00:09:23.260Yes, I'm also old enough to remember when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was campaigning against the Progressive Conservatives
00:09:31.760and he was railing against Brian Mulroney's GST and he promised to get rid of it.
00:09:36.940Oops, they failed to keep that promise.
00:09:39.020So interesting to see the GST, something as personal and in your face as a sales tax right in there again.
00:09:46.120And I will point out, you shouldn't be paying GST on diapers anyway.
00:09:51.740Like, you shouldn't be paying GST on essentials anyway.
00:09:55.700If I could, Chris, if I could just jump in.
00:09:58.240Sorry, I've been itching to say something.
00:10:00.140I feel like the Liberals have entered this phase where they've run out of their own ideas.
00:10:06.800They have no more original policies to propose.
00:10:10.580And they're just borrowing, nitpicking from every single party, including the Conservatives, including the NDP,
00:10:17.580and introducing, repackaging these ideas as their own.
00:10:20.460And you're seeing them take positions that used to be held by Conservatives, held by the NDP,
00:10:27.620and just repackaging them without any original plan.
00:10:32.320And I think, just going back to what I said about it being inauthentic,
00:10:36.220it doesn't come from a place where it's a long-term vision.
00:10:39.300It just seems like this cynical, short-term gain.
00:10:42.340And a lot of people are talking about a potential spring election.
00:10:46.060And if this payment is coming out a few months towards that, you know, it might very well be that bribe just to get those extra votes,
00:10:54.140potentially avoiding a crushing defeat.
00:10:56.280Yeah, and talk about repackaging policy.
00:10:59.540It was only, like, about a month ago that Doug Ford announced that he's going to be sending out $200 to every adult in Ontario.
00:11:07.180So it seems as if Trudeau and his best buddy, Doug Ford, got together in a room and started talking about ways that they're going to make themselves popular.
00:11:15.820At least with Doug Ford, he's generally popular in this province.
00:11:18.940It's still a terrible, terrible idea to just blow out $200 to everyone else instead of, you know, giving a carbon tax.
00:11:25.100And the cost of administering such a giveaway is, you know, pretty good to be pretty large.
00:11:32.580So Trudeau probably just saw, you know, what Doug Ford was doing and he said, hey, I'm going to try the same thing.
00:11:37.760Hopefully that will give me popularity ahead of an election.
00:11:41.460But I hope Canadians are smart enough, and I think they are, to realize that this is just a vote buying.
00:11:47.200You know, you see this in third world countries where you have these African leaders going around handing people, you know, $100 bills or whatever.
00:11:53.880And then say, hey, you know, come vote for my party or whatever.
00:12:00.160It is a shame that political leaders think that Canadians are this dumb and this easy to, you know, get their, it's this easy to get their votes.
00:12:09.300And, you know, it's not really addressing the long-term affordability concerns of Canadians who are dealing with bills and the thousands of dollars for, you know, filling up at the gas tank or, you know, heating their home.
00:12:21.300Yeah, regardless of jersey color and party, I have seen every single form of government do this.
00:12:28.640They just grab the shovel and they start throwing it off the back of a truck.
00:12:32.840And as a taxpayer, I need to keep on pointing out, this is your money.
00:14:20.920It's really, really easy when you're in a short-term survive, I've got to be able to pay the rent this month, I've got to be able to buy groceries for my kids, to say, okay, let's put climate change as a slightly lower priority.
00:15:25.200That has been the case his entire lived experience.
00:15:28.640And it wouldn't be so hard to swallow this, folks, Noah and Cosman, if he wasn't constantly turning the screws on us and cranking up the carbon tax,
00:15:39.820which is helping to make life basics unaffordable here in Canada, while not helping the environment.
00:15:48.280The carbon tax does not reduce global emissions.
00:15:52.700So, this is 100% financial pain with zero environmental gain.
00:15:57.420Okay, I'll get off my soapbox, but that just ticked me off, man.
00:16:01.980Yeah, just to put into perspective this Prime Minister's lifestyle, back in 2022, we did an ATIP looking exactly at the Prime Minister's expenses on groceries, chefs, etc.
00:16:16.400And in one month, they managed to spend over $12,000.
00:16:20.280Now, that is a fraction, like, literally, for some people, that is a fourth of what they make in an entire year.
00:16:29.160And this Prime Minister is just blowing taxpayer money, mind you, away on luxury goods.
00:16:36.000You know, he's shopping, he's getting deliveries from fancy bagel places, these organic bakeries, these French and Italian delis.
00:17:10.180He doesn't understand the struggles of ordinary Canadians.
