Juno News - Trudeau made life more expensive yesterday

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:16.220 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:24.040 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:27.060 Happy belated Easter.

00:01:28.780 He is risen. It is a delight to have you on the show.

00:01:32.680 Well, not on the show, watching the show.

00:01:34.180 I mean, maybe you're on the show.

00:01:35.200 If Chris Simms is watching, she's on the show today.

00:01:37.680 So that line was true in that context.

00:01:40.600 We'll also be speaking later on to Peter Sean Taylor,

00:01:43.920 who is a senior features editor with C2C Journal,

00:01:47.220 has a great piece on housing and why, no,

00:01:50.240 the issues with the housing situation in Canada are not that it is racist

00:01:53.900 or white supremacist or anything like that.

00:01:57.180 So we'll talk to him later on about that piece.

00:01:59.460 And that's not a straw man, by the way.

00:02:01.020 The federal government's appointed housing advocate has been making those very claims

00:02:05.000 about the housing landscape in this country.

00:02:09.100 I also want to talk in a little bit about this big to-do yesterday

00:02:12.600 where you had people across the country protesting.

00:02:15.000 I think in Alberta, one of my colleagues said they're still protesting out there

00:02:18.940 against the federal carbon tax.

00:02:21.260 Specifically, the increase in the carbon tax went up by 23% yesterday.

00:02:26.000 so it was no April Fool's Day joke. The world has gotten more expensive, at least insofar as Canada

00:02:32.440 is concerned. We have the price of gasoline that's gone up, the price of home heating. If you have

00:02:37.240 natural gas that's gone up, you have the price of fuel in general has gone up in price and that

00:02:42.780 means that anything that requires fuel, the oranges maybe you buy that are shipped in from

00:02:48.380 Florida, that can of sardines or whatever, all of that has gotten more expensive. Oranges and

00:02:54.300 sardines I don't think you want to mix those but all of those got more expensive yesterday and it

00:02:58.260 will still continue to trickle down as the cost of fuel increases so too does the cost of everything

00:03:04.200 this is the problem with it is that it's not just that consumer carbon tax that you see as a line

00:03:09.160 item on your gas bill it's the way that tax is now embedded in the Canadian economy now the federal

00:03:15.980 government is obviously feeling some pressure here we've seen the government get a very very

00:03:22.020 defensive about this. Stephen Gilbeau, he had a piece in the National Post where he says,

00:03:27.020 why I think the carbon tax is the right policy for Canada. This is positioned as the federal

00:03:32.960 environment minister responding to critics, and he's defending it. And the liberals are still

00:03:38.280 sticking to that line that, oh, everyone's getting better off, everyone's better off here. You make

00:03:42.960 more money than you spend, in which case, well, what is the point of the whole thing?

00:03:47.680 This is a clip from Justin Trudeau once again turning around and making it out as though

00:03:52.500 premiers are the problem and not him. All those premiers that are busy complaining about the

00:03:59.780 price on pollution but not putting forward a concrete alternative that they think would be

00:04:07.160 better for their communities are just plain politics. Every province has the opportunity

00:04:15.540 to put forward its own plan as long as they are fighting climate change to the same level that

00:04:21.740 we're asking all other Canadians to do. That's what a federal backstop is. But we're not seeing

00:04:27.460 detailed plans from the premiers on this. They'd much rather try to complain about it and make

00:04:33.900 political hay out of this. But Canadians know we need to fight climate change and we need to be

00:04:42.500 supporting people with more money in their pockets that's what the federal backstop does

00:04:46.900 that's what the canada carbon rebate that's landing in people's uh bank accounts as of april 15th is

00:04:53.320 going to help them with and that's a canada carbon rebate money in people's pockets that

00:04:58.960 conservative politicians want to take away ah the premiers could just come up with their own plan if

00:05:06.400 they have a better way of doing it except the problem is and he kind of just buries it in

00:05:10.540 an aside there it's almost a parenthetical remark on Trudeau's part that it has to meet the federal

00:05:16.280 threshold which means that provinces actually don't really get to opt out of this they can come

00:05:20.880 up with any plan they want as long as it looks and feels exactly like the federal government's plan

00:05:25.360 unless you're Quebec Quebec kind of gets a pass to do its own thing and in the end actually has

00:05:29.980 to charge consumers less but that's just because for political reasons the federal government will

00:05:34.720 never look at Quebec and give it a fair shake compared to what the rest of the country is 1.00

00:05:39.660 having to deal with. So we'll talk about all this shortly with our friend Chris Sims, who will join

00:05:44.140 us in just a little bit of time. But this is actually a bit of breaking news here. Justin

00:05:49.400 Trudeau gave a rare bit of honesty this morning at a political press conference. Now that this is

00:05:55.780 not an April Fool's joke, by the way. No, he actually was candid and honest and frank about

00:06:00.980 something. And this is on April 2nd. If he did it yesterday, I would have thought it might have been

00:06:05.040 a deep fake but he was very honest and that issue even more remarkably was on immigration.

00:06:11.760 We have seen housing in this country become a top issue for Canadians. We see it as being

00:06:17.280 a very large part of why Pierre Polyev is surging so much in the polls because he's coming and

00:06:22.300 talking about this issue when the Liberal government with nine years at the helm have

00:06:27.300 not actually been able to do all that much except for preside over a worsening of the situation.

