Juno News - Trump’s Choice for Canada’s Prime Minister

00:00:00.000 Isaac, you've got your baby blue on today because you've got your Jays coming up soon?

00:00:04.720 Yeah, the season opener is next Thursday, I think.

00:00:07.260 Okay.

00:00:07.800 I remember, I don't know if you ever made the pilgrimage down to Seattle.

00:00:11.400 Do they even still have a team?

00:00:12.660 Do the Mariners exist anymore?

00:00:14.140 Yeah, they do.

00:00:14.800 I saw that some of the Jays fans might be boycotting the Seattle games this year because that's obviously one of their best series for Seattle because the stadiums are filled with Jays fans and the hotels and the city.

00:00:27.120 I mean, everything, right?

00:00:28.420 Yeah.

00:00:28.640 Oh, because Trump bad?

00:00:30.600 Yeah, because of the tariffs, yeah.

00:00:31.840 Okay.

00:00:32.060 Well, you know, I'm not just saying, I'm not sure how many people in Seattle are huge Trump voters.

00:00:39.060 Like, I'm going out on a limb here and wondering about that.

00:00:42.300 I'm dating myself, but I remember going down to Seattle and Ken Griffey Jr. was playing for the Mariners and we got to meet him down on the field.

00:00:49.460 It was super cool.

00:00:50.380 So, yeah.

00:00:51.460 Alex, do you follow the baseball?

00:00:54.120 No, but I did go to Seattle to come to the U.S. election.

00:00:56.740 And your intuition is correct.

00:00:59.060 Like, most people just didn't even care, right?

00:01:00.800 They said, like, it's a foregone conclusion.

00:01:03.300 In Washington, at least.

00:01:05.140 Well, we definitely need some happy distractions.

00:01:07.160 So, I will be looking forward to the baseball season started.

00:01:10.020 Okay.

00:01:10.220 Speaking of starting, let's get this thing going.

00:01:15.540 All right.

00:01:16.200 Welcome to Off the Record.

00:01:17.500 My name is Chris Sims.

00:01:18.820 I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:01:22.080 I'm joined by Alex Zoltan and Isaac Lamoureux from True North.

00:01:26.640 Fellas, there's lots to talk about here and I wanted to get going because we have a pretty packed show.

00:01:30.760 So, first up, I don't know if I had this on my bingo card.

00:01:35.380 U.S. President Donald Trump went on Fox News, and I think it was on Ingram, and said that he would prefer that the selected Prime Minister, Mark Carney of Canada, he'd prefer that he stay on the job.

00:01:49.160 Because I don't quite know the clip.

00:01:50.860 So, let's actually listen to how Trump phrased this.

00:01:53.780 Give this a listen.

00:01:55.140 We have much more.

00:01:56.580 I don't think so.

00:01:57.240 Just so you understand, we subsidize Canada.

00:01:59.460 And I like Canada.

00:02:00.280 I love Canada.

00:02:01.180 I love Wayne Gretzky.

00:02:02.020 But now, the liberal guy is—

00:02:02.680 I love his wife.

00:02:03.440 I love everything.

00:02:03.500 The liberal party is going to win now in the next election, most likely.

00:02:07.100 And they were down and out.

00:02:09.320 I don't care.

00:02:09.480 Isn't that going to make them more hostile to us and possibly open the door for China closer to Canada? 1.00

00:02:16.240 And that would really put us in a bind. 0.97

00:02:17.940 The conservative that's running is stupidly no friend of mine. 0.83

00:02:21.740 I don't know him, but he said negative things. 0.98

00:02:23.320 So, when he says negative things, I couldn't care less.

00:02:26.020 I think it's easier to deal, actually, with a liberal.

00:02:29.880 And maybe they're going to win, but I don't really care.

00:02:32.000 It doesn't matter to me at all.

00:02:33.360 So, your endgame is what with them?

00:02:35.280 My endgame is I don't want to have a big deficit.

00:02:38.680 I don't want to see the United States of America—and you say 60, and I say 200, but it doesn't matter. 0.53

00:02:44.560 I don't want us to pay 60 or 200 billion dollars to a country that, if they were a state—think of this—it would be our biggest, most beautiful, it would be great.

00:02:54.820 Yeah, you know, there was—I forget who said it was—it might have been Pierre Trudeau, who said it's like living next to an elephant.

00:03:05.340 He did, yeah. 0.82

00:03:06.400 And you're a mouse. 0.69

00:03:07.140 That was great.

00:03:37.140 It's really a good use of our time, because it's really impossible, and it's unfalsifiable anyway.

00:03:43.300 What I will say about Donald Trump—somebody else had said this, and it really struck me.

00:03:47.280 When he says stuff, the spirit is always right, but the details are all wrong.

00:03:52.560 And so, when he says 60 billion or 200 billion, it doesn't really matter.

00:03:56.080 Well, actually, sir, it does.

00:03:57.840 Right?

00:03:58.020 Like, if this is a problem that you're trying to solve, like, it's important to know the details and the facts.

00:04:04.100 Isaac?

00:04:04.460 Yeah, I don't know what to think of the things Trump has done, especially for the Conservatives' campaign and what that means for the next federal election in Canada,

00:04:17.260 because some people I've spoken with have thought that Trump's proposed tariffs, for example, have hurt the Conservatives in their campaign against the Liberals.

00:04:28.260 And we've seen the Liberals gain ground in the polls.

00:04:31.260 But the most interesting thing, Chris, that I want to talk about, which is a completely different story that I wrote about, was the OECD report, which went into a proposed tariff scenario, and who would be the big winners and losers nationwide—not nationwide, worldwide.

