00:05:55.220So that right there is about a third of this total amount that we're talking about here.
00:06:01.360And a lot of it that my concern really rests on is that of that money that outpaces how much people lost in employment compensation, I don't think much of it actually went to employers who were shouldering the burden of a lot of the costs due to the shutdowns.
00:06:16.580Right. I mean, some of it was there, like deferred mortgages and that kind of thing, but that's still presumably the debt that belongs to the business owner.
00:06:23.400It's not free cash from the government. So that's a really good point. And with any government scheme, it's going to benefit some people a lot more than others. So I think you're right in imagining that some people were much, much better off given COVID and the Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit or CERB, whereas other people obviously lost their business, lost their livelihood, had to go bankrupt, lost their homes, lost everything.
00:06:48.220So it's not equally distributed, but, you know, it does sort of give you an indicator of, you know,
00:06:55.280Trudeau came to the Canadian public and said, we're going to shut down the economy, but don't worry,
00:07:00.660we're going to give you these emergency relief payments.
00:07:04.140But instead of just covering the lost income, the Trudeau government went on like, you know,
00:07:08.860a spending bonanza and just racked up record debt.
00:07:12.260I think our current deficit is approaching $400 billion at this point.
00:07:19.440You know, every pet project that any liberal could ever dream of is now either in the works or being written up as we speak for the throne speech.
00:07:28.080So I think what we're seeing is just an incredible case study, Andrew, in a government acting without any restraints whatsoever and just basically spending any money that it can think of, which kind of makes you think that they're gearing towards an election.
00:07:43.820The more that I see Trudeau and all of these spending proposals and promises, it really feels like we are heading towards an election and Trudeau is doing the thing that politicians love to do, which is bribing the public with their own money.
00:07:57.560So John Iverson, a columnist over at the National Post, had a story really interesting.
00:08:03.720The headline was Trudeau's literally frightening spending plan has some liberals and bureaucrats very worried.
00:08:10.080If you have liberals and bureaucrats worried about federal spending, then I think, you know, you're going above and beyond, even for Justin Trudeau.
00:08:19.020But basically just a bunch of quotes from civil servants and liberal insiders saying that, you know, whatever the liberals do have planned, it's something that is extraordinary, that they're embarking on a major policy shift, that they're not at all worried about deficits, that there's going to be structural changes in the way that government operates.
00:08:38.260basically sounds like they're going to unleash some kind of a utopian socialist plan, Andrew,
00:08:44.620where we remake our entire economy, snap our fingers and turn it green and, you know,
00:08:50.880built with pixie dust and rainbows. But, you know, the more I read about it,
00:08:56.080and there were several leaks, not just John Iveson. We saw something like this in a Bloomberg article
00:09:00.520talking about how Chrystia Freeland has been tapped to basically reimagine the Canadian economy
00:09:08.160and redesign all these fiscal programs,
00:09:10.880it feels like something big is coming down the pike.
00:09:14.860And I don't know, judging from these leaks,
00:09:36.740If so, it would really explain why that relationship between Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau got as fractured as it did, to such a point that Morneau left to take on an international role with the OECD.
00:09:48.800And listen, I mean, the nature of politics is that we'll know when we know.
00:09:52.220I do think that Justin Trudeau has typically been hampered by some of the more centrist traditions in the Liberal Party.
00:09:59.560And if you go back to 2015, it seems like gradually those people are being pushed further and further out.
00:10:05.660And I mean, again, this is not calling people in the Liberals conservatives by any stretch, but you had people that were not socialists that were in there, people like John McCallum, Stéphane Dion, Bill Morneau, and more and more of these people are finding themselves on the outskirts, and it's the Freelands, the McKennas, the Trudeaus that are occupying a larger and larger share of the Liberal caucus and of the Liberal brand.
00:10:27.760So I wouldn't be surprised with it. Remember, the Liberals were uninterested in reigning in the deficit when the economy was good because they said we could afford to spend. When the economy is bad, they say, well, now we need deficits because we need to spend to keep us out of ruin in families.
00:10:43.140Trudeau has been very indignant when asked about debt by saying, well, I mean, the government can borrow cheaply, so it's really no issue, even though a low interest rate is still interest.