00:06:33.540 But Justin Trudeau was asked about this and a lot of the other stuff connected to it.

00:06:37.300 And my, my, my, let's take a look.

00:06:40.680 You recently said your government is working on both housing supply and demand

00:06:44.380 by turning the dial down on temporary immigration.

00:06:48.140 Does that mean your government's immigration policy has contributed to record high housing unaffordability?

00:06:55.660 It's really important to understand the context around immigration.

00:06:58.860 Every year, we bring in about 450, now close to 500,000 permanent residents a year.

00:07:07.540 And that is part of the necessary growth of Canada.

00:07:10.920 It benefits our citizens, our communities.

00:07:14.320 It benefits our economy.

00:07:16.080 These are the levels that we have stabilized and grown steadily over the past years

00:07:21.980 because that's what Canada needs to continue to have a strong economy and strong communities.

00:07:26.360 However, over the past few years, we've seen a massive spike in temporary immigration,

00:07:34.360 whether it's temporary foreign workers or whether it's international students in particular

00:07:40.360 that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.

00:07:47.360 To give an example, in 2017, 2% of Canada's population was made up of temporary immigrants.

00:07:55.360 immigrants. Now, we're at seven and a half percent of our population comprised of temporary

00:08:01.660 immigrants. That's something that we need to get back under control, both for the benefits of 1.00

00:08:07.900 those people, but because international students, we're seeing increasingly vulnerable to mental 0.99

00:08:14.420 health challenges, to not being able to thrive and get the education they want, but also

00:08:19.800 increasingly more and more businesses relying on temporary foreign workers in a way that's driving

00:08:25.800 down wages in some sectors. So we want to get those numbers down. It's a responsible approach

00:08:31.740 to immigration that continues on our permanent residents as we have, but holds the line 0.96

00:08:39.100 a little more on the temporary immigration that has caused so much pressure in our communities.

00:08:44.920 so this was a long clip but there was buried in it an incredibly important sentence and I'm going

00:08:53.380 to read we literally threw this in a moment ago so I don't have the the small highlight clip to

00:08:58.620 share with you but I'll read the line over the past few years we've seen a massive spike in

00:09:04.660 temporary immigration whether it's temporary foreign workers or whether it's international

00:09:09.080 students in particular that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.

00:09:17.340 So Justin Trudeau is conceding two things in this. Number one, that there has been a massive

00:09:21.640 spike in immigration. I mean, we know that. We look at the numbers. We see how Canada is ultimately

00:09:26.520 bringing in upwards of a million people a year if you extend it beyond new permanent residents and

00:09:31.580 also include these temporary residents in Canada who are TFWs, they're international students and

00:09:38.080 the like. So we have this massive spike that Justin Trudeau conceived. And then the key part

00:09:43.820 here is that it's grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb. Now, when he says

00:09:52.100 Canada, he is talking about Canadians, Canadian societies, the Canadian labor market, the Canadian

00:09:58.480 housing market. When he talks about immigration happening, he talks about it in this very passive

00:10:03.440 way, as though it just happened. We just blinked one day and there are, oh, this many more millions

00:10:07.580 of people here, when his government has been in charge of immigration policy in Canada for the

00:10:12.720 last nine years. If there is an issue with an immigration system that has swelled to such a

00:10:19.100 point that Canada cannot absorb the people, his words, not mine, it is his government that is to 0.57

00:10:25.520 blame. So Justin Trudeau, for the first time, is admitting a profound failure on his and his

00:10:32.740 government's part to manage immigration in a sustainable way. Now, one of the things you may

00:10:38.920 know, it's been a part of True Norse coverage. I asked Conservative leader Pierre Polyev about this

00:10:43.080 in December when I did a year-end interview with him. What's the Conservative number? What is the

00:10:48.180 number that the Conservative Party, if it forms government, would use to base how many immigrants

00:10:53.820 Canada can absorb, can sustain? And as you may recall, Polyev in that interview would not give

00:11:00.080 a firm number. I even tried the old just the number thing that he did to Jean Charest during

00:11:04.820 the leadership. And he said, well, I'm not going to give you a number, but here's what we're going

00:11:08.600 to do. We're going to tie it to jobs. We're going to tie it to housing. And there was something else.

00:11:12.720 I think healthcare was the other one. We're going to tie it to jobs, housing, and healthcare. And

00:11:17.380 he certainly said that the current number was not sustainable. Well, even Justin Trudeau is

00:11:21.840 admitting this now. So we have here quite a significant development. Now, the federal

00:11:27.720 government, of course, is not going to actually say that it is to blame for this. They're going

00:11:32.520 to start using these incidental terms. Oh, it just sort of happened. Yeah, just this is why.