00:04:45.020 And guess what?

00:04:47.160 U.S. would lose.

00:04:48.100 Canada would lose.

00:04:48.960 Who would win?

00:04:49.600 China.

00:04:50.460 I don't think that's what Donald Trump wants.

00:04:52.600 He's definitely not pro-China.

00:04:54.740 So, maybe in reading that report, he might start to change his mind, because, look, the tariffs are hurting the American people even more than us.

00:05:02.720 We see their GDP is going to go down more than ours is.

00:05:05.960 So, we're going to be hurt.

00:05:07.260 They're going to be hurt.

00:05:07.960 China is going to be the winner. 1.00

00:05:09.200 How is this the situation we find ourselves in, where China is profiting from a trade war between North American countries?

00:05:17.100 I just—I can't believe it.

00:05:19.880 So, I keep getting phone calls from people and emails about tariffs, because they can feel really complicated.

00:05:25.980 But, ultimately, tariffs are just trade taxes.

00:05:29.680 So, and this is one of the things where—when people are saying here in Canada of,

00:05:34.100 hey, man, his whole 51st state talk is really ticking me off, like, I totally get it.

00:05:39.560 Like, somebody walks up, punches you in the face, you want to punch back.

00:05:42.340 But you've got to be smart about this.

00:05:44.320 And if we put in retaliatory tariffs, all we're doing is tying our own shoelaces together before our fight.

00:05:51.520 Like, we've got to be more calculated about this.

00:05:54.280 And so, to your point on the numbers he was throwing around, it doesn't matter.

00:05:58.280 It really does.

00:05:59.300 Like, one of my friends used to—one of my friends on the air used to be described as a volume on 10, facts on 3.

00:06:07.620 Like, you know, great—

00:06:11.000 That's Donald Trump.

00:06:12.160 Yeah.

00:06:12.560 For sure.

00:06:13.300 It's one of those things where you're like, really?

00:06:15.580 Like, because this is now—what's frustrating here is that regardless of your politics,

00:06:20.100 if you're like a Polyev guy or a carny person or a Trump person, whatever, it isn't the rulers who feel this stuff.

00:06:30.580 When these sorts of people start getting into a big trade tariff war, it is only normal working people who feel this stuff.

00:06:38.840 It's the person at the grocery store who's suddenly paying double for peanut butter.

00:06:42.660 It's the person who is in the aluminum plant who is worried about losing his job, which is devastating.

00:06:49.620 Like, you lose your house, you lose your car.

00:06:51.780 Like, that is not something people just shake off.

00:06:54.760 And so this is where whenever sort of these kind of statements and eruptions happen from the media in the States,

00:07:00.420 it's just like, okay, again, how do we deal with this?

00:07:03.200 But, yeah, we'll see.

00:07:04.940 That wasn't something I was expecting.

00:07:06.680 However, having read his book, The Art of the Deal, and I'm currently listening to his later one, like, Kicking Butt in Politics.

00:07:15.680 I can't remember what it was called.

00:07:18.020 He's always keying in on, like, the fracture in the bone.

00:07:22.740 He's always feeling for the weakness or the chink in the armor. 1.00

00:07:26.220 And so the language there that he used of easier to deal with, I think that was what he was getting at.

00:07:33.640 So I would recommend everybody always read the books of political leaders because they have a lot of control over you.

00:07:40.600 Who wants to take this kind of a surprising video?

00:07:44.180 I didn't realize that the vandalism had gotten to this point in Canada.

00:07:48.620 I was seeing some footage from the States, but apparently there was some vandalism at a Tesla place in Canada.

00:07:53.380 Alex, did you want to take that?

00:07:54.380 Yeah, so apparently they spray-painted a Tesla showroom, I guess you would call it, in Montreal.

00:08:02.720 That follows some vandalism that occurred on a Tesla lot in Las Vegas.

00:08:07.160 There was an attack in Kansas City.

00:08:09.320 There was a protest here in Vancouver for Metro Vancouver in Surrey on the weekend.

00:08:14.560 And also they have removed the automaker Tesla from the Vancouver auto show as well on account of security concerns.

00:08:23.240 Wait, just a second.

00:08:24.960 So I grew up in BC and I lived in like lower mainland quite a bit.

00:08:30.200 And I've got a weird thing where I notice the makes of cars like all the time.

00:08:34.800 Like it just ticks by like a mental ticker.

00:08:36.800 I will say the Langley, Surrey area, like there's a lot of Teslas there.

00:08:42.580 Like way more than anywhere else I've ever lived.

00:08:45.740 So you're saying that the Vancouver car show isn't letting Tesla in now?

00:08:51.540 Correct, yeah.

00:08:52.820 Yeah, they've been banished on security concerns, which seems kind of wrong, right?

00:08:57.320 I mean, it's not like Tesla chose for them to be a security concern, right?

00:09:01.840 It kind of seems like you're almost rewarding the vandals at that point, right?

00:09:06.260 You're canceling Tesla for being a victim of crime.

00:09:10.120 Let's watch the video.

00:09:12.260 I think we have a clip from what happened in Montreal.

00:09:14.920 Hey, hey everybody.

00:09:16.360 I'm currently at Tesla dealership in Montreal.

00:09:20.160 And as you can see behind me, this is what happened this morning.

00:09:24.680 There is two activists who came here to draw paint, the pink paint at the Tesla dealership.

00:09:32.840 This is the first attack against Tesla here in Canada.

00:09:37.700 So I will have my full report coming soon.

00:09:41.120 Stay tuned.

00:09:42.300 I just want to point out the irony of now people are protesting electric cars.