00:10:51.360And we're talking about billions and billions that are going to be spent on servicing this debt with no end in sight whatsoever for getting rid of the deficit, let alone chipping away at the debt.
00:11:02.900So there are big problems here, and these things are not theoretical issues.
00:11:06.500But the problem is that the Trudeau government has always focused more on trying to sell what it's buying without having to worry about how they're actually paying for it or how they're pretending to pay for it.
00:11:18.220Right. And in that regard, I mean, the fact that so right now, as it currently stands, I mean, Canada's debt is higher than it's ever been.
00:11:25.000It's basically it's double what it was a decade ago.
00:11:27.380And Trudeau seems to be dead set on doubling it again.
00:11:31.840We pay about 9 percent of the total revenue to government towards servicing the debt.
00:11:36.160And that's an environment with low interest rates and before Trudeau adds his next spending bonanza.
00:11:41.120So you can only imagine what would happen if, you know, the economy shifts and we get plunged into a further recession.
00:11:48.560If interest rates do go up, I mean, I mean, then you're talking about a much bigger percentage of the federal revenue going towards servicing the debt, which, again, is just a waste of money.
00:12:00.140It's like money going to bankers and to into Bay Street instead of going towards social services for Canadians.
00:12:06.740So you're going to end up with higher taxes or reduced spending or some kind of a combination.
00:12:10.980It's like we've already been here. We lived through this. This happened in the 90s.
00:12:14.560You know, Trudeau Sr. introduced massive new spending programs that were never reined in the 70s and 80s, just completely categorized by growth and spending with a slumpish economy.
00:12:24.960And then by the 90s, Canada was almost bankrupt.
00:12:27.020And the sort of lesson that everyone learned in all the parties was, you know, OK, we need to have a modicum of fiscal responsibility.
00:12:33.640And Trudeau is just completely throwing that out the door.
00:12:37.660And, you know, the way that they're speaking, the leaks that we're seeing in the media and the way that Trudeau himself is talking, it seems like this is just the beginning, Andrew, because they have something even more ambitious to come.
00:12:48.860So here is a clip of Justin Trudeau alluding to just that.
00:12:52.860And just note at the end of the clip, it's a two minute clip.
00:12:56.520So, you know, he talks about why he's doing this, what he thinks that Canadians want, how he wants to rebuild the economy and make it more equitable, more green, yada, yada, yada.
00:13:06.680But then he specifically says that he doesn't have a democratic mandate to do this, which I find very interesting.
00:13:14.100Prime Minister, you've been having virtual meetings today with business leaders in B.C. about the green recovery.
00:13:19.800What specifics were discussed in these meetings and how will this green recovery help businesses recover from the COVID crisis?
00:13:30.320Well, I think one of the things, you know, when we talk about a green recovery, what we're actually talking about is a long term recovery for our economy.
00:13:39.900We know the world is going towards greater energy efficiency.
00:13:43.840We know the world is going towards lower carbon.
00:13:46.380We know the world is moving towards more renewable energy.
00:13:52.580We need to make sure that we're leading the way, that we're part of that in a way that reassures people in existing industries,
00:13:59.940people who have jobs now or are worried about their jobs because of COVID or have lost their jobs because of COVID,
00:14:06.060that our plan for the future of the economy includes them.
00:14:09.480So, yes, there's an awful lot we can and must be doing around improving our economy in many different ways, including in real steps towards fighting this other crisis that we're facing on top of COVID and the opioid crisis, which is the climate change crisis.
00:14:27.000As we move forward in reimagining what the Canadian economy can look like in the coming years, we have an opportunity to go greener.
00:14:37.000We have an opportunity to be fairer, to reduce barriers for women's participation, for Indigenous participation in the workforce.
00:14:44.000There are so many things that we can look at as an opportunity through this tragedy of COVID to do bigger things.
00:14:52.000But that's why we're putting together a throne speech now that will set out this ambitious agenda before Parliament and parliamentarians can decide, because we're in a minority situation, whether this government has the support to move forward on this new agenda that, quite frankly, nobody ran an election on a year ago because we didn't know about COVID.
00:15:13.120This was a completely different situation.
