Juno News - August 25, 2025


What will Carney do when Parliament returns？


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

185.07306

Word Count

6,215

Sentence Count

325

Misogynist Sentences

10

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Candice Malcolm Show. I'm Chris Simms, sitting in for Candice Malcolm,
00:00:07.080 sometimes this summer. Thank you so much for making us a part of your day and your week.
00:00:11.560 I hope it's off to a great start. Lots to talk about on the show today. What's happening right
00:00:17.260 now in Ottawa is that people are slowly waking up to the fact that government is coming back.
00:00:22.560 So most of us who have kids, we're all getting ready for our kids to head back to school next
00:00:26.880 week. It's going to be after Labor Day. So a lot of families are really busily trying to finish off
00:00:31.900 their last bit of summer. In Ottawa, it kind of feels similar. So there's going to be staffers
00:00:37.220 that are getting back into town. There's going to be bureaucrats trying to get their big binders
00:00:41.140 ready for their ministers to take a look at. All that is to say the business of government is going
00:00:46.340 to start cranking up really fast in Ottawa soon once the House of Commons comes back. And that
00:00:52.040 means they're going to figure out how to tax you more and how to spend your money. I wanted to
00:00:58.260 raise this because you might have noticed last week, all of a sudden, it was elbows down across
00:01:04.160 the nation. Wasn't that interesting? All of a sudden, Prime Minister Mark Carney is saying,
00:01:09.600 you know what, we're going to drop retaliatory tariffs because this is the wise thing to do.
00:01:14.880 Weird, because the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said that you should have done this at the outset.
00:01:19.740 Because for people who don't know, tariffs are just trade taxes. Okay? So if we have a tariff on
00:01:30.520 American items, let's say a jar of pickles. Okay? Say the Canadian government puts a tariff
00:01:38.640 on American products like a jar of pickles. That is an import tax. Okay? That means that you and I
00:01:46.780 those of us who are at the grocery store, when we go to pick up that object, when we go to pick up
00:01:51.660 that thing that comes from the States that has an import tax, it is going to cost us more.
00:01:58.360 It's on the same side of the border. If U.S. President Donald Trump wants to slap import taxes
00:02:03.140 on Canadian stuff, that's his thing. Okay? But it is ultimately going to hurt normal working people
00:02:10.700 on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. What's super frustrating here is that politicians
00:02:18.300 like Carney and like many of his cabinet ministers have been able to skate on this issue now for this
00:02:25.100 long by saying stupid catchphrases like elbows up or elbows down. That's funny for about like eight
00:02:32.720 seconds, but it's not funny afterwards. Because again, at the end of the day, it's not just consumers
00:02:38.780 on both sides of the border who are getting hurt because these are just trade taxes. It isn't just
00:02:45.140 that industries are going to be damaged. Okay? We're dealing with all sorts of stuff. Our farmers are
00:02:51.140 facing tariffs. Okay? Our steel producers are facing tariffs. All of a sudden, we do use a lot of steel
00:02:56.820 around here. Okay? So industries are being injured. Okay? Consumers are being nailed. And at the end of the
00:03:04.180 day, you're paying for all of this. You are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for the
00:03:11.820 prime minister's salary. You are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for the international
00:03:18.020 trade minister's salary. You want to start looking at the bureaucracy? Now you're getting into really
00:03:24.240 gnarly costs. Again, you are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the deputy ministers
00:03:30.320 and all sorts of specialists and experts who work in and out of government to manage this issue.
00:03:39.400 Do you feel like the Canada-US issue with trades and tariffs is being professionally managed?
00:03:45.720 Are you getting good value for your money? I can't help but point out that Alberta Premier Daniel
00:03:52.060 Smith took a smart approach to this from the very start. She took a basic approach whenever you're in a
00:03:58.760 dispute with somebody that you actually want to maintain a relationship with. Okay? Say things are
00:04:03.820 getting heated. What's the adult thing to do? Okay? The adult thing to do is take the tone down.
00:04:11.020 Take the heat out of the dispute. Okay? Meet with them. Find some common ground. Something you both agree
00:04:18.300 on. Then book your next meeting. Something hopeful to look forward to. Premier Smith went right down there
00:04:26.560 to the States right away. She did the soft soap diplomacy right away. And guess what? The tariff
00:04:32.340 on Alberta energy was lower than it was across the rest of the country. That's because it's a really
00:04:39.460 good idea to try to negotiate with your most important and biggest trade partner. Spitting in
00:04:45.960 their eye, saying dumb things like elbows up, and trying to use them as a scarecrow during all of your press
00:04:51.360 conferences, doesn't help taxpayers. It doesn't help normal working people on both sides of the border.