00:17:13.760And if he did, he would understand that $250 doesn't go a very long way.
00:17:20.500No, that no longer covers even a big grocery shop for a family of four.
00:17:25.380It used to, back before the lockdowns, back before the Trudeau government, $250 would generally be, for a family of four, kind of your big Saturday grocery shop.
00:17:37.880And I needed to stress what he was saying there.
00:17:40.880He's saying that people who literally are struggling to afford food in survival mode ought not to be thinking about themselves and their children.
00:17:52.840They should be thinking about his pet carbon tax, darn it, and how it makes him look when he's here with his friends on the global stage.
00:18:01.560Even in defiance of the data, I have to continue to stress this.
00:18:07.020Even if you loved the carbon tax, even if your main concern that kept you up at night was global emissions, sorry, even if Canada ceased to exist, it wouldn't make a dent in global emissions.
00:18:18.820So his little carbon tax pet project here is doing nothing except causing us financial pain, of which he knows nothing.
00:18:29.860No, you make a really good point, Chris.
00:18:31.800I mean, Canada only makes up about 1.6% of global emissions worldwide.
00:18:36.720If Canada was wiped off the face of the earth, we're not going to make a dent of it, especially since India is trying to modernize their economy, and they're going to need a lot of energy for that.
00:18:47.720China is also doing the same with the 1.3 billion people that they have.
00:18:51.640That's already two countries that is accounting for about 2.5 billion people in the world, and we only have about 42 million in our country.
00:18:59.420So if we slash emissions to zero tomorrow, it isn't going to make much of a difference at all.
00:19:05.800And the goal that the United Nations and these world leaders who are buying into this zero emissions ploy, their claim is that they want to ensure that the world doesn't heat up by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.
00:19:20.980It'll only heat up by 2 degrees Celsius.
00:19:23.840So if we're looking for a 1 degree Celsius change in global warming and Canada only makes up like under 1% of the world population, it doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense for Canada to be going to such lengths to try and fight climate change when, A, emissions are still going up even though the carbon tax is still in place, and B, the cost of living concerns that Canadians have already been having has been increasing.
00:19:51.500When you go to the gas pump, I'm going to have to pay about $1.60 per liter on my gas.
00:19:59.540It's actually insane because it was never this high before.
00:20:03.040When you go to the grocery store, you're going to have to pay about double what you were paying back in 2019 because the Trudeau government has been just shoveling out a bunch of money out the door, and they had no concern for fiscal matters.
00:20:17.400You know, Justin Trudeau famously said that he doesn't pay attention to monetary policy.
00:20:21.400That's not something that he thinks about.
00:20:23.840So for him, you know, to turn around and say that, oh, yeah, I care so much about, you know, the cost of living concerns of Canadians, but, you know, we still have to fight climate change.
00:20:33.140It's just so disconnected from the reality that most Canadians are facing who are struggling to pay the bills, who are, you know, having having to skip meals sometimes in order to put food on the table for the children.
00:20:45.820It is, you know, really someone who it is the words of someone who grew up rich in a posh sort of circumstances, and it doesn't understand the average experience of average Canadians.
00:20:56.900If I could just add one more thing to what Noah is saying, the most infuriating thing about this is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others like him ask everybody else to sacrifice except for themselves.
00:21:11.480They still continue to go on these trips, take their entire delegations with these jets to Brazil, wherever, mind you, and they refuse to sacrifice on pay.
00:21:22.900They refuse to sacrifice on all the privileges they're afforded in their positions.
00:21:30.740It just, and I think it's, it's become so endemic to the political class that Canadians are really starting to react and recoil when they're being lectured in this way.
00:21:42.420Yeah, to put a point on it, like I pointed out, he was born wealthy and talk about privileged, literally the son of the prime minister at the time.
00:21:51.980Um, they put in a pool while he was there.
00:21:54.460That always got me to remember a few months back when he got all huffy and said that, oh, the only people who have to pay the carbon tax are the people with indoor swimming pools.
00:22:03.380And, uh, I say, I think three personal cars say number one, he was raised with an indoor swimming pool.
00:22:09.300So he'd know number two, the fact that he said three personal cars, because of course the help parks outside too, for him.
00:22:15.580So he had to specify that they were personal cars.
00:22:18.020This is the thing, and I needed to stress the math here for anybody who forgets, and I promise we'll end on a, we'll end the show on a good note.
00:23:15.280So anyone with a scrap of common sense understands you can't hand the Trudeau government a $20 bill and expect a $50 back with no cost to you.
00:25:09.820It's the same size as EB's last cabinet.
