02.560I mean, there can be handouts to corporations at the expense of taxpayers.
00:25:06.200What we're seeing, you know, health care spending has increased a lot over time, but we're not necessarily seeing wait times come down.
00:25:11.820In fact, Canada actually performs quite poorly compared to other universal health care countries around the world on wait times and on number of doctors and hospital beds and other categories like that.
00:25:22.340So just because you're spending a whole bunch of money doesn't necessarily mean you're getting best results.
00:25:27.040But ultimately, it is up to people to decide if they're getting good value for those tax dollars.
00:25:32.040I know you mentioned the comparison between Canada and other OECD countries.
00:25:36.100How has the track been in Canada historically?
00:25:38.920Is this number staying relatively constant?
00:25:40.820Are we seeing it going up or, dare I say, even down?
00:25:44.380Yeah, so for the tax rates for Canada, so we go back all the way to 1961 in our report.
00:25:49.960That's when the data was first available from Statistics Canada.
00:25:54.040And what we saw at that time is that the tax rate was at about 33.5% for the average family back in 1961.
00:26:01.000And basic necessities actually amounted to over half of your income for the average family.
00:26:06.380But that's remarkably shift over time now.
00:26:09.400So now we see basic necessities taking up about a third of your income at about 36%, whereas the tax rate now is at about 42.6% for average families.
00:26:18.880So the tax rate has generally been increasing over time.
00:26:22.340So that has been a remarkable shift that we've seen, particularly in recent years.
00:26:26.900We've seen things like payroll taxes and the elimination of certain tax credits, and that's certainly increased the tax rate for average Canadian families.
00:26:34.420And that's something that we'll keep our eye on moving forward as well.
00:26:38.960These are these credits are historically factored into these numbers, because I know that can make it in many cases even more complicated to try to calculate.
00:26:46.800Yeah, tax rates, tax credits, things like that, they're all incorporated into our calculation.
00:26:53.680Like I said, you know, we have a whole bunch of different categories like income tax rates,
00:26:58.080corporate income tax rates, property taxes, and so on.
00:27:00.820So we do calculate, you know, various things into those calculations every year.
00:27:05.680I know there have been a number of policies in the last few years that have forced there
00:27:09.260to be more transparency on credit card bills, on phone bills, on hydro bills.
00:27:13.720A part of me thinks when I look at this, the Canadians could benefit from a breakdown of exactly how much they're spending in taxes every time they do something.
00:27:20.640Because certainly it seems like just given the total sum here, the individual places where people are being taxed would probably shock a lot of people.
00:27:28.740Yeah, and that's ultimately what this report aims to do.
00:27:31.920I mean, when we look at housing costs, for example, we look at that in the study, you know, amounts to about $20,000 per year or about 22% of your annual income for the average family.
00:27:42.420but when you actually consider how much taxes amount to it's nearly double what actually is
00:27:47.500in housing so you know as a lot of canadians are concerned about paying their rent or paying their
00:27:51.900mortgage right now they should also consider you know how much they're actually paying in taxes
00:27:55.660it's the single largest expense for canadian families right now and that's certainly a big
00:28:00.040consideration for them when they're considering their budgets every year what are the areas if
00:28:05.980any where people might not realize they're getting taxed or where the number might be higher because
00:28:11.920I know that I mentioned at the top of the interview here, your personal income tax, your sales tax.
00:28:17.400I mean, these are things that people see a lot more.
00:28:19.640You must be factoring some numbers here that people might not realize are there or might not realize are as high as they are.
00:28:36.400But what we actually see with corporate income taxes and payroll taxes is that a lot of this, the burden is actually passed on to employees in the form of lower wages.
00:28:45.500So it's not necessarily something that people will think of.
00:28:48.880They think it's kind of just a burden on the employer, for example.
00:28:52.240But we do see that there are results for lower wages for employees.
00:28:56.700And it can also have higher unemployment effects as well because you're increasing the costs for businesses and they're going to pass on that cost to employees.
00:29:04.000So that's something that we see out in the empirical research, that this can be passed on to employees, and it usually is.
00:29:11.260I know predictions are always tough, especially when you're talking about a study that's really data-focused,
00:29:16.720but when you do this for 2020, looking at some of the changes that we've seen in the economy this year,
00:29:24.660do you think when you do the next version, looking back, it's going to be a bit more challenging,
00:29:28.080just given all of the factors that I think Canadian families are dealing with with job losses?
00:29:34.000Certainly. I mean, one thing that we're thinking about going forward, you know, is right now we're running a federal deficit of about $343 billion.
00:29:41.360So we're having a lot of today's spending that's not necessarily being financed by today's taxes.
00:29:47.080So we're likely to see deferred taxation into the future where, you know, tax rates are likely to increase in the future.
00:29:53.400So, you know, going forward, we could actually see the tax rates in this study start to increase more.
00:29:57.960I mean, we could see a lot more challenges for Canadian families moving forward as well as we start to have that tax bill start to increase.
00:30:06.040Yeah, and I just have to clarify, I think at the beginning, I may have messed up the year.
00:30:09.300The study is 2020. The data in the study are from 2019.
00:30:13.100So obviously, you're looking back to the data that are available, given this year's aren't in yet.
00:30:17.220So I just wanted to clarify that for those listening.
00:30:19.800And I do think to the point that you just brought up, a lot of the concerns that we may see if people are finding that, yes, their job losses are happening and income's going down, that the percentage people are spending on taxes, even if the dollar figure isn't higher, may actually be quite significantly inflated.
00:30:36.780So perhaps there's going to be a bit more awareness when we look at these numbers.
00:30:40.300Yeah, that's certainly an important consideration.
00:30:43.040Ultimately, this study is about informing Canadians of how much their tax bill is.
00:30:46.880And, you know, it has increased by over 2,000 percent since 1961.
00:30:51.840Even when we account for inflation, it's about 169 percent increase.
00:30:55.840But ultimately, that percentage of income number is probably the most important one.
00:31:00.020Just seeing that general increase over time where we were at about 34 percent of income back in the 60s,
00:31:05.440and we're now at about 43 percent of income.
00:31:07.500And this is likely to increase as well in the future.
00:31:09.800So that's certainly an important number that I think Canadians will be informed of.
00:31:15.320Jake Fuss, economist with the Fraser Institute,