Juno News - April 13, 2024


Why conservatives should reject the left's premises on climate ｜ CSFN Day 3


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 3 minutes

Words per minute

174.75682

Word count

11,013

Sentence count

353

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Franco Tarazzoni of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Chris Sims of the Tax Foundation joins the show to talk about the federal government's massive deficits and the impact they're having on our everyday lives. Andrew Lawton is the host of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show on the Global Bureau of Reverence's annual rankings.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:04:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords
00:04:30.000 Thank you.
00:05:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:05:26.280 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:05:30.000 Hello and welcome to you all, Canada's most irreverent talk show here.
00:05:37.760 We once again renewed our irreverence on the Global Bureau of Irreverence's annual rankings.
00:05:43.080 We are out irreverenting everyone, and we are so irreverent we're doing a rare Friday show.
00:05:48.020 We're going to kick back and let loose from the exhibition hall at the Canada Strong and Free Network's annual conference in Ottawa.
00:05:55.900 Now, as you saw from the arm that protruded in front of my shot there,
00:05:59.180 we have a special guest with us, none other than Franco Tarazzoni.
00:06:02.860 You couldn't have just waited for the intro,
00:06:04.260 but we love having Franco on the show as our regular tax fighter from time to time.
00:06:09.200 He works with our good friend Chris Sims at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:06:13.220 And the one thing that we all know about the conservative movement,
00:06:15.660 you know, red Tories, blue Tories, social conservatives, libertarians,
00:06:19.040 all tend to converge on this idea that government should not spend so much.
00:06:23.020 So with this government, you have probably had a fair bit of work in the last few years, have you not, sir?
00:06:28.100 Yeah, yeah. I mean, unfortunately, business is booming in a bad way for taxpayers.
00:06:32.480 I mean, the government is spending like crazy.
00:06:34.120 We have a budget that's going to be announced on Tuesday.
00:06:36.840 And so far, this government's approach to budgeting has been spend more on everything forever.
00:06:41.840 You know, that's not a good way to manage your household finances.
00:06:44.460 It's not a good way to manage a business.
00:06:45.920 And it's definitely not a good way to manage the finances of a country.
00:06:49.480 this upcoming budget's a bit interesting because normally a budget is this closely held state
00:06:54.360 secret where the government waits until markets close to come out and release it because it is
00:06:59.340 market moving information in this one we've had the government doing this like campaign style
00:07:03.640 rollout making budget announcement after budget announcement and so far all i've heard in this
00:07:08.600 has been more spending and i don't know you've been keeping a tally on it but but what do we
00:07:12.340 know about the budget so far from what has been announced well okay so we know that the government
00:07:16.440 is just going to keep diving into debt, right? Spend, spend, spend billions of dollars likely
00:07:20.900 in additional spending. And what's so worrisome about that is that even before all these spending
00:07:25.320 announcements, the parliamentary budget officer says, you're looking at a deficit of around
00:07:28.860 $40 billion. Okay. We're in what? 2024, right? We're not in these pandemic years. And the
00:07:34.640 government is still running these massive deficits that were like unthinkable, unthinkable only a
00:07:39.620 couple of years ago. Right. And one of the big problems with these massive deficits is the
00:07:44.560 massive amount of money that's being wasted on interest charges okay so like this year federal
00:07:49.660 interest charges are probably going to cost more than what the federal government sends to the
00:07:54.660 provinces in health transfers wow like how ridiculous is that right and in a couple years
00:07:59.500 time let's look at 2028 uh debt interest charges will probably cost more than the amount of money
00:08:04.780 the federal government brings in its gst okay so let's put that into perspective every time you go
00:08:09.860 to the store and you pay the federal sales tax in a couple years time every penny collected through
00:08:14.680 that sales tax will go to paying uh interest on the federal credit card that's so crucial and it's
00:08:20.220 something that i can't stress enough whenever i talk about this with people is that it's not just
00:08:23.860 about spending outside your means it's that it it limits your buying power as a government which is
00:08:28.800 you know taxpayer money obviously forever i mean when you talk about that health transfer anyone
00:08:32.240 who's ever had a health care issue in any province in canada just think of what government could
00:08:37.080 spend the money that went on debt service on hospital bed, on an MRI machine, on any of these
00:08:43.200 things. And that's such a point that seems to be completely absent from the discussion from
00:08:46.900 government, certainly this government. Well, you know, what's always in the conversation,
00:08:50.460 unfortunately, with this federal government? Taxes. Yeah. Right. We already know that taxes
00:08:55.180 are making life more expensive. We just saw the carbon tax increase that really impacts all of
00:08:59.520 the necessities of life. It makes it more expensive for you to fuel up your car. It makes it more
00:09:03.400 expensive for you to stay warm during the winter months. And it makes it more expensive for you to
00:09:06.580 buy groceries. And on that, we've seen not just the NDP in Singh, but also some liberal MPs
00:09:12.340 musing about a grocery tax. Now, hello, a new tax on groceries is not going to bring down the price 0.64
00:09:19.300 of food. It's going to make your life more expensive. And, you know, only a couple of years
00:09:23.340 ago, Trudeau was asked about the possibility of a grocery tax. And he said that they don't want to
00:09:28.480 bring a tax in that will be passed on to the consumer. And that's exactly what these types
00:09:33.060 of so-called excess profit taxes, especially on the grocery sector, would do. It would just make
00:09:38.520 life more expensive. And Andrew, you know, if the federal government really wanted to bring down
00:09:42.920 food prices, scrap the carbon tax. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I mean, you can look at all
00:09:47.780 of these different levers that government has available to it. And some parts of inflation are
00:09:52.020 global in nature. They aren't things that government can necessarily take responsibility
00:09:56.120 for. Other things governments can. And, you know, when you're talking about families that are
00:10:00.580 struggling to make ends meet. And every now and then we see consumer spending surveys that show,
00:10:05.180 I forget the exact number I saw on the recent one, but a large volume of Canadians are within
00:10:09.320 $200 of not being able to meet their monthly expenses. So for people in that, a 10%, 12%
00:10:15.480 increase on something is quite significant. Yeah. And let's bring this back to the budget
00:10:20.820 and the deficit, right? Because you're so right to point out that inflation comes from many factors,
00:10:25.900 But you know what the government can control? How much it taxes, how much it spends, and how much it prints money.
00:10:32.440 Now, what happened during the COVID years?
00:10:34.160 Well, there was something that was different than normal times.
00:10:36.940 Well, many things, but one of them is that the central bank, the Bank of Canada, had the money printer on overdrive.
00:10:43.060 Okay, so during the pandemic years, the Bank of Canada printed more than $300 billion.
00:10:48.120 New dollars, right out of thin air, dropped into an economy that had revolving lockdowns, right?
00:10:53.100 So it created too many dollars chasing too few goods.
00:10:55.500 That's one of the reasons that you saw prices across the board skyrocket.
00:10:59.680 Now, going back to the taxes, we could see a different excess profits tax go in,
00:11:05.600 and we already know that the economy is struggling, and this would chase away investment,
00:11:09.760 this would hurt Canadian businesses, and would cause a whole lot of economic damage.
00:11:13.900 Now, you used a line there that we've heard Conservative leader Pierre Paliyev use as well,
00:11:18.260 about chasing few goods.
00:11:20.280 And I was wondering if you could explain, is he using your language, or are you using his?
00:11:23.640 Or is it a bit of both? Because I'm curious if you're actually finding that you've been leading the conservative movement in some ways on this.
00:11:29.420 Well, you know, I think the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we've been really pushing the needle.
00:11:33.360 We've been banging the drum against the crazy overspending and how that drives up inflation.
