Juno News - What will Carney do when Parliament returns？

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 1.00

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 0.99

00:02:25.100 long by saying stupid catchphrases like elbows up or elbows down. That's funny for about like eight 0.99

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 0.90

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 0.98

00:04:51.360 conferences, doesn't help taxpayers. It doesn't help normal working people on both sides of the border. 0.85

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. 0.77

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, 0.93

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. 0.61

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? 1.00

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. 0.78

00:11:09.480 Like, this is the dumbest waste of money, and I'm pointing it out, because, Franco, I can hear them 0.99

00:11:14.640 right now. I can hear people asking you, if you're in a mainstream media interview especially, of, oh, 0.98

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 0.98

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 0.59

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, 0.64

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 0.55

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 0.93

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 0.97

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 0.98

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 0.85

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.

Juno News - August 25, 2025

What will Carney do when Parliament returns？

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