Trudeau's budget an attempt to buy re-election
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Summary
In this edition of the True North Report, Andrew Lawton talks about the 2019 federal budget, the SNC-Lavalin scandal, and the latest on the Trudeau government's plans for infrastructure spending. He also talks about some of the most significant announcements in the budget, including the announcement of a $20 billion in new spending.
Transcript
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Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to another edition of the True North Report.
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My name is Andrew Lawton, a fellow with True North, here with you to discuss the federal budget
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or the unofficial kickoff of Justin Trudeau's re-election campaign.
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If you can't tell, I'm a little bit pessimistic about the whole thing here insofar as pre-election budgets are concerned.
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But you know, I want to talk about a few different stories that are unfolding here.
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And I'm going to get to the latest in the SNC-Labola issue because it is, in many respects, connected to the budget.
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But I also want to look at some of the numbers that we're seeing in the budget here, breaking it down.
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I've had the chance since the budget was tabled to go through some of the numbers
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and look at some of the programs and the promises and all of that stuff.
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Some of it I'm still getting coming in, so I'm going to be a little bit more, you know, scattered than usual,
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which is saying something in this particular edition because I want to keep up to date on new information that's emerging.
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I thankfully was not in the lockup because that sounds like one of the most painfully boring things that one can do with their life,
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to spend a day, an entire day, not even able to use your phone in a government budget talk.
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So instead I was like, oh, you know, everyone in the lockup, once they get out,
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they're going to tell me what I need to know about it.
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And I was able to, you know, spend my day doing everything other than going over the federal budget.
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So I thank you very much for all who had messaged me today asking if I was in the lockup.
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But I do think there are some important things to go over here.
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And just the top line of this is that the budget has more than $20 billion of new spending,
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And most importantly, and I think this is the biggest thing that people need to understand about the 2019 federal budget,
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no end in sight to the deficit, no end in sight at all.
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This is particularly important when you understand a headline from four years ago that I'm going to share with you here.
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And this is a very, very important headline, one that was from a Canadian press story, December 17th, 2015.
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Justin Trudeau says vow to balance budget in four years is very cast in stone.
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Even as economic hurdles pile up, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insists his pledge to balance the federal books in four years is very cast in stone.
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On top of the balanced budget, Trudeau told the Canadian press that the Liberal government will also live up to its other fiscal anchor
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to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio every year until the end of its mandate.
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So Justin Trudeau didn't just say that he was going to balance.
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Remember, this is, by the way, the second or the amended promise.
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The first part of it was, you may remember in the campaign, there's just going to be no deficit at all.
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And then it was, there's going to be a little itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow polka-dot deficit.
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And then it was something that, okay, even though we have the deficit, it's going to be gone within four years.
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This was an ironclad promise made by Justin Trudeau during the election and then doubled down on when he was the Prime Minister.
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And that went from no, the deficit's going to be gone within four years to here we are now facing billions and billions and billions of dollars in new spending
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with not even a prediction on when the deficit is going to be gone.
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So the budget this year has $22.8 billion in new spending.
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The budget is ultimately going to become the springboard for the Liberal platform.
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So we know from looking at these promises what the Liberals are going to be running on in the election as they head forward with that.
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And I want to look at some of the specifics here.
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And even CBC said the following, which I think is important.
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Morneau's 460-page budget titled Investing in the Middle Class Offers No Timeline for Erasing the Deficit.
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The Liberals had pledged to run deficits to finance a massive infrastructure program, but broke their promise to return to balance by 2019.
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And this is something that we now see in this particular budget has a $20 billion deficit next year,
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which in two years is going to fall to $15 billion.
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And then in 2023-2024 is going to fall to $10 billion.
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So if you look at this, we're having deficit projections over the next six years in this budget to the tune of about $90 some odd billion.
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But $90 billion, more than that, over the next six years that's projected in this budget.
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And I want it to be noted that we have gone from no deficit by 2019, so no deficit after four years, to 10 years of deficits and probably beyond.
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We just don't know yet because the budget doesn't forecast that far in advance.
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So this budget is exactly what most people predicted it was going to be.
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And Aaron Woodrick, who you may be familiar with, he's the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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He's the perennial pessimist on things like this.
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He did an interview earlier, and I know some people were jumping up and down on him for it, where he's like,
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well, you know, it's just going to be spend this, spend that.
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There's going to be massive spending, spending everywhere.
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And people were saying to him on Twitter, oh, you know, Aaron, come on, you know, be an optimist.
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And then the budget comes out, and he's exactly right.
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Every prediction that every fiscal conservative gave ahead of this budget has been correct.