00:11:37.320 We've been talking about the carbon tax for so many years.
00:11:39.780 We've been talking about the fact that the government raises its alcohol taxes.
00:11:43.940 I know this conversation could probably drive you to drink, but sorry, folks, they're taking more money out of your pocket when you go buy a bottle of beer as well.
00:11:51.520 So we've been banging the drum on this forever,
00:11:53.720 so it's good to see at least one party, some other MPs,
00:11:56.780 maybe some independent MPs, really get on the bandwagon here
00:11:59.560 and just understand that the federal government's overtaxing,
00:12:03.580 overspending, and that money printing is really making life harder for Canadians.
00:12:07.080 We have heard the federal government say that there's not going to be a tax on the middle class,
00:12:11.980 an increase in a tax on the middle class.
00:12:13.520 Now, the definition of the middle class is one that the government has infamously not provided,
00:12:17.660 even when it had a minister for the middle class.
00:12:19.900 but they aren't ruling out tax increases in general.
00:12:23.000 And I would say if people jump up and down and say,
00:12:25.360 well, yeah, I'm middle class, so I'm not too worried about it,
00:12:27.820 why should that be a cautious or concerning position?
00:12:31.280 Well, first of all, hey, you guys hear about that story?
00:12:34.220 Just last year, Trudeau took a six-day trip to the Indo-Pacific region,
00:12:38.000 spent, what, $2 million on a six-day trip, including $200,000 on airplane food?
00:12:43.040 Ask yourself this.
00:12:44.420 Why do you want to give the government any more money from any Canadian, right?
00:12:47.580 They're just going to waste it on themselves.
00:12:48.980 but the second thing is like look you bring in business taxes you bring in wealth taxes you
00:12:53.680 bring in excess profit taxes or a grocery tax two things happen number one like a grocery tax
00:12:59.320 that just flows through to the consumer right so there's higher prices at the store every time you
00:13:04.360 go do your grocery haul but number two taxes on like business or a wealth tax that drives away
00:13:09.880 investment that hurts the Canadian economy and right now we all know that the economy is already
00:13:14.620 struggling canadians are already struggling so this is probably the worst possible time to bring
00:13:19.300 in these very damaging taxes like i said create a lot of economic damage yeah no they do and and
00:13:24.440 i mean it was ironic because you go back uh two years and there was the freedom convoy protest
00:13:28.420 and the government when it was defending that said that economic harm was a national emergency which
00:13:33.500 means we need like the emergencies act on the federal budget uh with how things are going like
00:13:37.600 how bad are you expecting it to be because on one hand it's a government that wants to win
00:13:41.020 re-election next year so you'd think they'd have to put forward some vision that will be palatable
00:13:46.340 to canadians but what are you anticipating i'm anticipating massive deficits but look um a lot
00:13:52.660 pretty much all of these budgets have been pretty bad right yeah i feel like mr trudeau has not met
00:13:57.840 a budget target that he could just blow by right remember when he was first running to be prime
00:14:02.340 minister in 2015 he said they'd run you know these tiny little deficits of about 10 billion
00:14:07.800 a year don't worry folks we'll balance the budget in 2019 will it happen yeah they miss that target
00:14:15.140 by about 20 billion dollars even before the pandemic um and look like the parliamentary
00:14:19.780 budget officer shows that the next time under the current trajectory that we would see a balanced
00:14:24.940 budget from ottawa is like 2035 but that doesn't even consider any additional spending and so when
00:14:31.200 we see them announce spending spending spending borrowing borrowing borrowing i honestly think
00:14:35.660 it's going to be bad news for Canadians and you know let's not forget that if this government
00:14:40.020 doesn't find the spine to actually save money actually cut spending they're going to clobber
00:14:44.760 taxpayers. I have a feeling that when we see you know this it's going to get a lot worse and
00:14:51.960 the challenge will be for a conservative government that comes in or theoretically a
00:14:55.760 government that is going to be different from this one that they're going to say listen our
00:14:59.800 hands are tied we can't do anything here it's just so bad and I know you've always been as an
00:15:04.620 organization very good at not letting conservative parties off the hook either and i wanted to ask
00:15:08.980 what your realistic expectation would be of a conservative government on balance the budget
00:15:14.100 how long would you give them before you start to say hey listen guys you're part of the problem
00:15:17.740 now well we need a complete detailed plan to balance the budget immediately and why i say
00:15:22.680 right away is because well if you give them a couple years they're going to drag their feet
00:15:26.960 they're going to keep pushing the goalposts further and further it's like hey andrew i'm
00:15:30.260 to go on a diet next week yeah what happens i know i've been saying that for the last 10 years
00:15:34.440 so like so here's the thing right that's this is why it's so important to actually balance the
00:15:38.480 budget immediately stop this deep dive into debt and here's how they should do it number one stop
00:15:43.040 the wasteful spending right the fed spent eight million dollars building a barn at redo hall now 0.63
00:15:48.400 i don't know the first thing about farming but i'm pretty sure my buddies in brooks know how to build
00:15:52.520 a barn for less than eight million bucks okay then you got to go after the big things stop the
00:15:56.780 corporate welfare this government isn't seemingly giving billions of dollars to everybody and their
00:16:01.200 dog who wants to build some batteries number three you got to cut down the bureaucracy okay
00:16:05.860 the trudeau government has added a hundred thousand new bureaucrats since taking office
00:16:10.200 they've handed out a billion dollars in bonuses despite federal departments not even being able
00:16:15.740 to meet half of their own performance targets so you got the little things you got to do
00:16:18.660 and you got to do the big things right as well yeah and i mean and defunding cbc that's become
00:16:23.000 like a defund the cbc liam liam throw me throw me one of those baseball caps there i gotta
00:16:27.800 this is a new one that i haven't seen so uh there's defund the cbc and you guys also have
00:16:33.260 this one at your booth here um so it says defund the cra exactly i wish i could take credit for it
00:16:39.320 but this is actually not a ctf hat oh but let me tell you folks people are getting even more
00:16:43.920 frustrated with the cra right you got a problem good luck trying to get them on the phone um you
00:16:48.620 know we do hear more rumblings about this automatic tax filing and my first thing is like these guys
00:16:53.860 can't even do the basics things right like why do you want to give the cra more power over your
00:16:57.480 lives yeah yeah fair enough all right i thought it was yours it was on your booth but i guess it
00:17:00.660 was like a generous contribution yeah get rid of that thing all right well franco terrazano good
00:17:04.520 to see you in person sir and thanks so much for coming on i look forward to probably having you
00:17:07.560 on around the budget time oh that'd be great man thank you so much all right that was franco
00:17:10.920 terrazano federal director for the canadian taxpayers federation and like i have said time
00:17:16.700 time again a conservative man does not live on tax policy alone you can't just win an election
00:17:21.860 by trying to be a fiscal conservative i think we've seen in the past when conservatives narrow
00:17:26.260 the debate a little bit too much so i wanted to look outside of canada for this next segment
00:17:31.340 earlier today i caught up with the former prime minister of australia tony abbott
00:17:34.920 well the canada strong and free networks annual conference isn't just an assembly of
00:17:43.160 conservatives from across the country but also from around the world one of the fantastic speakers
00:17:49.180 this year kicking things off on the first night was the former prime minister of australia tony
00:17:54.680 abbott who has been an unflinching and unapologetic conservative throughout his career and as always
00:18:00.120 former politicians tend to get even more candid but he was pretty candid when he was in office as
00:18:04.400 well it's my great pleasure to have tony abbott on the show now tony thank you for being with us
00:18:09.860 And welcome to Canada.