00:09:48.960 Like it's really hard for me to keep up.

00:09:51.040 Like I know the taxpayers have helped, you know, underwrite and fund some of the electric car manufacturing in Canada.

00:09:57.700 And that was a huge push coming from folks who generally vote NDP and liberal.

00:10:04.520 And now to see vandalism happening of an electric, I think they're completely electric.

00:10:08.740 I don't even know if Tesla makes hybrids. 0.95

00:10:11.020 Like that's, I know, I did not have this on my bingo card.

00:10:15.160 Isaac, what was your thoughts on this?

00:10:17.140 I don't know if you're a car guy, but I was kind of surprised to see because Teslas are popular, legit popular in the Vancouver area.

00:10:22.300 Well, I have my problems with Teslas living in Edmonton where it's like minus 50 sometimes.

00:10:27.860 That ain't going to do you too good.

00:10:29.560 I mean, it's spring for most people.

00:10:31.500 It's still like almost minus 10 here.

00:10:32.820 And the snow's melting, which is good.

00:10:34.800 And minus 10.

00:10:35.660 It's funny, actually.

00:10:36.740 It was like minus 10 or 20 the other day.

00:10:38.720 And my neighbor's outside in his shorts and T-shirt.

00:10:41.900 Sheveling his walk.

00:10:43.080 And I'm like, minus 10.

00:10:45.400 Yeah, it's shorts weather.

00:10:46.220 But, yeah, you know, I was thinking about this last night, completely unrelated to the Tesla, but just about the cult-like ideology of people that we've seen.

00:10:55.580 I mean, really, they don't care what the cause is that they're fighting against before.

00:10:59.920 It was oil and gas.

00:11:00.560 Now it's electrical vehicle companies.

00:11:02.040 Complete opposite things.

00:11:03.380 Before they hated Canada.

00:11:04.640 Now they love Canada.

00:11:06.260 You know, it just changes at the flip of a switch when the people they look up to in politics, let's say, tell them what they need to hate.

00:11:15.620 But perhaps what they're lacking is the reasoning behind it all and the critical thinking that actually lets us know why we believe what we believe.

00:11:24.940 I will say I spent 25 years, most of it, as a mainstream journalist.

00:11:30.860 And so I've cut thousands of clips.

00:11:33.460 Back in the day when we used to have to hand tape to each other, like big ones, Betamax tapes.

00:11:38.860 And so I'd sit there and toggle and cut and cut.

00:11:41.160 And it would be a 10-second clip or a two-minute clip.

00:11:43.640 I don't care who's talking.

00:11:46.100 Could be left, right, whatever, space alien.

00:11:48.640 Listen to the entire thing.

00:11:51.620 Always listen to the entire conversation.

00:11:54.380 Always watch the entire interview.

00:11:56.500 Always watch the entire press conference.

00:11:58.820 Get the context.

00:11:59.880 And then make up your own mind.

00:12:01.820 Totally fine to make up your own mind.

00:12:03.880 But just a bit of advice.

00:12:06.540 As somebody who's cut clips before, always watch the entire thing for context.

00:12:10.760 It's one of those things where you can really get a crowd of people going in one direction based on a little bit of information.

00:12:19.200 I wanted to shift gears here, no pun intended.

00:12:22.440 Does Teslas have gears?

00:12:23.900 Like, I don't even know.

00:12:24.800 I've never driven a fully electric car.

00:12:27.460 Like, I'm a big...

00:12:28.160 I love cars.

00:12:29.300 Love them.

00:12:29.900 But I've never...

00:12:30.520 I don't even know if the transmission engages in the same way.

00:12:33.640 Okay.

00:12:34.020 Let's shift gears.

00:12:36.020 To Pierre Polyev had a huge announcement this week.

00:12:39.840 And at first, people might be forgiven for thinking, oh, this isn't that different.

00:12:43.800 Polyev vows to scrap the carbon tax.

00:12:46.420 For real.

00:12:47.640 Now, some of you might be thinking, he's literally got that on a t-shirt.

00:12:51.300 He's been doing acts of the tax rallies now for, you know, more than a year straight.

00:12:56.360 This is a big one, though.

00:12:58.040 Because he is the first major Canadian politician to come out and say no carbon taxes.

00:13:05.320 None.

00:13:06.080 Meaning no industrial carbon tax.

00:13:08.520 No consumer carbon tax.

00:13:10.020 And he's on the record many times saying no second carbon tax, which was a weird carbon tax that was buried in fuel regulations, especially there in B.C., Alex.

00:13:18.680 You guys pay it through the nose.

00:13:21.100 So for him to come out and say this, like, it was like a huge thing.

00:13:25.480 It's a big deal for two main reasons.

00:13:29.200 One, it will save Canadians, like, billions of dollars.

00:13:33.340 Like, mega money here.

00:13:34.680 Because, of course, as of right now, industries that are nailed with the industrial carbon tax are not eating this cost.

00:13:43.040 They are passing that down to you from the fuel refinery down to the pump, from the utilities company down to your home heating.

00:13:49.940 Same thing at fertilizer plants.

00:13:51.440 They're charging farmers more, which increases your price of food.

00:13:54.180 It is a major trickle down.

00:13:56.500 It's just harder for you to see the pain as a carbon taxpayer.

00:13:59.920 And second, and this is key, by obliterating the industrial carbon tax, it removes the ability for politicians to hide the consumer carbon tax the way that Carney is saying he's going to.

00:14:14.620 Alex, I'll let you take the first run at this.

00:14:16.420 What were your thoughts when you saw this announcement?

