Juno News - July 24, 2024


Trudeau's ban on independent journalists comes back to bite him

Topics
internal trade barriers mutual recognition for first aid kits
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Andrew Lawton Show Ken Paxton Keeley Lepke Turnbull Sheila Gunn-Reed Counter Signal Andrew Lawton Pierre Poilievre Chris Selle Dan McTague Rebel Kamo
Canada’s migrant crisis is too serious to ignore Poilievre says media should stop quoting ＂experts＂ who caused the drug crisis

Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

184.85

Word count

7,353

Sentence count

263

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On today's episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, host Andrew Lawton is joined by Dan McTagg to discuss the latest in the Trudeau-Bechytie saga, including how the Prime Minister was able to get so close to Justin Trudeau while on vacation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30 Thank you.
00:01:00 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:19 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show on this wednesday
00:01:29 july 24th hope you're doing well it is just after one o'clock eastern time where i am in
00:01:34 beautiful southwestern ontario but wherever you are i think it's i haven't actually been
00:01:38 outside today i realize so it may or may not be beautiful but it's not flooding like it was
00:01:43 was that early last week and and certainly in toronto so it is all relative in that sense but
00:01:49 Anyway, hope wherever you are in this lovely country or world, you're having a great day.
00:01:53 Whether you're listening live or catching this in a time capsule in the year 2075, we welcome you very much.
00:02:01 And I hope the world is a little bit less chaotic than it is today.
00:02:06 But anyway, I want to talk about a few different things here.
00:02:09 We're going to get into gas prices with the, I'm going to definitely the country's leading authority, maybe even the world's leading authority on gas prices.
00:02:17 Dan McTagg. That is going to be coming up in just about 15 minutes or so. Also later on in the
00:02:22 program, why free trade is a bit of a misnomer when you don't even have free trade in your own
00:02:27 country. You can't take a case of beer from one province to another. And these barriers are coming
00:02:33 with a huge cost, about $200 billion a year. That's going to be something we tackle later on
00:02:38 in the program. But I want to begin by discussing this interview. I mentioned it yesterday because
00:02:44 it had just sort of emerged that it had happened as I was coming on air. And it was an interview
00:02:50 that was not planned, that is very unlikely on the surface between Kian Bextie of The Counter
00:02:56 Signal. Now he used to work for Rebel, now he's started his own outlet, and Justin Trudeau. And
00:03:02 the interview took place where, I mean, basically the only place you can get interview access to
00:03:07 Justin Trudeau, which is a beach in Tofino, British Columbia. Now, there are a few moving
00:03:12 parts to this. Number one, Justin Trudeau is on vacation. He decided to take 10 days off until
00:03:18 the end of the month with his family. I don't know if it's just his kids and him. I don't know
00:03:22 if Sophie is there as well, but either way, it's a family vacation. He is on the beach in Tofino.
00:03:28 He loves Tofino, goes there all the time. And this is where Kian Bextie and one of his colleagues
00:03:34 who goes by Cat Canada on Twitter, she was, I believe, the camera operator at the time. Now,
00:03:40 why I want to talk about this is because this has become a bit of a flashpoint here
00:03:45 online you have some people not just Trudeau defenders even some people on the right
00:03:49 saying this is in poor form it's not fair to ambush someone when they're on vacation
00:03:54 you shouldn't invade someone's private space there's a time and a place for this and so on
00:03:59 and then you have a whole other subset if you go like way way way deep into the rabbit hole
00:04:05 I should have pulled some sample tweets but it's not hard to find you get people that believe this
00:04:09 was a setup. This was a plant. Justin Trudeau and Kian Bexty were supposedly in cahoots and they
00:04:17 had planned this as some weird psyop that was endeavoring to humanize Justin Trudeau. And
00:04:23 I can go through and basically dismantle point by point why it is not a setup. I've known Kian
00:04:29 for many, many years. I can tell you he is not on the liberal government's payroll. All of the
00:04:35 theories that have come up for how he got close or how did he get past security these are people
00:04:39 that know nothing about Canadian security they know nothing I mean I have shaken Justin Trudeau's
00:04:44 hand more times than I can count this is not something that is difficult to do in Canada
00:04:49 especially if someone is outside of a structured environment if they think they're just walking
00:04:53 along a beach now I would say that the relatively lax security in this country around political
00:04:58 leaders is a feature and not a bug it's because we live in a country in which leaders are not and
00:05:03 do not feel threatened generally. Now, I'm assuming a time will come when that will change, but
00:05:07 don't take the absence of Kian being tackled by police as evidence that he had been given
00:05:13 permission to get close to Justin Trudeau. That being said, once he did get there and Justin
00:05:20 Trudeau did have RCMP kind of performing a protective bubble around him, he did wave them
00:05:25 off. And you're going to see this in the clip that I'm going to share in a couple of moments.