00:18:11.240 Andrew, it's wonderful to be here.
00:18:12.900 And I've got to say, this has been a bracing and invigorating conference.
00:18:18.120 Good to see so many hundreds of often young Conservatives,
00:18:22.880 very enthusiastic and ambitious for the next government here in Canada.
00:18:28.400 Let me ask you about, and just for some context for those not familiar with Australian politics,
00:18:33.140 the Liberal Party there with a capital L is the Conservative Party with a small c.
00:18:37.940 But that party, how does it situate itself, if you were to compare it against the Tories of Canada, the Tories of Britain, and that global conservative landscape on what Australian conservatism is?
00:18:50.040 We are very much the Australian equivalent of your Conservative Party or the British Conservative Party.
00:18:56.720 But, like your party and Britain's party, we go through more conservative and more progressive phases.
00:19:03.060 under me the party was more conservative under my successor the party was less conservative
00:19:09.700 but under Peter Dutton the current leader of the Liberal National Coalition in Australia
00:19:14.540 the party I think has gone back to being a proper small c conservative party and look we're in
00:19:23.020 opposition now and as I said constantly as opposition leader the job of an opposition
00:19:29.120 is to be a strong alternative not to make weak compromises with a bad left-wing government
00:19:37.780 one of the fascinating things when we look at these shifts is that in canada there's been a
00:19:43.580 great realignment over the pandemic era and i think in australia where some of the covid
00:19:47.660 restrictions were worse than anywhere else totally over the top uh that that was a particular flash
00:19:52.660 point in canada we had the trucker protest in australia has there been a similar resurgence
00:19:56.620 from that? I think that a lot of people on the centre-right were very dismayed by the way even
00:20:06.260 supposedly conservative governments connived at restrictions on freedom and increases in the size
00:20:13.480 of government which were simply unprecedented even in wartime. So I think that the pandemic
00:20:19.820 while deeply dispiriting in so many ways and culturally weakening in so many ways has certainly
00:20:28.160 reminded conservatives of the fact that these values these important enduring I think eternal
00:20:35.480 values that are in the marrow of our bones have to be asserted and defended not watered down
00:20:43.640 because too much of that happened during the pandemic and too often that's happened
00:20:49.120 in periods of government.
00:20:51.340 We've split the difference
00:20:52.880 rather than standing up for the smaller government,
00:20:56.820 lower taxes, greater freedom,
00:20:59.060 respect for the family, small business,
00:21:03.180 and institutions that have stood the test of time.
00:21:05.980 And above all else, love of country.
00:21:08.060 Because at the heart of our political tradition
00:21:10.860 is freedom, tradition,
00:21:14.040 and above all else, patriotism.
00:21:16.700 One distinction I was wondering
00:21:18.440 if you could help demystify for for me and the audience is on firearms policy because in canada
00:21:23.800 the conservative party's position on firearms is generally about uh less controls less restrictions
00:21:29.800 certainly not the american model whereas uh some of the big gun control in australia came about
00:21:34.360 under john howard who's a otherwise very stoic stalwart conservative so how in the political
00:21:40.440 culture has that happened in a party that otherwise supports property and freedom look um
00:21:45.640 We just have a different approach to guns. We always have. Maybe it's because the settlement process was different in our country than in North America, but we've just had a different approach to guns.
00:22:05.460 and look i'm all in favor of farmers having guns if you've got a property you may have pests that
00:22:13.060 you need to shoot there may be animals that you need to put down as humanely as possible and
00:22:18.020 quickly and obviously if you've got an old 303 it's a very good way of doing that and if you're
00:22:23.380 a sporting shooter fine by all means have access to guns so i'm not in a sense anti-gun but i
00:22:30.660 I don't have this thing about an armed population.
00:22:36.640 I suspect a heavily armed population is more danger to itself than it is to any bad guys.
00:22:43.900 Let's talk about what you and Boris Johnson on Wednesday had actually a very lively and spirited exchange on,
00:22:49.860 which was climate policy.
00:22:51.000 And just for a bit of context, when we hear this discussed in Canada,
00:22:54.640 oftentimes the Liberals and the Conservatives start from the same core premise,
00:22:58.760 which is that yes climate change is serious it's predominantly caused by man we've got to reduce
00:23:03.320 emissions and they differ on on how to do that and how much to do that you went actually a step
00:23:09.160 further and challenged that core premise you said actually i'm not convinced it's predominantly
00:23:12.840 man-made and that's a position that i would love for a canadian politician to have the courage to
00:23:17.720 utter on stage well it's a position that i've pretty consistently had when i was prime minister
00:23:25.480 i had a little mantra if you like and my mantra was climate change happens we have to assume that
00:23:33.080 mankind makes a contribution we should do what we can to reduce emissions but not if it costs jobs
00:23:40.120 drives industries offshore and adds to people's cost of living now we know that climate changes
00:23:48.760 the ice ages classic case of climate change the roman warm period the medieval warm period
00:23:55.240 classic cases of climate change and ask yourself what caused them i mean seriously ask yourself
00:24:02.200 what caused the ice age now it plainly wasn't mankind's carbon dioxide emissions because there
00:24:08.440 were hardly any of us there was no factories or anything like that now if the most dramatic
00:24:15.160 example of climate change that we're familiar with had absolutely nothing to do with mankind's
00:24:20.360 emissions obviously there are many factors in climate change and there's no real reason to think
00:24:26.840 that the most significant one is mankind's carbon dioxide so look on on sort of good
00:24:36.120 prudential principles and as someone who appreciates we've only got one planet we've
00:24:41.720 got to look after it i'm all in favor of resting lightly on it but it's not just sensible in fact
00:24:50.040 its utter folly to turn our world upside down in this mania for reducing emissions why shouldn't
00:24:58.440 we continue to drive v8 cars why shouldn't we continue to eat beef why shouldn't we continue to
00:25:05.240 enrich our countries and help other countries by mining and exporting coal and by drilling and
00:25:12.440 exporting gas. Why shouldn't we keep flying for business and pleasure? And what's behind
00:25:22.540 a lot of the more extreme climate activism is actually a hatred for our way of life.
00:25:28.320 And in many ways, this is a cause that's been adopted by quasi-Marxists who have been much
00:25:35.300 more successful at getting the middle class to revolt in the name of saving the planet 0.93
00:25:40.680 than they ever were, getting the working class to revolt in the name of economic equality.
00:25:46.100 And where I really diverge with Boris Johnson's perspective on this
00:25:49.860 is that he distilled it to the old thought experiment of Pascal's Wager,
00:25:53.380 where he said, you know, maybe it's true, maybe it's not true,
00:25:56.420 maybe it's really bad, maybe it's not.
00:25:57.980 But effectively, he said it costs us nothing to act as though...
00:26:01.440 Which is complete nonsense.
00:26:02.440 This is where his argument completely fell down,
00:26:06.020 where the analogy didn't work because it's cost us already trillions of dollars to make
00:26:15.860 all these changes to combat climate change, as we think. And to what end and to what benefit?