00:15:16.680And laying that out, which includes an ambitious green agenda, is going to be what we're doing at the end of this month.
00:15:26.740So, Andrew, Trudeau, by his very own admission there, says that he doesn't have the mandate to do this kind of thing.
00:15:33.120That what he ran for and the world that we lived in and the election that he won in 2019 is not at all what he's proposing now.
00:15:40.320So wouldn't that mean that he should call an election just out of the very principle of it?
00:15:45.520I mean, all those things that he wants to do, all those things he wants to accomplish,
00:15:48.600he hasn't really put that to Canadians.
00:15:51.180And having parliamentarians vote on it is flawed because each party has its own sort of vested interests.
00:15:57.560I think that what Trudeau is saying really leads Canadians to the conclusion that we should have an election
00:16:03.920to decide whether or not we actually want to go forth with this truly reckless plan.
00:16:08.840yeah and i think that there is a bigger ideological problem that is i think underpinning
00:16:14.920this because i agree wholeheartedly with you that if you're going to do anything bold or anything
00:16:19.100that is a departure from what you campaigned on in the previous election you have to seek another
00:16:24.300mandate if you want it to be a legitimate course of action and i don't mean legally legitimate but
00:16:29.500i mean morally legitimate in this particular case but the problem is is that the global elites right
00:16:34.940now are hellbent on actually leveraging coronavirus to ram a lot of really radical things that they've
00:16:41.900wanted to put in place for years down the throats of unwitting populations. I mean, just as one
00:16:47.500example here, if you look at the Davos Forum, the World Economic Summit, the theme this year, the
00:16:52.700title of their big virtual summit is The Great Reset. And the description is an opportunity and
00:16:58.780an urgent need, to use their words, an urgent need for global stakeholders to cooperate and
00:17:03.780simultaneously managing the direct consequences of the crisis to improve the state of the world.
00:17:09.700They're launching the Great Reset Initiative and the number of stories that we saw even in March
00:17:15.060when we didn't quite know the full scope of the pandemic. I'll just rhyme off a few headlines
00:17:19.620here. LA Times, coronavirus offers opportunity on climate change. Al Jazeera, coronavirus crisis
00:17:26.160offers big green opportunity. Time Magazine, what coronavirus means for the possibility of a
00:17:32.500carbon-free economy. It doesn't matter how many people's lives have been destroyed, careers have
00:17:37.200been destroyed, how many businesses have had to shut down. The fact that there has been a big
00:17:42.120shock to the world and to the economy has given these people to them license to ram a lot of
00:17:48.980things that would, under any other circumstances, be seen as radical. And they want to rebuild the
00:17:53.720economy in their image, not what it was before we went down this road in the first place. And
00:17:59.080that's a huge danger. That's a really important observation you made, Andrew, because this is
00:18:03.900what they've been advocating for for a decade. This isn't anything new. And so now is just the
00:18:08.640opportunity. It kind of echoes what Freeland, Chrystia Freeland, the new finance minister,
00:18:13.220said in her sort of inaugural press conference there. She said that corona presented a fabulous
00:18:18.680opportunity, which, you know, you don't really usually think of a huge global pandemic and
00:18:23.880resulting recession that has destroyed you know trillions of dollars from the economy as a fabulous
00:18:30.360opportunity yeah i learned i learned in my first year of university about the broken window fallacy
00:18:35.640and now canada's finance minister doesn't seem to be familiar with the concept right and and just
00:18:40.360even the the language that you would use it seems a little tone deaf to describe uh what we're going
00:18:45.240through right now is something fabulous uh for the for your point there was a ctv headline that was
00:18:50.600just for anyone who who watches my uh podcast knows this is like my biggest pet peeve when a
00:18:57.240news headline does something like this but ctv reported over there they said the feds should
00:19:03.080invest 50 billion dollars in green projects for post-pandemic stimulus experts so ctv has gone
00:19:10.280out and found a bunch of left-wing activists and people who you know basically hate fossil fuels
00:19:16.360and want to pull canada's uh resource economy out and build something totally different uh
00:19:23.320and we're told that that's what the experts believe in that we should just now's the time