00:14:19.200 Well, I actually have more of a question because I'm kind of on the crime beat right now.

00:14:22.240 So I'm a little bit outside of this area.

00:14:25.960 It's not in my circle of knowledge.

00:14:27.320 Let's just put it that way.

00:14:28.160 So, Chris, I'm curious.

00:14:29.880 So if Paul Yev were to get rid of the carbon tax, what would happen in provinces where they've instituted their own carbon tax proactively, like in B.C., for instance?

00:14:38.840 Would we still have a carbon tax?

00:14:40.300 I'm just curious.

00:14:40.960 I don't know.

00:14:41.820 So a few things there.

00:14:43.080 Number one, when he made the announcement about the industrial carbon tax, he was talking about the forced federal industrial carbon tax.

00:14:51.020 Okay.

00:14:51.260 So just from what I know of him, because, you know, I go back quite a while, he's not the type to force a province to stop imposing an industrial carbon tax.

00:15:02.480 He might think it's dumb or he might talk to the premier, but he's not usually that's not usually his bag.

00:15:07.820 But as of right now, he has said it's the federal industrial forcing of it, which is what is happening right now. 0.71

00:15:15.260 And also, this is key.

00:15:17.060 It's what Carney wants to crank up.

00:15:19.480 Carney has said he is going to shift the carbon tax costs that we can all see because it annoys him that we can see the carbon tax costs because the peasants get uppity.

00:15:28.160 Right.

00:15:28.340 So he's going to shift it over there and then crank it up so that federal element will be gone.

00:15:33.160 However, the first carbon tax that you guys pay visibly, like the one that shows up on your Fortis B.C. natural gas bills, your premier, David Eby, has promised to get rid of that B.C. carbon tax if the federal backstop is removed.

00:15:50.720 And Carney has said he's reducing the federal one to zero.

00:15:54.100 That's when he signed that weird piece of paper.

00:15:56.740 And he said immediately.

00:15:58.200 But the paperwork says April 1st, so a bit of a discrepancy there.

00:16:01.880 But he does say he's going to reduce it to zero.

00:16:04.340 And if he does do that legit, that is saving you 13 bucks per minivan.

00:16:09.220 It's saving you 20 bucks per pickup fill up.

00:16:11.680 And that's saving the average Canadian family about 400 bucks per year on their home winter heating.

00:16:18.140 That's the first carbon tax, the one that Carney promises he's reducing to zero.

00:16:22.200 Eby is on the record.

00:16:24.100 You might remember from the provincial election saying, if they go first, we'll go second and we'll match them.

00:16:30.100 Right.

00:16:30.520 So, pitter-patter.

00:16:33.300 Isaac, did you have thoughts on this huge carbon tax announcement?

00:16:36.620 Oh, many thoughts, yes.

00:16:37.840 No, Chris, this goes back to what you were saying about watching the whole clip, because I remember and how I came to know of this was Paul Yefra pulled up the carbon tax law at a press conference and said, hey, guys, Carney said he's removing the carbon tax.

00:16:53.960 He can't actually do that.

00:16:55.560 This is the carbon tax law that the jurors that legislates what the carbon tax is.

00:17:01.320 Parliament's prorogued.

00:17:02.360 You can't get rid of this law until it comes back.

00:17:04.980 Here's the law.

00:17:05.900 I have it in my hands or probably ever did his act in his hands.

00:17:09.400 And he actually broke it down for a normal person to understand who was just listening to that press conference, which I think is really key when we're talking about those complex issues.

00:17:18.360 As we saw with Alex, even, a reporter, he had to ask you a question right away like it's not entirely clear.

00:17:24.140 And just bringing it back to the industrial carbon tax and how it's a hidden tax.

00:17:28.240 We've, of course, talked before on the show, Chris, about my heating bill and how the carbon tax was more than the energy itself.

00:17:34.540 Now, if they raise the industrial carbon tax, that's not going to be on there.

00:17:39.000 But guess what?

00:17:39.460 The energy will go up because it costs the company more to produce that energy.

00:17:43.700 You think they're going to absorb that cost?

00:17:45.400 They're not.

00:17:46.020 I'm going to absorb that.

00:17:47.380 And it won't be on my bill as carbon tax.

00:17:49.460 It'll just be I'm magically paying 1.5 times more for energy.

00:17:53.720 I wonder what could have happened there.

00:17:54.860 Oh, maybe it's because the industrial sector is paying more for the energy.

00:18:00.500 Oh, yeah.

00:18:00.880 And this is their like straight up.

00:18:02.560 This is their playbook.

00:18:03.860 Like Mark Carney, his book is out of my reach right now.

00:18:05.940 I don't want to unplug my earphone.

00:18:07.400 Like Mark Carney wrote a 507 page book.

00:18:10.500 Okay.

00:18:11.040 Cheerleading carbon taxes.

00:18:12.800 Carbon taxes are a keystone to his worldview.

00:18:16.040 He says that carbon taxes must exist and continuously increase.

00:18:20.580 The carbon tax center, which is kind of a clearinghouse for information on the carbon tax around the world.

00:18:26.500 There's there's language in there.

00:18:28.180 It's not their own language.

00:18:29.100 It's just stuff that they're reposting for information.

00:18:31.120 But there's language on there that is basically counseling politicians who have to deal with us uppity peasants who don't like a visible carbon tax.

00:18:40.280 It's counseling them to do things like a cap and trade carbon tax, which is still a carbon tax, but you just can't see it.

00:18:48.000 Massive industrial carbon taxes.

00:18:50.360 And it even says, which is a safe harbor for politicians who are shy about facing irate voters.