00:04:59.400 It'll get you some credit in the mainstream media, and it'll allow you to skate around other more
00:05:05.220 important issues because the media will be distracted by it. But at the end of the day, it just costs normal
00:05:12.560 working people money. I will also point out that back when Premier Smith went down to the United States,
00:05:19.560 she got right in there, and she got a hold of the ears of influencers, okay, who speak directly to
00:05:27.880 the Trump administration and said, you know what? We can't afford this. Let's not do this. Let's make
00:05:33.340 a deal. What can we do? Let's keep the lines of communication open. We don't think this is a wise
00:05:38.660 idea. That's a smart thing to do. Now we're back at square one. All of a sudden, it's elbows down.
00:05:46.440 All of a sudden, finally, the Prime Minister is saying, let's drop the retaliatory tariffs.
00:05:53.160 At the end of the day, normal working Canadians want our governments, plural, to be smart,
00:06:00.480 to earn their pay well, and to make a smart deal. Because people don't want to be punished
00:06:06.740 with unnecessary trade taxes, which is exactly what tariffs are. It is well past time
00:06:15.500 for the bureaucrats and the elected government in Ottawa to grow up, wise up, and start actually
00:06:22.700 earning their pay. What's in store for us this fall? How much is the government costing us right
00:06:30.060 now? Where on earth are we going to be able to find savings? Is the government really going to
00:06:35.880 start banning the sale of normal gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles? Why are they doing this?
00:06:41.460 Let's find out. Joining me now is Franco Terrazzano. He is the Federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayers
00:06:48.400 Federation, also my very good friend. He's stationed in Mordor, also known as Ottawa. Franco, we've been
00:06:55.500 chatting about how the federal government can save money. And some of these headlines that we're seeing
00:07:01.940 from the federal government unions, I'm sorry, but they're kind of laughable. It seems like they're
00:07:06.880 running around like Chicken Little. What's the vibe on the street there in Ottawa?
00:07:11.400 Well, look, I think this is going to be the biggest fight as we head into the fall session
00:07:15.240 of Parliament, right? I mean, look, truth be told, we actually don't know what Carney is going to do
00:07:20.180 with spending, right? We don't know what he's going to do with the bureaucracy. We haven't seen a budget
00:07:24.360 yet. However, the Carney government should be cutting the size and growth of the bureaucracy,
00:07:29.040 right? Like, the federal bureaucracy is so bloated, it costs you way too much money. I mean,
00:07:33.860 look, the federal government added 99,000 extra bureaucrats since 2016. You're paying for 99,000
00:07:42.460 extra federal paper pushers, and the cost of the bureaucracy has gone up 77% in less than a decade.
00:07:49.960 But get this, folks, like Canadians aren't getting better services, right? We just commissioned a poll
00:07:54.720 from Leger that shows that half of Canadians say federal services have gotten worse since 2016. So
00:08:01.520 you're paying an arm and a leg for this bloated bureaucracy, your tax bill is going up, the
00:08:05.400 government debt bill is going up, yet federal services are getting worse, half of Canadians
00:08:10.700 say. So look, I think there's going to be a big fight. I think these greedy government union bosses
00:08:15.360 are going to light their hair on fire. But if the Carney government is willing to do the right thing,
00:08:19.480 it has to roll up its sleeves, and it has to fire some bureaucrats.
00:08:23.000 I was seeing some headlines there. I don't know if it was PSAC or one of the other government
00:08:27.260 unions there that was saying, oh my goodness, you know, if we cut too deep, it's going to affect
00:08:32.160 our DEI program. I kind of found that funny. Here we go. Advocates warn federal budget cuts could
00:08:38.260 reduce diversity and inclusion initiatives. I'm seeing that all over X this morning as well.
00:08:43.640 And I kind of had to laugh to myself because last I checked, most taxpayers want the government to do
00:08:49.060 really basic things. They don't need them wading into grant approvals for, I don't know,
00:08:54.480 lesbian pirate musicals, for example. Yeah, or I don't know, spending $100,000 tracking the birth,
00:09:01.860 life and death of a grocery cart. Yes, the federal government has actually spent your money that
00:09:06.720 way. Or how about this? 20 grand for a report about the gender politics of Peruvian rock music.