00:05:29 But the reason I'm wanting to give it a bit of context here is just so you know what the two
00:05:33 debates are that are taking place about this number one this was a setup it was staged number
00:05:38 two okay maybe it wasn't a setup and it wasn't staged but it was unfair he shouldn't have done
00:05:43 it it's not civil it's not polite okay now that we have those arguments i've got thoughts on both
00:05:48 of those but let's just roll a bit of the clip now this is a a 13 minute video that the counter
00:05:53 signal has posted this is an excerpt that shows i think the general tone and tenor of what happened
00:05:59 I'll be with you in a bit.
00:06:28 Thank you. I appreciate it.
00:06:29 No, tell me.
00:06:30 I just want to know.
00:06:31 No, no, no.
00:06:32 I get that.
00:06:33 I ask the questions.
00:06:34 You can ask me one question and I'll ask you one question.
00:06:35 You can ask me one question, but you won't.
00:06:36 Okay?
00:06:37 Sure.
00:06:38 Do you think Prime Ministers should be able to have a family life?
00:06:40 Absolutely.
00:06:41 Okay.
00:06:42 Can you imagine?
00:06:43 No, no, no.
00:06:44 I get to ask one question.
00:06:45 You've asked multiple questions.
00:06:46 You haven't answered one, though.
00:06:47 I'm going to ask one more.
00:06:48 I'm going to ask one more.
00:06:49 Do you think Prime Ministers get to have a family life?
00:06:51 Do you think?
00:06:52 Do you think?
00:06:53 Do you think?
00:06:54 Do you think?
00:06:55 Okay.
00:06:56 So what's your question?
00:06:57 I want to know if you're hiding from your caucus, why you won't call a caucus meeting?
00:07:00 Okay. I am not hiding from my caucus, and I've had many, many conversations and meetings with
00:07:07 caucus. Okay. Question for you now. Can you imagine, and do you think that kids who grow up
00:07:17 in a Prime Minister's family deserve to have a normal-ish life with their family?
00:07:24 Absolutely, yeah.
00:07:26 Okay. And can you understand...
00:07:28 Can I ask a question? Sure. Go ahead.
00:07:30 So, you are passing a bill right now. You're pushing through a bill that's going to...
00:07:33 It's called the Online Harms Act, and you're sort of putting a bunch of policy in behind protecting children.
00:07:40 You say it's all about protecting children, but that bill is actually going to censor Canadians' ability to access the Internet,
00:07:47 to exercise free speech. Why put those two bills together? Why not separate them? 0.94
00:07:53 first of all it's actually not doing any censoring of the internet and it's entirely focused on
00:08:01 protecting the kids. So it goes on it's about a 10 minute walk and talk which is a type of
00:08:09 interview and it's not a level of access or a length of interview that any independent journalist
00:08:14 that I'm aware of has ever had with Justin Trudeau and Kian Bexley only got that because he went to
00:08:20 Tofino and went to where he assumed Justin Trudeau was going to be. And that was that. Now,
00:08:26 I'm going to just, there's so much to unpack in this, oddly enough. And one of the reasons I
00:08:32 wanted to bring, share that clip with you is because Justin Trudeau has been protected from
00:08:38 Kian. The police have come in, they're putting a barrier. They know they can get him. I don't 0.99
00:08:42 know how far he is from shelter or a building, but they know that they can basically keep Kian 0.99
00:08:47 away from him. And Justin Trudeau says, no, no, no, let's take a walk. Now, I think what he was
00:08:54 doing there, it sounds like, was actually just trying to go away from his son. He was also,
00:08:59 I suspect, realizing, okay, maybe there's a way that I can flip the script on this and turn this
00:09:05 around. Because everyone has seen videos of some independent journalists filming Justin Trudeau
00:09:10 walking alongside him. He ignores them. That's that. He's doing something different here. And
00:09:14 what he does is he walks right over to Kian and says, all right, I'll take your questions, 0.91
00:09:17 but I get to ask you questions too. And after a little bit of awkwardness at the beginning,
00:09:21 they seem to accept the terms of this. Kian asks questions about the Online Harms Act,
00:09:26 about Liberals Caucus Management, about whether Justin Trudeau is going to step down before the
00:09:30 next election. Justin Trudeau focuses on family, about having a private life, having a family life,
00:09:36 about whether it's fair to not let people have that. And they talk about how much Justin Trudeau
00:09:42 works and how much time he takes off him it was actually in some ways a more insightful interview
00:09:48 and then not in some ways in many ways it was a more insightful interview
00:09:52 than you get from most other places with justin trudeau certainly now so i it was not staged it
00:09:59 was not set up there is no evidence to support that and the only evidence is just people saying
00:10:04 they don't think kian would get that close to him that's really the only theory that the only
00:10:09 evidence or speculation that people who believe in the you know undercover liberal operative
00:10:14 key and bexty theory seem to have but the reason i want to talk about this so much is because
00:10:20 what trudeau has done is very masterful i'll give him credit for it he took this moment turned it
00:10:26 around took control of the conversation and in the end both got their shots for lack of a term in
00:10:32 on the other and the reason that i believe that what kian did was justifiable
00:10:39 was because Justin Trudeau has made it impossible for independent journalists to access him in any
00:10:45 official forum. I have tried to cover the Liberal caucus meeting even when it was in my own city.