00:26:25.420 Emissions are going up because whatever India and China say, for all sorts of reasons,
00:26:31.340 quite sensible reasons they are continuing to burn coal to to use gas to use oil and frankly
00:26:39.540 modern life is absolutely impossible without fossil fuels at enormous expense and massive
00:26:48.220 inconvenience and economic weakening and strategic weakening of ourselves we could move to wind and
00:26:56.400 solar power. But we can't do without steel. We can't do without plastic. We can't do without
00:27:03.780 fertilizer. And these are all critically dependent on fossil fuels. And there is no likely medium
00:27:13.040 term substitute without, again, massive expense. And this idea that we should impoverish ourselves
00:27:20.380 in the name of reducing emissions when nothing we do in our countries is going to make a
00:27:25.980 difference to overall levels of carbon dioxide because China and India are not doing the same
00:27:31.980 thing. It's it's crackers. It's absolute crackers. It's an act of economic and ultimately social and
00:27:41.920 strategic self-harm. And the sooner we wake up to ourselves, the better. But I notice just
00:27:49.620 overnight the un climate chief has set a new deadline of doom we've got just two years oh
00:27:56.980 only two years now to save the planet well i mean all these deadlines have come and gone
00:28:01.540 uh and the planet seems to be rocking along yes yes uh we're still here and and the very best
00:28:12.180 thing we can do to deal with whatever comes including any changes in climate down the track
00:28:18.900 is to keep ourselves strong and free.
00:28:22.980 That's what we should do, keep ourselves strong and free.
00:28:27.140 And policy that makes us less strong and ultimately less free
00:28:30.920 is no good thing, whatever the supposed justification.
00:28:35.800 Perhaps you can explain from your experience as a head of government
00:28:38.820 how politicians who are elected in Western democracies around the world
00:28:42.980 from liberal parties, conservative parties, more socialist parties,
00:28:46.580 all tend to sound the same when they're at the global forums and the global summits talking about this.
00:28:51.660 I mean, the Paris Agreement, the COP summits, I mean, even Boris Johnson when the UK was hosting the COP summit.
00:28:57.920 It seems like all of these domestic realities tend to lose when that amorphous global community gets together. 1.00
00:29:04.060 Well, let me tell you this, Andrew.
00:29:06.980 Lots of people in my party, when I became opposition leader back in 2009,
00:29:12.560 and lots of people in the commentariat said that I was unelectable,
00:29:16.580 because I wasn't prepared to accept the consensus, in inverted commas, on climate change.
00:29:25.460 And what I was able to do as opposition leader, and I think to some extent as prime minister as well,
00:29:32.860 was to turn this from an environmental issue and a moral issue into an economic issue and a pragmatic issue.
00:29:41.020 Which is what it is for ordinary people.
00:29:42.720 And let me point this out to the benefit of any nervous Canadian Conservatives.
00:29:52.260 Three elections in Australia were largely fought on the issue of climate and our response to climate
00:29:58.260 and energy resulting from climate policies.
00:30:02.080 2010, 2013 and 2019.
00:30:05.540 And in every single one of them, the more sceptical party did extremely well
00:30:11.060 and campaigning against a carbon tax,
00:30:15.080 I won a landslide victory in 2013.
00:30:20.200 Sure, if you look at the opinion polls,
00:30:23.160 people will say we want to see emissions reduced
00:30:26.400 and we think climate change is important.
00:30:29.240 But if you then ask them how much are they prepared to pay,
00:30:32.340 $100, $1,000, $1 million,
00:30:34.800 the answer is we are not prepared to pay.
00:30:37.460 And this is why the green zealots, the climate cultists, 0.97
00:30:41.060 have constantly promised us
00:30:43.500 that renewable energy is cheap, even free.
00:30:48.060 Well, it might be cheap when the sun is shining
00:30:50.980 and the wind is blowing,
00:30:52.360 but we need electricity 24-7.
00:30:55.520 And that means that intermittent wind and solar power
00:30:59.640 has always got to be backed up at massive expense,
00:31:02.800 at massive expense,
00:31:04.740 and as well, you need a gargantuan new transmission grid
00:31:10.160 transmission system to cope with this decentralized grid. But all of the new
00:31:17.320 transmission infrastructure is only being used 30% of the time, given that it's only on average
00:31:23.360 30% of the time that the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. And I think the caution in that
00:31:29.340 in and we saw this in the Canadian election in 2021, where a conservative party tried to
00:31:35.140 do the carbon tax thing and was resoundingly defeated because voters didn't want it, didn't
00:31:40.320 buy it, and if they wanted that, they would have voted for the left in general. 0.63
00:31:42.820 Politics is a contest. It's a contest of ideas. And quite apart from the fact that I think that
00:31:48.820 carbon taxes and this whole emissions obsession is wrong in principle, absolutely wrong in
00:31:55.420 principle, why would you do something that's wrong in principle, which actually blurs the
00:32:02.300 difference between you and the other side of politics particularly given that these emissions
00:32:08.400 obsessive policies are so damaging to aspirational working class people who need their pickup truck
00:32:18.480 who want to heat their house in winter and cool their house in summer who want to have a good
00:32:25.700 honest blue collar job in a car factory or a steel mill or a timber mill or something like that. I
00:32:33.540 mean, you know, why are we attacking the working class the way we are? And one of the reasons why 0.94
00:32:40.140 over the last generation, you've seen more, if you like, poorer people moving to the right
00:32:48.540 and richer people moving to the green left is because in the end, this whole climate thing
00:32:54.680 is the ultimate first world problem when you don't have anything else to fret about
00:32:59.600 you suddenly worry about maybe the planet might be a couple of degrees warmer in three or four
00:33:08.220 decades time well look maybe it will maybe it won't if it is I think it's unlikely to be mankind
00:33:17.880 that's driven that much more likely to be sunspot activities or oscillations in the earth's orbit
00:33:23.400 around the sun, and given that there are other far more pressing problems right now, in particular
00:33:30.700 Islamist aggression in the Middle East, in particular the ongoing aggression by dictatorships
00:33:40.880 such as Russia and the Chinese communists, we have challenges all around the world right 0.50
00:33:48.680 now, and the last thing we should be doing is weakening ourselves in dealing with those
00:33:53.360 challenges by obsessing over climate i mean ask yourself this are the ukrainians worried about
00:33:58.960 their emissions at the moment are the israelis thinking about how we can put in more wind and
00:34:06.480 solar power no they have got existential issues to worry about and we have to remember that we're not
00:34:14.960 necessarily entirely free of having to deal with the same things ourselves just in closing tony
00:34:20.640 you've spent now a few days with canadian conservatives what can the australian right
00:34:24.960 perhaps learn from canada and what can the canadian right learn from australia
00:34:29.920 well i hope that people in canada might look at my experience in opposition and in government
00:34:39.040 and be confident that you can take on tough issues go against the elite consensus and win
00:34:46.320 thumping majority and without wanting to put tickets on myself so far the abbot government
00:34:55.600 is the only government in the world that has repealed a carbon tax and which stopped successfully
00:35:02.720 stopped a wave of illegal migration by small boat and if we can do it others can do it now as for
00:35:11.920 Canada teaching us good lessons. I'm really impressed at the way Pierre Polivare has really
00:35:21.840 galvanized conservatives in this country. And I can sense at conferences like this,
00:35:28.160 a real passion and a strong ambition to get into government and to make a difference. Now,
00:35:35.920 I think that Canada has to some extent been in the doldrums one way or another for the last decade.
00:35:41.920 So I think it needs reinvigoration, but there's a real sense of purpose about your opposition leader
00:35:51.620 and a real sense of enthusiasm at conferences like this.
00:35:55.560 And frankly, the Anglosphere needs a strong conservative government to succeed
00:36:03.860 because it's a while since we've had one which has unambiguously succeeded
00:36:09.560 and let's hope Canada is the start of a new wave.
00:36:13.580 Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, thank you so much, sir.
00:36:16.420 Thank you.
00:36:18.540 The former Prime Minister of Australia, an Anglophile,
00:36:21.980 a big advocate for the Conservative movement,
00:36:23.980 not just in his own country but around the world.
00:36:26.320 And I would also point out there that you can agree or disagree with his position on it,
00:36:30.700 but there's something in politics that we often call the Overton window,
00:36:34.140 which is in society really the realm of acceptable opinions within civil discourse.