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Because Justin Trudeau isn't just a liberal that believes spending your money is better than any other path for government.
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But Justin Trudeau believes that he is going to use that $22.8 billion of new spending to buy his way into re-election.
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And the terrible thing about this gamble is that he's gambling with money that's not his own.
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Because there is no win when Justin Trudeau is spending billions of our money to get re-election for himself,
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so that he then, for the next four years, can spend billions more of the money.
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Thomas writes, let's talk about all the free crap he's going to do to buy our votes.
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Well, I'm glad you want that, Thomas, because that is exactly what we're going to talk about
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Yeah, and I am going to get to S&C Lavalin as well.
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That's a big thing, and it is related to the budget.
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Dale writes, buying all target demographic groups, nothing more or less.
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And that's a very critical point here, because this is trying to look at each segment of the population
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that the liberals think it can rely on to have vote for it.
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And they're trying to get that support from each of these individual groups,
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you know, $1 billion, $2 billion, $5 billion at a time.
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And I will go over some of the specifics here, because I think that there may be some value
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in individual programs, but you have to look at the whole of it.
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You have to look at the gestalt, and you also have to question the why now.
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And one big example of this is the first-time homebuyer incentive.
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Now, this is a program that would reduce the mortgage payments that you have to have to own a home
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by having the Canadian Mortgage Housing Commission, I think CMHC, pay about 5% to 10% of your down payments.
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So, theoretically, they could put up to, let's say, $20,000 down.
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If you were buying, let's say, a $400,000 house, and you wanted to put down a $20,000 down payment,
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the CMHC would match that theoretically, and put down another $20,000.
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So, instead of having 5% down on a house, you put 10% down, thus reducing your mortgage payments.
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And you need to give the CMHC the money back, but it's interest-free.
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So, this is an incentive that would put interest-free loans, essentially,
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to first-time homebuyers to better ease the burden of home ownership.
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Number one, I think that there are a lot of millennials that are completely priced out of the housing market,
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and I'm sympathetic to a government program that is trying to bring that in check.
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But one of the biggest issues that we have that's causing houses to be so expensive
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for first-time homebuyers or people buying and selling is the fact that there is a supply issue.
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And Nicole Verkint, who's a really smart CEO and commentator, had looked at this,
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and she was actually mentioning the number on BNN Bloomberg earlier this afternoon,
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that the average time it takes to get a simple, basic warehouse built from permit,
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So, basically, two-thirds of the year is how long you need to wait and sit on your hands,
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not making any money, just to get permission to build, to invest.
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And we know that in the housing sector, that problem is very similar,
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where you have people that want to build, they want to put houses on the market,
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and the more supply there is, the better the demand is met, and they simply can't.
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And remember, back in, I think it was about a year and a half ago,
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So, the issue wasn't, I mean, the issue is that homes were going for such dramatically inflated prices,
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and something like this doesn't really protect people from overpaying for houses.
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Matthew writes, at what point does the budget balance itself?
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The budget at this point has not yet balanced itself.
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We've told the budget to balance itself, but unfortunately, it hasn't gotten there yet.
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So, this first-time homebuyer incentive was actually something the Liberals promised four years ago.
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Because they want the re-election cachet that this is going to bring.
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If four years ago they put this in, and Millennials realized it doesn't solve all their problems,
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they're not going to win support, they do it now,
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the thing doesn't even go into effect until September.
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Which means that by the time the Millennials that Justin Trudeau is trying to buy the votes of,
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go to vote in October, the vast majority won't have even seen anything of this program,
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but Justin Trudeau is telling them he's gotten them looked after.
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This is a program that I actually think is a really good one.
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This is a benefit that will give workers money to pay for training and allow them to retrain as they go through their career.
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So, this is something that's meant to, I don't want to say protect against automation,
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but something that allows people to keep up with changes in their industry,
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to continue to make sure that they're at the top of their game.
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So, this is something that I think mostly is a provincial mandate,
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but I think as far as policies go, I think it's a fairly productive one.
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Lowering interest rates on Canada student loans,
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making the six-month grace period interest-free after a student loan borrower leaves school.
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This will also create 84,000 new student work placements by the year 2023-2024.
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So, as someone who had student loans, who paid student loans,
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the problem with this is that it is making government more and more involved in something that is not working right now.
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And I'm talking specifically about the student work placements.
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So, it's government that has to bankroll those.
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So, it's trying to basically deceive people into thinking that there's a much greater connection from students to employment than there is.
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Because, no, it's just government that's making this happen.
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And this is something, when you put the money into this,
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it's government that has to keep it on life support for indefinite periods of time.