00:10:51 That was about a year ago. It was not accredited. The most I would be allowed to do is stand on the
00:10:56 sidewalk outside the venue and hope someone walked by. The PMO will not even respond to media requests
00:11:02 that I send. So if we're writing a story about Justin Trudeau at True North, we do what journalists
00:11:06 are supposed to do, we reach out to the prime minister's office and give them an opportunity
00:11:10 to comment. And they do not respond. They ignore us entirely. When Justin Trudeau has press
00:11:16 conferences, no matter where in the country they are, if you reach out and you're with True North,
00:11:20 or I presume Counter Signal, and you say, I want to attend as a journalist, like every other
00:11:25 journalist, they will not respond. They will not even give you the location of these press
00:11:29 conferences. So when you shut off official channels of access, which we realize in a
00:11:36 democracy are incredibly important, press freedom is incredibly important. Press must have access
00:11:41 to political leaders. It doesn't mean unfettered access. It doesn't mean every day. It doesn't
00:11:45 mean everyone gets a one-on-one interview, but there should be some level of access. When you
00:11:49 shut that off, you force journalists to get creative. And this is Journalism 101, by the way.
00:11:56 when you're trying to reach someone for comment and you can't reach them you have to start
00:12:01 everything you call them you email them and yes you even go knock on their door because it is
00:12:08 that important to make sure you're giving them an opportunity to respond so this is the equivalent
00:12:13 of kian bexty in a less obtrusive way i'd say going and knocking on justin trudeau's door
00:12:18 and he ends up having a great interview out of it does it reveal anything in the way of breaking
00:12:24 news? Maybe, maybe not. That's for you to decide. But it reveals a lot about the way Justin Trudeau
00:12:28 is operating. And look, I'll say again, when he's on, he's on. It was hard to believe that that guy
00:12:34 was the same guy that struggles to describe a water bottle in some press conferences, but he
00:12:40 actually managed to, in that moment, just kick into gear and realize what he needed to do to try
00:12:46 to diffuse the situation. And this is what it's supposed to be about. That's what democracy is
00:12:51 supposed to be about. That's what the interplay between journalists and politicians is supposed 0.93
00:12:55 to be about. It's not about one convincing the other. It's just about the two sides realizing
00:13:00 that they have very different constituencies and engaging in some form of a conversation.
00:13:06 But I go back to all of this pearl clutching that we see from people that are so mortified,
00:13:11 so offended that Kian went to track Justin Trudeau down on the beach. Look, if Justin Trudeau had 0.57
00:13:16 been at a restaurant table with his kids, I would have been very uncomfortable with that.
00:13:20 if he had been really close to his kids. And at first when I saw that, I didn't think his son
00:13:24 was anywhere near. Later on in the interview, Trudeau mentions that his son was out swimming
00:13:29 and he was going to visit him. So I think it's possible that when Kian made the approach,
00:13:34 he thought he was just alone, but was on his way to see his son. So I don't know the details on
00:13:39 that. But I understand the discomfort with that. I once, when in the 2019 election campaign,
00:13:45 was banned from covering liberal press conferences.
00:13:49 So we were just going around the country on our own
00:13:52 because we couldn't be on the liberal campaign plane.
00:13:54 And we were trying to get access to Justin Trudeau
00:13:57 to ask a couple of questions.
00:13:59 And there was one moment we were in Montreal
00:14:01 and I was about to approach Justin Trudeau.
00:14:04 I was at a table in a hotel lobby
00:14:06 and I got up and I just took one step forward
00:14:10 and I realized he was surrounded by his kids.
00:14:13 And I took a step back
00:14:14 because that was not something that I wanted to do.
00:14:16 And I knew there'd be another opportunity later in the day.
00:14:18 That was a line that I drew.
00:14:20 But when you are in the field,
00:14:22 you have to make these snap judgments.
00:14:23 And I don't begrudge anyone a mistake or two,
00:14:27 but I'm not convinced a mistake was made here
00:14:29 because Justin Trudeau has invited this treatment
00:14:32 from the media.
