Juno News - March 24, 2020


The Candice Malcolm Show: The economic toll of COVID-19 pandemic


Episode Stats

Length

26 minutes

Words per Minute

193.96422

Word Count

5,176

Sentence Count

281

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Canadians are being quarantined at home, and the economy is in free fall. How bad is it going to be? Today, Candice talks about the economic impact of the crisis, and why she thinks it's worse than anything we ve ever seen.


Transcript

00:00:00.240 Canada wildly underestimates the toll or potential toll of the coronavirus.
00:00:05.520 Journalists and politicians continue to mislead us about this disease,
00:00:08.960 plus some good news. I tested negative for coronavirus and we're going to go
00:00:12.320 through a lot of fake news. Candice Malcolm here and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:20.480 Thank you so much for tuning in. As promised, I am doing a live episode here,
00:00:26.400 reporting live from quarantine, I guess. I am now in day, I think, 14 or 15 of being
00:00:33.200 self-isolated here at home. I think it's probably good practice regardless of what the government
00:00:38.800 tells you, regardless of how strict the measures are to impose sort of self-isolation or home
00:00:44.320 quarantine measures. At this point, we know that there are lots and lots of outbreaks. There's
00:00:48.800 lots and lots of new cases around where I live, for instance, here in Toronto, that even if the
00:00:54.720 government wasn't telling us to stay at home, I probably would and I would encourage you to do
00:00:58.800 the same just, you know, for concern for, you know, your own health and safety. But it's kind of
00:01:05.280 interesting to watch the, you know, politicians push more and more pressure for us to stay indoors
00:01:12.000 and for us to basically destroy our own economy, kill large sectors of the economy without any real
00:01:20.480 solid plan. So I'm going to get into all of that. I know Justin Trudeau tried a power grab. He tried
00:01:26.960 to sneak it in. They're debating all the emergency measures today. They're going to pass that 82
00:01:32.800 billion dollar measure and Trudeau sort of secretly tried to throw in a bunch of measures to give
00:01:38.720 basically his government unlimited power. Thankfully, the Conservative opposition kept him on his toes and
00:01:44.480 hopefully they'll remove all that. So that's all happening today. I am doing another episode of the
00:01:50.080 True North Update, which is a show where my colleague Andrew Lawton and I go through all of the news
00:01:54.720 related to coronavirus. We've been doing it every day for the past week and we're going to continue
00:01:59.840 to do it as long as the whole country is on self-lockdown. So I encourage you to watch that
00:02:04.480 show. It'll be up later on this afternoon, probably around five o'clock. So I'm going to talk about that
00:02:09.520 in that show. I'm not going to talk about this show today. I want to focus in on the economy, on what
00:02:14.080 we are actually doing, the measures that we're taking as a country to prevent a potentially
00:02:20.240 disastrous public health outbreak similar to what we've seen in China, what we've seen in Iran,
00:02:25.840 what we've seen in Italy. We're trying to prevent that, but we really don't have a plan. We really
00:02:29.600 have no idea what we're doing and what we know that we're doing is destroying our economy, destroying
00:02:36.880 the livelihood of millions of Canadians. We're going to see just an absolute disastrous outcome in terms
00:02:43.920 of bankruptcies, businesses going out of business, people losing their homes, families falling apart.
00:02:49.280 Okay, this is going to be worse than anything that we've ever seen. And at this point, we don't even
00:02:55.120 really have any idea on like a timeline. Like how long is this going to last? So the Conference Board of
00:03:02.480 Canada came out with a report. They released this report yesterday, the economic implications of social
00:03:09.920 distancing to August. So this is a scenario where Canadians are homebound essentially until August.
00:03:16.880 August. So we're not talking a couple weeks here. We're talking five months, people. Five months of
00:03:23.600 staying at home, nothing opened, everyone just kind of working from their bedrooms and hoping that we don't
00:03:30.720 spread this disease to the point where our hospital system collapses. So what would the projection be
00:03:39.200 if we were to continue these measures until August? Well, according to the Conference Board of Canada,