00:09:15.020 Okay, or how about this doozy, right? Eight grand studying the, what, sexual and gender identities
00:09:20.460 in online Harry Potter fan communities? I mean, what an absolute waste of money. We all know that
00:09:26.620 JK Rowling's stance on gender is pretty firm. Plus, grown-up Harry Potter nerds never get laid. So I
00:09:32.540 don't know why the government is spending eight grand on a report like that. But like, look, it's not even
00:09:37.680 just this silly, small examples of waste that we can go on and on about. Look, when the government
00:09:42.740 can't do the little things right, you can bet the government isn't doing the big things right.
00:09:46.760 And talking about the big things, look at the fat cats in Ottawa ballooning, okay? So there are now
00:09:52.500 nearly 147,000 federal bureaucrats taking a six-figure salary, right? That's about 40% of the entire
00:10:02.340 federal workforce, and I'm putting that in scare quotes. Nearly 40% of the entire federal bureaucracy
00:10:08.720 has taken a six-figure salary, right? So look, the federal government has broke more than a trillion
00:10:14.200 dollars in debt. And I know that Canadians just can't afford to keep propping up a bloated federal
00:10:20.800 bureaucracy. I wanted to point out those ridiculous examples of waste, because inevitably, we'll hear
00:10:27.020 something like, oh, well, okay, fine. What do you want to cut first? You know, food for orphans or help
00:10:33.200 for war widows? Like, okay, how about we start with cutting the fact that they're giving out grants?
00:10:39.280 Literally, he wasn't joking there, folks. Like, the gender politics of Peruvian art music,
00:10:44.800 rock music? Number one, you paid for that grant. Number two, you are helping in some way to pay for
00:10:51.360 the bureaucracy which considers such grants, and then hands them out. I'm not even touching on the
00:10:56.580 fact that, like, Stats Canada and other bureaucrats have their own podcasts, which next to nobody listens
00:11:02.940 to. And they talk about things literally, like gay ghosts, and whether or not outer space is sexist.
00:11:09.480 Like, this is the dumbest waste of money, and I'm pointing it out, because, Franco, I can hear them
00:11:14.640 right now. I can hear people asking you, if you're in a mainstream media interview especially, of, oh,
00:11:19.660 well, you know, won't this cut too deep? Won't this affect services? Like, are you already getting
00:11:24.340 questions like that, or are you just bracing yourself for them?
00:11:27.220 No, we're already starting to get it, right? We did a bunch of interviews when we released that
00:11:31.180 Leger poll that showed that more than half of Canadians want the government to cut its size and
00:11:36.000 cost of bureaucracy. That half of Canadians, despite the bureaucracy costs going up 77%,
00:11:41.220 you still have half of Canadians say that federal services have gotten worse since 2016. So, look,
00:11:47.500 we're already starting to get that pushback already, but, you know, my quick pushback to that is,
00:11:53.760 are you serious? The federal government added 99,000 extra bureaucrats, and still Canadians are
00:11:59.320 saying federal services are worse, okay? So, clearly, adding more government bureaucrats doesn't
00:12:04.320 mean better outcomes for Canadians. That's step number one. I mean, look, we already talked about
00:12:09.520 the extreme amount of waste, right? Especially a lot of wasteful spending going overseas, right? We
00:12:14.880 talked about some of this, but, you know, $8,800 for a sex toy show in Germany called, who's,
00:12:19.860 is this? $12,000 for seniors in other countries to talk about their sex lives in front of live audiences.