00:14:34 He has invited this treatment from the media
00:14:35 by treating the media with such contempt.
00:14:37 Again, Kian was one of the journalists 0.92
00:14:39 who at the time with Rebel News needed to sue
00:14:42 to get into the Leaders' Debates Commission's debates in 2019. True North was there as well.
00:14:48 We were banned by a government agency from doing our job as journalists.
00:14:53 And every day, despite that, despite that, the liberals still have the same attitude towards
00:14:59 independent journalists, the same attitude that prevents them from doing their work.
00:15:04 So look, maybe you don't like Key and maybe you don't like the idea of what some people
00:15:08 are characterizing as an ambush, but Justin Trudeau is reaping what he has spent the last
00:15:14 several years sowing. And that is where I think, again, the pearl clutching is a great way of doing 0.78
00:15:19 this. Chris Selle had a point, he was with the National Post. He said, if Justin Trudeau doesn't
00:15:25 like the job that much, he's the prime minister of a G7 country, if he doesn't like people asking
00:15:29 him questions, then he can just quit already and move on. But the thing that is so fascinating is
00:15:34 that when you look at these mechanisms that are in place that tend to block access, these mechanisms
00:15:40 in place that tend to prevent people from being able to ask a question to Justin Trudeau, it's
00:15:44 because his staff doesn't have confidence in him. It's because his staff is not convinced that he
00:15:49 could do the Pierre Polyev thing and turn around an interaction with a journalist in a way like
00:15:55 that. Now, I'd say that this exchange with Kian shows that he can at times do it. He can at times 1.00
00:16:01 flip the script take charge or at least take a level of control of a conversation and and end
00:16:07 up doing it but it's not about what looks good for him it's not about whether he's capable or not
00:16:12 the whole point is is that it took uh kian baxi several thousands of dollars for him and his
00:16:18 videographer to get on planes go to tofino get he posted like a screenshot of his credit card
00:16:26 bill or whatever to you know get on one of those harbor air float planes to go to the beach and i
00:16:32 don't know how long they were waiting like i joked yesterday that finding trudeau is kind of easy you
00:16:35 just sort of look on the beach and there he is but i don't know if they were walking up and down the
00:16:38 beach for eight hours i don't know how long it took for them to do it but i do know that they
00:16:43 did it and they did it well and i would suspect that if kian were allowed to go to trudeau press
00:16:49 conferences he wouldn't have had to do that because it simply would not be worth it it simply would
00:16:54 not be worth it and you'd already have that access and that's where i find this to be just
00:16:59 such a profoundly dismal state of affairs i've told the story often of when christia freeland
00:17:05 who was at the time the foreign affairs minister she was co-hosting this so-called global conference
00:17:10 for media freedom in london england i was there covering it and she was having a press conference
00:17:16 and at the media freedom press conference decided to ban me to ban true north from attending it also
00:17:22 Sheila Gunn-Reed as well. And it was just by a fluke that all of the other journalists there
00:17:28 were really minded to support press freedom. And they said, well, Freeland, we're not going to go
00:17:32 to your press conference unless you let everyone in. That solidarity doesn't happen on a normal
00:17:37 basis. That solidarity doesn't happen in the case of what Kian Bextie and others are dealing with.
00:17:43 So all of that is to say, I am not troubled by this in light of that context. I do believe
00:17:50 generally that we should let politicians have a personal life, no matter how much you may loathe
00:17:55 them. I don't like the idea of protesting at people's homes. I don't like the idea of harassing
00:17:59 people at home. I don't like the idea of harassing anyone or doing anything of the sort when they're
00:18:05 around their family. But asking questions as a journalist on a beach, which is not a place that
00:18:11 carries a public expect or an expectation of privacy, when you have no other opportunities
00:18:17 to do that I think is entirely justifiable that's my position I'm open to people disagreeing so if
00:18:24 you have other thoughts on it weigh in in the comments this has been more people have been
00:18:28 talking about like the extraneous aspects of the interview than have been talking about the
00:18:33 interview itself on social media now admittedly that was before the the interview was released
00:18:38 but let's talk about one thing we can find a lot more unanimity on among this audience I suspect
00:18:43 which is the devastating impacts of the carbon tax, one of many, not the only thing driving up
00:18:49 the cost of living, but it is in fact doing it. Now, that being said, there is an interesting
00:18:55 piece that I wanted to get to on gas prices generally, which is that the Competition Bureau
00:19:01 is suspecting there may be a little bit of anti-competitive conduct that is, to use the
00:19:07 watchdog's word guiding gas prices the competition bureau is looking at a company called
00:19:14 calibrate canada which they suspect is guiding gas prices at 100 or 1700 fuel stations across
00:19:22 the country if you want to understand fuel prices there's only one guy in canada that knows
00:19:28 everything about them and that is our good friend dan mctagg who is the president of canadians for
00:19:33 affordable energy and also a former Liberal Member of Parliament back when that meant something very
00:19:38 different from what it does today. Dan, it's good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:19:43 Good to be here, Andrew, and thank you for the invitation. I didn't realize gasoline was
00:19:48 such a big deal these days. It certainly wasn't with the Competition Bureau 40 years ago,
00:19:52 30 years ago when it was after this file, but glad to see that they're on it nevertheless.