00:25:13.120But that cabinet itself was a historically large one, larger actually, than former Premier John Horgan's cabinet.
00:25:21.960And we have to realize that Horgan left the EB government with a surplus, a quite sizable surplus.
00:25:29.460And EB has managed to turn it into a record-breaking deficit with very little to show for it.
00:25:36.780But as for the cabinet itself, it might be the same size, but it's actually more expensive.
00:25:41.960It's going to cost British Columbians more because the EB government just before the election this year gave themselves all pay raises for cabinet ministers as well as secretaries.
00:25:54.860So we have about $60,000 extra in salaries for cabinet ministers, and I think it's about $40,000 more for the secretaries.
00:26:03.780So it's going to cost British Columbians more.
00:26:06.760And some of the picks themselves, so there's been quite a few shifts.
00:26:11.440A lot of people didn't get reelected, including like the former minister of education.
00:26:16.200But he's moved, shuffled some people around.
00:26:19.140Some rookies have been put into positions.
00:26:21.700A few key ones that I kept my eye on was Adrian Dix, the former health minister, who was in charge of COVID, who was in charge of dealing with the drug opioid crisis, mental health crisis.
00:26:33.580He's been moved out of that file and sent to energy.
00:26:37.780And I was talking to you about this earlier, Chris, you being from British Columbia, you recall Adrian Dix used to be the NDP leader in BC when he was in opposition.
00:26:49.240And at that time, he actually opposed the Kinder Morgan expansion, which is now known as the Trans Mountain Pipeline after it was purchased.
00:26:58.980So it gives you a sense of the priorities of this government.
00:27:01.980They're actually anti-reinforcing the energy industry in this province.
00:27:07.060And the other position that I saw was he handed a spot to Christine Boyle.
00:27:12.760It's the first cabinet position for this MLA.
00:27:15.980And she used to be a Vancouver city councilor who, during the big BLM, you know, Black Lives Matter craze, she advocated for the defunding of the police.
00:27:27.080And it actually cost Vancouver council, quite a Vancouver police force, quite a substantial amount of money in budget, which the Vancouver City Council had to recuperate after they realized what they had done and how horrible of a mistake it was by raising taxes on Vancouver residences in terms of property taxes.
00:27:49.640So, and she's also, just to clarify, she's been appointed in the Indigenous ministry.
00:27:55.200She's not in public safety, but she's also a proponent of the land back movement, you know, this sort of radical wing of Indigenous activists who want to decolonize Canada and et cetera.
00:28:07.480So there are some suggestions that this is more of the same, if not even more radically left than the last cabinet.
00:28:17.040So just to be clear, did you say that Dix is now energy?
00:28:26.960So for folks who are from BC, the fight to get the Kinder Morgan pipeline twinned, which at the time was owned by a private company and at the time was going to employ a whole bunch of people at their own expense.
00:28:39.180That was a big fight to get that through, and I'm 99% sure that he was one of the guys who was super opposed to it at the time.
00:28:47.840And now he's the minister in charge of their energy.
00:28:50.220Just to give you guys a, for folks who aren't familiar with BC, to give you a perspective, John Horgan, before he became premier and before he was even in MLA, he was working in an MLA's office that was managing like natural gas.
00:29:06.740Like he actually knew a thing or two around the energy sector as far as it goes in British Columbia.
00:29:13.180To have this now switch over from having a surplus with a premier who, for whatever, at least seemed to understand energy a little bit more, now going to a massive deficit, and a minister now who was opposed to a pipeline expansion.
00:29:34.820Noah, did you have any thoughts on what's going on out in BC?
00:29:38.420Yeah, I'm pretty concerned with your new energy minister, not only because of her previous experience campaigning against the fine people working in the energy sector, but also because of her mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:29:54.480It seems as if the NDP, they got one of their most zealotous ministers, and then they put her in a position where she can-
00:30:07.860But, yeah, they put one of their most radical ministers in a department that is very important.
00:30:15.660During the COVID-19 pandemic, BC had some, you know, it wasn't some of the most harsh restrictions in the country.
00:30:22.980I would give that award to Quebec, but, you know, the BC government definitely did not pursue a moderate course when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic, and now this minister is going to be at energy.
00:30:37.800It doesn't seem as if British Columbians are going to be getting any relief when it comes to the competent government.
00:30:43.900However, I would be a little bit optimistic if I were a British Columbian because the NDP, they are holding onto power very tenuously, and if a NDP MLA or two decides to resign, if the Greens also decide to kick the bums out whenever they want to, BC could see themselves within another election in just a very short amount of time.
00:31:10.640And I think the BC Conservatives would be really well positioned to win an election now that they have more representation in the BC legislature.