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And if government pulls the plug, and we saw this with Doug Ford in Ontario,
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he takes over, he's looking at all these things,
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and every single time you even hint at touching one of them,
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everyone gets outraged because they're so used to programs that exist only on government subsidy.
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So, I don't like new programs that can only be sustained by government money.
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The National Pharmacare plan that we've been told is happening is not in this budget,
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So, I don't think the Liberals were able to find the money to do this National Pharmacare plan
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that they brought Eric Hoskins on to talk about, that they've been talking about, that the left wants.
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But you can tell they're trying to work towards it.
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So, the new Canadian drug agency will lower Canadian drug costs, allegedly,
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And it does this by creating a new guideline, basically,
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a new national formulary for prescription drugs and a national strategy for high-cost drugs for rare diseases.
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Now, I think that the national strategy for the high-cost drugs, that's a good one,
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You get, you know, young, you know, child cancer patients, for example,
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that have drugs they need that are worth tens of thousands of dollars.
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I think that if we're going to say that we have a health care system where the government is looking after you
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and we don't have the private insurance alternatives that people in free market health care systems have,
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the government has to be able to answer this question.
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So, that section of it I don't take issue with, but, again, they're now trying to handicap Pharmacare,
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which means they're trying to move more and more towards that socialized system, which means...
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And, look, we talked about Canadians that are leaving the country for health care.
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I did that yesterday with Colin Craig from SecondStreet.org.
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Canadians are leaving the country because they don't like the health care system here.
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So, why would we then replicate that health care system by putting a national Pharmacare system on
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that's going to run basically with the same level of inefficiency?
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Dave writes, retrain for panhandling as life becomes too expensive to live.
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Well, yeah, I don't know how much training you need for panhandling, but either way, you know,
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people are going to be able to retrain for something.
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Patricia writes, Trudeau is still a liar as promises mean nothing, nothing at all.
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Well, you know, I don't necessarily agree with that because I think one of the most dangerous
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things about this budget is that the Liberals have been painfully honest about their intentions.
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They want big government to be the answer to everything, and this is a budget that is based
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on making big government the answer to everything, and that's all the Liberals are trying to do.
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He's been very dishonest about SNC-Lavalin and other stuff like that.
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But my big concern is that this is a very ideological budget, and it's the kind of thing
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that if the Liberals get another mandate, we don't know how many billions and billions
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And in all honesty, I've got to point out here that Liberal budgets used to be fiscally conservative.
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And, you know, whatever issues I may have had with Paul Martin, the Prime Minister, or
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Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, Paul Martin, the Finance Minister in Jean Chrétien's
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government, was someone who today would not have a home in the Liberal Party.
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Paul Martin very much ran his governments, or his, uh, Chrétien's government's books
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And that doesn't mean you agreed with everything they were spending money on, but at least the
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And it's one thing if you want to make this Bernie Sanders-esque budget where we're going
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to pay for X, Y, Z, and we're going to tax you X, Y, Z so we can pay for it, which is
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more morally defensible than what the Liberals are doing right now, which is saying we're
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going to pay for X, Y, Z, but we're not actually going to bring in the money to cover it.
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So they're trying to get the best of both worlds, they're trying to get the political play of
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big government spending and the political play of fiscal responsibility, when neither
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In any case, continuing on with what's happening here.
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The guaranteed income supplement for low-income Canadian seniors who choose to stay in the
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I haven't seen the specific numbers on that, so I can't speak to those.
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High-speed internet government is committing so that all homes and businesses have access
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to 50 megabit per second internet, no matter where they live.
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This is something we heard was coming, a broadband initiative.
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I would love to see how many Canadians don't have access to this.
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And this is access, not whether they choose to put it in their homes, but whether they actually
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So the idea is that if you're an Attawafaskat and you want to stream Netflix, you should
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be able to access high-speed internet if you desire it.
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It doesn't mean that every, you know, senior has to have 50 mbps internet.
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But I would love to see, because I've never been able to get a sense of the number of how
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many Canadians don't have access to it, and it's rural, remote, and northern.
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So this is not for you city folks, and I'm a city folk.
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This is for people in rural parts of the country.
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But I have a feeling that government is going to spend more than it would cost if we just
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went to Rogers and said, hey Rogers, you know, go lay some cable out there or something.
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A new incentive if you buy an electric battery or hydrogen fuel cell vehicle under $45,000.
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Now they've done this so that it's not a repeat of what happened in Ontario, where the vast
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majority of people that were getting the, it was actually kind of hilarious, the vast majority
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of people that were getting access to this green energy vehicle fund in Ontario were using
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So you had all these multi-millionaires that were getting government help on, on their electric
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car because, you know, we got to save the baby seals and all that crap.