00:36:39.280 And I think Tony Abbott has done a lot in Australia, and even he's shared it in that interview, to kind of extend the boundaries of that so that you can have certain discussions that, again, even in a Canadian political context, you'd be unlikely to see from any party.
00:36:52.100 So perhaps some lessons there that politicians can take.
00:36:55.880 But what a wonderful warm-up act Tony Abbott is to my next guest, Paige McPherson, who is with the Fraser Institute.
00:37:03.040 She's an expert and all-seeing eye on all things education.
00:37:05.960 We've had her on the show a number of times on this,
00:37:07.880 and I wanted to take it in a little bit of a broader way today
00:37:10.540 and talk about education and educational policy
00:37:14.020 in a context of family policy
00:37:16.580 and an issue that we'll be touching on as well with Ginny Roth
00:37:19.460 in an interview that we'll share with you next week.
00:37:21.800 But Paige McPherson, always good to see you.
00:37:23.720 Thanks so much for coming on today.
00:37:25.040 Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Andrew.
00:37:26.460 You and I have spoken because you're a great advocate for school choice,
00:37:29.520 for parents to have choices to send their kids to schools,
00:37:32.000 not just this weird binary that we have in Ontario
00:37:34.920 where you can do, you know, public or Catholic,
00:37:37.440 but in Alberta, perhaps, where you have charter schools,
00:37:40.160 you have this independent schooling mentality
00:37:42.380 baked into the public system.
00:37:44.920 I was wondering if you could extend that a little bit
00:37:46.520 because you touched on it in a discussion here
00:37:48.640 about really what choices are available,
00:37:51.220 and I'd say more pressingly what choices aren't available
00:37:53.700 to families and mothers who make a lot of these decisions.
00:37:57.240 Yeah, absolutely.
00:37:58.120 So, you know, I think that it's important to kind of frame it
00:38:01.600 in the question of do families and women, if you want to talk about it from a sort of female 0.60
00:38:06.760 empowerment point of view, do we actually have the freedom to make the choices that we want to make
00:38:11.660 with our kids from day one, looking at sort of family policy, maternity leave, where you're going
00:38:17.200 to send your kids to child care, and then, of course, as they get older, where you're going to
00:38:21.040 send your kids to school. And in certain provinces, as you've mentioned, when it comes to educational
00:38:25.620 choice, as an example, in the Maritimes, where I live, and in Ontario, where you live, no,
00:38:30.320 Educational choice is extremely limited.
00:38:32.820 In Quebec and in Western Canada, from Manitoba West,
00:38:36.840 yeah, you've got more funded options.
00:38:38.780 A portion of the parents' tax dollars will follow their children to the school of their choice.
00:38:44.200 But I think it's an important question to ask right now in the context of the rising cost of living.
00:38:50.440 Even when these choice avenues are available through policy,
00:38:55.060 it's still a lot easier to make the prescribed government choice.
00:38:58.780 So in the context of child care policy, with the new government day care program, that's sending your child to a $10 a day subsidized day care center.
00:39:07.280 In the context of schools, that's sending your child to the local government public school.
00:39:11.960 And of course, you can make another choice for your family.
00:39:16.060 But looking at the data and asking the question, how easy and how feasible actually is it to make those choices for many families, I think is another question altogether.
00:39:24.140 And certainly when you talk about it in a healthcare context, and I've had this discussion with some of your colleagues at the Fraser Institute, we see that universalization limits choice. It limits options. And anytime government tries to take this universal approach to something, it ends up where you have this one-size-fits-all position.
00:39:40.240 And I think the Ontario schooling example and the Eastern Canada schooling example is there.
00:39:44.140 That's kind of the child care approach as well.
00:39:45.880 All of a sudden you force people into this government constraint.
00:39:49.620 And, you know, I'm wondering how we break out of that.
00:39:51.760 Because I can't imagine if you went around and polled the average parent that you would get much resistance if you said,
00:39:57.860 hey, should you have more choice?
00:39:59.480 Should you have more options?
00:40:00.400 You're not saying you have to take your kid out of the public system.
00:40:03.540 And yet still these policies are pretty firmly in place in these provinces.
00:40:07.620 So I know in health care why that happens, because people have this very fearful scenario that any change to the status quo will mean a dilution of care, a dilution of access, a dilution of being able to get something at low or no cost.
00:40:22.520 Is that the same thing in health care? Is that why nothing's really changing?
00:40:26.220 Well, I think an interesting distinction between education and child care policy and then health care policy in Canada is that in Canada in health care,
00:40:33.440 You often don't have any other option unless you're going to go to another country to seek that option, right?
00:40:38.360 Yeah, the out-of-pocket private school doesn't exist for health care.
00:40:41.220 Exactly. So, yes, there are independent schools in Canada.
00:40:43.620 There are child care options you're permitted by the government to do, right?
00:40:47.720 You can send your child to a private day home, for example, that doesn't fall under the government regulation and subsidy program.
00:40:53.800 You can get an aunt or a grandmother to work less and, you know, split child care with you.
00:40:58.580 You can choose to stay home with your children.
00:41:01.400 It's just it's become very difficult to make that choice, to take the road less traveled.
00:41:07.740 That isn't the government avenue that they've created by this massive expanding state, essentially, becomes difficult.
00:41:16.120 And that's for a number of reasons.
00:41:17.500 On the one hand, if you look at child care policy, for example, OK, if you're going to go back to work when you have a child and you're going to need child care for them, you probably are going to make more than $10 a day.