00:12:26.120 I see Chris is laughing because she knows the government doesn't have to spend any money on
00:12:30.220 that, right? You want to hear seniors talk about their sex lives. You just go to a two-for-one
00:12:34.400 Tuesdays at any Swiss shall lay near you. Or how about the $1,700 spent on a musical about lesbian
00:12:41.360 pirates, right? So, we're joking. We're kind of laughing because if we didn't laugh, we would cry
00:12:46.820 over this government waste. But let's look at the big picture, and I'll stick with spending money
00:12:50.980 overseas, okay? So, in the most recent year, the federal government spent about $11 billion on
00:12:57.180 foreign aid to other countries, okay? Almost $11 billion, or a little bit more. Now, in that same
00:13:02.040 year, the government spent about $6 billion through the entire Department of Veterans Affairs,
00:13:08.020 okay? So, let that sink in. The federal government spent almost twice as much on foreign aid as it did
00:13:14.480 through the entire Department of Veterans Affairs, okay? So, it's one thing to highlight some of the
00:13:19.400 small wasteful spending as we are. But look, I mean, on the big things, the government is wasting
00:13:24.160 huge sums of your money, taking money out of your pocket and wasting it, not just here in Canada,
00:13:28.920 but of course, out of country as well. In fact, Global Affairs Canada might be the worst waste
00:13:33.700 offender in the entire federal government, and that's saying a lot. Yeah, if we had our own version
00:13:38.820 of Doge, which people keep asking us to do up here in Canada, that's probably where we should start,
00:13:43.660 is Global Affairs Canada. And I really wanted to highlight what he just said there, folks.
00:13:47.400 Franco just said that we're spending almost twice as much on foreign aid, okay, sending money out of
00:13:53.920 country, than we are on Canadian veterans. And I will point out that doesn't just include our own
00:14:00.240 war veterans here in Canada, it's RCMP as well. It's managing their pensions, it's helping them
00:14:05.580 with healthcare, it's helping them with PTSD. Like, these are Canadians, okay? It isn't, like,
00:14:11.800 but we're spending almost twice as much overseas. What a huge waste of money. There's another stat that
00:14:17.160 blew my mind with recently, Franco, and I still can't quite grok it. And that is along the lines
00:14:23.200 of this, if we had kept the growth of the bureaucracy in line with our own population's
00:14:30.720 growth, okay? So we're not slashing and burning, okay? We're still growing it, okay? Still adding
00:14:35.740 more bodies to the, you know, bureaucrats. But if we'd kept it in line with population growth,
00:14:41.080 we'd save, like, billions of dollars per year? Seven billion. You would save more than seven
00:14:47.060 billion dollars every single year had the bureaucracy had just grown in line with population
00:14:52.000 since 2016, right? The bureaucracy, then just the number of bureaucrats went up about 38%,
00:14:58.360 while Canada's population grew by about 16%, okay? So if the bureaucracy had it grown just in line
00:15:04.840 with population, taxpayers would save more than seven billion dollars every single year. Now,
00:15:11.600 you know, it's not just the number of bureaucrats that taxpayers are paying for. It's also the cost
00:15:16.220 that keeps going up, right? The perks, the salary, all that kind of stuff. I mean, let's look at some
00:15:21.240 egregious examples, the bonuses, right? Taxpayer funded bonuses have cost Canadians more than $1.5
00:15:28.060 billion since 2015. Now, number one, why is the government handing out bonuses? Like, this is not the
00:15:34.400 private sector. Why are you handing out bonuses? Number two, in what world is an organization that
00:15:39.380 is $1 trillion in debt, think it has any money lying around for bonuses? But then the government
00:15:45.920 is handing out bonuses for clear failure, okay? We all remember Arrive Scam, right? It initially
00:15:52.420 launched for 80 grand, then the simple app blew up to a tab of about 60 million. Well, government
00:15:58.560 executives working on Arrive Scam took $340,000 in bonuses. Or the Bank of Canada, it has one job,
00:16:07.640 keep inflation low and around 2%. Well, when inflation reached a 40-year high and Canadians
00:16:13.560 couldn't afford groceries, the Bank of Canada printed up $20 million in bonus checks. Or how about the
00:16:20.740 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, okay? Another crown corporation has said many times, you know,
00:16:26.200 it's to an effect of like, oh, we have one objective overall, housing affordability for
00:16:31.380 all. Okay, well, since 2020, they've handed out more than $100 million in bonuses, and we've been
00:16:37.300 struggling with a housing affordability crisis. Makes no sense. Yeah, makes zero sense. You are
00:16:44.800 awarding government failure with taxpayers' money. What gets me is that even their own, see, for people who
00:16:51.260 haven't worked in government, departments have their own little way of monitoring themselves poorly,
00:16:56.380 and they set their own little objectives on what they want to do. They aren't even meeting their own
00:17:02.140 internal, like, objectives most of the time. Like, their little achievement grid, or whatever they
00:17:07.460 want to call it, most of the time, or quite often, they're not even meeting those things, but they're
00:17:11.940 still handing out bonuses. Even by their own measure, they're failing. I wanted to shift gears here,
00:17:17.700 because you are right there in Ottawa, and people often refer to as the kids coming back to school.