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But what was interesting about it was that this, there was such a backlash, it was costing
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So now the federal government has decided it's going to pay off people that get electric vehicles,
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And what's happening is they're making it so that the vehicle has to be under $45,000.
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So if you're, if you're doing your thing for the world by getting a Tesla, the government
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Like I mentioned, I'm making sure that I get as much here.
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I haven't read it all, but I'm going through the key points here that really speak to what
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it is the government is trying to do and what it is that the government is trying to define
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And on that note, I actually want to share with you, if I can, the letter that Bill Morneau
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had as the introduction to the, the introduction to the budget here.
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He writes nearly four years ago, Canadians helped us build a plan for real change.
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It was a plan that would invest in the things that matter most, good, well-paying jobs for
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the middle class and people working hard to join it.
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More help for families struggling with the high cost of living, strong, connected communities
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and better opportunities for our children and grandchildren.
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And in the years since, those investments have begun to pay off.
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And the Liberals are touting this idea that they've created 900,000 new jobs, forgetting
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the fact that when Justin Trudeau took over, the economy was already on an upturn.
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And a lot of the positive economic situations we've seen in Canada have been really part
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And a lot of spillover from the United States economy as well, American employers in Canada.
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But what's happening here is the Liberals are claiming credit.
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They're saying that they're lowering taxes on the middle class, despite the fact that they're
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also increasing the services on the middle class, making it fiscally unsustainable to
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And for all that Bill Morneau likes to talk about, invest, invest, invest, and the investments
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paid off and you've invested here and invested there.
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What the Liberals have not done is been honest about what they mean when they say invest.
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But they still do not have a plan to balance the budget for at least 10 years from when
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And this is something the Canadians are, in their view, not going to be perturbed by.
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Because the Liberals genuinely want government to be the be all and end all, and that's part
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They want government to be at the epicenter of spending, which is, I don't want to say
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The bigger problem here is that the Liberals, I fear, will be successful in this.
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Because there are a lot of Canadians, and you've heard me talk about this phenomenon before,
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They're not reading through the 464-page budget either.
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They're not delving into the meat of this because they don't care, or because they've
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And I fear that a lot of these Canadians will be duped by, take the first-time homebuyers
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The government says, we might give you $20,000 towards buying a house.
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If you're trying to buy a house, and let's say you're trying to buy a $400,000 house,
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or a $400,000 condo, or something like that, and the government says, we'll pay for half
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Well, now you can put 10% down and lower your mortgage payment.
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Well, maybe you hold a bit of that money back, and it's interest-free, so maybe you put the
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money that you were going to put forward there towards paying off your mortgage payments
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But again, it's easy to think, okay, wow, this is, you know, the government's giving
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So the government's giving me all of this, and it doesn't matter that you have to pay
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And it doesn't matter that the government is bankrolling this program by running up deficits.
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If you feel that it's benefiting you, you're going to look at Justin Trudeau and be like,
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I couldn't buy a house under the evil conservatives.
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If Andrew Scheer wins, I won't be able to buy a house.
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And I agree that something needs to be done to help people get into the real estate market
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My position is this should be done on the supply side, not by artificially fudging the
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numbers like this, because now, remember, everyone's buying power goes up.
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Everyone's buying power goes up if you're in that first-time homebuyer category.
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So it's not to say it won't have an impact, but it may also drive up the number of people
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that are buying houses, which is the point, but there are still negative repercussions
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But again, it's that it's not being done in a fiscally sustainable way.
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And if you're just tuning into the stream here, welcome.
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My name's Andrew Lott, and we're talking about the budget, and specifically the fact that
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this is just shy of $23 billion in new spending with no end in sight for the deficit.
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And that's the biggest part here, no end in sight for the deficit.
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So let's talk very briefly, if we can, about the SNC-Lavalin issue.
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Not because I want to beat this with a dead horse, but because there is something to be
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Now, the budget was going to be today anyway, so it's not like the fact that there is a budget
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What's in the budget is very much a distraction.
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Because they're trying to get as much coverage of we're giving you this, we're giving you
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this, we're giving you this, we're giving you this.
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So the people can't talk about what they were giving SNC-Lavalin.
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I think that was last year's budget, whatever SNC-Lavalin was getting or wanted to get out
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But the problem that we see in this dynamic here is that Canadians are moving on.
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The Liberals have succeeded in forcing Canadians to turn the page on this by blocking Jody Wilson-Raybould,
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The Conservatives were going to have some, I understand it, procedural showdown today.
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They were trying to delay the budget from being tabled and they were unsuccessful.