00:31:21.980Their reputation has been developing over the course of a year plus now, and going into an election when the NDP have been in government for so long now, I think a lot of British Columbians are going to want to see a change of leadership.
00:31:37.340So, Cosman, sorry to put you on the spot, but are you hearing any good stuff coming from the BC Conservatives?
00:31:43.740Are they kind of sticking to their guns of things like, you know, let's scrap the carbon tax, let's have taxpayer protection, let's fight these deficits, that sort of stuff?
00:31:51.600Like, are they sticking to what they were saying during the election?
00:31:55.400Like, are they staying organized and united?
00:31:59.800The election was all attack, attack, attack against the BC Conservatives, both from the NDP and the legacy media here in British Columbia.
00:32:09.580But I feel like it's, from what I'm seeing, it's only reinforced the positions of John Rustad and the BC Conservative Caucus.
00:32:18.300They've sort of had an unapologetic approach.
00:32:21.900You know, they've admitted we've, you know, we've made some mistakes.
00:32:24.320We've had some, you know, issues with our candidates, but they're doubling down on a lot of the solid core positions they have, including their opposition to the carbon tax, including their stress to improve public safety, to get rid of drugs off of the streets by getting rid of safe supply programs, and moving people into those recovery and addiction treatment programs.
00:32:51.880But just to kind of steer the BC conversation a little bit, Noah, you were talking about how, you know, there might not be that much time left for the BC NDP.
00:33:02.880And I think that is true to some degree, because we just saw BC NDP Premier David Eby appoint a new chief of staff.
00:33:12.620And this new chief of staff conveniently used to work for Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley.
00:33:21.240He was actually her principal secretary.
00:33:25.480So it's interesting, because if you know anything about the NDP, this is a sort of nationally syndicated party.
00:33:32.460The provincial parties are just like tendrils, tentacles of this national body.
00:33:38.720And sometimes it comes across that they act like a united front.
00:33:43.580They all propose similar policies and push this national agenda towards more socialism, more radical progressivism.
00:33:55.080They just trade and swap these people into positions of power and authority to guide the future of the provinces they're elected in.
00:34:03.780And on the issue of the length of the term, Eby only hired this guy for six months, which indicates to me that he might not think he has a lot of time left before another election is called.
00:34:15.060Usually, if you hire a chief of staff, you know, you hire them for the term or you give them a lengthier contract.
00:34:20.440But six months seems to me like a ridiculously short time for a new chief of staff.
00:34:25.940And there could be an election coming whenever, you know, somebody gets sick, somebody passes away.
00:35:02.340So when Trudeau got into office, he assumed office in a state in which the Canadian government was spending about $40 billion on the federal bureaucracy.
00:35:12.340There's still a lot, but at least it was a bit manageable.
00:35:16.360Now we are spending nearly $70 billion on our bureaucracy, going up 73% in only nine years of, you know, as the conservative party would say, after nine years of Justin Trudeau, you know, blah, blah, blah.
00:35:31.880Like the cost of the federal bureaucracy has gone up 73,000.
00:35:36.620And the population of the federal bureaucracy has gone up by over 100,000, from 257,000 to 367,000.
00:35:45.480Now, for the increasing cost and the increasing size of a federal bureaucracy, you would expect that the federal services that we are receiving are, you know, just so much better than what we've been getting before.
00:35:56.360That the quality is better, that we're getting more services, that, you know, the departments are being more, about being more efficient.
00:36:06.020Many Canadians report that the bureaucracy has not been doing their job, that the federal government is not delivering the services that they should.
00:36:13.200If you remember, if you remember, when we were coming out of the pandemic, the passport offices were so crowded that you had to wait in line for several, several hours, maybe even 10 plus hours, just to go out and get your passport.
00:36:26.500The federal government really has not been placing a great emphasis on the quality of the federal service.
00:36:32.540But, you know, they're more than happy to spend a lot more on the federal, on the bureaucracy.
00:36:38.520Now, if we look down south, who are our friends in the United States, they just elected President-elect Donald Trump.
00:36:47.980And his administration looks like it'll be taking a much different approach to dealing with the bureaucracy than we are doing in Canada.
00:36:56.060In Canada, we don't mind ballooning bureaucracy, well, Canadians do, but our government doesn't mind.
00:37:01.140But it seems as if the federal government in the United States wants to create a department in order to make the bureaucracy a lot more efficient.
00:37:09.940They are calling the department DOGE, its acronym for Department of Government Efficiency.
