Juno News - April 21, 2024


What Freeland’s budget means for Canadians


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

187.59213

Word Count

1,909

Sentence Count

122

Misogynist Sentences

2


Summary

Sandra Chrystia Freeland's Budget is a disaster for Canada's economy and the middle class. We talk to Catherine Swift, President of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada, about the impact of the Trudeau government's 2019 budget.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We are seeing a government that on one hand is trying to do this weird sort of like class
00:00:14.740 fighting thing where they say, oh, we're taking aim at the wealthy, we're taking aim at the rich,
00:00:19.260 we're taking aim at all of that. And as we were talking about yesterday with Ryan Mallow from
00:00:23.460 the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, they do this while trying to sort of look at the
00:00:28.880 so-called middle class, which is a group that admittedly can be a bit amorphous in politics
00:00:33.180 and say, we've got your back, we're supporting you. And this is what Jagmeet Singh is doing when
00:00:38.220 he takes aim at corporate greed. He is trying to tell all of these people that all of their problems,
00:00:42.980 all of the issues they have, the reason they can't afford groceries, it's not inflation,
00:00:47.100 it's not the carbon tax, it's not bad financial policy, bad monetary policy. No, it's Galen Weston.
00:00:53.320 Galen Weston is the reason that you can't afford groceries. Want to welcome into the show our
00:00:58.500 good friend, Catherine Swift. I got to see her in person last week at the Canada Strong and Free
00:01:03.320 Network Conference. She is the president of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and
00:01:08.280 Businesses of Canada. Catherine, always good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on today.
00:01:13.840 My pleasure. I love to talk budget, Sandra. Just love it.
00:01:17.220 Well, you know, I've seen over the last, I don't know, 16 hours or whatever, 18 hours, a lot of people
00:01:23.820 that are with big companies, people that have worked in the tech space, entrepreneurial space,
00:01:28.540 that are saying everything that came out yesterday is just bad news for business. It's bad news for
00:01:34.020 making Canada competitive. And I wanted to get your perspective on this, I mean, from an independent
00:01:38.400 business perspective, but just in general for Canadian industry.
00:01:41.600 Yeah, it's very bad. Of course, the burgeoning deficits and debts are bad for every Canadian
00:01:51.480 and including business. So the fact that they presented this as somehow a good budget for young
00:01:58.560 people, I couldn't figure that one out because the young people are going to be paying these massive
00:02:04.480 debts deficits. And the fact that we now have our debt service is $54 billion just to pay interest
00:02:11.460 on the debt. It is taking away from any product, productive services in our economy. So that's
00:02:17.600 one aspect. This capital gains, bumping capital gains. I mean, to me, 50% is pretty rich to start
00:02:23.380 with. Bumping that to two thirds is unconscionable. And of course, business, everybody say, oh,
00:02:29.200 it'll only affect the rich and so on and so forth. Oh, no, no, no. It'll certainly affect business
00:02:34.400 investments on the part of business, assets that may have, they easily can meet that 250
00:02:40.860 thousand dollar threshold. Anybody who has businesses that have a business premise,
00:02:46.160 perhaps, or a few business premises, and they want to reorganize that, they're going to be facing
00:02:51.300 charges there. We see anyone that has a second residence, for that matter, a cottage, say,
00:02:57.920 or whatever, which a lot of free middle class people do and plan to leave it to their kids.
00:03:02.420 Well, now their kids are going to get dinged with a whole bunch more. And they overall,
00:03:07.140 the funny thing is, Freeland acknowledged our productivity problem a little while ago. Mind
00:03:11.880 you, it's so, it's the 800 pound gorilla in the room. It's pretty hard not to acknowledge it.
00:03:16.480 But what she has done in this budget is only going to worsen our productivity issue. And maybe
00:03:21.500 people think that's some sort of theoretical economic concept, but our productivity is our
00:03:26.840 standard of living. And we know our standard of living has been stagnant ever since the Trudeau
00:03:31.340 government's been in power. And what's the most important thing to enhance productivity is investment.
00:03:36.640 Investment has already fled Canada, because our government can't, we can't get anything built,
00:03:41.940 we can't get anything done. We have building permits that go on for 10, you know, you don't get
00:03:45.740 something for 10 years, it's utterly ridiculous. But we've already killed investment, this capital
00:03:51.120 gains change is going to kill it even more. And that's our standard of living again. So I just don't
00:03:56.400 get what version of economics, none I've ever seen, they're basing their thinking on. And boy,
00:04:04.500 I sure hope we have an election sooner rather than later, because I think most Canadians are,
00:04:09.140 you know, figuring out that they're getting badly hurt by this government. And it's certainly not
00:04:13.540 helping the broader picture at all.
00:04:15.840 And Chrystia Freeland, I should point out here, and you noted this in a statement yesterday,
00:04:20.100 had previously said that we were going to keep the deficit under $40 billion, as though we're supposed
00:04:25.100 to be grateful for such fiscal prudence with a deficit that's only $40 billion. Now, it came in
00:04:30.620 just under that where we're at $39.8 billion. Now, you're suspecting that if you like lift the hood
00:04:36.720 there and take a look around, there's going to be some creative accounting just to get it below that
00:04:40.500 target.
00:04:41.640 Absolutely. No, she really, the fact that she focused on it so much prior to the budget, I thought,
00:04:46.900 oh, they're going to pull some fast one here that won't be won't be apparent right off the bat.
