EZRA LEVANT ｜ Carney's grocery rebate is just a campaign stunt： how about some real fixes？
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Summary
The Liberals say they re going to tackle the affordability crisis? Do you believe them? David Menzies and Ezra Levant are here to remind you that nothing sets off my internal Bs detector more so than lefties promising affordability.
Transcript
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tonight the carny liberals say they're going to tackle the affordability crisis
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do you believe them it's friday january 30th 2026 i'm david menzies and this
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is the ezra levant show shame on you you censorious bug
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say did you catch prime minister mark carney's affordability announcement in nepean ontario
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the other day well here's an excerpt so today we're announcing that our government is launching
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the new canada's groceries and essentials benefit this will deliver hundreds of dollars more into
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the bank accounts of more than 12 million canadians first of all i am just so done with these cheesy
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photo ops in fairness every party engages in this nonsense but really was it truly necessary for
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the prime minister of canada to stand in the produce section of a supermarket to deliver government
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policy what's more can you just imagine the conversation before that presser kicked off
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such as the pm asking a staffer uh say what are all those multi-colored spheres oh mr prime minister
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those are various fruits and vegetables fruits and vegetables you say yes mr prime minister we're in a
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grocery store this is where the little people buy their food oh i see how quaint let's be real folks
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when was the last decade mark carney went grocery shopping but i digress anyway the point of the presser
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is that some canadians are going to save a few hundred bucks on groceries thanks to the federal
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government raising the existing gst credit amount by 25 percent the government will also provide a one-time
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payment of 50 percent of the gst credit this year the program will run for the next five years
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and carney noted this scheme will quote deliver hundreds of dollars into the bank accounts of
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more than 12 million canadians end quote well on the plus side i'll say this delivering money into
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the bank accounts of canadians is a whole lot better than the federal liberals freezing the bank
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accounts of canadians which carney fully endorsed back in 2022 by the way after all canadians espousing
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politic political wrong thought regarding the freedom convoy well they had to be disciplined you see
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even so from an economic perspective canada needs major surgery but with this announcement
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dr carney is essentially applying a band-aid to a bullet wound but it's curious to see that suddenly
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carney much like his democrat counterpart south of the border has hopped aboard the affordability
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bandwagon after all the elbows up strategy has been an utter disaster in terms of getting a trade deal
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with the u.s so now the liberals are pivoting saying they are going to fix a country that is
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increasingly becoming unaffordable for so many canadians and golly why are things so expensive
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these days well at the presser carney being carney put the blame on everything from climate change to
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covid 19 no i i swear conspicuously absence regarding the so-called reasons for the root causes of
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inflation was any mention of federal liberal policies that have been in place for the last decade but
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hey never mind carney also noted ottawa will invest 500 million dollars in a fund to help food businesses
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expand their supply chains to which i have to say what's in it for brookfield acid management now
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having said that nothing sets off my internal bs detector more so than lefties promising affordability
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case in point in virginia last november democrat abigail spanberger successfully ran for governor
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on a platform all about making virginia more affordable when sworn in here's what miss spanberger stated
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quote my first executive order as governor directs my entire administration to identify where we can
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reduce costs for virginians we must lower costs in housing health care child care and energy
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families deserve relief end quote so what has played out over the course of the last several weeks in the
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great state of virginia well would you believe virginians are now subject to dozens of brand new taxes
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as well as increases to existing taxes oh yes one of those fiscal hits was a backdoor carbon tax
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that will result in virginians paying about 1200 more per year for electricity oh that's u.s dollars by
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the way not canadian pesos there will also be an additional local sales tax in all virginia counties and
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cities as well virginians can now expect to pay deep breath here a gun and ammunition tax a delivery tax that
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will hit amazon uber eats fedex and ups orders an event tax a storage facility tax a gym membership tax a dog
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walking tax a dog grooming tax a counseling tax a vehicle repair tax a home repair tax a dry cleaning tax
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and on and on and on it goes yikes so much for the state's official tourism slogan virginia is for lovers
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there ain't all that much that's lovable in virginia these days oh and besides the hotel tax is going
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up too the point is spamburger ran on a platform of affordability but her policies will have the
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precise opposite effect isn't that the very definition of bait and switch and folks isn't it downright
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fascinating how positions of politicians can seismically shift on the fly it is uncanny that
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what's promised during an election campaign disappears when the election campaign is toast
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you know kind of like how carney some 10 months ago when he was out on the hustings labeled china as
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canada's canada's biggest security threat i think the biggest security threat to china canada is china
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and that china these days is now our newest whiz bang trading partner much to the chagrin of our biggest