00:19:56 Yeah, it's interesting because I think anecdotally everyone would assume there was some sort of a
00:20:01 passive collusion going on because you know everyone has seen the intersections with three
00:20:06 gas stations where one drops their price and then you know half an hour later the next one does and
00:20:10 then half an hour after that the other one does but but what is it they're actually thinking is
00:20:14 happening here that may be illegal potentially well i think they're probably looking at uh
00:20:19 conspiracy which is that uh the you know a couple of these gas stations are gathering in the dark
00:20:23 of night under you know dimly lit lamps on some street corner and saying hey this is the price
00:20:28 we're going to be setting for the next several days they may also be looking at the wholesale
00:20:32 price of gasoline which uh brings us into the whole ambit of you know why are wholesale prices
00:20:37 very similar between competitors um this of course has always been a concern that you have you know
00:20:44 three or four suppliers shell sorry excuse me pedro canada uh imperial being the big players
00:20:50 across much of canada of course our regional players irving in the east coast and uh to the
00:20:56 the west uh west coast chevron of course now of course which is uh uh parkland refinery in in uh
00:21:03 in uh in vancouver uh these are smaller players but they tend to look at the wholesale price of
00:21:09 gasoline they look at the canadian dollar and they come up with a a formula which basically suggests
00:21:15 which way the price is going to go now in some parts of the country it's usually 48 hours after
00:21:20 the price or 36 hours i should say after the price is settled on u.s markets uh we get a wholesale
00:21:26 price indication that doesn't necessarily mean gas stations need to jump on it but in most major
00:21:31 cities across canada they do which of course is the reason why i began predicting gas prices well
00:21:36 over 30 years ago um at the same time i was out writing a little report that lost in time report
00:21:44 of the liberal committee on gasoline price in canada you'll see uh it's about 26 years old and
00:21:48 yours truly was was chair of that at the time I was concerned about the loss of competition
00:21:54 particularly among retail gas stations however this is always going to continue to be an issue
00:21:59 we know that gasoline prices tend to be also diesel prices tend to be jet fuel prices tend to
00:22:05 be heating home heating oil prices and so where energy prices go and how their influence do with
00:22:13 I think not just the political direction of this country but the whole issue of affordability which
00:22:17 something i've been on for several years as you can see from above i have every expectation that
00:22:23 the competition bureau of course is being guided by new uh mandates uh the mandate of course would
00:22:29 be uh you know nudge nudge wink wink we uh we want to make sure that there's no green washing that 1.00
00:22:35 is to say people making claims that they're doing something clean uh quote-unquote uh anti-fossil
00:22:40 fuel uh when in fact they're not uh and so i think the the bureau itself has now gone from
00:22:45 being a defender, a cop on the beat when it comes to competition, to bringing in and inviting some
00:22:53 of the political partisan considerations, including climate change and, of course,
00:22:57 all the issues, the many taxes that go with it, Andrew. How many independent variables are there
00:23:04 that are inputs to gas prices in Canada? You have to watch in Canada, Eastern Canada,
00:23:11 So Atlanta, Canada, Quebec and Ontario tends to follow the New York mercantile exchange or the market at New York is where our wholesale price comes from.
00:23:22 And that varies by day. So if we're on a daily today where it's up a couple of pennies, that could mean a one cent increase.
00:23:27 A couple pennies a gallon could mean a cent or two increase come 24 hours, 48 hours from now.
00:23:32 So we're likely looking at a scenario where that would happen by Friday.