00:17:22.700 So, for most people who actually have their own kids and stuff in the house, kids are going back
00:17:27.600 to school next week. Now, when do your kids, your MPs, actually come back to school? And I wanted to
00:17:34.840 ask, what's first on the agenda in your mind? What are the main things that they need to tackle
00:17:39.680 once the house starts sitting again? Yeah, well, the circus will be back middle of September.
00:17:45.080 And look, like I said before, I think the biggest fight is going to be around the bureaucracy,
00:17:49.340 and I think it's going to be around spending, and whether the government will cut spending,
00:17:53.740 or what have you, just because we're hearing that the budget, the federal budget, will finally be
00:17:58.200 tabled sometime in October. But we've already kind of talked about the bureaucracy. I want to shift to
00:18:02.420 another fight that I see coming, and that's around the government's ban on the sale of new gas and
00:18:08.540 diesel vehicles by 2035, right? So, by 2035, the government wants to ban the sale of all new gas
00:18:14.640 and diesel vehicles. And the reason I think this is going to be a big fight is twofold. So,
00:18:19.740 number one, is that this ban starts in 2026. So, it starts in a couple months, where I believe
00:18:26.800 about 20% of all new gas and diesel vehicles sold, or all new vehicles sold, will have to be
00:18:31.700 electric. So, the ban is starting next year. But the second reason I bring it up, why I think this is
00:18:36.540 going to be such a big issue is because Mr. Poliev and the Conservatives have vowed to launch a
00:18:42.140 national campaign against the government's ban on the sale of new gas and diesel vehicles. So, I think
00:18:47.240 that's going to heat up real quick once September rolls around. Yeah, that's a big, meaty one. I know
00:18:53.040 here in Alberta, the Alberta government, led by Premier Daniel Smith, is doing the right thing.
00:18:58.160 They've added this to their list of very serious grievances that they have with Ottawa, saying that
00:19:03.180 we want this fixed, like right now. Like, they're not playing around. They're getting pretty mad about
00:19:08.220 this, okay? There's a lot of people that are pushing for more autonomy, I will put it that way,
00:19:13.140 here in Alberta versus Ottawa. And one of the main, two big reasons here, why people are fighting this
00:19:18.800 so hard. Number one, you know, the government has no place in the garages of the nation, okay? Like, why is
00:19:25.340 the government getting up on people's grill, telling them, dictating to them what kind of vehicle
00:19:29.320 they need to drive? I'll put it this way. So, if you're, you know, hauling cattle here in Alberta, or if
00:19:35.040 you're a commuter out there in Ontario, you're trying to get into downtown Toronto, or something like
00:19:39.480 that, you're driving into London, like, that's up to you. What kind of vehicle fits for your work and
00:19:45.480 family requirements, okay? And the government is just bad at doing things. As you just described very
00:19:50.880 fulsomely with the bureaucracy, they're big, they're wasteful, they don't know how to do stuff. Like, they
00:19:55.780 couldn't organize a two-car parade. So, who are they to say, this is going to fit for your family?
00:20:00.620 It can't. And secondly, the main reason why the Taxpayers Federation is fighting this is that we
00:20:05.780 can't afford this. Like, we don't have the money or the energy to make this thing actually work.
00:20:13.100 The math just isn't mathing, as you say. The federal government itself already says that if they
00:20:18.940 made a full switch, it would cost something like $300 billion? Yeah, up to $300 billion, which is
00:20:25.120 absolutely banana pants crazy. I mean, look, yeah. Number one, I think when you hear these
00:20:30.680 politicians talking about banning the sale of gas and diesel vehicles by 2035, you've got to ask
00:20:35.180 yourself, you know, how much is your tax and power bill going to go up? Because this is nuts, right?