00:18:57.680 It is just so disgustingly undemocratic.

00:19:02.220 I think it's interesting that Carney keeps calling the carbon tax divisive.

00:19:05.900 Right.

00:19:06.380 Which is like a really interesting use of language.

00:19:08.700 I don't know if it's divisive so much as it's just wildly unpopular because a carbon tax is very immoral when you think about it, because heating and gas, they live on a very inelastic demand curve.

00:19:20.360 Right.

00:19:20.780 Like you don't have an option of whether or not to keep your home in Edmonton.

00:19:24.340 If you don't, you freeze to death, you don't have an option of whether or not you can drive to work or not, or else you lose your job and you can't pay your heating and you freeze to death.

00:19:32.080 It's like putting a tax on insulin for diabetics.

00:19:35.120 Right.

00:19:35.280 There's something incredibly immoral and unjust about that.

00:19:37.980 So I find the language divisive to be almost.

00:19:40.900 Yeah, it's a strange use of the word.

00:19:43.740 It is.

00:19:44.120 I will point out.

00:19:46.660 So.

00:19:48.640 Franco Terrazano, our federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, wrote a book on this.

00:19:54.080 It's going to be coming out soon.

00:19:55.600 It's already available for preorder on Amazon.

00:19:58.040 I just finished voicing the thing and I'm editing it, which is taking forever.

00:20:01.880 But this is why I can recall all this stuff fresh.

00:20:05.320 What's upsetting is that politicians have known this, the immorality that you point out here, Alex.

00:20:12.300 They've known this for a long time.

00:20:14.980 Very briefly, where you are right now, the carbon tax was hatched back in 2008 and politicians at the time promised many things.

00:20:24.260 They said the carbon tax is going to be revenue neutral.

00:20:27.500 They said that the carbon tax was going to create an abundance of affordable alternative energies that people could just switch to.

00:20:35.140 To your point, Alex, this is not like choosing between paper or plastic shopping bags.

00:20:40.320 No, most people don't have that affordable alternative abundant energy source to switch to.

00:20:46.480 They would have done it by now.

00:20:48.240 They're just beaten into a financial corner.

00:20:50.840 And this is key for any of my folks who are huge environmentalists and they hug trees like I have done.

00:20:57.340 Like, I hear you.

00:20:59.280 This is not an environmental solution because when British Columbia first hatched the carbon tax in 2008, they promised that the carbon tax would reduce emissions by 33 percent below 2007 levels by 2020.

00:21:15.160 Guess what?

00:21:15.800 They went up instead.

00:21:17.780 So it doesn't work anywhere you slice this thing.

00:21:20.620 And very briefly, one more thing on this industrial carbon tax thing.

00:21:23.340 This is what blows my mind coming from Kearney.

00:21:26.040 And this is fresh from Kearney.

00:21:27.680 This is not dug up from his book from two years ago.

00:21:30.380 It's what he said out loud with his face.

00:21:32.940 He says he wants to crank up the industrial carbon tax and create carbon tax tariffs.

00:21:40.100 So stuff coming into Canada for the first time ever will have a carbon tax punishment coming from a country that doesn't have one, i.e. the United States.

00:21:49.460 Making stuff cost more for Canadians.

00:21:51.960 That does two things, okay? 1.00

00:21:53.640 Which is super stupid, especially right now. 0.98

00:21:55.800 One, it makes stuff cost more here. 0.99

00:21:58.980 Two, there's a guy named Donald Trump, the President of the United States, who's ringing a dinner bell right now trying to get industry to come to America.

00:22:09.100 Well, guess what's going to happen to those manufacturing plants in Ontario?

00:22:12.860 I'm looking at you, Ontario.

00:22:14.700 They're just going to get up and move. 0.97

00:22:16.240 Yeah, I'm going to be a bit of a jerk to all sides of the political spectrum and say that 25% tariffs on Canadian goods to solve the fentanyl crisis is just as dim-witted as thinking you can change the weather with taxes to tariffs, as you mentioned. 0.94

00:22:29.880 Yeah, tariffs are just trade taxes, and they just make things and life more expensive for normal people. 0.95

00:22:38.300 Did we want to get into, this was quite the eyebrow-raising moment.

00:22:42.280 Premier Daniel Smith here in our home province of Alberta, Isaac, kind of throwing down the gauntlet, right?

00:22:50.600 So I was trying to read this to understand it, but I haven't had enough time to really analyze it.

00:22:55.400 Basically, what I understand is this.

00:22:57.120 She's going to designate our oil and gas sites and the data as kind of protected so the Feds can't look at it. 0.82

00:23:06.980 Like, what was your take on this, Isaac?

00:23:08.720 What did you get from this?

00:23:10.400 Yeah, a few things I want to cover.

00:23:12.640 Firstly, just touching on the tax.

00:23:14.220 We've seen, of course, Alberta go to war against the Feds an uncountable amount of times on these carbon taxes.

00:23:22.260 And we've seen nationwide, too, the emissions have only ever gone up with the carbon taxes.

00:23:26.480 They do absolutely nothing for emissions.

00:23:28.020 And we've seen that in Alberta.

00:23:29.680 They've been saying the same things.

00:23:31.020 Look, we can reduce our emissions with technology.

00:23:33.660 Taxes are not the option.

00:23:35.080 In fact, empowering industry will help because it will boost technology.

00:23:39.180 And now, speaking of industry, here's Alberta saying to Ottawa,

00:23:43.340 you can't access our oil and gas industry at all, off limits, completely off limits.

00:23:48.460 We've seen them, of course, go to battle with the Feds many times over the oil and gas emissions cap.