00:23:36 um western canada so from thunder bay if you can believe it or not right up to the uh right up to
00:23:42 vancouver's uh limits uh the lower mainland is another market and that's really driven by the
00:23:48 chicago spot market and of course we have the vancouver lower mainland and victoria so vancouver
00:23:54 island is also influenced by what's called the pacific northwest uh market and that of course
00:24:00 means whatever happens in the united states tends to be the price we're going to pay within 48 hours
00:24:04 at least gas stations will be forced to pay and including you have to include in that of course
00:24:09 the value of the Canadian dollar very important to recognize because Andrew is many people tend
00:24:13 to overlook in their so-called you know millions of dollars in federal government subsidies to come
00:24:18 up with these studies that surprise nudge nudge wink wink antenna support the government's position
00:24:24 they tend to overlook the fact that Canadian dollar continues to sink in 137 pennies to buy
00:24:30 one us dollar adds about 24 to 27 cents a liter to the price of gasoline and that's not even
00:24:36 including the issue of taxation they not the one but the two carbon taxes that we now have in
00:24:40 canada and to go back to the retail aspect of this how much latitude do uh gas companies have
00:24:48 do you know pumps pump stations have in their prices when these are going up and down i know
00:24:54 costco you know locally is notoriously good for having a few cents uh less but but but how much
00:24:59 of a buffer do they really have to to pad that out if they want to undercut their their competitors
00:25:04 well you have to look at what's called a retail margin and you have to look at your market if you
00:25:08 have a lot of people coming through so what they call throughputs you have a lot of uh you know
00:25:12 20 30 000 liters a day and you have several hundred cars coming in then you know your your
00:25:17 margin doesn't have to be as high it could be seven six five cents at costco or you have other
00:25:22 ways of cross-subsidizing that as costco would for instance with uh you know with uh uh rewards
00:25:28 programs or better yet uh you know you paying 60 65 a year to uh to have access to their pumps i
00:25:34 can't just walk into their pumps without showing my you know my costco uh uh membership uh before
00:25:40 getting that so that's a bit of an advantage also the amount of fuel you can use if you can walk in
00:25:45 and say hey listen i can move a million you know liters of gasoline and one given a week or diesel
00:25:50 the equivalent or supreme you're going to get the attention of the refiner because the refinery runs
00:25:56 you know 24 7 365 days a year and so uh those who can move volumes tend to get a little bit of a
00:26:02 better discount than say you know barney's bait and tackle and uh you know gasoline emporium uh
00:26:07 would uh in an off-site you know situation where they don't get a lot of traffic nevertheless it
00:26:12 takes everyone pays within a few cents the same for wholesale price of gasoline there are discounts
00:26:18 casco costco might get on a day like today where they rack price that the so-called wholesale price
00:26:24 uh you know say for uh regina being a dollar 4.9 might be buying it for 99 cents so they get five 1.00
00:26:30 cents off any competitors in the area because of the large volumes they can move they still have
00:26:35 to have a retail margin in order to cover the cost of honoring credit cards cost of uh you know of
00:26:41 keeping the plaza open paying the staff or whoever is there and that's why you know you can't do
00:26:46 these things for free we often see many variations in prices across the country even within cities
00:26:52 where some gas stations tend to have a lower price than others they hope that they can get
00:26:56 more attract more to their station by you know lower slightly lower prices but the really i
00:27:02 think the story here and i've said this for some 30 odd years now is that the real competition is
00:27:06 at the retail level the last eight or nine cents a liter and that's what it comes down to eight or
00:27:11 nine cents is all the gas station has control over and so you know if they suddenly remove that after
00:27:16 5 p.m in a given afternoon and have zero margin they're running seven cents lower than everyone
00:27:21 else obviously they're going to get most of the traffic and there are many websites some which
00:27:25 i've worked with in the past gas buddy for instance which are devoted to letting people
00:27:29 know when that happens how that happens where the best deals are i wanted to just in in the last
00:27:35 couple of moments i have with you here point you to this tweet ryan turnbull who's a liberal member
00:27:39 of parliament had shared uh this he says a new report says canadian carbon tax did not cause
00:27:45 hike in gas prices or inflation the conservatives will deny this at all costs they just can't handle
00:27:50 the truth. So I would say, and I think you would agree that we can't say every increase in gas
00:27:57 price has been attributed to the carbon tax, but the design of the carbon tax was to increase gas
00:28:03 prices. That was the point of it. So I don't know how the liberals are saying that there is no
00:28:07 connection to increases and the carbon tax. It makes no sense. And I was member of parliament
00:28:12 for Whitby for several years. So, I mean, I know where Mr. Turnbull is trying to come from,
00:28:16 but when you get an organization that you pay 35 or 50 million 52 million to to come up with some
00:28:22 kind of weird study that doesn't include some experts who know what the hell they're talking
00:28:25 about i.e me uh you know that there's a problem and uh you know that this is uh from a political
00:28:31 point of view and i'll put my 18 years as a liberal member of parliament uh hat back on