00:19:27.080guys let's invest another 50 billion what's what's 50 billion when when the government's already
00:19:31.800borrowing you know over a trillion dollars and plunging the country further and further into
00:19:37.000debt so lots of that uh coming from from voices on the left lots of people saying that we should
00:19:43.640rebuild the economy this way. I think now is the time for more prudent voices, more people to be
00:19:50.260calling out this Trudeau government, and a really good opportunity, frankly, for Conservative leader
00:19:55.160Erin O'Toole to carve a different path, to outline a different, you know, economic recovery for
00:20:01.920Canada, one that's maybe perhaps more rooted in reality, and based on the restraints of, you know,
00:20:07.560how much money do we actually have to spend, and let's not completely plunge our entire society
00:20:13.200into endless debt. So Aaron O'Toole has done a couple of interviews. He's kind of coming out
00:20:19.380strong, I would say, as new leader. But he did say that he would plan to raise the deficit in a
00:20:25.480decade. So it would take him 10 years to do it, which sort of signals and indicates to me that
00:20:31.080he's in no real rush, that he doesn't really have a plan to balance the budget. And in some ways,
00:20:35.840you can't blame him, just given the scope of how much Trudeau has, how much debt has been created,
00:20:42.200how much new spending programs have been created. Conservatives often get the reputation of being
00:20:47.320sort of mean-spirited and cutting off programs. And so you can't just turn the taps off overnight,
00:20:52.900although Trudeau did just turn them on overnight. But O'Toole's sort of coming across as trying to
00:20:59.700be very moderate, which is probably wise, given that Trudeau is taking such a giant step to the
00:21:07.480So, Andrew, what do you make of Aaron O'Toole's pledge?
00:21:11.200How do you think he's doing so far in his first few weeks as leader here?
00:21:14.220Well, I think there's, on the note of the deficit reduction,
00:21:16.560I think there's a cautionary tale here on how difficult it is to undo big spending
00:21:20.720because ultimately people get entitled to their entitlements.
00:21:24.060And when you have deficits that are looking to be potentially as high as $300 billion
00:21:27.880and even beyond that no reduction plan in sight,
00:21:31.280he can't just say we're going to cut that deficit down to a balanced budget within four years
00:21:35.760as you could if it were a bit more of a modest deficit.
00:21:39.200And if you remember back in the federal election,
00:21:41.880the Conservatives under Andrew Scheer put something forward
00:22:03.040And I mean, we know that is kind of a moot discussion now,
00:22:05.760But you have to be able to start making very tough calls, and you can't get a six- or nine-figure budget, I guess, down to a balance without making some of those tough calls.
00:22:17.260And if Aaron O'Toole rather starts talking about doing anything too radical, we know what's going to happen.
00:22:23.680Everyone is going to be coming out of the woodwork saying, you're going to cut this, cut this, cut that.
00:22:27.740I mean, we know that he has pledged to defund CBC, so there's over a billion a year in savings potentially, or whichever portion of the CBC's funding is gone.
00:22:38.120And I think there are other things as well that you could do to start bringing the books back into balance, but it's not going to be easy in, yeah, I mean, 10 years.
00:22:45.780To me, as a Canadian taxpayer, I look at this and I say, that's just a horrifying reality, that this is basically the future of the country for the foreseeable future.
00:22:54.220We know that governments never do things on time and on budget, so if they're promising 10, it could end up being 15, and that's assuming nothing happening between now and then that causes us to have to reset that with even more spending.
00:23:06.620Right. I think it was Milton Friedman, an economist, who said there's nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.
00:23:13.180Well, this was all presented to Canadians as a temporary measure to help us get through lockdowns.
00:23:19.180And suddenly we went from a temporary measure to completely reimagining the economy, spending, you know, again, trillions of dollars to meet every pet project that a liberal can dream up.
00:23:33.440And it looks like we're going to be stuck with it for a really long time.
00:23:36.200And you kind of made this observation before the show started that it feels like Trudeau is in campaign mode.
00:23:41.800He's doing all these sort of small-town interviews, radio interviews.
00:23:46.520He's been doing lots of spending announcements.