00:03:44.800 I mean, so the report isn't actually released. They said they're going to release a full report
00:03:48.400 on the 25th, which is tomorrow. But the sort of over, you know, the basic bullet point reading here,
00:03:56.240 which is all we have is bullet points, is that in this scenario, they say the economy sheds 330,000 jobs
00:04:04.480 over the second and third quarter, boosting unemployment to 7.7%. I'm sorry, they project
00:04:11.920 that the total job losses for the country are only going to be 330,000. But we're already way past that.
00:04:19.200 We know that just in one week, last week, after Justin Trudeau announced his emergency measures,
00:04:23.600 that more than 500,000 Canadians applied for EI in just one week. So they applied for the employment
00:04:31.120 insurance scheme that Trudeau introduced. So if 500,000 people are employed after just one week
00:04:37.360 of social measures, how is it projected that we're only going to lose 330,000 jobs? I think that this
00:04:44.560 report, I mean, I haven't read it because it hasn't been fully released yet. But from just, you know,
00:04:48.640 what they've released so far, it seems absolute madness to say that we would only lose 300,000 jobs in
00:04:55.600 the economy, that the unemployment rate would be 7%. Let's just remind everybody, just last month,
00:05:01.520 in Alberta, the unemployment rate was 7.2% in February 2020, before any of these social distancing
00:05:07.680 measures. So we're really supposed to believe that the unemployment rate is barely going to move
00:05:11.920 in this country when they shut down every restaurant, you know, every bar, every theater,
00:05:17.680 every sporting event, you know, they're shutting down the whole country. Anyone who works in the
00:05:22.640 hospitality industry, anyone who works in tourism, they've basically shut down international flights.
00:05:29.120 So lots and lots of people at airlines have been, have lost their jobs. I don't really understand.
00:05:34.720 There was a report from Goldman Sachs down in the United States that projected that the economy was
00:05:40.160 going to contract, the GDP was going to contract by 50% and that they expected a 30% unemployment rate
00:05:46.400 in the United States. Canada's economy is so incredibly tied to the US economy that it's really hard to
00:05:52.000 wrap your head around the idea that Canada would only have a seven percent unemployment rate,
00:05:57.120 but that the United States would have a 30%. I can't imagine a world where the US's unemployment
00:06:02.400 rate was 30% and Canada's is only seven. So if this is the basis of the reports that, of sort of the
00:06:09.840 stimulus spending and the government spending that Justin Trudeau is introducing, that the Liberal
00:06:13.360 government is introducing, is based on a report like this, you know, we are wildly out of touch with the
00:06:19.760 reality of what is going to happen when you purposefully shut down the entire economy.
00:06:25.200 And I think that the concern that a lot of people are really starting to have is,
00:06:29.200 okay, you know, Justin Trudeau is kind of laying down the law. He's saying it's time for everyone
00:06:33.920 to stay home. We really have to take social distancing seriously. Everybody work from home.
00:06:38.320 Nobody go out and about. No one, you know, they've closed parks. They've closed all the schools.
00:06:43.120 They've closed basically any public area. You know, they've banned any kind of gathering
00:06:49.040 with more than 50 people. And, you know, they're cracking down a lot less than that. Like people
00:06:53.760 who continue to have their stores open or their restaurants open are going to be targeted by
00:06:59.680 apparently government officials fining people and arresting people. A woman was arrested in Quebec
00:07:04.640 City for testing positive for this coronavirus and then being found walking around the town. So,
00:07:12.000 you know, the whole idea is what, you know, what is the future of our country going to look like if we
00:07:17.920 continue with these measures? And we're not really being told at this point how long it's going to
00:07:22.400 last and what the economic repercussions are going to be. So, we know, for instance, that when people
00:07:29.760 don't work, they can't pay their bills. They can't pay for their homes. People are going to potentially
00:07:34.320 leave their homes. You know, I know that there's been all kinds of measures taken so that, you know,
