00:01:39.140I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:01:41.960I'm joined by my friends from True North, Noah and Isaac.
00:01:45.680Thank you so much for joining us today.
00:01:47.720Lots of fun things to talk about, namely that I'm right.
00:01:50.880And that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is not going to bring down the Trudeau government anytime soon, no matter how much he huffs and puffs and tries to pretend to blow the house down.
00:02:37.300Well, I think that Jagmeet Singh has proved himself to be one of the most dishonest politicians in Ottawa.
00:02:44.040You know, like we can say a lot about Justin Trudeau and, you know, the dishonesty of his government, all the scandals that his government is responsible for.
00:02:51.780However, Jagmeet Singh routinely just tries to deceive the Canadian public.
00:02:57.500You know, you can see that from his messaging on inflation, the greedflation thing, which is, like, the most nonsense economic statement possible.
00:03:05.740And, you know, he does this routinely talking about how Pierre Poliev is going to take away your abortion rights and stuff like that.
00:03:10.680And now he's told the Canadian people two months ago, now time flies, two months ago he pulled out of the Confidence and Supply Agreement and basically made it seem like he was going to stand off against Trudeau in Parliament and is going to really, you know, take it to him and, you know, bring down the government, you know, if they make just one little mistake because that's what was holding him back with the Supply and Confidence Agreement.
00:03:32.840But it seems as if the affairs in Ottawa just goes on, as they always have been for the past few years, and he is supporting the Trudeau government.
00:03:41.220It seems as if Jagmeet Singh is more supportive of the Trudeau government than, like, 24 Liberal MPs, you know.
00:04:50.960At least I respect he's Francois Blanchet.
00:04:53.260But he went to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and he tried to get some concessions out of him.
00:04:56.820He tried to get, you know, boost some support for seniors.
00:04:59.860And he also tried to, you know, get some Quebec-specific policies, you know, as he is apt to do.
00:05:05.180And, you know, after a few weeks of negotiation, well, before the negotiation, he told the press straight up, I'm going to take a few weeks.
00:05:11.920And if the Prime Minister takes no action to move towards our demands, we're going to call for an election or tell the Conservatives and the NDP to pull their support from the government.
00:06:01.060He mentioned the dental program, which I saw Justin Trudeau tweet about, oh, the dental program has served one million Canadians.
00:06:07.280This is half the number of Canadians that are attending a food bank on, I think, a monthly basis or even daily, which is two million Canadians.
00:06:40.040The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is presenting at committee next week on the issue of, get this for disingenuousness, moving the election ahead by one week.
00:06:51.260The scheduled official election date next October is when it's technically supposed to happen.
00:06:57.440And this government actually has the audacity to claim that it's because they don't want to interrupt with Diwali.
00:07:04.100And not because a whole bunch of members of parliament will automatically come into their pensions.
00:07:10.080So, if they have it early, around 80 MPs or so, roughly around there, I think is the number, a bunch of MPs, regardless, will not be able to get a pension.
00:07:19.640But if they have it a week later, bango, bango, because they've served for six whole years, they then qualify for a pension.
00:07:26.840Which, of course, we're calling them out on that nonsense because if they're so worried about, you know, interrupting a really important festival like Diwali, just have it earlier.
00:07:36.000Why aren't you having it earlier, guys?
00:08:42.200This isn't somebody at Heritage Committee or Heritage Department who's sad about not being a journalist anymore and starts his own podcast.
00:10:00.140Are they getting like some premium microphones that cost like $10,000 and they're building out a whole studio for a podcast that are listened to by like the people who actually produce the podcast and that's about it?
00:10:13.120And, you know, I was thinking like what are they talking about in these podcasts?
00:10:16.880I think like Housing Infrastructure and Communities Canada are probably talking about the details of how they pour the cement for like a bridge or whatever.
00:10:23.960It's like, hmm, you know, we pour the cement on an 86 degree angle or something like that, you know.
00:10:29.060Or, you know, like StatsCan, they're going to read to you like some like boring fertility numbers or like, oh, you know, this is the number of people that, you know, that came to this country as a tourist or whatever.
00:10:41.500It's like, no, nobody wants to hear these things.
00:10:44.540There's a reason why Canadians are producing podcasts themselves because, you know, they know what the Canadian people want and they can deliver to the people what they want.
00:10:54.920And viewers get to choose with their dollars or with their time what podcasts they decide to listen to.
00:11:01.860However, the federal government, they're just, you know, unnaturally trying to force this onto the Canadian people.
00:11:06.680The Canadian people aren't listening to it and then how the Canadian people have to pay for it.
00:11:16.740But, you know, obviously, you know, there's all these scandals on a daily basis that come out of the government that, you know, we can't even keep track of.
00:11:23.760So it's, you know, this is like scandal number one thousand five hundred eighty four.
00:11:28.720So it's just it's just, you know, a long line of over and over again, wasting taxpayers money.
00:11:34.300And this is another example of just an egregious waste of money that I hope a future government will, you know, slash and, you know, cut back on.