00:41:30.480 right? And if you've got a $10 a day daycare option, then sending your child to that daycare
00:41:35.940 is probably going to be the financially better scenario for you in the short term. Even if it's
00:41:41.400 not really your preferred option, even if as a woman, you'd love to stay home in the early years
00:41:45.460 with your child, it becomes less expensive in the shorter term for you to do that. The other thing
00:41:51.120 is that when you have these massively expanding government programs, you've got the debt and tax
00:41:55.760 burden to go along with that. We know that government spending is at record highs. We
00:42:00.940 know that debt interest payments at the government level that Canadians are of course responsible
00:42:05.800 for paying via their taxes, they're at record highs. We know that the debt or rather the
00:42:12.060 tax burden for Canadian families, that Canadian families on average are now spending more
00:42:16.580 of their income on taxes than they are on the necessities of life on food, clothing
00:42:22.020 and shelter. And you've been to a grocery store, you know that you're spending a heck
00:42:24.980 of a lot of money on food clothing and shelter not to mention housing costs right but you're
00:42:29.380 still spending on average about 45 percent of your income on taxes and that's to pay for these
00:42:34.660 large government programs so again yes in theory you can send your child to a different child care
00:42:41.060 option you can make that choice for your family you can send your child to an independent school
00:42:44.840 that you're going to have to pay for in ontario where the maritime is fully out of pocket but
00:42:48.500 even in alberta you're going to have to pay some cost in addition to you know the tax dollars that
00:42:53.700 following your child to that school so it really becomes the question of okay families can in theory
00:43:00.500 make this choice but how realistic is it well and i think that it touches on an important point
00:43:05.860 because i i was raised i went briefly to a catholic school in ontario which is part of the
00:43:09.860 the public system and then i did most of my schooling uh primary and your elementary and
00:43:14.500 secondary in the public school and i had always been raised with this mindset that a private school
00:43:20.340 was really just a wealthy elite thing that you do it because you could and
00:43:23.940 it was only older that i started to realize that there are different motivations for it and actually
00:43:28.900 you and i have spoken about some of the data on this overwhelmingly the people that choose private
00:43:32.740 schooling options or homeschooling are certainly not wealthy and they do it because they feel that
00:43:37.860 their needs are not being met by the public school system either their needs on a quality of education
00:43:43.140 or or even the content of education and i think that part's also missing is why parents feel so
00:43:48.660 underserved or unserved by the public system in the first place yeah it's a great point so we have
00:43:54.400 research on this particularly in alberta and bc where we drill down on the average incomes of
00:43:59.540 families who send their kids to independent schools or send their kids to the government
00:44:02.720 public schools and really those incomes end up being extremely similar especially when you remove
00:44:09.120 the very small proportion of independent schools that are those sort of elite prep schools that
00:44:15.220 sometimes that's the image that is sometimes yeah that was all i thought a private school was for
00:44:19.600 most of my life right so and but but in reality as you say you know the majority of of independent
00:44:24.280 schools in canada are cultural or religious schools you know you've got schools that are
00:44:29.060 have a typical or an interesting sort of philosophical approach like a montessori school
00:44:33.640 waldorf school that a forest school is a growing movement in canada so elite prep schools is
00:44:38.200 actually quite a small proportion of that but what's interesting i think about what you're
00:44:42.080 saying is that a lot of people don't know that the sort of government avenue is not going to be the
00:44:47.920 best choice for their family until they take it right until they have their child in a government
00:44:51.740 public school classroom and they realize okay this is not working my it could be for a whole
00:44:56.660 number of reasons right we hear from people who are experiencing bullying or violence
00:45:00.240 in school and it's just not the right fit for them it's the the curriculum is not getting to
00:45:05.300 them they're not reading they're not able to to do math they may maybe have a different learning
00:45:09.360 style maybe they have special education needs there's a whole host of reasons why families
00:45:15.040 might decide that the government public school is not the best fit for their child and want
00:45:20.000 to put them in another school and they might not realize that right off the hop but once
00:45:25.000 they do realize that the idea that only a family that is of significant means that can
00:45:30.800 afford a nanny or can afford to pay out of pocket for independent school tuition on top
00:45:36.420 of paying for subsidized daycare and government schools for everybody else and you know via their
00:45:41.700 very large tax burden that we've already discussed that's really not fair if that your family really
00:45:46.900 shouldn't have to have that level of income um to be able to do that what is interesting though in
00:45:53.060 our data as well is that a lot of families they're certainly not wealthy they're making these choices
00:45:58.180 they involve tremendous sacrifices and they're still making those choices we know that homeschooling
00:46:04.260 is going up as a share of students in nine out of ten provinces.
00:46:08.260 We know that independent schools' enrolment is growing as a proportion of total students
00:46:13.260 in every single province in the country.
00:46:14.860 So people are making these choices despite the cost of living going up,
00:46:18.720 but we also know that it involves a tremendous level of sacrifice for a lot of these families.
00:46:22.360 I know your focus is on the policy and not the politics,
00:46:24.880 but is there any real movement in any province?
00:46:28.460 Let me back up.
00:46:29.500 Is this issue on the agenda for any opposition parties in any province in Canada?
00:46:34.020 Is there any movement to the status quo that's really being championed anywhere?
00:46:38.880 I mean, so like you said, I mean, I really look at the policy, not the politics as much.
00:46:43.520 I mean, I know Danielle Smith in Alberta has talked about potentially expanding school choice in that province.
00:46:48.160 But they're already the one that's furthest ahead, right?
00:46:49.960 I know, they offer already the most choice.
00:46:51.540 There's no one in Ontario trying to blow up the system here, and certainly in your province, I don't think there is either.
00:46:55.800 No, there's really not a lot of movement, but there are a lot of parents that are dissatisfied, I think, with what their kids are getting in government public school.
00:47:01.680 You know, there's a lot of parents that are, they want to have more of an ability to be active in their child's school, to be informed about what their child is learning in school, understand, again, and this is one of those things that sometimes you don't realize it's an issue until it's too late.
00:47:16.360 Your child is suddenly entering third grade, and they can't read, and that's the critical age at which we know it switches from learning to read to reading to learn.
00:47:24.960 Your child's going to have to know how to read in order to succeed educationally, and yet here you are, and you don't have any other options.
00:47:31.680 So, of course, there's a lot of parents, and I would say there is, you know, in political terms, the political constituency there that absolutely does care about this issue.
00:47:41.040 And sometimes it's just the case that people don't really even know that there are these other options.
00:47:45.840 I don't know that people in Nova Scotia necessarily know the educational choice policy structure in British Columbia, right?
00:47:51.980 And so, of course, that's a part of the work that we do.
00:47:53.840 Well, we look forward to seeing more of it.
00:47:56.040 You always produce very interesting facts and figures on this.
00:47:58.560 Paige McPherson from the Fraser Institute, always a pleasure.
00:48:01.280 Thank you so much.
00:48:02.100 All right.
00:48:02.540 Thank you very much, Paige.
00:48:04.240 We will certainly check in on that.
00:48:06.020 And as I said, on Monday, we're going to have a discussion with Ginny Roth on birth rates,
00:48:11.220 which are a very key part of this.
00:48:12.940 And basically, what, if anything, government and governments should be doing to start promoting families.
00:48:19.240 And a lot of what Paige was talking about there was the idea of family first policy.
00:48:23.140 It's not government centrally planning the composition or structure of family.
00:48:26.560 It's about giving options or at the very least not taking options away.
00:48:30.540 But in the vein of birth rates, we can't talk about Canada's population
00:48:33.860 without talking about immigration, which has long been relied on
00:48:36.960 as really the lone avenue for population growth in this country.
00:48:41.380 We hear time and time again politicians say, well, birth rates are too low,
00:48:44.720 we've got to boost our numbers through immigration.
00:48:46.780 And as we've seen in the last couple of weeks in particular,
00:48:50.300 Canada's immigration has led to an unsustainable path. 0.98
00:48:53.800 We have the federal government itself even admitting that it has had far beyond,
00:48:58.720 those were its words, far beyond what Canada is able to absorb
00:49:01.840 in terms of temporary residents combined with new permanent residents.
00:49:05.500 And to give you some context on this,
00:49:07.220 government has committed to about half a million new permanent residents a year,
00:49:10.540 but the number of new temporary residents a year is over a million,
00:49:14.620 and that includes foreign students, temporary foreign workers,
00:49:18.020 people that come in through other channels.
00:49:19.760 So you have a large volume of people coming to Canada
00:49:22.520 and a country that economically cannot sustain even those who are here already.
00:49:27.540 So let's talk about this in context of what a conservative government would do about it.
00:49:31.820 I spoke about this with Pierre Pollyev in December,
00:49:34.680 and he was hesitant to give a specific figure for what a conservative government would advance.
00:49:39.880 But he also did say there'd be a formula in place,
00:49:42.800 and I wanted to delve into that a bit more detail with the Conservatives' immigration critic, Tom Kamich.
00:49:51.260 I'm speaking right now with the Conservative immigration critic,
00:49:54.840 Also, Calgary MP, the MP for Calgary Shepherd, Tom Kamich.
00:49:58.760 Tom, always good to talk to you.
00:49:59.860 Thanks for joining me.
00:50:01.180 Thanks, Andrew.
00:50:01.700 Thanks for having me.
00:50:02.480 So, obviously, immigration has become a hot-button issue in politics.
00:50:06.240 What's been fascinating is how the Liberals have decided to do a complete about-face
00:50:10.740 on what's really been their position for quite some time.
00:50:13.980 How did you feel when you got that concession from Justin Trudeau
00:50:17.020 within the last couple of weeks that Canada has actually bungled this,
00:50:21.760 that Canada has actually admitted through temporary residency
00:50:24.880 far more than what he said the country could absorb.
