Who’s really winning from Carney’s wealth fund？
Episode Stats
Summary
In this week's episode, we discuss the ongoing immigration crisis in Canada, the impact of a proposed ban on social media use by minors, and the government's attempt to keep temporary foreign workers in the country. We also hear about a potato giveaway in which thousands lined up to receive free food.
Transcript
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the carne government may impose a nationwide social media ban similar to those in countries
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like australia heritage minister mark miller is looking at restricting youth access to social
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media platforms and ai chatbots he says canada is playing catch-up when it comes to regulating
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internet content like other nations do when it comes to regulation of social media again
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jurisdiction that is assumed by the federal government whether we're talking about moratoriums
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or the proper regulation of egregious online harms and that's stuff that we're frankly a couple
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years behind in regulating as we see other jurisdictions like australia like britain like
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france taking action so we need to take action as well well some critics see the move as a veiled
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attack on free speech paving the way for censorship under the guise of child protection
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Well, Premier Doug Ford says he would keep temporary foreign workers, at least some of
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them in the province, if he had the power to do so. He was confronted by a group demanding he
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help them stay in the country. Here's what happened. We have questions to ask. We just
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mentioned that we don't promote any hatred. But what was the hatred that was spread by Minister
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able that when we were standing at minus 17 outside this building but no relief has been
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given to us we were working for skill trades and minister returned our files what about that yeah
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well i will i will talk about it because you know something i've met with the community a few times
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i met with i'm not too sure if it was yourself i was the one standing in front of the prime minister
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telling him these hard-working people are here to contribute to the community to give back you've
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You've been trained in certain areas, and I can tell you, your employers want you to stay.
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I wish I could snap my fingers and say, okay, you can stay.
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I told him in front of all the premiers, we need to keep people here.
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Well, that position is not doing much for his popularity these days.
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For the first time since he became premier of Ontario, Ford is running second to the liberals in voter preference across the province.
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While the job numbers in Canada continue to deteriorate,
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Statistics Canada has released some dismal employment numbers.
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The number of workers on the payroll in Canada declined by more than 60,000 in February.
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The decline more than offset the increase of workers last January.
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Year over year, the country has basically produced no new jobs.
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The declines were led by transportation, warehousing, administrative, retail, and construction.
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As we heard this week, the federal government is borrowing another $25 billion, this time to start a sovereign wealth fund.
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Normally, such funds like the one in Norway are built on wealth, not debt.
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Business expert Kirk Lubomov points out the corporate interests who are granted access to that huge pot of borrowed money have a safety net available if their business venture fails, a bailout from taxpayers.
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And our guest today is business consultant and political commentator, Kirk Lubomov.
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I understand that in Calgary, where you are, there was a potato giveaway recently.
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Thousands of people lined up for their free spud.
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And this was reminiscent of your days living in the Soviet Union before the wall came down.
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yeah this is you know our family left the you know fled communism as soon as we get the chance
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and this potato giveaway that was in calgary yeah with quite a nice generosity from the group that
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was doing it but there was 4 000 people lined up to get food because food affordability is such a
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big issue in canada and to me it was almost a little triggering in a way because there is no
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there you know potato is the symbolism food symbolism of communism it's essentially what
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we lived off uh you know it's easy to grow it grows in plentiful and it's uh it fills up the
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stomach uh and seeing people lined up in canada where we have uh you know alberta in particular
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as uh you know some of the most productive farmland in canada a huge percentage of it
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and seeing that you know we can't even provide for our own people affordable food that we can grow
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literally a couple kilometers away is you know just absolutely heartbreaking yeah it must have
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been a bit of a flashback for you where people gathering you know or lineups for for bread i
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guess in the old soviet block yeah you know i i have i i have a family that you know that doesn't
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live in canada obviously not everyone immigrated here but uh they ask what is going on in canada
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because everyone knows the signs of where things are headed uh you know once you live through it
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once you see the little movements towards uh a specific destination and it's starting to alarm
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people it's uh uh and a lot of people that i know from eastern europe a lot of friends that we have
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here have have moved back or started to move back because it's uh um they know what's coming
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so they're moving back to russia from canada people who bailed on this the old soviet bloc
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came to canada for freedom are going back to russia uh yeah and other parts of just eastern
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europe actually one of our good friends he had a big farm just outside of calgary and
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they just sold that and moved back um so it's uh yeah it is what it is but you know it's just
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you know you know we're talking about brain drain in this country but it's uh
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it's just so heartbreaking to see what's happening here you know we have plentiful we
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blessed with fresh water all the farmland we ever need to feed ourselves for cheap all the energy
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we need to provide for ourselves for cheap and you know people are going bankrupt just trying
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to put nutrition into their belly yeah and the government is focused on censorship internet
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censorship possibly you know banning social media sites you know for get under the guise of
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protecting youthful people you know youth the meantime it's really about censorship because
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as you recall i mean the old soviet bloc was obsessed with censorship wasn't it
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absolutely you know that's one of the first things you do to control the population
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uh you know the guilt of our history rather than celebrating that we built such a magnificent
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country you know it's all leading again towards one destination yeah and it's not a destination
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that we're going to like when we get there let's talk about lost lost jobs because canada did lose
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60 000 of them in february and even if you factor in the gains that were made in january we basically
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brought in no new jobs over the course of the year only alberta and saskatchewan i believe
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according to the chart the only two provinces really that gained over the last year
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what's what's your thinking of the situation as far as jobs go in canada
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you know there's this payroll employment it was extremely alarming and the reason is you know
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So there's a clear separation between the provinces that are trying to do something
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in the resource sector and the government heavy industries that have been relying on
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If you look at Ontario and Quebec, which is over 25 million of Canada's population, so
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majority of it, neither province has created a single net new job over the last 12 months,