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trading partner but again never mind the thing is an enhanced gst credit for some canadians is fine
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every bit helps these days i suppose and beggars can't be choosers and i suppose for some canadians
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in the months ahead they're going to be downright giddy about purchasing a chinese ev for less than
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35 000 count me out of that demographic by the way but if the carney liberals were really serious
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about affordability then why won't they establish a canadian version of the u.s department of government
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efficiency aka doge because as is so often the case with government bureaucracies economic calamity isn't
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so much a revenue issue but rather a spending issue indeed barely a week goes by when there isn't some
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discovery of a government engineered economic boondoggle that's guaranteed to raise a taxpayer's blood
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pressure case in point just two days ago black locked reporter noted that ottawa is spending some
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885 million dollars per year on illegal aliens and refugee claimants this includes free counseling
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nursing home visits transportation eyeglasses and other supplemental health services meanwhile as
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black locks adroitly notes 6.5 million canadians you know those rubes who are funding the gravy train for
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the non-citizens well they are without a family doctor golly remember when blackface said a canadian is a
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canadian is a canadian in defense of those canadians who had aspirations to becoming terrorists well it
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seems that illegal aliens now have more rights than actual canadian citizens i mean is anyone picking up
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the tab for your uber rides last year i recall shelling out about a hundred bucks for a pair of
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prescription reading glasses where's my handout as for supplemental health services well we're all on
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our own for that my friend unless of course you are transitioning to the other sex then that boob job is on
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the house of course so me thinks that a canadian is a canadian is a canadian is now obsolete indeed
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a more apropos slogan would involve paraphrasing george orwell namely all canadians are equal but some
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canadians are more equal than others moving forward i think operating a canadian doge initiative vis-a-vis
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eradicating unneeded and wasteful government spending would not qualify as rocket science it would be more
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like shooting fish like shooting fish in a barrel now full disclosure i've never shot a fish in a barrel
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but i assume it must be very easy to do so what i'm getting at here is one needn't do a deep dive search
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for wasteful government spending rather examples abound they're all around of how government spending
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is out of control a simple internet search or perhaps just doing a freedom of information request
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case in point i can't watch a single quarter of an nfl game these days without being bombarded by
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senseless federal government advertising such advertising amounts to nothing more than virtue
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signaling at best and unofficial election sloganeering at worst you know claptrap like this
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canada it's time for more us because we're more than just a place on a map we're an attitude
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one with more empathy than ego more unity than division more grit go and we got this the more we
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choose to stand up as our most flag flying maple leaf buying local adventuring selves the more we are
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the true north unbreakable strong and free now folks when it comes to any ad there's typically a call
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to action when ford advertises its f-150 pickup ford is hoping you'll actually come down to a dealership
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and buy a truck but what's the call to action with this ad well there isn't one it's just 30 seconds
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of rapid fire nostalgic clips paired with cliched slogans why was it even made other than enriching
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the coffers of liberal friendly ad agencies that is in any event scrapping useless federal government
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advertising would be taking a line item off the books totaling some 76.4 million dollars that's
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what the federal liberals spent on their orgy of self-congratulation for the 2023-2024 fiscal year
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but 76 million is chump change when it comes to the egregious gun grab according to the fraser institute
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when all is said and done this fiasco in the making could end up costing canadian taxpayers
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as much as six billion dollars that's six billion with a b and why to make canada safer no rather it's
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exactly the same reason the feds air those pointless tv ads it's all about virtue signaling it's all about
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ottawa pretending to do something about gun crime going on a jihad against legal gun owners while
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turning a blind eye to gangbangers won't move the safety needle one iota and that makes this gross
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gun grab equal parts fiscally irresponsible and downright useless and you want to know the worst
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thing about it the carny liberals including gary what's his name fully know this gun grab is a fool's
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errand but they don't care they shall proceed by the way a great reference for other government-fueled
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boondoggles is the website of the canadian taxpayers federation if you thought stephen king was the
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master of horror well folks you got to check out what the taxpayers federation reports on a routine
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basis why just the other day the ctf noted that about 98 percent of government executives took a bonus last
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year 98 percent and these bonuses were doled out even though departments missed nearly half of their
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performance targets how does this always happen in government but it never happens in the private
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sector oh i almost forgot in ottawa one always fails upwards and then there's the never-ending litany of
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ludicrous research grants in a ctf report fittingly published the day before halloween last year
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the taxpayers federation noted how ottawa greenlit taxpayer funded projects that are nothing short of