00:50:28.600 So, I mean, it's a bit ridiculous for the Prime Minister to claim
00:50:31.020 that he suddenly discovered that things aren't going the way that he maybe thought that it was.
00:50:36.100 He's the one that's been appointing all these immigration ministers.
00:50:39.080 I guess he doesn't read any of the briefing notes or documents that come up his way.
00:50:41.960 We found that out at the inquiry.
00:50:43.340 He doesn't read national security documents.
00:50:45.080 He's not reading immigration documents. It's obvious.
00:50:47.520 And, you know, this is just a continuation,
00:50:48.940 because back in august when he reshuffled his own cabinet you had this bizarre situation where the
00:50:53.900 previous immigration minister could not let go of his department he was saying that things are a
00:50:58.460 mess that's a direct quote and the new minister said things are out of control and they've been
00:51:02.780 fighting it out in public between the senior immigration minister and the junior immigration
00:51:06.700 minister and other prime ministers weighed in and accused this government of basically failing on
00:51:10.780 the job that they they're not competent obviously except he's the one that's appointed everybody
00:51:15.740 He's been in charge for almost nine years now, and they broke the immigration system. 0.78
00:51:19.580 It's nice of him to recognize that he broke it.
00:51:21.940 Pierre Polyev, on my show and now elsewhere, has talked about what his approach to immigration will be.
00:51:27.000 He said that immigration should be tied to a couple of key indicators,
00:51:30.300 such as job availability, health care resources, and also, I think, in general,
00:51:35.600 when you're looking at just the well-being of the country,
00:51:37.740 those economic focal points have been where he's gone.
00:51:40.740 Can you give any more clarity on what a conservative immigration plan would look like
00:51:45.280 and a platform or what you would like to do in a Conservative government on this?
00:51:49.900 So, I mean, what I'd love to do in a Conservative government
00:51:52.160 is help the next immigration minister figure out what the formula should be.
00:51:56.660 And right now it's, you know, broad terms,
00:51:58.420 health care, housing, jobs, equals, that will be whatever it equals to.
00:52:03.040 And then we'll have to create that, you know,
00:52:05.480 very objective way of calculating how many people should be allowed to be in Canada
00:52:11.280 to be working here, studying here, reuniting with families,
00:52:14.960 all of it, all of it together.
00:52:16.640 And I think those are three very reasonable metrics to have.
00:52:19.540 And what are the inputs into those metrics,
00:52:21.940 like how exactly we'll look at closer to the election,
00:52:24.560 we'll obviously give it to the public so they can make a determination.
00:52:27.800 Do we have a better way of doing and managing our immigration system 0.99
00:52:30.900 or do they prefer the chaos and the brokenness
00:52:33.600 that the Liberals have created over eight years?
00:52:35.660 If that calculation leads to a permanent resident number
00:52:38.880 that is lower than the target now,
00:52:40.780 is that something that you would be willing to stand behind?
00:52:42.960 So it's going to be more than just permanent immigration.
00:52:45.140 It's going to be also temporary resident immigration because the problem isn't the permanent residency ones.
00:52:50.720 Like those PR numbers are often quoted by individuals in Canada.
00:52:54.440 About 45 to 55 percent of those, depending on the year, actually people who are physically in Canada already,
00:53:00.500 they're just changing their status from studying, from working here on a temporary foreign work permit,
00:53:05.300 and they're becoming permanent residents of Canada, hopefully on their pathway to becoming citizens and, you know, joining the Canadian family.
00:53:11.000 So half of those are already here.
00:53:12.740 We're talking about everybody.
00:53:13.920 It will be an all-encompassing number, including everyone.
00:53:17.000 So I don't want to limit it just to PRs.
00:53:19.180 But to be direct about that, do you think that number is going to have to be lower than what it is right now?
00:53:23.660 It'll be whatever it comes out to, that will be the number.
00:53:25.780 If it's lower, it's lower.
00:53:26.960 If it's higher, it's higher.
00:53:28.300 But we see what the housing construction is looking like.
00:53:31.940 The number is going down in terms of the number of dwellings being completed per year.
00:53:35.860 Health care services are stretched in some provinces, sometimes beyond the limit.
00:53:39.900 That's what I heard in Vancouver when I was there a few weeks ago.
00:53:42.280 That's what I hear in Toronto when I'm there.
00:53:44.020 Like, we don't have a family doctor crisis in Calgary.
00:53:47.080 There are actually signs saying family doctors accepting new patients.
00:53:50.260 So this is my pitch to your listeners and viewers.
00:53:52.580 Like, if you want a family doctor, know Calgary is a beautiful place.
00:53:55.340 It's the most beautiful city in Canada that they can move and find a family doctor.
00:53:59.400 But also jobs, job vacancy rates, job unemployment rates.
00:54:02.960 In specific sectors of the economy are looking for more people than others, such as construction.
00:54:08.540 All of that will be affected.
00:54:09.640 There'll be a total number at the end, and that will be the final number.
00:54:13.140 Do you think that it's reasonable to restrict the immigration calculation to economic indicators?
00:54:18.140 I know the previous Conservative government looked at values-based things,
00:54:21.660 and certainly since October 7th, we've seen some examples of people
00:54:26.460 where there is not a consensus on core beliefs.
00:54:28.940 And I'm wondering how that would factor into your ideal scenario for immigration.
00:54:32.760 I'm always worried about introducing things that are not fixed, like values,
00:54:36.260 because that should be a specific society to decide.
00:54:38.440 Like, I don't want my government determining which values it supports, which doesn't.
00:54:42.460 And the reason I don't like it is because for the last nine years, that's the Liberal government of Canada.
00:54:46.840 That's what they've been doing.
00:54:47.920 They've been telling you if you ran, you know, a school camp program and you thought that it should be based on, like, Bible teachings,
00:54:55.380 that you were a bad person and they applied a values attestation test to whether you could receive a bit of taxpayer funds to hire a couple of camp councillors.
00:55:03.200 and if you were running you know like a resettlement program they made you tell
00:55:06.920 them do you support certain values or not so that's what I'm always worried
00:55:10.640 about is when you allow the government to determine which values it's going to
00:55:13.820 promote which it doesn't then you get the Liberal Party of Canada doing what
00:55:16.760 it's done for the past nine years so I believe like things like health care
00:55:20.480 housing jobs all Canadians can get behind that and be like yeah those are
00:55:24.020 reasonable objective metrics there's no subjectivity to them you either have
00:55:28.160 those services or you don't and there'll be a number and we can then debate
00:55:31.360 whether the inputs are correct or not and then it's a debate about what are the inputs that
00:55:36.000 should be going into it you want more immigration build more housing get the policies into place to
00:55:40.640 make housing cheaper so that people can get into more housing you want more doctors more
00:55:44.960 healthcare services well make it easier for doctors to practice we have over 20 000 internationally
00:55:49.120 trained doctors who cannot practice their profession in fact there are less doctors
00:55:53.200 practicing today than there were like 20 30 40 years ago as a percentage out of it like per
00:55:58.640 thousand uh and same thing for nurses there's over i think 32 000 internationally trained nurses who 0.98
00:56:04.080 can't practice the profession the occupation that they love because colleges are blocking them from
00:56:08.880 doing so so the country of origin lost a nurse we didn't gain a nurse we just have people who
00:56:13.280 are disgruntled because they can't practice their profession likely working a survival job
00:56:18.720 election currently scheduled for fall of 2025 if you had your way when would you be going to the
00:56:23.360 the polls uh the same thing my constituents are saying immediately right now non-confidence as
00:56:29.080 many non-confidence votes as it takes to topple the government let's have an election a carbon
00:56:33.100 tax election and let the liberals defend raising the cost of living on everyone tom committs thank
00:56:37.660 you thank you andrew that was my interview with the conservative immigration critic calgary shepherd
00:56:45.040 mp tom committs now one thing i'll point out there is that the conservative's position now
00:56:50.280 which is we won an election yesterday, is a nice departure from in 2021 where Justin Trudeau called an election and the Conservatives were wondering why.