00:04:51.680 But to make that, you know, because she's always talked about, oh, I have my guardrails,
00:04:57.160 you know, all these things that she's not supposed to go past the red line. And yet she's gone over
00:05:04.680 every red line she's set for herself since. So this one, I wasn't surprised to see it barely.
00:05:10.820 It was by $200 million, I believe that it was under the $40 billion. But I would bet serious money
00:05:20.980 today, Andrew, that that will never be achieved. When we get the final data, this isn't the final
00:05:26.260 data for the fiscal year. We don't get that till usually around September. And I think once we
00:05:31.020 see those accounts, we'll see that it's even worse. And going forward, of course, as you said,
00:05:36.520 there's clearly no attempt at all to come toward balance. There's the kind of reduction by a few
00:05:42.700 billion a year. I don't believe that'll happen either. We're going to see, again, interest rates
00:05:47.540 are a plague on Canadians right now. And the higher, the more debt they go into, the more they tax
00:05:54.400 Canadians, the higher they keep interest rates for longer. The Bank of Canada has already said
00:05:59.800 the government's fiscal policy is running absolutely contrary to the Bank of Canada's
00:06:05.240 monetary policy. So that prevents, I mean, we all want to see interest rates come down.
00:06:09.620 A lot of Canadians have yet to renew a mortgage at those higher rates, and they're going to get
00:06:13.360 hammered when that happens. Some already have been hammered. That won't happen as long as this
00:06:18.340 government pursues these kinds of policies. They're just making it worse for everyone.
00:06:23.680 Yeah, and I want to rhyme off some of the numbers here since you bring up the deficit. So we have
00:06:28.060 the projection for this budget year, $39.8 billion as a deficit. Next year, $38.9 billion. The year
00:06:38.160 after, $30.8 billion. 2027, 2028, $26.8 billion. The end of the projections, 2028 to 2029,
00:06:46.020 the budgetary deficit will be down to $20 billion. So no plan to balance the budget. And if you go at
00:06:53.300 that rate, it would probably take another decade to get there. And what's interesting too, is if you
00:06:58.380 look at the debt as a percentage of GDP, that number is relatively stagnant. It goes from, you know,
00:07:04.940 42 to 41 and a half to 40.8 to 40 to 39. So we're still going to be at 39% of our debt as a percentage
00:07:12.220 of GDP within five years if the Liberals have their way. And as you know, that is not taking
00:07:17.500 into account interest rates, which could throw a tremendous wrench. It just as, you know,
00:07:21.680 individual homeowners are beholden to changes in interest rates, so too is the government here.
00:07:26.700 So I mean, maybe they're being so reckless because they know they're not going to be around beyond a
00:07:31.040 year and a half from now, and this will be someone else's problem. But like, how do you justify
00:07:35.500 this at all? They don't, not in any sane manner. And again, I don't believe any of these targets
00:07:44.860 will be met. And I have come to believe, I don't like to wear my tinfoil hat too often,
00:07:50.580 but I have come to believe that they are making this as bad as it can possibly be for the next
00:07:56.600 government, which looks like it's going to be Pierre Poiliev government, so that they just have a
00:08:01.900 horrific time. And then of course, they'll criticize them, right? How could you ever have such a big
00:08:05.720 deficit? And let's not forget, these are the guys that were only going to run those modest 10 billion
00:08:10.020 deficits until 2019, when the budget would be balanced. Also, this budget makes assumptions
00:08:15.920 about growth in the economy that look overly optimistic. That's another consideration, because
00:08:20.520 they have to assume the economy is going to grow by, you know, X percent in the future years. And I think
00:08:26.000 we're heading for some serious trouble here. Again, investors around the world, foreign investment's a big
00:08:30.960 deal in Canada. Our dollar has fallen. And by the way, a falling dollar, we invert a lot into Canada
00:08:35.740 too. A falling dollar means more inflation, because our dollar doesn't buy as much. And it all, every
00:08:41.680 single thing they've done here is leading toward making all of these critical measures that affect
00:08:47.220 all of our everyday lives worse. And so it's very depressing, of course. But I wonder how they can
00:08:54.620 really, I wonder how they can justify it in their own minds, how they can look in the mirror
00:08:58.460 at themselves with damage they're doing. And, but what seems to be interesting is they seem to be
00:09:03.120 thinking maybe they, they almost act as if they haven't been in government for the last eight and
00:09:07.840 a half years. And Trudeau saying, oh, geez, we've got an awful lot of immigration. What could have
00:09:12.060 happened there? And Freeland, you know, commenting on, darn, we got all this, you know, debt interest
00:09:17.100 we have to pay. Who did that? And we get all this. I wonder if it's that new, there was supposedly a new
00:09:23.020 communications guy hired in the PMO back, back last year. And I wonder if this is the new strategy,
00:09:30.680 sort of pretend, you know, pretend they didn't, they didn't do any of this in the last eight and a half
00:09:34.880 years. If so, I don't think Canadians are going to be fooled.
00:09:38.760 Yeah, very well said on that. They do tend to just be very surprised that they've been at the helm for,
00:09:44.340 you know, the last eight years and things just happen. It's so Stephen Harper's fault. I think they're,
00:09:48.240 they're still blaming Arthur Meehan for the budgetary deficit, probably. Catherine Swift,
00:09:53.120 always good to talk to you. You are doing great work over there standing up for business and
00:09:58.080 industry in Canada, and we appreciate it. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew
00:10:04.020 Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.