00:07:38.320 you can't evict people during this period. Banks are going to be giving a lot of forgiveness in terms of
00:07:43.200 mortgage payments, late mortgage payments. But the idea still is that we know, just again,
00:07:49.680 for instance, we know that unemployment rates are linked to suicide. So, this is from a CBC report.
00:07:55.120 It was in Alberta. It said that the analysis looked at suicide statistics and unemployment data between
00:08:00.240 2000 and 2017. During that time, Alberta's suicide rate was higher than the national average. It
00:08:05.920 revealed that for every one point increase in unemployment, there's a 3% or 2.8% increase
00:08:12.400 in suicide. And we know that unemployment causes about 45,000 suicides a year worldwide. So,
00:08:19.280 you can't just tell Canadians that they're going to lose their job potentially indefinitely. Sure,
00:08:24.480 we have boosted EI payments. The government is working. Well, if they pass this emergency spending
00:08:29.600 bill today, the government will be working to provide about $1,800 a month to Canadians who have been
00:08:34.960 laid off. Maybe that's enough to kind of cover the basics, maybe, if you're lucky. But still,
00:08:39.920 a lot of Canadians will just simply not be able to make ends meet. They won't be able to afford their
00:08:44.960 lifestyle. They won't be able to afford the life that they created pre, you know, this coronavirus
00:08:50.080 outbreak. And I don't think those circumstances are being properly considered right now. You know,
00:08:56.480 our number one concern is public health, as it should be, you know, protecting loss of life and
00:09:01.440 protecting an infection spread the way that we've seen in Italy. But the problem is that there's just
00:09:07.680 so much details missing. There's so much missing. And we just don't know, again, we don't know. So,
00:09:15.280 the measures that we're taking, are they permanent? Are they permanent? We're just going to all stay at
00:09:19.840 home for the foreseeable future? How is that going to, how is that going to be realistic? Are people really
00:09:26.160 just going to be complacent and sitting in their homes all summer, all spring and all summer? What are
00:09:30.080 you supposed to do with your kids? What are you supposed to do? You know, how are you supposed to
00:09:35.920 stay at home with kids and also work from home, right? Like, it just, it just doesn't really make a
00:09:41.680 lot of sense. It doesn't really add up. Now, I have a son, he's one years old, so he's not in any kind of
00:09:46.240 school, not in any kind of daycare. But even still, in my life, you know, he's an active little guy. I like to
00:09:52.960 take him out. I like to take him to classes. He has music class. He used to go swimming,
00:09:58.080 go to church group, all that kind of stuff. So he has sort of no social interactions right now. And,
00:10:04.480 you know, that's fine for now. But six months from now, I think we're all going to be a little stir
00:10:10.320 crazy. And I don't think that you can really just ask Canadians to indefinitely wait for something,
00:10:17.440 wait for a cure to be developed, wait for a vaccine to be developed, wait for different waves so that our
00:10:22.400 hospital systems don't get overwhelmed. You know, we have to come up with some kind of a timeline
00:10:27.040 here. We have to come up with a timeline. Otherwise, well, first of all, I don't even know how the
00:10:32.240 government's going to continue to afford these massive payouts when you have 500,000 Canadians
00:10:37.120 plus applying for EI for, you know, a $2,000 check every two months, every month, on top of all the
00:10:43.760 business bailouts, on top of all the bank bailouts, all the, you know, money going, increased child
00:10:49.520 care benefit. I don't quite understand the increased child benefit because so families with kids are
00:10:56.320 going to get more money, but you can't even use it for daycare. You can't use it for preschool or for,
00:11:03.200 you know, to sign kids up for more classes because everything's closed. So sure, you might be getting
00:11:08.080 a little bit of extra cash every month, but you can't really even spend it. I mean, that's sort of
00:11:13.120 more of a stimulus measure as opposed to an income adjustment measure, which is what the rest of the
00:11:17.520 stuff was. So really, I'm seeing sort of a lack of an overall plan for what's happening with this
00:11:25.040 coronavirus. Like, are we waiting for a vaccine? Is that what's going to happen? Because we could be