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They got, you know, Bill Morneau to basically say, just here's the budget, have fun, and he
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still is going to be giving a speech if he's not giving it already.
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But it doesn't make a difference because here's the budget.
00:25:25.360
It's out, the Conservatives lost, the Liberals won.
00:25:29.920
The Conservatives have lost the SNC-Lavalin debate.
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And I don't say that because I think they've done anything wrong.
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I don't say it because I think that they've been on the wrong side of it.
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And even though the media has been covering it, it is a message that ultimately has become
00:25:48.240
And unless, and I said this last week, unless the story changes, people are going to move
00:25:55.420
And now they've got 600 or 400 and some odd, 464 pages of other things to talk about.
00:26:02.300
They've now got almost 500 pages of other things to talk about other than SNC-Lavalin.
00:26:08.660
And these are all going to be the most fresh in people's minds as the election nears.
00:26:14.840
This is going to be an area where there's a lot more to talk about and chew on.
00:26:18.620
And ultimately this will hijack the news cycle for the next week and probably the next few
00:26:26.220
Well, look, if you're getting something out of the budget, congratulations.
00:26:29.340
If you're getting a little goody or a little perk in here, that's the whole point of this.
00:26:32.600
The Liberals want to be able to, because remember, everyone in Canada when you're in politics
00:26:40.220
Conservatives were better at it, at kind of segmenting the population.
00:26:44.140
So Tom Flanagan's book, Harper's Team, talked about this, where if you were a blue collar
00:26:51.580
working class guy, you were a Dougie, they said.
00:26:54.340
If you're a downtown Toronto soy latte drinking millennial woman, you're a Zoe.
0.97
00:26:58.900
If you're a childless upper income level couple, you're Marcus and Fiona.
00:27:04.000
If you're a couple that owns a business, you're Steve and Heather.
00:27:06.980
And how I remember these names, I have no idea.
00:27:09.720
But the whole point of it is that they know that, yeah, you know, Zoe's never going to
00:27:13.780
vote Conservative, Dougie might, Marcus and Fiona, they might, Steve and Heather, they'll
00:27:20.160
And they want to win over those people and make sure they get these people, their people
00:27:26.100
And what the Liberals are trying to do here is look at their map and say, okay, we don't
00:27:31.080
We don't care about these people that aren't going to vote for us.
00:27:36.300
We think Indigenous people are going to vote for us.
00:27:41.700
We think people in Ontario, Quebec are going to vote for us.
00:27:45.380
And what they've done here is they've basically gone through and they say, who in the country
00:27:53.500
And what can we give them so they don't care about anything else?
00:27:57.720
And you know, Merrill writes something very important here, and I've talked about this in
00:28:01.260
the past that half of Canada's population is within $200 of not being able to meet their
00:28:09.500
And this means that if you are a Canadian and you're in this average category or half
00:28:14.700
of the category, and something goes up, let's say dental surgery or a car repair or a leak
00:28:21.500
pipe and you've got to bring in a plumber, if you have something in your home that you
00:28:25.100
need to shell out $200 for, you're having to go into debt because that is the difference
00:28:30.960
between you making your monthly payments or not.
00:28:33.940
So all of this is to say that we have a government that's running things in an even more irresponsible
00:28:40.820
way, racking up monumental levels of debt with no end in sight, and Canadians who are essentially
1.00
00:28:47.500
looking to government to model healthy financial behaviour have no model in sight for that.
00:28:52.780
And I would hope by now that most Canadians aren't looking to government to model healthy
00:28:57.340
behaviour, but this is the problem here, is that government is now proving that you don't
00:29:02.800
need to have the money to spend the money, and I hope Canadians don't fall for it.
0.75
00:29:07.400
That's my solemn hope and my solemn goal in this.
00:29:10.200
And this is the goal that True North is really making it imperative to fulfil, unlike the Liberals
00:29:15.420
who just forget about their balanced budget pledge.
00:29:18.100
We are fiscally responsible, but more importantly we're dedicated to our mission, which is informing
00:29:22.980
Canadians and exposing the governments that are, and any political leaders that are not
00:29:28.580
being honest and not being good stewards of taxpayer money.
00:29:31.640
We can't do this alone, if you would like to help us out with a $10 monthly contribution,
00:29:37.240
If you want to help us out with a $50 monthly contribution, if you want to help us out with
00:29:40.840
shares in S&C Lavalin, maybe not those, but in all honesty we do appreciate any support
00:29:47.180
Head on over to truenorthcanada.com and you can sign up for the Andrew Lawton Heritage Club
00:29:53.640
In the meantime, more budget coverage to come, but thank you, God bless, and good day to you