00:23:54.480 And in its past forms, it seems to keep evolving, although they don't really change anything.

00:23:58.880 They just say they did.

00:24:00.380 And they've even taken them to court before and won various times, where, of course, the No More Pipelines Act, I think it was, was deemed unconstitutional.

00:24:10.900 And here's what Alberta is saying.

00:24:12.540 Again, if you're trying to violate our jurisdiction, yeah, not going to happen.

00:24:17.220 And so they basically updated their act to take it to the next level, where Ottawa can't even get Alberta's data.

00:24:24.720 So all these impact assessment acts, whatever, they're based on emissions data.

00:24:29.400 They won't even have the data.

00:24:30.620 So how are they going to know what's happening in Alberta?

00:24:33.740 Yeah, no, it's, it's, I mean, I certainly don't blame Alberta.

00:24:37.540 Like I said, they're actually trying to not only empower industry, but reduce their emissions.

00:24:41.940 Unlike Ottawa, who, who, who are just trying to tax people and do nothing about emissions, though they virtue signal and say, oh, this will reduce emissions.

00:24:48.920 We know from the data itself, by the way, from the data that in these taxes do nothing to reduce emissions.

00:24:55.080 In fact, they do the opposite.

00:24:56.540 Whereas Alberta is actually trying to empower industry and implement best practices and technologies that will and are reducing emissions.

00:25:06.000 And another report I read recently, I forgot which one it was.

00:25:09.940 Anyways, yeah, look, Canada can actually be a global player in energy because we have clean energy.

00:25:15.180 And the alternative is getting very, very dirty energy from coal producing plants in China.

00:25:21.200 So, yeah, if we actually boost up our energy and get it worldwide, we can actually do something in global emissions, not just our little country of 40 odd million people.

00:25:32.460 Yeah, to your point, again, Canada is responsible for about 1.4 percent of global emissions.

00:25:38.720 We're really fighting on the wrong end of that arithmetic problem if we're really concerned about global emissions.

00:25:44.620 I will quickly point out I did I think I saw language such as if the feds try to get into these offices to get this data, it will be like a trespassing situation.

00:25:57.440 So like things is getting real.

00:26:00.160 I will also point out that the parliamentary budget officer, the PDO, OK, the nonpartisan watchdog of the federal budget, has came out with a report very recently.

00:26:10.840 I did a stand up in front of a pumper there, a pump jack, and it would cost.

00:26:16.340 So the production cap, they call it an emissions cap, but it's a production cap coming from Ottawa imposed on Alberta's oil and gas sector.

00:26:25.580 This is the data from this report.

00:26:27.540 That move would blow a $20 billion hole in the Canadian economy and slash more than 40,000 jobs.

00:26:40.880 Chris, it's 20.5 billion and I know because I know the report and 54,400 jobs.

00:26:46.600 I think it was by 2032, but yes.

00:26:48.360 Wow, that is an astonishing amount, just an astonishing amount.

00:26:52.620 Alex, you're there in the Lower Mainland.

00:26:54.840 You're actually in the New West, the original capital of British Columbia for history nerds.

00:26:59.700 Alex, what's your take on this?

00:27:01.420 What did you think when you heard this gauntlet being thrown down?

00:27:05.400 Yeah, I'm curious.

00:27:06.600 Again, I have another question because I'm not as knowledgeable on this as I probably should be.

00:27:10.100 How much does the federal government collect from the carbon tax?

00:27:13.760 How much does the federal government collect from the federal carbon tax?

00:27:17.080 Around $13 billion.

00:27:20.640 Because I guess my concern...

00:27:22.620 But I'm just playing devil's advocate, so forgive me.

00:27:25.440 As we all know, the federal government is so bloated as it is,

00:27:29.340 and they already can't afford to basically run operations with a balanced budget.

00:27:34.600 Can they afford to lose the carbon tax?

00:27:37.260 Yes, because they need to cut spending like a machine. 0.98

00:27:40.260 Right, no, no, no, I agree with that, of course.

00:27:41.960 I absolutely, yeah, yeah, out of principle.

00:27:44.140 I mean, obviously we're all right of center and we'd rather have a smaller government.

00:27:48.560 But just theoretically speaking, if Carney wants to keep the existing federal government intact as it currently is,

00:27:54.920 can he even afford to get rid of the carbon tax?

00:27:57.740 No, he would add on to the debt.

00:28:00.400 He would straight up add on to the debt, which, by the way, is $1.2 trillion.

00:28:03.740 And as we all famously know, our deficit, which is a little baby debt, deficit is a yearly debt that is piled onto the big honking mama debt. 0.61

00:28:13.720 The baby debt for this fiscal year went from the $40 billion mark to around the $60 billion mark.

00:28:20.460 And that is when famously Krista Freeland said, you know what, I'm out of here. 0.57

00:28:23.960 I'm not doing this.

00:28:24.700 So, yeah, if they kept on spending, I won't even say like drunken sailors, like a drunken sailor was my best man at my wedding.

00:28:31.200 He was way better with money than the Trudeau government.

00:28:33.540 So if they just keep blowing money like this, then no, they would just have an extra $13 billion added onto their debt.

00:28:41.740 The answer, though, of course, is to slash spending.

00:28:43.960 Wouldn't this be a good question for mainstream media?

00:28:48.600 Yeah, that's a really good question.

00:28:50.520 How are you going to afford this?

00:28:52.140 That's a great question.

00:28:53.320 And you know what he'll probably say?

00:28:55.140 He'll say something like, we're going to make big polluters pay, which translation, use your universal translator from Star Trek, means businesses, industries, job creators.