00:11:29.760 waiting a year if that's the case. I think that, you know, in order for Canadians to just say,
00:11:36.160 sure, you know, strip away a massive percentage of the economy, I think it's probably closer to the
00:11:41.840 30% figure that Goldman Sachs put it at. 30% of our economy is just going to disappear, and that's
00:11:47.520 everyone who works in hospitality, works in food and restaurants, hotels, you know, flights, and not to
00:11:53.600 mention a significant cutback in other industries. Just, you know, tourism industries, people who come
00:11:59.920 from other places to visit Canada in the summer, you know, think anyone who works at like an aquarium
00:12:05.360 or museum or anything like that, car rental agencies, it's just, it's all interconnected,
00:12:10.480 and it's all going to disappear. And we're supposed to believe that it's only going to result in a 7%
00:12:15.360 unemployment rate. I think that that is wildly problematic. And, you know, one of the things
00:12:21.120 that Justin Trudeau said in his press conference is that his government always lets, it always lets
00:12:28.640 science and experts guide us, science and experts. Now, I think that's a cop-out, because, you know,
00:12:35.280 you're a politician, you're the leader of the country, you're the prime minister, you have to be
00:12:40.000 there to make tough decisions. That's the job, it's a public policy rule. So, you can be advised by
00:12:45.440 scientists about, you know, best practices, but even within the scientific community, there's no,
00:12:50.240 necessarily, there's no agreement. I see reports on both sides, I see there was a report from Stanford
00:12:55.520 University of a professor saying, you know, we're kind of overreacting. Just look at the,
00:13:00.240 look at the infection rate and the death toll. It's not that high at this point. And yet, look
00:13:04.800 at the reaction that we've had, comparing it to other things. You know, other people looking at
00:13:10.000 the data saying, no, no, no, it's about to get a lot worse, we need to be even more paranoid. So,
00:13:13.840 there's not even sort of a universal opinion among scientists when it comes to this disease. Some
00:13:20.720 people think that the numbers are really starting to level off, even in Italy, they're not growing the
00:13:24.640 same way other people think, no, you know, we need to take more and more measures. So,
00:13:28.960 again, they're saying that they're letting the scientists and the expert guys, but I think that
00:13:32.560 there's a real problem in doing that. Because if you, if you just say that, you're kind of
00:13:37.760 alleviating yourself of any responsibility, right? You're saying, well, it's not me that's making this
00:13:42.080 decision. I'm just relying on the experts. Well, who are the experts, right? Who are the experts that
00:13:46.960 you're listening to? Which scientists? It's up to you to choose, you know, to comb through the data and
00:13:51.520 figure out which one is going to lead you. You know, just two weeks ago, the government was sort
00:13:56.560 of laughing at the idea of open borders and saying, no, that's not what we believe. Open borders don't
00:14:01.440 help. The virus has no borders, or sorry, open borders, closing our borders won't help. This virus
00:14:05.920 has no, knows no borders. This is a global effort and we can't close ourselves off at this point.
00:14:11.600 And then, you know, a couple days later, they did a complete about face and said, okay, now it's time
00:14:15.840 to close the border, you know, way after other people were, had closed their border, way after.
00:14:22.080 So just as an example, Donald Trump closed the United States to first two flights from China.
00:14:30.320 He did that way before anyone, anyone else was doing it. And then when he announced the travel ban
00:14:36.880 from Europe, this was March 13th, you know, the experts, the so-called experts condemned him.
00:14:43.120 So right here, viruses don't carry passports. Why travel bans won't work to stop the spread
00:14:49.280 of the coronavirus? So why is it when Trump issued a travel ban, the experts said, no, no, no,
00:14:57.600 that's not going to help. But then when Trudeau does it, it's, you know, a necessary problem.
00:15:02.720 It's a necessary solution. I don't understand how that is the case. And again, Canada's health minister,
00:15:09.280 minister has you. She said the more countries that have outbreaks, the less relevant borders become.
00:15:14.720 A virus knows no borders. And she said that closing borders can actually have a contradicting effect