00:56:57.980 And they're like, no, no, no, stay in power. You're doing a great job. We don't we don't want to campaign right now.
00:57:02.140 So that is in and of itself quite interesting.
00:57:04.600 And it's the Liberals who are a bit hesitant to go to the polls, perhaps because the polls show their numbers to be lower than Stephen Gilbeau's IQ,
00:57:12.460 which is actually quite a feat if you think about it. But that's actually the real net zero, by the way, Stephen Gilbeau's IQ.
00:57:18.300 But one thing I wanted to talk about on this is that this is the first time I've heard a Conservative official, a senior Conservative MP, talk about the possibility that Canada's immigration targets could be lower.
00:57:30.660 Now, he says, look, we'll run the formula. If it's lower, it's lower, it's higher, it's higher.
00:57:34.380 But they're actually willing at this point to say what Pierre Polyev didn't really, when I spoke to him in December about this, admit that that could be lower.
00:57:42.660 So I think that in and of itself has been a movement, and I think it's also a sign that the immigration consensus in Canada has shifted dramatically on this.
00:57:50.920 Again, when the Liberals came out in, I forget it was, beginning of last week or two weeks ago, and said what a lot of Canadians have said, which is, okay, we've got a little bit of a crunch here.
00:58:00.820 We don't have enough houses. We don't have enough jobs. We don't have enough in the way of health care resources.
00:58:05.620 That is a big problem. But the Liberal problem here is that they are neglecting to address the fact that they have been the ones at the helm.
00:58:13.580 They've been the ones there in power for the last eight years. So any problems that exist have happened on their watch.
00:58:20.740 Now, I wanted to, as we wrap up our week here at the Canada Strong and Free Network's annual conference in Ottawa,
00:58:26.420 just share a bit of a final thought, if you will, because it's been a great time.
00:58:30.300 And I've met a lot of people that are big members and supporters of True North Nation out there
00:58:34.860 and have had lots of great things to say about our work and our coverage and our team,
00:58:38.840 and I'm so grateful for that.
00:58:40.680 This is an event that I realize is only a subset of the conservative movement.
00:58:44.900 I had a message from someone yesterday, actually, that took a very anti-CSFN look
00:58:49.120 and said, well, this is just for the rich who can go to Ottawa.
00:58:51.680 And I'd say it's actually for the, what is it, if you like pain, are you a sadist or a masochist?
00:58:57.240 I always forget, but I think you're a sadist, whatever one,
00:59:00.320 whatever one means you like inflicting pain, that's the type of person that goes to Ottawa voluntarily.
00:59:04.160 But the thing about it that I will point out here is that there is a group that comes here,
00:59:09.800 and you've obviously got your lobbyists and your political staffers and your politicos,
00:59:13.160 but I have met people that are more grassroots populist from the West.
00:59:17.280 I've met people that are young up-and-comers, keen conservatives.
00:59:20.600 I've met Red Tories.
00:59:21.540 So there is a coalition here, but I'm very keenly aware of the fact that the people I've been meeting in the halls here
00:59:26.720 do not represent the totality of the right-of-center movement.
00:59:30.560 And by that, I include, you know, the red Tory, blue Tory, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives, fiscal hawks, property rights, rurals, all of these types of people that I think are a part of this coalition in the country that doesn't often agree on everything and in some cases might not even agree on most things.
00:59:49.080 And what's fascinating is that everyone has their red line.
00:59:52.800 And over the course of the pandemic, we saw a lot of people who might be economic socialists
00:59:57.620 that saw their red line was personal freedom and bodily autonomy.
01:00:01.080 People that would never identify as being on the right that all of a sudden found no home on the left
01:00:06.880 because of what that was happening through the COVID era.
01:00:09.400 I did an interview earlier with a former Liberal member of Parliament, Dan McTagg,
01:00:13.540 that I'll share with you next week, in which he talks about his departure from the Liberal Party.
01:00:17.660 But as he describes it, it was actually the Liberal Party's departure from him.
01:00:22.300 And I think that's a fascinating thing we need to keep an eye on in the conservative movement and coalition.
01:00:27.500 Now, just to do the shameless plug here, I have a biography coming out in the next month about conservative leader Pierre Polyev.
01:00:34.720 And one of the fascinating things I sort of touched on in that book, I think it's fascinating anyway,
01:00:39.700 is that Polyev's development as a politician, as a political leader,
01:00:44.380 has really tracked the development and evolution of the modern conservative movement.
01:00:49.080 He was a young reform activist in Alberta in the 1990s.
01:00:52.760 He was part of the fight to change that into the Reform Party.
01:00:55.440 He was part of the fight to merge the Reform Alliance Party with the PC Party
01:01:00.160 and then form the Conservative Party of Canada,
01:01:02.640 which he contested a seat in as he was elected and was a member of parliament
01:01:06.720 and has been for the 20 years that party has been in existence.
01:01:10.640 So that's in and of itself a fascinating story here.
01:01:13.760 And you look at how Preston Manning, who founded the Canada Strong and Free Network
01:01:17.600 as the Manning Centre some years back, how Preston Manning has influenced this.
01:01:22.040 So I don't think it's an elite gathering.
01:01:23.980 I think you can say it's a gathering that has some elites,
01:01:26.000 just as the Conservative movement in this country has some elites.
01:01:29.320 But one thing that is fascinating here is the level of enthusiasm and momentum.
01:01:33.940 It has been a very dark period of time for people that don't like Justin Trudeau for the last several years
01:01:39.140 because they keep seeing Justin Trudeau get elected and re-elected and re-elected and wonder how.
01:01:44.420 This past year has been the first time I've seen a monumental shift where Conservatives don't just seem happy to vote out Justin Trudeau,
01:01:51.600 but seem to be more secure in voting for something else and putting forward a positive vision that isn't just an opposition-based thing.
01:02:00.660 And again, not everyone is going to rally behind Pierre Polyev
01:02:03.260 and the Capital C Conservative Party of Canada.
01:02:05.980 But there does seem to be a lot more of a grounded sense
01:02:08.720 of what Conservatives are fighting for with a small C,
01:02:11.880 what people in the movement are fighting for.
01:02:13.540 So we'll leave it there for this week.
01:02:15.140 We'll have more interviews from the Canada Strong and Free Networks Conference
01:02:18.180 as the show progresses next week.
01:02:20.160 I'll be back in the regular studio then.
01:02:21.880 But thank you to all of you who have been tuning in.
01:02:23.980 And if I can just say, being here is important.
01:02:26.720 There are a lot of people that we really don't get the chance to speak to,
01:02:29.140 like Tony Abbott for example
01:02:30.760 but there is a cost in doing this
01:02:32.560 we have a great video set up
01:02:33.960 it's been phenomenal
01:02:34.700 it is expensive though
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01:02:43.020 but thank you
01:02:43.640 we'll talk to you soon
01:02:44.320 thank you
01:02:44.700 God bless
01:02:45.180 and have a wonderful weekend
01:02:46.460 thanks for listening to the Andrew Vaughn Show
01:02:49.480 support the program by donating to True North
01:02:52.020 at www.tnc.news
01:02:59.140 You