00:37:16.360And Trump has appointed Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to lead the department to help cut down on costs that the federal, on things that the federal government doesn't need to be spending on, cutting back on jobs for people that, you know, aren't really contributing to anything whatsoever.
00:37:35.980And they're really trying to do this in order to bring down the cost of the government in the United States.
00:37:42.760So how do you guys contrast the difference between the approaches that we are taking in our respective countries?
00:37:50.620Well, for anybody who's been waking up from a three-week long nap, yeah, President Trump is now President Trump again, or President-elect Trump.
00:37:59.400He won the presidency, the Senate, the House, and the popular vote.
00:38:04.420The popular vote, I think, that was pretty impressive.
00:38:06.480It was, I think, by about 5 million people.
00:38:08.720So in political terms, he's got a mandate.
00:38:11.900I think technically under the U.S. Constitution, he now has to be the dog catcher in Washington, D.C., too, because he just got so many votes.
00:38:19.020And so now he's set up this Department of Government Efficiency.
00:38:21.980I was very excited to see that there actually looks like they're talking to Ron Paul, who's been wanting to reduce the size and the cost of government now for so long that it's really nice to see.
00:40:18.040Because to do any cuts to make the government more efficient, it implies you need to take an audit of exactly what's going on, the amount of money that's being spent, all of the doubling of positions where people are doing the same work or not doing any work at all.
00:40:33.820So I think that is the most crucial and positive development is that it's going to be a lot of transparency.
00:40:40.840And Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have promised that they're going to dedicate a daily update on this audit and the transparency of the government.
00:40:49.500And that's what needs to happen in Canada.
00:40:51.120Unfortunately, Canada doesn't have as much of a tradition of small government conservatism.
00:40:58.340It is there, but it's not really written into our history like it is in the United States.
00:41:04.120And so here, I think the first step is just like getting an audit of what the government is, what the size of it is, what people are doing.
00:41:14.840Because I suspect out of an eight-hour workday or however many hours they actually mandate in the federal government, they might be working two hours at their desks.
00:41:26.520I think the transparency and an audit of government comes before you can make those efficient cuts.
00:41:31.780And I think once people are aware and told exactly what the size of the government is and all of the problems within it, they will be supporting and cheering on every decision to cut.
00:41:42.000And it won't become this bogeyman of, oh, you're cutting services.
00:42:47.420But I do think it will catch on because I think increasingly Canadians are looking at the amount of money that the federal government is spending and the types of services that they are receiving,
00:42:57.600the type of benefits that they are getting from the federal government and they don't think that it is necessarily worth the cost.
00:43:04.200And if a conservative government does become, if the conservatives do form the next government,
00:43:08.900I think Prime Minister Poliev would look at the situation and say,
00:43:12.620Hey, you know, back when Harper and the conservatives were previously running the government,
00:43:17.840they were able to bring down the size of the bureaucracy.
00:43:21.500Now, I think from 2006 to 2008 or 2009, it increased.
00:43:24.880But over the last several years of the Harper government, they were actually able to bring down the size of the bureaucracy.
00:43:31.420And they didn't sacrifice government services.
00:43:34.760They weren't cutting government programs like the NDP and the liberals like to fear monger about.
00:43:39.140So I think there is going to be a concerted effort to do so, especially since the Poliev government, they need to get through their agenda.
00:43:47.800They want to move away from the incremental approach of the Harper government.
00:43:52.800And I think to do so, they're going to want to make sure that the government is running efficiently and that they are able to implement their policies in a quick and efficient manner.
00:44:01.300So I think that not only will the Canadian people have an appetite for this, but also I think that the future government or a potential future government would have an appetite for cutting down the bureaucracy and trying to make it more efficient.
00:44:15.340Now, if that means, you know, I don't know what the acronym would be, moose or goose, we'll have to see.
00:44:21.700I definitely, you know, I'm advocating for a goose because, you know, it is an iconic Canadian animal.
00:44:32.480Even if you're not living in Canada, sometimes you'll see a Canadian goose in maybe Florida.
00:44:36.920I don't know where they immigrate down south to in the winter.
00:44:39.500But yeah, it's just summer down there.
00:44:42.520But yeah, one of those inferior countries.
00:44:45.140But at the end of the day, I think Canadians are looking forward to some looking forward to the federal government running in a much more smooth manner than the Trudeau government has been able to produce.
00:45:13.080You can either send them to True North, send them to the Taxpayers Federation, or just comment on the YouTube channel.
00:45:18.660But remember, this entire show, everything is off the record.
00:45:30.460Noah, I think it's really funny that you said geese immigrate southward because I'm imagining them going to like the passport office and like getting a visa and standing in line.