00:29:05.640 Remember that steel plant that he was standing in with his earplugs in and his eye protection and his hard hat?

00:29:12.560 And they couldn't get, apparently, the word on the street is, I don't know if this is true.

00:29:17.400 The word on the street is, is they couldn't get workers to stand behind him.

00:29:20.520 So they made all of the cabinet ministers put on these outfits.

00:29:24.100 And just saying, I don't know if many of those cabinet ministers have worn steel toes before in their lives because they looked a little awkward.

00:29:32.020 Alex, just to take it to your neck of the woods there, I saw a few articles come up recently on if EB were to remove the carbon tax, I think it would leave like a $1.5 billion hole in their budget.

00:29:43.720 And we already know BC is continuously running record deficits and their credit rating, I think, has decreased like three times or something.

00:29:50.940 So I don't know how they're going to deal with losing the carbon tax, the revenue from the carbon tax, because it's revenue neutral.

00:29:57.440 No, it's not.

00:29:57.860 You need that money.

00:29:58.560 You need to tax your citizens because your spending in other areas is very irresponsible.

00:30:03.860 Speaking of spending in other areas, do we want to get into the stuff that Premier EB spends money on there, Alex?

00:30:10.060 Ah, yes.

00:30:11.300 Oh, yeah.

00:30:12.080 So I heard that he was eating $57 sandwiches.

00:30:15.020 Is that true?

00:30:17.340 So the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, my colleague, Carson Binda, he's our BC director for the CTF.

00:30:23.560 This is his story.

00:30:24.540 He dug up these FOI documents.

00:30:26.800 So Premier EB blew more than $118,000 on a huge taxpayer-funded party.

00:30:34.340 Get this.

00:30:35.460 This was not for people from British Columbians around the province who had done great things.

00:30:40.860 This wasn't for people who were raising money for cancer research.

00:30:44.040 Even then, a $57 sandwich is expensive, but it wasn't for any of those noble things.

00:30:49.840 No, it was a huge shaker for bureaucrats.

00:30:54.560 And what got me was it was termed government innovation, which is like an oxymoron.

00:31:02.540 And then they had like a huge party.

00:31:05.300 And this is what blew my mind.

00:31:07.060 Two things.

00:31:07.460 One, there was the hall they rented cost like $14,000 or something.

00:31:13.540 And it was just like a couple blocks from, you know, the enormous building that we already

00:31:18.320 pay for in Victoria called the legislature, which has ballrooms and stuff in it.

00:31:22.740 And then also, this is what I can't understand.

00:31:25.840 And I'm going to throw it to you guys, Alex and Isaac.

00:31:28.260 They spent $57 on sandwiches per sandwich.

00:31:33.760 And this is not, before you ask, this is not with a catering fee baked in. 0.98

00:31:38.280 The catering fee was a different line item on this damn receipt, okay, on this invoice. 0.98

00:31:43.480 These, these sandwiches cost 57 bucks a piece. 0.99

00:31:48.320 I make sandwiches for my kids every single morning using like roast beef and stuff.

00:31:53.180 I could not make it cost 57 bucks.

00:31:55.840 Yeah, like what's in them?

00:31:57.320 What's in the sandwich?

00:31:58.460 Is it like foie gras and beluga caviar?

00:32:02.280 Beluga caviar.

00:32:03.800 How do you possibly get to $57 per sandwich?

00:32:06.920 A sandwich by definition is a fairly small thing.

00:32:09.920 It's just two pieces of bread with something in the middle.

00:32:11.640 So, Isaac, what do you think they put in between the pieces of bread?

00:32:16.780 What do you think they put in there?

00:32:18.600 I don't know.

00:32:19.360 Some sort of lobster sandwich, I guess, could, could warrant that cost.

00:32:22.340 Although you are in BC, you could theoretically maybe get lobster for a bit cheaper.

00:32:25.800 You're right on, on the waterfront there, but I have no idea.

00:32:30.840 There's no, so it would have to be, I would go, I would, I would up you there.

00:32:34.620 It would have to be like salmon, wild salmon off the West Coast, because the lobsters don't

00:32:39.460 live on the West Coast, except this one time, a family member of mine who was from Nova Scotia.

00:32:45.440 This is a fun story from Nova Scotia.

00:32:47.740 And he was coming back, back home to BC.

00:32:50.840 And he was bringing lobsters with him, like live lobsters, because you have to cook them.

00:32:55.800 Sorry, the animal rights people.

00:32:57.180 You have to cook them boiling from when they're alive.

00:32:59.180 But he had a layover at the ferry.

00:33:02.460 And so he took them down to Horseshoe Bay and put like a little fence in the water and took out his lobsters and swam them around.

00:33:11.600 And so all these tourists started taking pictures of him.

00:33:14.440 So they thought that we had pet lobsters.

00:33:17.260 Anyway, there was entire lore that started there.

00:33:19.600 But yeah, this thing, for these sandwiches, I was envisioning like the golden goose.

00:33:25.380 Like they killed the golden goose.

00:33:27.220 They made, to your point, Alex, foie gras out of this poor golden goose.

00:33:31.280 Then they sprinkled it with saffron and just added an inflation tax or something.

00:33:36.560 Like you said, it's a sandwich between two pieces of bread.

00:33:38.760 There has to be some like super bougie bread, too.

00:33:40.740 I don't know what the most exquisite bread in the world is, but something crazy.

00:33:44.840 Just to take us through a few other costs, because I had written about this article.

00:33:48.800 Get this, $7.50 per bottle of sparkling water.

00:33:52.180 Okay, I don't know about that one.