00:11:37.800 And we just tweaked the system here. And I honestly feel, I mean, Mark Miller, who's the

00:11:41.780 immigration minister, him and Justin Trudeau, those two guys are longtime friends. They have

00:11:48.300 known each other for a long time. I think they're thick as thieves. So I don't expect there to be a

00:11:52.800 real point of friction between the two. But if there were a different immigration minister,

00:11:57.080 I would actually say that there would be. I would say that there would be some fracture there that

00:12:01.720 someone would have to in that role say, well, hold on. You're now saying that we have been the ones

00:12:07.000 that have been responsible for the problems here. I mean, look, it's true. Like I said,

00:12:11.140 this was a remarkable bit of honesty and candor from Justin Trudeau. And he talks about how we

00:12:16.720 need to get it back under control. Back under control. And this is the problem. I mean, there

00:12:23.640 was that story in Brampton Ontario a couple of weeks back where 20 I think it was 25 people were

00:12:30.140 living in one single house that had a couple of rental units most of them if not all of them were

00:12:35.640 international students we've seen the videos and the footage I mean Harrison Faulkner's talked

00:12:40.280 about this on a show a number of times of people just lining up for jobs at grocery stores and

00:12:46.860 other retail settings lining up around the block hundreds and hundreds of people looking for jobs

00:12:51.920 you order food delivery in a university that a university town or a college town and nine times

00:12:58.620 out of ten it's an international student that is delivering it because these are people that come 1.00

00:13:03.100 to this country and then find they cannot succeed here because they can't find a job they can't find

00:13:08.200 a home they can't do all of the things that they need to survive or let alone thrive in a country

00:13:14.940 so this idea that the system is broken is not new in fact Justin Trudeau may be the last person in

00:13:22.800 Canada to wake up to the conclusion he may be the last person here who's even realized that this

00:13:28.460 simply is not working but I will say welcome to the party it's nice of you to turn up if you are

00:13:34.860 coming better late than never welcome to the reality that Canada and Canadians have been 1.00

00:13:40.620 going through on your watch, Prime Minister. And when he says this was a massive spike,

00:13:46.000 fact check, true. When he says it's more than Canada could absorb, fact check, true.

00:13:50.960 Now, the hilarious irony in all of this is that if a conservative politician were to have said

00:13:55.920 what Justin Trudeau said in that clip that I just shared, they would be maligned by the liberals as

00:14:00.820 racist. They would be called anti-immigrant. They would be called xenophobic. But when the liberals

00:14:08.060 wake up to that point when the liberals say because it's not a race issue it's not a diversity issue

00:14:12.660 it's not it's not even undermining the core thesis that oh diversity is our strength it's

00:14:16.880 simply saying that immigration in this country at the very least has to be tied to a country's

00:14:22.460 ability to provide economically for the people who are within its borders citizens and otherwise

00:14:27.920 which means if you can't deal with that you cannot add to that without having there being a having

00:14:34.420 there be a problem that the government needs to deal with. My apologies on the grammar there. I

00:14:38.580 was getting fired up about this topic because it has always been treated as though it's the

00:14:42.660 political third rail where you can't have an honest and frank discussion about immigration.

00:14:47.700 And the federal government, the liberals have been the primary purveyors of that sense. They've been

00:14:52.940 the ones calling anyone who criticizes their immigration approach as racist. They've been

00:14:57.840 the ones maligning those who want to raise these very issues that even the liberals are now forced

00:15:03.920 to concede that even the liberals are now forced to accept so listen what's going to happen in the

00:15:11.200 future with this I don't know the government is trying to do all of these little tiny tweaks and

00:15:15.860 turn the dials and all of that to say well immigrant international students we're going to

00:15:20.420 cap this number here but really that is not dealing with the essence of the problem that's

00:15:26.080 not dealing with the core dynamic here that's not dealing with what Canadians are dealing with in

00:15:31.680 Canadian communities. And by the way, universities and colleges have been the ones that for years

00:15:36.980 have loved looking at international students as being this giant cash cow, because a domestic 0.97

00:15:42.520 student who's from Canada will pay, I don't know, $7,000 a year in tuition. And then you get these

00:15:47.420 international students that are paying upwards of $50,000, $60,000. And the universities love it.

00:15:54.080 And they have lowered their standards to make this happen. And it's Canada and Canadians that 0.82

00:16:00.300 have suffered. And it's, by the way, the students themselves who are suffering, because when the

00:16:04.540 students come and they can't afford a place to live, they can't afford, they can't find a job,

00:16:09.060 they actually are not able to devote what they need to their studies because they're focused on

00:16:14.980 just trying to deal with this bill of goods they've been sold, which is not what the country

00:16:19.840 has offered them. So no, in fact, the most pro-immigrant position you could take on this 0.98

00:16:25.760 is to say that Canada has profoundly failed on this.

00:16:30.660 So we'll talk about this more tomorrow.

00:16:32.740 Like I said, this was a fresh admission from Justin Trudeau just this morning, in fact.

00:16:37.980 But to return to where we started,

00:16:39.700 yesterday the big carbon tax demonstrations took place across the country.

00:16:44.300 Chris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:16:47.820 She joins us every Monday, but we bumped it back with yesterday being a holiday at True North.

00:16:53.520 And Chris, always good to talk to you.

00:16:55.200 you've been very good at not letting the Alberta government off the hook here because just as the

00:16:59.700 federal carbon tax went up yesterday, so too did the reinstated Alberta fuel tax. And I've got to

00:17:06.840 say, I mean, I've got a lot of time for Danielle Smith. You and I have both crossed paths with her

00:17:10.900 many times over the years. I've yet to hear a compelling reason for why all of the things

00:17:16.120 she's saying about the federal government don't apply to her government and the gas tax.