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uh right so you have to factor a few things into it one is that the printing of the money
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that we are doing to stimulate the economy is just not working at all and the other aspect of
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it is that you know you have 25 million people that do not get into entrepreneurship or can't
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get into entrepreneurship to create jobs which is probably just as alarming if not more and we're
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seeing to productive industries particularly getting hit which is to construction and to
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manufacturing industries which we essentially need to build things right we need construction
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workers to build roads uh plants and manufacturing to actually produce things to export so it's a
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serious problem when those two uh those two industries in particular are losing jobs which
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at least one of them is a sovereign wealth fund,
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which is kind of laughable considering the fact
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of the resource sector because we use that money
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And even that's not enough because we run deficits
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But the Sovereign Wealth Fund, well, that is going to, I guess, provide certain startups,
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The idea is to give a boost, an initial boost to companies looking for, you know, seed capital
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But you see some issues, some problems here, some clouds, because of certain provisos in
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this law that will basically give failed attempts to start these businesses and launch these
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companies a safety net in the form of a bailout, correct? Yeah, I think if that fund did some of
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the seed capital towards, I guess, funding some startups and some technologies, I'll be almost
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okay with it just not to the same degree that it's operating in but it's it almost seems like a
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pay-to-play kind of fund uh if you want to build something if you want permission something from
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the government to do something well we're taking a piece of it first and some and some companies
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just maybe would not do it or or want to do it so the issue here is this fund is there to try to
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stimulate investment in canada uh you know in economics essentially we have a term called
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multiplier and it's and we uh and the last budget was essentially all based of it when the government
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says we're going to attract a trillion dollars it's based on a multiplier that they're going to
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spend 250 billion dollars over the next five years and they're going to get four dollars for every
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dollar from the private sector so this fund is designed to generate a multiplier effect
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and it's it's really hard to see how they would do that and the reason i'm saying is
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it makes no sense to launch a fund because the country is having a hard time attracting capital
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because of the red tape that the government will not remove to begin with so you don't
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launch a fund after uh before you get rid of red tape you have to get rid of the red tape
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get rid of everything that's preventing the actual private capital from coming in
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and then see what actually is happening to sovereign wealth fund in general is a good
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idea it just can't be funded out of debt the reason is it creates also a lot more risk so
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funds have performance estimates and expectations and when you borrow to invest it's called the
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leverage in the private market, this fund will have a hurdle of 4%. In other words, it's going
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to be losing about $800 million, $600 million to $800 million every year before it generates a
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dollar of return to taxpayers. And because it's borrowed money, it doesn't really matter what
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the government is going to call it or where it thinks it's going to get it from. It's all creative
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accounting to read the end of today we're still running a deficit so that money is going to come
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from pure debts and which will we have to pay and if i can just add this point to it the latest
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projections it is that our interest on just on our federal debt is going to hit 80 billion dollars
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by 2030 31 budget a year which is insane uh just to just to give you uh you know a percent a
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percentile it's going to be grow by 50 percent from this year just in five years and when uh
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the liberals took and power got in power it was around 20 billion dollars so it's going to grow
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And that's all money that's not going to be paying
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I mean, this prime minister was touted as, you know,
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an economic genius for his work at the Bank of England,
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despite the fact people thought he was a disaster.
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and, of course, you know, working at Brookfield.
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You know, it's a very centralized, almost Soviet-style attitude
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We'll decide which parts of the economy are going to grow
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We'll decide, you know, decide which companies are successful
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and which ones are not through government money.
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So it's very top-down, a government-directed economy.
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And it's bound for failure, because to your point, they're not doing the things that need
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to be done that other countries are doing, like the United States.
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They eliminated huge amounts of regulation and red tape.
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You know, they provided tax cuts, all sorts of incentives for companies to get in.
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So here we have a polar views of how to grow an economy one way, the free market way, and
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the other one is government-directed, top-down, you know, suck as much money as you can from the
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taxpayers, and we'll see which one wins. But I think that that debate was already won for the
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free market side a long time ago, wasn't it? Yeah, absolutely. When the capital doesn't
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choose us, it's, you know, what else do you have to say? You have to be fighting for it and competing
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for it which is what the us does by getting rid of red tape and opening uh priorities and actually
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taking action of things now the us has took some serious directives in the last i would say year
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and making electricity and power generation uh national security uh different commodities and
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everything else and that really gets rid of even more red tape and saying we're ready to rock uh
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You know, there is no substitute for capitalism when it's got to do with attracting investment.
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Yesterday, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and who else there?
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Google, Amazon, Facebook, and someone else there.
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And here in Canada, we're trying to create a government up role, which is, you know, let's borrow $25 billion to invest in ourselves, rather than create the same mechanism for the private sector to flourish.
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So we have those booming big industries that can actually invest themselves, and we just sit and get out of the way.
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yeah getting out of the way unfortunately from this governance perspective won't get them credit
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won't allow them to get to wet their beaks you don't do you know what i mean like there are
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people who are obsessed with growing government and people that want to empower the people you
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know by growing the economy and encourage entrepreneurship that's the basic polar opposite
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here of what we're dealing with and uh it hasn't worked this point over the last 10 you know 11
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years of liberal uh government and i don't think it's going to work going forward how do people
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follow you online kirk oh yeah uh kirk lubomov on x my facebook page is under the same name and uh
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on my sap stack same name fantastic thank you so much for coming on the show we appreciate it as
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always i appreciate you thank you kirk lubomov if you enjoyed this show consider supporting
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Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.