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surreal the federal government's social sciences and humanities research council spent more than
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one billion dollars of your hard-earned money last year on what you ask well allow me to cherry pick
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a few examples such as 105 000 was spent on a study examining the life cycle of a grocery cart
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entitled cartography tracking the birth life and death of an urban grocery cart from work product to work
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tool this was led by kate elliott of simon fraser university elliott's work documents the
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relationships between carts and the humans who design assemble use and repurpose them uh why
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well that's the thing folks elliott began researching this report almost eight years ago
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and it's still not done not that anyone is breathlessly awaiting its conclusion uh mind you
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and how about this one folks the feds also dished out twenty thousand dollars on a study called gender
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politics of peruvian rock music fabiola bezos work at the university of british columbia is quote
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informed by the feminist and queer perspectives and theorizes music as an extension of sensual and
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sexual practices and dynamics of power end quote well apparently not even miss bezos the study's author
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knows knows what she's saying and so it is that she plans to curate an exhibition as part of her doctoral
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dissertation because presenting her findings is quote impossible in a written text alone end quote yeah no guff
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and here's one the government spent ninety four thousand dollars on a study entitled rhetoric of the selfie
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the study lay led by amy morrison of the university of waterloo is quote grounded in the politics and narratives
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of self-representation online end quote um does anyone other than narcissist justin trudeau
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really quick care about the science of selfies of course it goes without saying that defunding the cbc
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would make for a nifty 1.4 billion off the books too wouldn't it and that's an annual savings but
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there's no chance carney will steal that particular platform plank from pierre polyev
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the liberals love their bought and paid for department of propaganda so despite plunging viewership expect
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to see more investment in the cbc under carney in the months and years to come in the final analysis
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if carney really cared about the affordability crisis he wouldn't hand out crumbs to canadians vis-a-vis a
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fortified gst credit for groceries rather he would take a flamethrower to all the aforementioned
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government spending that i just outlined wasteful government spending and believe me folks there's
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just so much more alas that's not going to happen it's just not in the dna of a carny liberal to be
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fiscally responsible these days as well many observers couldn't help but notice that the gst
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announcement had a very election campaign vibe to it and ottawa is a buzz these days that a spring
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election might very well happen after all carney did try to get his coveted majority government by
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wooing opposition mps into the liberal fold and it almost worked but to quote agent 86
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missed it by that much and so it is carney is now opting for plan b a federal election perhaps less
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than 12 months after the last one time will tell in the meantime when it comes to spending your tax
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dollars the carney liberals seemingly subscribe to a lyric lifted from the song disco inferno
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well folks calgary is abuzz with the conservative party of canada convention that just kicked off
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today we have an entire team on the ground here check out this report
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sheila gun reid for rebel news i'm here in calgary at the conservative party convention the largest
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conservative party convention to date i'm here with conservative mp and immigration critic michelle
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rumple garner michelle i wanted to talk to you about the complete and absolute destruction of the
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immigration system under the liberals in the last 10 years but really since justin trudeau's welcome to
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canada tweet um even just this week new information has come out about the abuse of the temporary foreign
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workers themselves not just the system but the workers themselves ten thousand complaints in six
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months and only 200 or so investigated it's not just um you know employers abusing the system so that
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you know young canadians are underemployed but the temporary foreign workers themselves are being
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exploited absolutely well first of all thanks for having me on your show it's exciting to be here um
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um great backdrop yeah so temporary foreign worker program when we announced earlier this fall that
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the conservative party's position is to abolish the temporary foreign workers program one of the key
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points that we included in there was because like it's not just us as the conservative party saying this
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united nations uh talked about this program being akin to slavery and that's because essentially what
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happens is especially in like the low skilled worker streams you see employers bringing these uh
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temporary foreign workers to canada but they're tied to that employer so there's it's been right with
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abuse this is why when we were actually in government uh i think it was 2013 we made major reforms to
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the program because the abuse was rampant back then justin trudeau reversed all of those reforms fast
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for today rampant abuse and then also i think you made a very good point too employers have abused
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this program also in a way to depress wages and with a 20 percent youth unemployment rate across this
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country it is i haven't heard an argument yet from a lot of these lobby groups who want to keep the
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program obviously that it somehow it somehow benefits canadian youth i think what we need to be doing
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more is saying no we're this doesn't work we need to train canadian youth make sure that they have