00:15:21.120 because it will allow people to lie and that people will still be able to get in regardless of whether
00:15:25.120 the borders open or closed. So, you know, were they listening to the experts then or are they listening
00:15:31.280 to the experts now that they agree and they've closed the borders? Again, this is the problem that I have,
00:15:38.400 is that, you know, at the end of the day, you have to choose, you have to make a decision and to just
00:15:42.800 say, well, it's not my decision. I'm just relying on the experts. Like who are the experts? Who determines
00:15:49.600 who is an expert? There's so many people with differing views at this point. Are you going to listen
00:15:54.560 to economists like the folks over at Goldman Sachs saying, you know, we're looking at a major,
00:15:59.520 major collapse in the real estate sector. It could lead to a massive stock market crash even further.
00:16:04.560 Think about how many people are going to lose their livelihood, lose their pensions, lose their
00:16:08.000 savings, lose their house, lose their family. And then you have to weigh that with the health experts
00:16:14.480 that are saying, you know, the only way that we beat this coronavirus is that everybody stay inside
00:16:18.640 and nobody work. And it's like, okay, well, which one's going to look worse in the end? And you really
00:16:23.680 do have to balance and you have to make a decision. So you can't just say, you can't just say, I'm listening
00:16:28.960 to experts because there's contradictions within what the experts are calling for. And even in
00:16:34.000 experts in any given field don't really agree. And I think when you have the news media kind of
00:16:39.760 picking sides, you know, we've seen this throughout that if you are sort of more on the, like, if you,
00:16:47.040 if you like Justin Trudeau, if you're a journalist who likes Justin Trudeau, you look at his response to
00:16:51.360 this virus and you say, wow, you know, he is just a standup guy doing everything he can, makes me so
00:16:58.240 proud to be a Canadian. You know, I saw, I've seen a lot of this on Twitter, the sort of liberal
00:17:03.280 journalists and more, more pro-Trudeau journalists talking about how much they admire Justin Trudeau
00:17:09.920 and how, how proud they are of his response. Whereas then you have sort of more of the skeptical crowd
00:17:15.600 saying, well, wait a minute, what, you know, what is he doing? Does he have a plan?
00:17:18.800 You know, I'm seeing so many contradictions between what he was saying a month ago, what he's saying
00:17:24.640 now. And then you have the same thing in the United States, you know, you're trying to read through the
00:17:29.040 news about what's happening with the coronavirus and every news article you read is tainted with
00:17:34.000 this sort of anti-Trump derangement syndrome. You know, if I just want to find out what's happening,
00:17:39.600 you know, reading an article, a news report, supposed to be a news report in the Atlantic or the Washington
00:17:45.040 Post or the New York Times, you kind of have to have a filter and just ignore the like four paragraphs
00:17:50.240 of complete Trump derangement just to, just to get through it. So, you know, people keep saying,
00:17:55.680 now's not the time for partisanship. Now's not the time to play politics. Let's just focus at the task
00:18:00.800 at hand. But it's really impossible to do that because if people hate Trump, they're not going to
00:18:05.360 be able to write neutrally about what he's doing. And if people love Trudeau, likewise, they're not looking
00:18:10.160 neutrally at what is happening. Someone on Twitter is saying, please discuss the housing market. Well,
00:18:17.200 there was that report in Goldman Sachs. Let me see if I can pull it up because it was pretty scary,
00:18:24.480 honestly. And I feel like one of the things I'm sort of concerned about is I read a lot of news and
00:18:31.040 I'm a news junkie. I will read a lot of reports and I feel like there's a lot of information coming
00:18:35.920 out in the United States. You know, there's a lot of projections. There's a lot of critiques. There's really,
00:18:39.040 really thorough reports coming out, analyzing everything to do with this fallout. And then
00:18:46.000 I look for the equivalent in Canada and it just doesn't really exist. It's not, obviously we're
00:18:51.520 a smaller country and we don't have the same kind of like resources, social infrastructure of,
00:18:57.920 you know, think tanks and, you know, news reports and just a pure number of people working on public