00:11:45.040I'm going to read some of the titles of the podcast.
00:11:47.340So, but Isaac, I wanted to get your take in the meantime.
00:13:17.720This is a really funny one, though, here.
00:13:19.500I wanted to actually read this to you.
00:13:21.680It was from Statistics Canada and it was what they are actually talking about.
00:13:26.680It's called A Sayers Podcast from Statistics Canada.
00:13:30.620It has twenty one episodes since January of twenty twenty one.
00:13:34.680So I guess they were getting a little stir crazy to episode topics have ranged from gender identity to climate change and misinformation and to systemic racism.
00:13:56.700It's all the same old stuff, but it's just bureaucrats talking to each other when nobody listens to them and you get to pay for it.
00:14:03.140Now, to be clear, like cards on the table, if you want to have a podcast about like LGBTQ plus ghosts, which actually one of them talked about.
00:14:24.920It's really fun and entertaining, but do it on your own time.
00:14:28.060Like don't make taxpayers pay for this stuff.
00:14:31.220And this is where it gets pretty wild, because whenever we come forward and we say, you know, guys, you have a 40 something billion dollar deficit.
00:15:20.100So essentially, the CBC is going to host the next federal leadership debate, which is wonderful for those of you who have ever watched debates in the United States and what happens with their moderators.
00:15:37.220And I'm sure that we can expect the same with these upcoming debates because it should become as a surprise to nobody that Pierre Poilievre has been very, very critical of the CBC.
00:15:47.840So by default, you would expect them to treat him unfairly.
00:15:50.880Do you guys think that we're going to see fair and unbiased, unbiased, moderated debates here coming up?
00:16:01.380I remember watching the 2019, 2021 leaders debates, and I just remember thinking like, wow, the format of these debates are really bad.
00:16:09.360Say what you want about the American presidential debates and how the moderators go about doing their job.
00:16:15.460But I think at least the format is pretty decent.
00:16:18.100The candidates, they get some time to do their opening spiel, and then they get to go back and forth with each other on the live mics and basically try and push back on each other's ideas and really go at it.
00:16:30.620Whereas the Canadian debates are very, very sanitized.
00:16:33.960They try and just avoid all conflict and confrontation between the candidates, and even when they have open time to speak between the candidates, it just comes off as very tame and very muted.
00:16:50.720Now, I hope that when Pierre Poiliev gets on stage, he's going to try and flip the table and change that whole dynamic.
00:16:57.200And it seemed like Andrew Scheer tried to do that, a little unsuccessfully.
00:17:10.780And the reason why viewership is going down for these debates is because they are just very boring to watch.
00:17:17.180Even people who are very interested in politics think they're boring, which is saying something because these people, including myself, are political.
00:17:25.600It's like, this is all we do our entire lives.
00:17:27.740So I think that when you are losing the people that are very interested in politics, the people who are not interested in politics but still need to make a voting decision, they're just not going to tune in.
00:17:36.800They're just going to listen to what the candidates have to say.
00:17:39.740And that might be for the best if you're not a fan of debates.
00:17:42.900But it certainly isn't good that we're having the CBC host it, which is funded by taxpayer dollars, instead of a network that could do a much better job.
00:17:52.960I'm not saying that CTV and Global and all these other networks are amazing, but what I am saying is that they have the resources to put on such a debate, and we're not giving them these debates.
00:18:05.460We're instead giving it to the public broadcaster, who by and large has lost the trust of the Canadian people.
00:18:10.860And it seems like an idiotic decision in line with everything that has come in these past nine years.
00:18:16.640So the mainstream media has lost the trust of the public, like by and large.
00:18:22.680I think it's around seven in ten Canadians or Americans even think that the mainstream media is deliberately misleading them.
00:18:28.920These aren't oopsies or accidentally mispronouncing a name or getting a date wrong or something, which happens to all of us because we're human.
00:18:34.120But no, like I think around 70 percent, give or take, of people actually believe that they're deliberately trying to mislead them.
00:18:41.020And they should think that because some of the stuff that we've seen pulled here on either side of the aisle is pretty crazy.
00:18:47.160From the taxpayer's perspective, we want lower taxes, less waste and more accountable government.
00:18:51.980So for us, we want things to be as simple and bare bones and basic and clear as possible.
00:18:57.640So if someone, for example, like Steve Paikin is very balanced, he asks very serious, insightful questions, you can't tell how the guy votes, which is how it should be with journalists.
00:19:10.200And so if someone like him is asking the questions and if you have an audience that is invited from all different perspectives on the political spectrum, I mean, they can't hoot and holler and throw things, of course.
00:19:21.040But if they're there to naturally respond to what people are saying in the room, that's really good for accountability and asking people questions and kind of keeping the room kind of a good human tone, if that makes sense.
00:19:33.280And so as long as it's that nice and bare bones and well done, produced, or isn't wasting a lot of money, no ridiculous little sound effects like they did with the Conservative Party leadership debate.