00:17:20.940 Yeah, same here. In fact, I was almost tempted to phone you about it just offline because I'm stumped. It's one of those weird situations where she's such a rock star when she's taking on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. She went right into the lion's den there in Ottawa and did a great presentation at committee. And so she's absolutely right to take the Trudeau government to task and say, scrap this carbon tax altogether. It's a huge waste of money.

00:17:46.420 But then, like, puzzlingly, in Edmonton, here at home in Alberta, we got our fuel tax, our provincial fuel tax, increased all the way back up to its full strength of 13 cents per litre of gasoline and diesel.

00:18:00.540 And to your point exactly, like, this is nothing personal. Big fan of a lot of what Premier Smith is doing. But policy-wise, I can't square this circle.

00:18:10.840 This does not make any sense, both from a fiscal standpoint or from a communication standpoint.

00:18:18.040 Fiscally, they did the right thing when they fully suspended the fuel tax here in Alberta for a year, Andrew.

00:18:24.000 It saved Albertans around a billion dollars, having it at zero for an entire year.

00:18:28.940 Then they brought it back up to nine cents per litre just at the new year, the start of 2024.

00:18:34.720 But then they went all the way just yesterday and brought it all the way back up to 13.

00:18:39.120 And so this is strange that they're doing this considering the fact that they have a balanced budget and there's still places for them to cut.

00:18:47.040 Like, why are they handing mega millions of dollars to an NHL team to help them build their hockey rink in Calgary while you're nailing drivers of everyday, you know, jobs here in Alberta for filling up their vehicles?

00:19:01.220 And just communications wise, I don't get this part.

00:19:05.140 Why would they Bigfoot their own victory party?

00:19:08.560 Why would they overlap their provincial fuel tax increase with big bad Justin Trudeau's

00:19:14.740 carbon tax increase?

00:19:16.240 Just comms wise, I don't even understand this play.

00:19:19.520 Why not leave it at nine cents per liter and kick the can ahead to June or July?

00:19:25.360 There's this old line that you hear that there is just one taxpayer and that federal spending,

00:19:31.380 provincial spending, municipal spending.

00:19:32.940 At the end of the day, when you have one pocket and when that $1 you've earned comes out of

00:19:37.560 your pocket and goes to government in the abstracts and in the grand sense, it really doesn't matter

00:19:42.740 which one. I mean, I used to like Jack Astor's back in the day before the HST in Ontario,

00:19:47.860 they used to have the line items on the receipt that you'd get. It was like Kretzian's tax 1.00

00:19:53.720 and Dalton's tax. And then it was like Harper's tax and Wynn's tax. And I liked it actually,

00:19:59.440 because I told you, yeah, okay, they both have a role to play. But at the end of the day,

00:20:02.540 The HST was a transparent policy because a tax is a tax is a tax. And this is the thing. I mean,

00:20:08.160 to try to distinguish between these two is just from a messaging perspective alone flawed. But

00:20:13.780 also it means that any criticism she's making to the federal government, criticisms with which I

00:20:18.780 agree, can also be pointed back at her government. And I just don't get that. I mean, she's been

00:20:25.300 asked about it somewhat. Have you gotten a sense of how she rationalizes it at least?

00:20:29.980 I haven't heard her direct response many times, to be fair. And I'd like to hear it, frankly. Again, it was her birthday yesterday. I like so much of what she is doing. To be totally fair, they've balanced the budget here, Andrew.

00:20:45.340 They wrote it into law that they must keep spending increases or strained below the rate of inflation plus population growth.

00:20:53.020 They're paying down the debt. They're putting money away for a rainy day.

00:20:56.340 Like those are really good things.

00:20:58.760 But it just pains me when they turn around and do nonsensical things like jacking up the fuel tax back up to full strength.

00:21:05.680 And I can hear some people right now within the UCP saying, well, technically, you know, a barrel of oil is getting up there in price.

00:21:11.880 Okay, fair enough. When former Premier Jason Kenney first announced this policy, yes, it was tied to the price of a barrel of oil. Once the price of a barrel of oil got up to, I think it's $90 per ton, $90 per barrel rather, they would then drop the fuel tax back down.

00:21:28.160 But it was not getting to that range when Premier Smith, new Premier Smith, fully dropped it down to zero for a year.

00:21:36.360 She did so for affordability reasons and also to take some of the sting out of the federal carbon tax.

00:21:43.280 And this is where I think, you know what, this is my hunch.

00:21:46.640 I don't know for sure.

00:21:47.860 I think what's happened is what's often called dome disease in Alberta.

00:21:52.020 And that's where a politician who's elected really grassrootsy, very connected to the average person, gets put into office there in Edmonton.

00:22:00.660 And then the bureaucrats who work in the Department of the Treasury Board, they get in there.

00:22:05.740 And those types who don't run for election, they don't need to talk to average voters, they love trying to find new taxes.

00:22:12.340 It's those sorts of pointy heads that keep suggesting a PST here in Alberta, for example, or new fees on all sorts of stuff so they can take in more money.