00:20:40.080 Like, as we just mentioned, a report that was published by the Government Department of Natural
00:20:44.300 Resources, look, this could cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Like, where are they going to get
00:20:49.560 the money from to, you know, build all this infrastructure, transmission, power lines,
00:20:53.940 all this kind of stuff? Like, the tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies going to
00:20:58.180 multinational corporations to build battery plants, right? Like, how is the government going to pay for
00:21:03.240 all this? Well, the only answer is, is the government's going to take more of your money. But like, look,
00:21:07.800 this is such a half-baked idea. I was reading, doing some research before we had this little chat,
00:21:12.860 Chris. And what is it? Canada would require, what, 14 large can-do nuclear reactors, right? Like,
00:21:20.240 this is, this is nuts. The only silver lining is that this plan is so half-baked, the plan is so
00:21:25.560 unrealistic, that like, hopefully just reality wins out in the day, and the government just can't
00:21:30.420 move forward with this ban on the sale of new gas and diesel vehicles. I wanted to point out that with
00:21:35.440 Alberta breathing down their neck, this might actually help. I know that last week, the Alberta
00:21:40.340 government did the right thing, and they came out and said, we're going to use every tool in the
00:21:43.280 toolbox here, folks, to fight this thing. They're even now going to take the federal government to
00:21:47.760 court, which is outstanding. Folks might remember the so-called No More Pipelines Law, Bill C-69.
00:21:53.840 We've had some wins in the court front in some of those fights, so that's a really good thing to see.
00:21:58.680 So I think it's really good for them to tackle this in every which way possible, because like you
00:22:03.420 point out, we just can't afford this. This isn't something so simple as grabbing an extra power bar and
00:22:09.180 plugging it into your outlet because you got a few more, you know, video game systems or TVs. No,
00:22:13.860 like electric vehicles draw a lot of power. We unfortunately do not have an abundant, affordable
00:22:19.700 energy system right now, even here in Alberta, where people might think that we're just swimming in it.
00:22:24.520 No, we have warnings that we're going to have a brownout in winter if people use their hair dryers
00:22:30.100 in the morning. I'm not joking. So like, we do not have the cash for this. Do you think, Franco,
00:22:35.600 I got to try to be a little bit of a strategist here. Carney has the room, okay? He's got the
00:22:42.160 capital to come into the room and say, you know what? That was the last guy's plan. I'm the new
00:22:46.940 guy. I'm the new prime minister. This was a former prime minister, Justin Trudeau's plan.
00:22:51.740 Stefan Guibo, you be quiet. No, shh. You're not talking at cabinet meeting today. Like he has the
00:22:56.460 room to do that, doesn't he? Well, the reason I'm going to say, yeah, is, I mean, just look back
00:23:01.400 what's happened over the last couple of months. I mean, during Carney's early tenure as prime
00:23:05.780 minister, I mean, he's already gotten rid of the consumer carbon tax. I mean, we all know that
00:23:09.920 Carney is changing the carbon tax. He's going to hammer Canadian businesses with a hidden carbon
00:23:13.600 tax. But look, I mean, he got rid of Trudeau's consumer carbon tax, if we can call it that.
00:23:18.960 He also did the same thing with the capital gains tax increase, right? Remember the government wanted
00:23:23.340 to go forward with an undemocratic and illegal capital gains tax increase. Well, Carney got rid of that
00:23:28.920 too. So I do think there's some political room for Carney to maneuver here and say, hey,
00:23:34.080 that was the last guy. You know, I'm a new guy here. And I think Canadians will give him some grace
00:23:39.480 on that if he's moving in the right direction. But let me just say, look, you know, obviously there's
00:23:45.040 a bit of a honeymoon phase whenever you have a new elected government. Okay. That'll last a little bit
00:23:49.660 of time. But if you look at some of the polling, like I saw some polling released, I believe over the
00:23:54.180 weekend, right, that shows that Canadians top concern again is the cost of living, right? Quite
00:24:00.480 significantly pulled more than what's going on in the United States. So again, cost of living is the top
00:24:05.880 concern in the minds of Canadians. So I don't think Canadians have a single ounce of appetite for
00:24:12.580 anything that will come from the Carney government or Ottawa that will make people's lives more
00:24:16.380 expensive. So even if the government had a little bit of a honeymoon phase, I don't think that is going
00:24:21.380 to last a long time, especially if the government is going to make people's lives more expensive,
00:24:25.940 which it has for years. I lastly wanted to touch on Franco. This is great stuff. Speaking of making
00:24:32.040 people's lives more expensive, this is what I think if I were a betting lady, I would think that Carney
00:24:38.240 has the capital to say, you know what, we're kicking this whole EV thing, as they call it so far down
00:24:43.620 the road that it's not going to affect us anymore. We're lifting the mandate. The car dealerships don't
00:24:48.860 need to have a 20% sales. I am noticing there's even a little bit of sprinkling of the softening
00:24:54.420 of language in there. They're using the term availability a lot now where they weren't before.