00:28:34 and say either you do want the carbon taxes to work to deny and to encourage people to or
00:28:40 discourage people from buying fossil fuels or you don't and uh so it's an argument if he's making
00:28:46 the argument this isn't inflationary, then it obviously is not working, which brings into
00:28:50 question Mr. Turnbull and the Liberal Party's attempt at trying to suggest that carbon taxes
00:28:55 are indeed useful. In fact, they're extraordinarily expensive. Canadians understand that. Most do not
00:29:00 get back what they put in and we're not just talking about fuel for transportation, but also
00:29:05 energy costs, things like keeping your home heated and the cost generally as it cascades
00:29:10 through the economy of all these things. Now, we have a country with two carbon taxes,
00:29:14 British Columbia being a very good example where you have 17.61 is the first carbon tax the second
00:29:19 the clean fuel standard the BC LCFS is short for BC low carbon fuel standard about 18 19 cents a
00:29:28 liter now and that's gonna be surprising I fought the government over there many years ago on this
00:29:33 point when they said there was 12 mystery cents it's actually about 18 or 19 now and that's
00:29:37 because the cost of a credit carbon credit which is about 500 which British Columbia is very
00:29:42 transparent about it's 500 bucks per credit for every 110 dollars is four cents a liter so for
00:29:48 that's according to the federal government's own uh um uh rias or uh regulatory implementation act
00:29:57 uh study so for every 110 dollars of carbon credit which is 500 today in british columbia
00:30:02 it's four cents four cents times uh a break in 110 into five from 500 you're talking uh
00:30:11 15.8 plus gst so you're about 18 cents a liter roughly for the second carbon tax that's what's
00:30:17 adding the cost of living more importantly last year at this time canadian dollars 131 pennies
00:30:22 to buy us dollar today 137 that's adding about two cents a liter the price of gasoline that's
00:30:27 a function of the fact that the world has very little interest in buying canadian commodities
00:30:31 and canadian currency it's a a tragedy uh before i let you go dan when should i fill up
00:30:36 well this weekend looks pretty good i would say uh by friday you'll see prices drop a little bit
00:30:42 more than they are now and right across the country an average decrease of about two cents a
00:30:46 liter so i'm waiting until friday to fill up uh some can get it take advantage of this tomorrow
00:30:50 if you're atlantic canada i've just given the information out there uh diesel down two cents
00:30:55 gasoline down 1.5 that's likely to be good for thursday and friday quebec ontario uh it's pretty
00:31:02 much the same down about a penny and of course western canada you've seen prices spike up they're
00:31:06 likely to drop about two cents a liter uh with the lower mainland vancouver staying in the 181 183 range
00:31:13 all right well you heard it here first first everyone uh dan mctagg president of canadians
00:31:18 for affordable energy thanks so much for coming on dan really good to talk always a pleasure thanks
00:31:21 for having me andrew all right dan was always back when i work in talk radio dan was always
00:31:25 like our favorite radio guest because it was like again like everyone would call in and be like wait
00:31:29 I need to know what's happening with gas prices.
00:31:31 Get Dan on, get Dan on.
00:31:32 So it's good to have him on this show as well.
00:31:35 So we will turn from one thing
00:31:38 that is costing you money to another.
00:31:40 There are no shortage of them in this country, sadly.
00:31:42 This one's a little bit wonky.
00:31:44 So every now and then I do one of these topics
00:31:45 where I'm kind of geeking out in a little way
00:31:48 because it's an issue that I've always been
00:31:50 banging my head up against the wall
00:31:51 that I can't get other people to care about.
00:31:53 So today I'm hoping you'll join me
00:31:54 in caring about this.
00:31:56 Interprovincial trade.
00:31:57 And if I haven't put you to sleep by that,
00:31:59 Do pay attention because it is costing the Canadian economy about $200 billion a year, according to a new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
00:32:08 If you want to know how it relates to you, six years ago there was a Supreme Court ruling that basically said you cannot take beer from Quebec to New Brunswick.
00:32:16 So if you find cheap beer on one side of the border, you are not allowed to take it to your home in New Brunswick.
00:32:22 That was the famous Camo case, which is important because the Constitution is so very clear that there should not be any trade barriers domestically in the country.
00:32:31 Yet we have so many of them, provinces that are treating their own economies as separate from others, and when we are all part of the same country here.
00:32:39 But it is coming, like I said, at a cost.
00:32:41 I want to welcome into the show to talk about this from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Director of Alberta and Interprovincial Affairs, Keeley Lepke.
00:32:51 Keely, thanks for coming on today.
00:32:52 Good to have you.
00:32:53 Thanks for having me.
00:32:54 So what are these barriers and why are they there?
00:32:58 Yeah, well, good question for sure.
00:33:00 There's lots of them and they differ from province to province.
00:33:04 But we're seeing barriers with regards to certain sectors.
00:33:08 We're seeing barriers to the free movement of labor across the country.
00:33:13 So if you're certified to work in one part of the country, that doesn't automatically mean you can start working in another part of the country.
00:33:20 Services. It's not just easy to pick up your business and move to another part of the country
00:33:24 and start operating your business in other areas. And with the flow of goods, we know that we can't
00:33:30 get all different types of products from all provinces and territories into our home province.