00:22:20.800 because those folks are always looking at that revenue column, how much money government's taking

00:22:24.960 in. Fair enough. But politicians need to stand up to these people and say, you know what? No,

00:22:30.440 read the room. We're not going to increase taxes. And when you combine it, Andrew, with just, I think

00:22:35.580 it's just this morning where NDP Premier of Manitoba, Wob Canu, came out and said, yeah,

00:22:41.340 I'm extending my fuel tax holiday. So folks in Manitoba are saving 14 cents per liter of gasoline

00:22:47.780 the diesel. Zero. They're paying zero provincial fuel taxes in Manitoba. We got full freight 13.

00:22:53.560 I don't understand. There's a great quote from Milton Friedman, which is, to be honest, I don't

00:23:00.400 love the, I like my version of the quote better because his is like more clinical in nature. But

00:23:05.700 the effective meaning of it is that you shouldn't try to elect the right people. You should try to

00:23:10.040 create the circumstances where even the wrong people do the right things, which naturally

00:23:14.240 leads us to manitoba which has an ndp government an ndp government which has not been great on the

00:23:19.200 carbon tax they've not been terrible they've been very wishy-washy but even in manitoba their

00:23:24.080 government is extending this fuel tax holiday that's right and i've always loved that modified

00:23:30.800 quote you use because it actually gives people a lot of hope even outside of taxes so everything

00:23:36.160 that's gone on the past four or five years or whatever it can get people down pretty fast and

00:23:40.960 I really like that method and that way of looking at it. I remember you telling me that years ago and

00:23:45.120 it cheered me right up because then that means that we can fix stuff. We can create the conditions

00:23:51.200 where even politicians who are, you know, lukewarm still nonetheless do the right thing.

00:23:57.120 And in this case in Manitoba, again, no knock on Wab Canoe, he seems like a very personable person

00:24:02.080 actually. They've, I guess, created the conditions where they're doing the right thing and so we're

00:24:08.640 really happy to see that and strangely this is where things are a little bit twilight zone

00:24:13.280 here in alberta we're even seeing some of the ndp candidates for the provincial party because

00:24:18.880 former premier rachel notley is stepping down they're having an ndp leadership race

00:24:22.960 some of the ndp candidates have come out and said yeah we need to scrap the federal carbon tax

00:24:28.160 now there's a lot of asterisks around there so i don't know how they feel about a provincial one i

00:24:33.520 don't know what kind of terminology they're going to use but even to have them saying out loud with

00:24:38.080 their face. We're opposed to the carbon tax is huge. So this is a big game changer. And so again,

00:24:44.580 it would be really nice to be able to just full throat approve of what the Alberta government is

00:24:50.220 doing when they're rallying cry against the federal carbon tax. But it's really tough to do

00:24:55.300 so when just cost wise, straight up math, we are now paying higher taxes at the fuel pump.

00:25:02.240 I have to take a bit of an indulgence here, Chris. Did you listen to the song I sent you?

00:25:06.180 i haven't had a chance to yet okay okay we're gonna do this now so i admittedly i sent it and

00:25:12.000 chris thought i was like some like my chris thought i had been hacked and was like fishing

00:25:15.780 her or something i did i totally thought you'd been hacked i'm like and then i looked because

00:25:19.620 i was like she always responds to me within like five seconds then i went and looked at the email

00:25:22.620 like oh yeah this looks like a spam email it's like hey check out this ai generated song anyway

00:25:27.140 so last week i discovered this ai song machine and i was like and i was just having some fun with it

00:25:32.500 And Chris has just been such a wonderful fixture on the show.

00:25:35.660 We thought she needed her own theme song for the show.

00:25:38.620 Let's roll it.

00:25:40.220 In the land of oil and cattle, there's a woman named Chris Sims.

00:25:47.560 Oh, my God.

00:25:48.240 She's got a fire in her heart, fighting against the government's whims.

00:25:54.400 She ain't afraid to speak her mind, to stand up for what's right.

00:26:00.240 A voice for the common folk

00:26:04.020 She's a beacon shining bright

00:26:07.080 She's crusading against taxes 1.00

00:26:12.400 You are!

00:26:13.700 For the hard-working folks out there

00:26:16.560 She believes in limited government

00:26:19.980 In freedom she declares

00:26:23.040 With a heart full of passion

00:26:25.680 And a spirit unyielding

00:26:28.160 Chris Sims is the voice.

00:26:30.640 Their message is appealing.

00:26:33.820 There we go.

00:26:34.780 Chris Sims, you're the voice of Alberta.

00:26:38.520 In the world politics.

00:26:41.300 All right, we can end it there, Sean.

00:26:42.840 That is so nice.

00:26:44.660 Thank you so much.

00:26:44.980 Chris Sims, you're the voice of Alberta,

00:26:47.040 and we're so glad you spend a little bit of your week with us.

00:26:50.360 Keep up the great work.

00:26:51.560 Keep up the fight.

00:26:52.600 This is what happens when you don't open my emails.

00:26:54.420 You miss out on...