00:23:48.960We learned that the public sector unions and CRA employees just got a 10% pay raise,
00:23:55.460plus a $2,600 non-taxable cash payment for the Phoenix debacle that happened.
00:24:02.480Trudeau pledged $2 billion to the provinces to help get back to school initiatives going.
00:24:08.120It seems like a lot of these spending announcements are kind of campaign announcements.
00:24:13.860And then, you know, you also have Erin O'Toole sort of posturing.
00:24:17.560So I just want to ask you, do you think we're heading for a fall election?
00:24:20.840I'm kind of of the opinion that we should have one, just given that if Trudeau wants to make this tremendous change in policy, he should bring it to the people.
00:24:29.240And Canadians should give a democratic mandate on whether we want to become a green socialist economy or not.
00:24:36.660Do you think that that's where we're headed?
00:24:38.120I've said it in the past, and I think it bears repeating here, that if you were to take the pandemic factor out of the equation, there is zero doubt in my mind that Justin Trudeau should go back to the polls and seek another mandate if he wants the changes that he's proposing.
00:24:52.300The only thing that I think is making people leery about an election is the factor in play about how do you do an election safely and how do you run campaigns safely with all the public health questions.
00:25:04.640And I think we'll get a little bit of a glimpse of that watching how things unfold in the United States over the next couple of months.
00:25:10.480But I do believe that if you take that out of the equation, an election looks a lot more imminent.
00:25:15.600So with that being said, I agree wholeheartedly.
00:25:18.420I mean, he's going to be coming back with a throne speech, which by his own admission is going to be a reset of the government and its priorities.
00:25:25.060So that means that Justin Trudeau is already pledging to come with a new list of promises, a new mandate, a renewed mandate, and a renewed focus and priority set from what he had when he took office in November in his second term.
00:25:41.040So how do you do that without seeking a mandate for that from the voters and have a moral justification to lead?
00:26:25.340And I don't know who is going to win that standoff.
00:26:27.820Well, we know that if it's the Conservatives that are the ones that send Canadians to the polls,
00:26:32.260we can expect an entire election cycle full of headlines
00:26:35.660talking about how reckless and irresponsible it was because Canadians will be forced to.
00:26:40.680Yeah, and I think that the Conservatives are keenly aware of that,
00:26:44.140which is why they don't want to be the ones to do it.
00:26:46.080Well, Andrew, speaking of public health concerns, I think Dr. Theresa Tam, the top health official of Canada, really outdid herself in embarrassing Canadians.
00:26:55.880I think this headline sort of made its way around the world and for all the cringeworthy things that Dr. Tam has said and all the time she's flip-flopped and said, don't wear a mask, wear a mask, temperature checks don't work, do temperature checks, etc.
00:27:10.680So this week, Teresa Tam tells Canadians, and this is not a joke, that they should wear masks while having sex.
00:27:19.640So she said, like other activities during COVID that involve physical closeness, there are some things you can do to minimize the risk of getting infected and spreading the virus.
00:27:28.520Canadians can always can find ways to enjoy physical intimacy while safeguarding the progress we have made in containing COVID.
00:27:37.760So wearing a mask while you're having sex.
00:30:28.740But to try to completely erase her history or to go down this path of revisionism to say that somehow Sir John A. MacDonald oversaw a genocide and was this evil, maniacal leader, just simply not true.
00:30:43.700And seeing that statue crash to the ground and the head pop off and all of the sort of angry mob cheering, it was just really distressing to see, to say the least, sort of trying to politicize it.
00:30:55.140And then, you know, seeing people on social media justifying it and cheering it and saying that it was, you know, inevitable that it had to happen was just pretty, you know, unsettling.
00:31:05.560I was actually happy to see Justin Trudeau come out and say that he was disappointed and say that that's not the right way to go about criticizing our history and trying to understand how to make society better.
00:31:20.280Although he did, according to the Globe and Mail, sink a little bit when he said in French, sort of blamed it on the extreme right.
00:31:29.920He said that I think we're seeing, particularly on the extreme right, that they're trying to start culture wars and divide Canadians on issues like this.
00:31:37.820I don't know how you can blame a far left mob tearing down a statue of Sir John L. MacDonald and then flip it to say, well, it's the far right that's creating these culture wars.