00:19:05.200 policy. But, you know, to say I showed you the Conference Board of Canada report hasn't been
00:19:10.480 released yet. It's really just a one pager with bullet points. It's not really comprehensive.
00:19:16.880 Let's move on. I told you that I had some good personal news to share and I got tested over the
00:19:24.080 weekend for coronavirus. So I will explain what happened and how I got my test. I know a lot of
00:19:28.720 people have been complaining about the fact that the tests are very slow, that once you get tested
00:19:35.120 it might take up to a week. I know people in Ottawa were complaining and I know that there has been a
00:19:40.080 huge problem with a shortage of tests. I think I got kind of lucky in just the fact that I was able to
00:19:44.080 test because I had been trying to get tested for two weeks. So if you normally listen to my show and
00:19:48.560 you're watching right now, you can tell I'm congested. My voice sounds different. I have a cold, I guess.
00:19:54.560 I was in California. I was in the Bay Area where there's a massive outbreak right now. There's been
00:19:59.200 I think a thousand cases in the Bay Area. The Bay Area has been on complete lockdown. Like people
00:20:04.720 aren't even supposed to leave their house at all. And I was there two weeks ago. I got back two weeks
00:20:11.120 Saturday. And from the time I got back, I didn't really have any symptoms, but I was a little concerned
00:20:16.480 just because not only when I was in California, you know, again, pretty busy. I had friends there,
00:20:21.680 had my son. So I was taking them out to different classes. And then the night before I left, I went
00:20:26.400 to a large fundraising gala. I went to the Make a Wish Foundation event in San Francisco and there was
00:20:31.600 at least 500 people there. And so, you know, once I got home and sort of realizing that there was an
00:20:36.000 outbreak there, I got a little paranoid. I also started testing myself and I had a fever. I had a
00:20:40.960 low grade fever. So I decided to call the health officials in Toronto and also Ontario. I had a very hard
00:20:47.040 time getting through to them. And once I finally got through on the line after waiting on hold for
00:20:51.840 two hours, one night, they basically said, look, unless you're in Iran, Italy, or China, you can't
00:20:57.280 get tested for this virus. So just stay at home and don't worry about it. A couple days later, they
00:21:03.520 changed that and said, okay, you know, you can get tested if you're in the United States too, because
00:21:07.440 there's now big outbreaks in New York City and California. They told me to call 811 in order to get
00:21:13.120 tested. You call 811 and the line is busy over and over and over and over again. Everyone in
00:21:18.160 my household was trying to call 811 so that I could see if I could get tested. Meanwhile,
00:21:21.920 my fever was getting worse and it was kind of sustaining. When I say fever, it was like testing
00:21:28.640 like 101 in that range. I got as high as 102. Anyway, Saturday morning, we finally got through on the
00:21:37.200 line. We waited on hold for over four hours. When we finally spoke to an official, they transferred us to
00:21:42.800 a nurse, talked to the nurse about my symptoms. She advised that I do get tested for coronavirus. So
00:21:48.080 I went down to Toronto Western Hospital, which is the corner of Bathurst and Dundas, and they had
00:21:54.000 created a whole new kind of center. It was just brand new, open, it kind of been refurbished to be
00:22:00.240 this testing center. It had just opened. It just opened on Saturday. So I was one of the first people
00:22:05.360 to go in and get tested. It was really, really well done. My hat goes off to the frontline workers there.
00:22:10.880 I know that they're really putting themselves and their own health at risk in order to address this
00:22:15.040 issue. So I went in, everything was very sanitary. You know, they give you a mask and gloves,
00:22:20.720 you go in one by one. So you're not even interacting with anyone and they're behind a plexiglass.
00:22:25.040 So I gave them all of my, you know, my health card and all my information. They sent me to a private
00:22:29.760 room. I waited there probably about 20 minutes. The nurse came by, she did the swab, which they swab up your
00:22:35.920 nose and kind of did that. Then a doctor came by, you know, just regular kind of like a regular doctor
00:22:42.640 visit. I left and they emailed me the results of the test less than 24 hours later. Like by six