00:26:55.420 on a, I suddenly love something AI made. This is wonderful. You know, there's always room for

00:27:02.580 growth. That's really touching. Thank you for that. So my wife has very little tolerance for

00:27:07.200 AI generated anything. So like, she was like, stop sending me your fricking song. So I'm like, 0.98

00:27:11.300 all right, well, my, uh, I guess, I guess I just have to share them with the audience now. I think

00:27:14.880 I'm done for now. I think I'm done for now. I might make a couple of more. Sean was upset that

00:27:19.340 he didn't have one. So I had a nice jazz song written about him needing to back off and let

00:27:24.340 me do the AI songs. It actually slapped us, the kids say these days. So, all right. Well, Chris

00:27:29.240 Sims, we will talk to you next week. Thank you so much for coming on as always. That was lit.

00:27:33.840 Thanks, Andrew. All right. We're going totally, totally trendy today. We have lit and slapped

00:27:40.060 and we're based, I believe, based AF, I think is it? Nevermind. All right. I've never once in my

00:27:47.060 life claimed to be cool and I don't feel it will work out well for me if I try to start now. This

00:27:52.560 is a fascinating, fascinating topic. I mean, look, the protests that we had yesterday were not

00:27:58.760 massive. They weren't Freedom Convoy massive. They certainly weren't as tense as the Israel-Palestine

00:28:04.780 protests. But even so, you had thousands of people out, in some cases, in very cold and windy weather

00:28:10.060 that were mobilized by this issue. Now, Pierre Polyev, he's been holding his rallies across the

00:28:14.860 country. He has decided to, of all the issues he could talk about, he has decided to make the

00:28:20.720 centerpiece of these rallies his pledge to axe the tax or spike the hike whatever he cause calls it

00:28:27.360 on a given day but this is important because that is bringing people out so this is going to be a

00:28:32.240 mobilizing issue just as housing is the federal government i said a few moments ago has now

00:28:38.960 finally admitted that there was a bit too much immigration for canada to absorb the housing

00:28:45.120 dilemma has been one of the more pressing and acute symptoms of this it's why Pierre Polyev again

00:28:50.800 has made housing so front and center on his policies but every now and then when you look

00:28:54.640 around and see that homes are unaffordable that not enough houses are being built you wonder what

00:29:00.800 the problem is now there is a federally appointed housing advocate that believes we need to look at

00:29:06.000 perhaps racism and white supremacy systemic racism all of these things not so says Peter

00:29:12.640 Sean Taylor, who is a senior features editor with C2C Journal, had a fantastic essay,

00:29:18.640 The Housing Market Isn't Racist, Blame Your Parents Instead. Peter, it's good to talk to you.

00:29:24.360 Thanks for coming on the show today. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:29:28.280 So let's start with the premise, because I'm increasingly of the mind that you could probably

00:29:32.520 find someone somewhere in the world that has said anything is racist. But this actually appears to

00:29:37.940 have had some relative mainstream pickup here, this idea that the housing sector, the housing

00:29:43.440 system is somehow racist. Where does this come from? Well, as you said, this comes from the

00:29:48.660 federal housing advocate, which was, she was set up two years ago by the Trudeau government,

00:29:54.780 supposedly to give advice to the federal government on housing issues. But anyone who has read any of

00:30:03.480 The output that comes from the FHA, it is the worst possible advice for anyone who wants

00:30:11.320 to increase the supply of housing, which is what we absolutely need to do if we're going

00:30:16.000 to make housing more affordable in Canada.

00:30:20.480 Instead, Marie-Josée Houle, who's the federal housing advocate, she goes on things like

00:30:26.660 she's very concerned about what she calls the financialization of the housing market,

00:30:31.520 which is in effect that it actually is a market you have suppliers providing housing to people

00:30:37.680 who demand it and in the process they they make a profit that's how they continue to offer housing

00:30:44.720 to people that want it she wants to get rid of profit making from housing she thinks it's 1.00

00:30:49.600 somehow immoral she wants to basically prevent all landlords from ever evicting tenants for 0.98

00:30:57.920 anything like non-payment of rent um it just goes on and on i could go at length but the thing that

00:31:05.680 sort of got my dander up this time around was her claim that the housing market is racist 1.00

00:31:12.000 and that the federal government has to step in with some very drastic measures such as

00:31:17.840 banning banks and pension funds from lending money to for-profit housing providers 0.98

00:31:27.920 And anyways, it's just, I could go on, we could do the whole segment on the stupid ideas 0.95

00:31:34.280 that come out of the federal housing advocate. 0.99

00:31:36.340 The point with my piece was that her claim that it's racist and that we need to take 0.51

00:31:41.460 dramatic action.

00:31:42.400 So I think that it's a, you hear everything is racist, as you said, the education system

00:31:46.680 is racist, the employment system is racist, on and on and on.

00:31:50.400 So they make a specific claim that the housing market is racist.

00:31:53.520 They don't really back it up with any data.

00:31:56.380 And as a matter of fact, Statistics Canada has been spending a lot of time since the Trudeau government came to power looking at race and a variety of issues.

00:32:07.960 They have quite a few studies on housing and race.

00:32:11.140 And so I took a look at it.

00:32:12.740 And if you read the essay I wrote, there's no apparent white supremacy going on in the housing market.

00:32:22.400 Yes, housing outcomes do seem to vary by racial background.

00:32:27.700 You get a very distinct sort of racial leaderboard, but by no means are whites at the top.

00:32:33.240 If the housing market was somehow controlled by white supremacists or there was this evil racist plot behind renting and selling homes, then you would expect the whites to be at the top. 0.57

00:32:45.840 In fact, they aren't.