00:24:59.740 So I am sensing something in the forest changing there. If I were a betting lady, though, I think
00:25:05.400 the big fight is going to be the industrial carbon tax because Carney wrote a book called Values, like
00:25:11.860 he was the former UN special envoy to the United Nations on topics like this. He mentioned during the
00:25:18.000 campaign. He mentioned during his leadership campaign that he wants to strengthen and change
00:25:22.920 the industrial carbon tax and talk about hitting your bottom line. Talk about making the cost of
00:25:27.740 living cost more. Where are we with this? Yeah. So look, I think you've kind of outlined it pretty
00:25:34.020 good, right? That Carney isn't ending all carbon taxes. He wanted to change the carbon tax and I use
00:25:40.160 his word, not mine. So look, the Carney government got rid of that consumer carbon tax, right? That directly
00:25:45.580 applied on fuels like gasoline. Every time you went to the fuel to fuel up your car, that was more
00:25:50.700 expensive. It was applied directly on your heating bill, like natural gas, for example. So the
00:25:55.640 Carney government got rid of the consumer facing carbon tax. But throughout the two election
00:26:01.280 campaigns, I guess Carney ran both for liberal leadership and then the general election. Many
00:26:05.720 times he referred to essentially increasing that hidden carbon tax on Canadian businesses like oil and gas
00:26:12.900 companies, refineries, and utilities. Now look, Carney tried many times to be like, oh, don't worry,
00:26:18.720 folks. You won't have to pay for that carbon tax. It'll be large businesses that pay. But you know,
00:26:24.100 fortunately, Canadians aren't buying Carney's spin, right? We released some Leger polling that shows
00:26:29.500 that 70% of Canadians understand that businesses will pass most or some of the costs on to consumers
00:26:35.460 through higher prices. In fact, only 9% of Canadians believe Carney that businesses will pay most of his
00:26:41.420 carbon tax costs. And I mean, look, it's pretty obvious, right? When you carbon tax refineries,
00:26:46.560 that makes your gasoline and diesel more expensive. When you carbon tax utilities, that makes your home
00:26:52.200 heating more expensive. And when you carbon tax fertilizer plants, well, that drives up costs for
00:26:57.600 farmers and makes your grocery haul more expensive. But you know, if I can tie in the cost of living and
00:27:03.700 what's going on between Canada and the US and our trading relationship right now, remember the White House,
00:27:09.160 regardless of who is occupying the White House, whether Republican or Democrat, they're not
00:27:14.440 bringing in carbon taxes, right? They're not. So look, a carbon tax on Canadian businesses will
00:27:20.860 push Canadian entrepreneurs to cut down production here and to set up shops south of the border where
00:27:26.420 there is no national carbon tax. Okay. So in effect, Carney's carbon tax is the worst of all worlds,
00:27:33.540 higher prices for you and fewer jobs for Canadians. That's a great point. And we need to stress it's
00:27:39.260 in your book, actually, which I will point out is excellent. You actually mentioned it. Sorry,
00:27:45.220 but it is really good because there were some things in there that even I'd forgotten.
00:27:48.340 So you point out in there that even like Barack Obama, okay, backed off on the idea of a national
00:27:55.060 carbon tax. So the United States isn't on the brink of having one anytime soon. I think that's
00:28:00.140 putting it mildly here. And back up here in Canada, if people, I personally think coming from British
00:28:05.700 Columbia, if they want a really tangible example of how this increases costs, okay, in British Columbia,
00:28:13.440 they have what we often refer to as the second carbon tax. Now it's technically a government fuel
00:28:18.220 standard that forces companies to get into this credit system, meaning those companies have to pay
00:28:24.540 more for the fuels that they are providing, okay, both gasoline and diesel. Those companies are not
00:28:32.200 eating the cost. They are not eating the cost of those increases. So on average in British Columbia,
00:28:39.240 that's why when you cross the border, it goes up here from Alberta. On average, it's costing
00:28:43.280 around 18 cents extra per liter of gasoline and diesel. Now that isn't the same sort of industrial
00:28:49.340 carbon tax, but I'm just showing you that they will pass on the cost because the companies can't
00:28:54.920 eat it and it winds up making normal people pay more. Do you think, I was really heartened to hear
00:28:59.560 that Leger poll. Do you think people are getting the message that the government can't just hide this?