00:22:48.240 o'clock the next morning, I had the result. I was negative. So I'm very, very glad and very thankful
00:22:52.480 that I don't have it. And really, I think that the key to addressing this issue and solving it is that
00:22:58.560 everyone needs to get tested. The more people who get tested, the better, because then you have the peace
00:23:02.720 of mind and you know, if you're sick, you have to take quarantine really, really seriously.
00:23:07.120 And if you're not sick, then you can go out and you can continue to go to work and we can continue
00:23:11.680 to have an economy in this country. I think that that is a much better measure than what we're
00:23:17.440 doing now. It's basically what South Korea has been doing, which is testing everybody. Everybody gets
00:23:22.720 tested, focus the resource on making sure as many people get tested as possible. Because I think part
00:23:27.360 of the concern at this point is that we don't know how many people have it. We don't know how many people
00:23:32.320 potentially walking around, not really taking the quarantine measures very seriously, and they
00:23:36.720 have it. And then we know this thing spreads incredibly fast. We know how quickly it can spread
00:23:41.440 and how many people one person can infect. So if we had more knowledge, more people tested,
00:23:47.680 I think we'll be a lot better off. I wish that we were focusing on that as opposed to these crazy
00:23:52.880 deconion measures to shut down the entire economy. And I know we are going to be talking in depth
00:23:58.000 on my other show, The True North Update with Andrew Lawton, about the extent of the government
00:24:03.840 powers, how Justin Trudeau basically tried a power grab, got caught, and kind of had to walk away
00:24:10.160 with his tail between his legs and eliminate some of the things that he proposed. But let me just say
00:24:15.760 this, you know, we're sending out $1,800 in EI, basically welfare, to half a million Canadians or more.
00:24:25.920 Okay, that's a lot of money. It's going to add up incredibly quickly. So I think that the whole
00:24:32.800 $82 billion is really just a starting point. That might be like how much money we spend in March,
00:24:37.840 and then we'll have to spend that much money again in April, potentially, and May and June. And eventually,
00:24:42.880 we're going to have to pay that all back. Eventually, you know, unless we're going to just default, which
00:24:47.920 would be terrible for the economy, we're going to have to pay that back. And it is going to come
00:24:52.720 from you and me, my friends, from the taxpayer. So I wouldn't be surprised to see massive, massive
00:24:58.480 tax grabs and increases. It's kind of scary to imagine what might happen if you kind of look back to
00:25:04.560 the top tax levels back during the 1940s and 50s, when we were trying to pay back the war efforts,
00:25:10.800 you know, the whole idea of the income tax was supposed to be a temporary measure,
00:25:14.480 it was brought in as a temporary tax to help fund the First World War. It is not temporary at all,
00:25:19.760 it is still here. My colleague over at the Toronto Sun, Anthony Fury, has been looking a lot into this.
00:25:26.240 The idea that a lot of the measures that were introduced and that are being introduced right now
00:25:31.440 are things that the left has kind of always called for. They've always called for, you know,
00:25:35.840 increasing the ability of AI, or of EI, sorry, making it available faster, all these other kind
00:25:42.480 of measures. You know, we have to be vigilant, we have to be vigilant, these measures are temporary,
00:25:47.440 and that when this crisis is over, the government goes right back to the way it was, and that we
00:25:52.480 don't allow them to, you know, continue with some of the surveillance measures, or some of the power
00:25:56.960 measures, or some of the taxation measures, and spending measures, that could be really, really
00:26:01.760 potentially bad for our society. So I'm going to leave it at that. Like I said, my colleague and I,
00:26:07.520 Andrew Lawton, will be coming back to you a little later on this afternoon. We'll have a full update on
00:26:12.080 all of the announcements today, all of the latest with coronavirus and the response, and we'll talk a
00:26:16.800 lot in depth about the emergency spending and the House of Commons today, and what happens in Ottawa.
00:26:24.000 So thanks so much guys for tuning in. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:26:31.760 we'll see you next time.