00:32:46.640 They're in the middle.

00:32:47.780 It's Chinese and Japanese Canadians are at the very top.

00:32:52.300 Asians more generally are up there as well.

00:32:56.820 Whites are kind of in the middle. 0.63

00:32:58.760 And at the bottom, you see Blacks and Latin Americans, according to this is how this is

00:33:05.080 what StatsCan has to say.

00:33:07.100 So that, you know, on the surface, that does suggest to me that the housing market is racist.

00:33:13.660 Its outcomes do vary, but that doesn't mean racism is behind it.

00:33:17.600 Well, and I would suspect that a lot of this is reflecting other divides that exist in other areas that have nothing to do with housing. One would be just general income divides. And again, I think we want to have a discussion about racial divides on income. I think that's an important discussion.

00:33:32.940 I also suspect geography probably plays a big role. I mean, if you look at the communities that have the most highly concentrated ethnic communities, they are generally speaking in urban centers, which happen to be the most expensive places in Canada to live, which is also a great contributor, I would assume. So again, where does she say the white supremacy is in all of this?

00:33:54.020 Well, the disappointing thing about her argument is that the federal housing advocate says a lot, says it very loudly and convincingly, but they don't provide very much evidence.

00:34:08.680 Okay. I'm glad it's not just because I read through your piece a number of times and I looked up elsewhere and I couldn't even find the point that you were, I knew you were refuting a valid point that was, or a point that was legitimately made, but I couldn't actually find like what was there to attack really. That was the problem because there was such a thin or non-existent basis for it.

00:34:28.120 A lot of vague accusations.

00:34:30.240 Another report they put out claims there should be reparations for past housing injustices.

00:34:35.140 But to tackle the bigger question, perhaps, since the Trudeau government set up StatsCan

00:34:43.140 to look at racial statistics and gender statistics, there's a whole sort of subunit at StatsCan

00:34:50.600 now that's supposed to be sort of investigating these sorts of things.

00:34:54.120 And sure enough, when they look at employment, when they look at education, when they look at poverty figures, when they look at housing, you do see a very distinct, as I called it, a racial leaderboard.

00:35:07.520 You tend to see Chinese, Japanese, Asian, Canadians at the top of whatever it is you're studying.

00:35:15.220 Whites tend to be in the middle and Blacks and Latin Americans tend to be towards the bottom, whether, as I said, all these different categories.

00:35:25.580 So it does require some sort of explanation, as you say.

00:35:30.600 The one that's sort of off the cuff these days is that it's all to do with racism.

00:35:35.360 But I think as you look a little closer, you discover that there's other factors going on.

00:35:41.000 And a lot of these factors, quite frankly, aren't within the control of government.

00:35:45.640 These are family and individual choice decisions that, you know, are going to be cultural norm issues as well that really require much more a broader sort of social response.

00:35:59.680 So explain to me the dangers of this, because it's easy to look at this sort of and roll your

00:36:05.840 eyes and say, oh, well, but this is not just some wacky professor. This is not just some

00:36:11.160 campus activist. This is someone who has a role that is designed to have a fair bit of influence

00:36:16.160 in federal housing policy. Right. I mean, she's set up to give the federal government advice on

00:36:22.800 housing. And if the government is listening to the kind of advice that the federal housing

00:36:28.900 advocate is providing, we're doomed. There's no question, because the goal here is to eliminate

00:36:36.320 or reduce as much as possible the private sector from the provision of housing in Canada. And

00:36:43.120 there's simply no way that that can survive. The racism report that I mentioned, one of its

00:36:52.340 suggestions is that banks and pension funds be banned from lending money to anyone that makes

00:36:59.260 a profit in the housing market. Now, just roll that around in your head for a little while.

00:37:05.560 Beyond eliminating the mortgages for anyone who wants to rent out a house, it would completely

00:37:14.760 destroy the bridge financing and short-term financing requirements for building large

00:37:21.320 apartment buildings and complexes and all sorts of things it would bring the entire construction

00:37:27.000 industry to a complete halt and and the their goal is to have non-profits and co-ops fill the

00:37:34.740 fill the gap here it's just um it's completely illogical and there's no there's no evidence

00:37:41.460 that you can point to anywhere that the the the billions if not trillions of dollars of capital

00:37:47.600 that you would require for getting to Canada,

00:37:51.580 getting Canada to where we need to be

00:37:53.200 in terms of housing supply

00:37:54.440 can be provided by the nonprofit sector.

00:37:57.220 It's just, it's a complete fantasy.

00:37:59.580 No, and look, I always have this argument

00:38:01.940 with people at the municipal level.

00:38:03.600 It's easy to give developers a,

00:38:06.240 it's easy to be mean about developers.

00:38:08.280 Let's be real.

00:38:08.820 A lot of them, people tend to view them

00:38:11.160 as like the Sherman Potter character

00:38:12.680 in It's a Wonderful Life.