00:29:04.860 Well, I think people always knew that carbon taxes make life more expensive, right? The only people
00:29:09.040 who tried to pretend like it didn't were the political pundits or academics or the government
00:29:14.220 politicians and bureaucrats themselves who tried to twist themselves into a pretzel trying to explain
00:29:19.020 that somehow carbon taxes made people richer. But of course they didn't and Canadians never bought
00:29:23.880 that spin. And that was one of the fatal flaws of the carbon tax that Trudeau tried to shove down
00:29:28.620 everyone's throats, right? It's like Trudeau tried to tell us that carbon taxes could make us richer
00:29:33.220 and people didn't buy it because Canadians know, everyone knows that you can't give the government
00:29:38.600 20 bucks and then somehow magically get $50 in return, right? It was always magic math from the
00:29:44.800 beginning and Canadians didn't understand it. So look, if the Carney government wants to continue
00:29:49.300 pushing carbon taxes, it's probably going to try to do it in a very sneaky hidden way, try not to talk
00:29:54.480 about it. But that's why the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's here shouting, nay, nay, we are going
00:29:58.840 to talk about it. And you're going to have to answer and tell Canadians, you know, how much you're
00:30:02.820 hitting carbon tax on Canadian businesses is going to cost, right? And like Simmer, I'm glad you brought
00:30:08.480 up the fact that like a business isn't just a piggy bank for governments, right? They can't just continue
00:30:13.360 to pay tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, and nothing happened, right? Either number one, they're going to pass
00:30:18.360 some of the costs onto Canadian consumers through higher prices, or number two, they're just going to cut
00:30:24.060 production, not reinvest in Canada, not hire more Canadians, more of our neighbours, and they're just
00:30:29.400 going to go somewhere else around the world that doesn't have these high carbon taxes, like the United
00:30:34.620 States. Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, thank you so much for
00:30:40.580 joining us on the Candace Malcolm Show. Hey, Chris, thank you. You bet. So folks, you heard it there. So we've got
00:30:48.260 members of Parliament, okay, who are paid big bucks, they're going to be coming back to Ottawa very soon.
00:30:53.080 And they've got an agenda. We're encouraging them to focus on three things. Cut the size and cost of
00:30:59.900 government in order to balance the budget and fight the debt. Scrap this ban on gasoline and diesel
00:31:06.020 powered vehicles, which nobody wants and we can't afford. And third, get rid of your plans to create
00:31:13.340 a big, bad, hidden industrial carbon tax. Because at the end of the day, what Franco said is right.
00:31:18.980 Normal working people are still fighting to afford basics. And it's easy to gloss over something like
00:31:25.180 that. But when you really think about it, it becomes more real. Okay, so around 50% of Canadians
00:31:31.680 are within $200 of not being able to pay the very bare minimum on their bills. That means covering the
00:31:39.760 bare minimum on their credit cards, keeping the lights on and keeping some food in the house. Okay,
00:31:44.680 close to 50% of Canadians are in that situation. We've got record amount of people demanding help
00:31:53.900 at food banks now. Okay, the highest level of growth that these volunteers are seeing at food
00:32:00.280 banks come from working families. What that means put normally is that a parent who's holding down a job
00:32:08.060 is still counting on donated jars of peanut butter to feed their kid. That's what increased demand from
00:32:15.200 working families at food banks really means. So at the end of the day, it is the cost of living that
00:32:21.460 is going to be front and center. And I would encourage everybody watching here to send an email to their
00:32:27.860 member of parliament. Tell them that you want them to have smaller government, less waste, lower taxes,
00:32:35.940 so that people can afford normal things in life. And for those of you who are thinking,
00:32:42.160 oh, well, it doesn't matter what I say. These MPs won't care. That's not true. Because it was average
00:32:48.180 people that made even Mark Carney blank on the carbon tax. If you look around at gas stations this summer,
00:32:56.160 it's about 20 cents cheaper than it was last summer. That's because the consumer carbon tax is gone.
00:33:02.400 And you folks made even Mark Carney say, I need to get rid of this and come up with a hidden one.
00:33:09.380 So you speaking up and demanding something really matters. And what also really matters is sharing
00:33:14.580 messages like this. You won't hear this sort of talk happening at will on most mainstream media
00:33:21.060 channels. You won't hear discussions like this. You won't hear advocacy like this. So make sure you head
00:33:27.380 over to Juno News, subscribe to Juno News, like, and share this video in order to spread the word.