00:33:34 It's not as simple and straightforward as that. So lots of barriers exist across the country that are
00:33:40 hurting Canadian businesses as well as consumers at a time when affordability is top of mind for
00:33:45 many people it is and you know i'll ask in another way of where these costs come from like so that
00:33:52 200 billion dollars a year that's a pretty significant number where what's what's contributing
00:33:56 to that so you know there's there's quite a few examples but really by eliminating internal trade
00:34:01 barriers we can improve camda's productivity by allowing businesses to transport goods and services
00:34:06 more easily more cheaply um you know reduce delays caused by differing provincial regulations
00:34:13 have access to a wider consumer base,
00:34:16 thereby increasing sales and efficiency.
00:34:18 So all those things together add to up to that $200 billion.
00:34:23 Things like increased competition, reduced red tape,
00:34:26 enhanced innovation, all playing a role there.
00:34:29 So, I mean, for small and medium businesses,
00:34:32 like a lot of them I'm assuming would just say
00:34:34 it's not worth the hassle and just close off to other provinces.
00:34:38 I mean, the alcohol market is a great example of that.
00:34:41 like it's just so cumbersome and burdensome to deal with the regulations a lot just don't even
00:34:45 bother yeah absolutely what we're hearing from our small business owners in many cases it's
00:34:50 actually easier to trade with the united states than it is to trade with um your neighboring
00:34:55 province or territory um so that's a really big indication that people need to pay attention to
00:35:00 this issue at the political level especially um but alcohol is an issue that just is ridiculous
00:35:06 um you know when we're making international headlines as a country because we can't move
00:35:11 of alcohol products freely within country,
00:35:15 that's a serious problem.
00:35:16 And there has been some minor steps to fix that,
00:35:21 but it's certainly not all the way there
00:35:23 and there's lots of room for improvement.
00:35:26 So what would need to happen to fix this?
00:35:29 Because as I understand it,
00:35:30 it isn't even just one single federal policy say
00:35:34 that's causing all of these problems.
00:35:35 It's every province that has its own
00:35:37 pseudo protectionist regime basically.
00:35:41 So there's a role for each of the provinces to play when it comes down to this, how they're currently going at fixing these barriers is by going to a table called the RCT.
00:35:52 The RCT was created under the Canada Free Trade Agreement, and it's basically a table where they come together, they identify barriers and they sit and argue about, you know, whose regulations and rules are the best.
00:36:04 So if you think about first aid kits, for example, prior to the RCT, first aid kits were different in each province.
00:36:11 And if you had a business that operated across multiple provinces and territories, you had to make sure that your employee had access to that province's first aid kit.
00:36:20 So if you think about a truck driver who required a first aid kit in their vehicle, they would have to have multiple different first aid kits to be in compliance.
00:36:29 So what provinces did is they came to the table and argued about who had the best size of Band-Aids
00:36:34 and they came to an agreement on who had the best first aid kit, you know, and now it's been decided
00:36:39 seven years later that we have one first aid kit across the country. Great, but that's way too slow
00:36:45 to be removing some of these barriers. So what CFIB is recommending is something called mutual
00:36:50 recognition. Instead of coming to an agreement all sitting around the table fighting over Band-Aid
00:36:55 sizes let's just say you're in Alberta business and you want to use a BC first aid kit no problem
00:37:01 we recognize that that BC first aid kit is good enough for folks here in Alberta um you know we
00:37:07 are not so different as a country we do have unique differences um in the different regions
00:37:12 and whatnot but we are not so different that um first aid kit should be viewed so differently
00:37:16 across the country there's many examples of that all right well definitely something we should
00:37:22 keep an eye on and yeah, call your MPP or your MLA or your MNA. I think those are all, I think
00:37:27 those are all three. Uh, I'm in Ontario. It took me like years to learn and they weren't all MPPs,
00:37:31 but anyway, uh, great, uh, great topic. And hopefully we'll get some change on this in
00:37:36 the future. Akili Lepke, thank you so much for coming on. Good to talk to you.
00:37:39 Yeah. All right. Uh, that is a fascinating, like, okay, maybe not fascinating topic,
00:37:45 but it's an important topic. And, and that Kamo case was great because it illuminated exactly
00:37:51 how absurd it is that a guy who lives in New Brunswick that, you know, wants to go and buy
00:37:55 some cheap beer in Quebec then gets pulled over and fined once he crosses the Quebec-New Brunswick
00:38:01 border to get back home because, you know, heaven forbid you carry beer across a provincial line
00:38:06 as though it's, you know, like the Berlin Wall or something. But anyway, that does it for us for
00:38:11 today. We'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North. This is
00:38:16 the Andrew Lawton Show. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all. Thanks for listening to the
00:38:21 Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:38:46 We'll be right back.
00:39:16 We'll be right back.