00:38:14.180 But the reality is,

00:38:15.260 developers have a profit motive, but it is that motive that gets them building houses. And

00:38:20.640 without that, you have to basically bureaucratize this process. And I don't think anyone who's ever

00:38:26.200 relied on government for anything says that it can be known for running things efficiently or

00:38:30.760 swiftly. So this idea that we need to take the capitalism out of the housing market would just

00:38:37.420 be economically catastrophic. True. And also, for me, it doesn't logically flow that someone who's

00:38:44.600 interested in making a profit is going to be discriminatory uh you know the opposite really

00:38:50.200 it's like yeah i know let's you know i don't care if you want to pay for my house here you go

00:38:54.200 and and and the bigger the company the more um routine eyes and the more processes they're

00:39:01.660 going to have i mean if there was racism in the housing industry you'd expect it to be someone

00:39:06.560 whose personal prejudices can influence the room they rent in the basement for instance

00:39:12.040 You're a big apartment building owner, REITs. I mean, another thing that is to go off on a side note that the federal housing advocate is really worked up about are REITs and the fact that they get a particular kind of tax concession in Canada.

00:39:30.680 Anyways, these big corporate entities that have thousands, if not tens of thousands of rental units to offer, they've got, you know, online forms and all sorts of processes and, you know, checking your bank records, etc.

00:39:46.640 But they don't care what your race is.

00:39:48.600 It's not even a category to check off on their application forms.

00:39:52.640 These are the least racist organizations you could imagine.

00:39:56.060 They just want to fill their apartments. 0.87

00:39:58.220 So, yeah, the underlying premise is crazy, and the outcomes that would result from the federal housing advocates' suggestions would be devastating.

00:40:10.040 And it's also, again, unfair to claim that Canada is riven by racism without providing any proof.

00:40:17.840 You know, just to get back to my my piece that all these stats can studies that come up and they keep showing this very particular racial leaderboard rather than racism.

00:40:32.080 A much more believable and credible reason for this is actually the rate of single-parent households.

00:40:41.260 And this can be a difficult topic to discuss, but Chinese Canadians have very low rates of single-parenthood.

00:40:52.120 Whites tend to have a medium sort of rate, and Blacks, quite frankly, have a very high rate of lone parent,

00:41:00.020 especially lone mother households.

00:41:02.080 And this has a big, big impact on the outcome of children and future generations.

00:41:09.800 And as I said, it's not really within the ambit of the government to fix that.

00:41:15.200 And I think that explains not all, but it probably explains quite a bit of all these

00:41:20.380 variations we see across racial backgrounds.

00:41:24.200 It is definitely a piece people should read.

00:41:27.040 You'll get a lot more.

00:41:27.940 Well, if you're going to read two, if you're going to read two pieces on this, you can look at the housing minister's comments or the housing advocate's comments on this.

00:41:36.200 But you'll need a palate cleanser immediately after that.

00:41:38.840 So go to Peter Sean Taylor's piece.

00:41:40.540 The housing market isn't racist.

00:41:42.540 Blame your parents instead.

00:41:44.700 Peter, good to talk to you again.

00:41:45.700 Thanks for coming on today.

00:41:47.240 It was a pleasure.

00:41:47.980 Thanks for having me.

00:41:49.180 All right.

00:41:49.540 Thank you.

00:41:50.760 I meant to talk about this earlier on.

00:41:52.820 On the weekend, it was Easter.

00:41:55.000 Or if you are with the federal government, it was not.

00:41:57.520 It was actually, let's just put up this tweet from Veterans Affairs Canada.

00:42:00.900 It was, oh, I can't even see it.

00:42:02.640 Oh, there we go.

00:42:03.540 We want to wish veterans, current members of the Canadian Forces and RCMP and their families a happy March holiday season.

00:42:12.200 And what do you do to celebrate the March holiday season?

00:42:15.020 You make Easter colored deviled eggs, it appears.

00:42:18.680 No, I'm just offended that people are serving deviled eggs in any format.

00:42:22.740 But actually, they're veterans.

00:42:24.160 Maybe they're just using them as weapons.

00:42:25.520 But the fact that we call this the March holiday season instead of Easter is a little bit baffling to me.

00:42:33.500 Now, the day earlier, Justin Trudeau had, or the day before Good Friday, I should say,

00:42:37.640 Justin Trudeau wished people a happy Ramadan on Good Friday.

00:42:41.940 He had nothing to say at all.

00:42:43.920 Veterans Affairs, I file, or I'm filing tomorrow an access to information request.

00:42:48.140 I want to wait a couple days because I want to see if they like,

00:42:50.460 because every now and then if you file one after the fact,

00:42:52.760 you will catch in the ATIP the things they said about you criticizing them so I want to just give

00:42:59.260 a little bit of the fallout from this an opportunity to be caught in this but this is what it's come to

00:43:04.140 now that you can't even say Easter it's a happy March holiday season now I think they did eventually

00:43:08.920 do an Easter post probably when they saw there we go when they saw everyone being dragged see those

00:43:13.580 eggs are non-deviled so they're a less offensive egg to celebrate Easter with in any event that

00:43:20.260 does it for us for today. We will be back tomorrow with more of Canada's Most Irreverent 0.95

00:43:24.960 Talk Show here on The Andrew Lawton Show on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you

00:43:29.920 all. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North

00:43:35.640 at www.tnc.news.

00:43:50.260 We'll be right back.

00:44:20.260 We'll be right back.

Juno News - April 02, 2024

Trudeau made life more expensive yesterday

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