00:33:55.380 Usually you won't have to pay that.

00:33:57.100 How is like Woodstock 99 prices?

00:34:00.480 Were they on a plane?

00:34:01.940 And then just on the provincial level, of course, their 2024-25 deficit rose to $9.4 billion,

00:34:08.800 which was a $1.5 billion increase from its initial forecast.

00:34:12.940 And now the debt has risen to $130 billion, also surpassing previous forecasts.

00:34:20.540 But here's what you need to know if you're a British Columbian.

00:34:22.940 So this one's for you, Alex.

00:34:24.480 British Columbians will pay $4.3 billion annually in interest on the provincial debt,

00:34:29.640 amounting to about $757 per resident.

00:34:33.740 So, yeah.

00:34:34.820 And this is just what your politicians are spending their money on.

00:34:37.940 That's only 14 sandwiches, I think.

00:34:43.060 And that's just the interest.

00:34:45.480 And for folks keeping along with home at home, over $4 billion this year on interest,

00:34:51.060 you could build almost four brand new hospitals for that.

00:34:54.840 So it's a good way of picturing a billion, because a billion is a thousand million.

00:34:58.240 It can get kind of like overwhelming to understand how big that is.

00:35:01.360 The next time you walk past a reasonably sized new shiny hospital, that's about a billion dollars.

00:35:07.420 So absolutely wild.

00:35:09.000 I am laughing, because I know it's infuriating.

00:35:11.380 I'm laughing because otherwise you'll cry, because it's so infuriating.

00:35:15.280 And also I'm laughing because we have to mock these people.

00:35:19.340 These people clearly think very highly of themselves.

00:35:22.320 Like they think of themselves as landed dukes, which is why they can blow $57 per sandwich.

00:35:28.580 And apparently the finance minister was asked about this by the media, to their credit.

00:35:33.540 They stuck a mic in her face. 1.00

00:35:35.260 And she doesn't think a $57 sandwich is extravagant.

00:35:39.640 I think people should mail the minister of finance there in Victoria what they spend on groceries.

00:35:50.020 Let them know. 0.96

00:35:50.800 Let them know what they spend on their stupid BC carbon tax, which they need to get rid of yesterday, so she can get an understanding of how much a $57 sandwich actually costs the average person. 0.99

00:36:02.400 Pretty wild, guys. 0.99

00:36:03.480 I think that's all we have for today's fun.

00:36:06.540 Thank you both for joining us.

00:36:08.400 Alex, it looks like you're being broomed away from your location there.

00:36:12.540 Yeah, that's right.

00:36:15.440 Move along, or we can't have you standing here.

00:36:17.480 That's right.

00:36:19.060 That's right.

00:36:19.480 It's starting to rain, too.

00:36:20.400 I was just going to mention, I went to Seattle.

00:36:24.580 Oh, he got cut out there.

00:36:25.840 The election there.

00:36:26.620 You said you went to Seattle.

00:36:27.840 Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop.

00:36:28.720 You said you went to Seattle and what?

00:36:30.920 I went to Seattle to cover the election, the U.S. election.

00:36:33.880 And somehow I ended up in the Washington State Democratic primary building.

00:36:38.340 They had a kind of convention.

00:36:40.560 I don't know if I'm still here.

00:36:41.880 It was $27 per beer.

00:36:44.840 U.S.

00:36:46.200 U.S.

00:36:46.800 Yeah, so that's almost, you could almost buy a sandwich with that.

00:36:51.580 My gosh. 0.80

00:36:52.720 See, that's a perfect example of even the most ridiculous moments where you're trapped

00:36:56.180 in a certain area and, like, that's all you can pay, like, at a concert or something.

00:36:59.880 This still eclipses that.

00:37:02.120 And the people of British Columbia are dealing with disgusting costs of living.

00:37:07.080 Like, people can't afford homes.

00:37:08.560 They can't afford food.

00:37:09.660 Their transportation costs are through the roof.

00:37:11.660 Like, that B.C. government should be ashamed of itself.

00:37:14.540 Folks, thank you so much for watching.

00:37:16.980 And remember, everything that we've said is off the record.

00:37:20.440 Isaac, what's your, what's the most extravagant sandwich you've ever had?

00:37:28.000 You know, I...

00:37:29.080 Like, think fancy.

00:37:30.160 Like, was it grilled?

00:37:31.160 Did you have mushrooms on it?

00:37:33.040 I'm sure I've had some extravagant sandwiches.

00:37:35.020 They just don't come to mind because, you know, it's just in your head.

00:37:36.880 It's like, oh, it's just a sandwich, right?

00:37:38.160 And I tell you, Chris, they definitely didn't cost $57, no matter how extravagant they were.

00:37:45.520 I mean, are you kidding me?

00:37:47.300 $57? 0.87

00:37:48.420 It's so gross.

00:37:49.440 Alex, before you get broomed away by security, what was the fanciest sandwich you've had? 0.53

00:37:54.980 Oh, like, I'm super stingy.

00:37:56.840 I'm a really cheap person.

00:37:58.040 So at first I thought I couldn't think of anything.

00:37:59.780 But it occurred to me in conversation, I have spent like $27 on a lobster roll once.

00:38:04.920 Does that count?

00:38:05.940 Is a roll a sandwich?

00:38:06.920 Yeah, a roll is a sandwich.

00:38:08.560 I have a sandwich chart on the inside of my cupboard and a roll counts as a sandwich.

00:38:13.480 So does a hot dog, by the way.

00:38:14.780 Fight me.

Juno News - March 23, 2025

Trump’s Choice for Canada’s Prime Minister

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