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first crack at those opportunities and otherwise the abuse and that wage depression is only going to
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continue to grow over the years and i think there's a knock-on effect for the economy at large right when
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you have an entire generation of people who don't know how to work yeah and it's i mean what was your
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first job mine was an ice cream shop in winnipeg bingo hall coffee cart there we go so you learn how
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to show up for work on time basic customer service skills um these are these are skills smoking
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it was a bingo hall so so you know you learn you learn basic skills and that's part of the contract of
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canada right um employers get to work in a and thrive in a free market economy and train canadian
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youth who then become the next generation of leaders and you know our society so i think that
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to your point somehow that's that's gotten a race because i hear this i hear this from lobby groups like
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well i just can't train somebody it's like i don't think you've tried right and if you continue to have
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an endless supply of temporary foreign labor that's essentially indentured to an employer there is
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no incentive to to train or even to look at productivity increases as well too so yeah it's
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um this is a no-brainer um and i i think the liberals the fact that they haven't moved on this at all i i
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think it just shows that they they don't know which lane to pick um and of course liberals are always
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going to pick a lane that's not canadian youth canadian jobs and the entire system is rife with
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abuse um an order paper earlier this week came back that you were telling me about yeah it shows this
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stream of asylum seekers it's not refugees conventional refugees from horrible places of
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the world it's people who are coming here under one pretense and then switching lanes once they get
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here yeah so we've been so busy with the convention this week i meant to reach out to you but we did we
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got an order paper question back uh earlier this week and i had asked the government essentially who
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was making asylum claims because just to be clear in december the amount of asylum claims hit a record
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level there's 300 000 pending asylum claims okay right now many of those won't be heard for
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sometimes up to a decade so problems but what that order paper question showed was like how did somebody
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enter the country and then make an asylum claim and a huge spike in the last year of people who entered
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the country as foreign students likely have expiring visas and are now making asylum claims and that's
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abuse of the asylum system right i refer to what happened between 2022 and 2024 please feel free to
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plagiarize this term as the fraser wave of foreign students this is when sean fraser um permitted i think
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it was what close to a million more than that yeah and you saw and again it's not these kids fault for
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wanting to come to canada but you know you see things like conestoga college where the the the city
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that the college is located in it's like a population of roughly a hundred thousand they brought in 30 000
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kids in a year and a half you know and so now and they did the liberals did it with awaken on odd like
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you can stay but temporary has to mean temporary there are now at this moment according to recent
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reports 2.1 million people in canada who are here with expired or expiring visas they don't actually
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even know how many and so the question becomes this it's like the population of saskatchewan think about
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that so now but on top of that they've set new levels at a rate that assumes that many of those
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folks will voluntarily leave so uh there's a lot of work left to do for us as opposition to hold the
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liberals to account but also to propose ways to solve these problems and that's what we've been doing
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as a team all fall a huge heavy lift amending bills proposing major policy changes like the abolishment
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of the tfw program changing the rules around passing on citizenship to descendants of people
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who are here just as foreign or sorry temporary visas right we want to see people have parents
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have at least a pr status at least one parent have pr status like every other country in the world
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virtually i could talk to you for hours about the changes we've proposed but i think that the changes
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that we've proposed would restore order but i mean then there's also the question of the fraser wave
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right what are we going to do about that question like right and it's it's been a series of inept
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ministers who don't really know the file and also not um not giving political imperatives and direction
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to their bureaucrats uh you know i i think there was another block locks reported this week that the
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government spent over 250 000 just training their bureaucrats i think it was mostly me on how to like
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deal with me at committee and it's like well instead of spending that why don't you just do your job
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and you have to have that you have to both have a plan and an imperative and move you know the public
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service and policy makers and stuff to say like look canada can be an open and welcoming country but you
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can't bring in so many people that housing health care jobs other things can't social infrastructure
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can't keep up and that's clearly what happened and nobody benefits from that no newcomer or you know
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canadian citizen alike so i'm going to ask you to speculate as my last question why are they doing this
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you're asking me to get in the mind of like and then get right back out
00:29:14.620
i think it's a multi variety of things uh first of all uh let's go back to the the one of the first
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changes trudeau made back in 2015 the reversal of former mr jason kenney's reforms of the tfw program
00:29:31.020
that was clearly to in response to you know lobbies that were asking for an endless supply of foreign
00:29:37.660
labor so that they could increase their profits on the backs of essentially indentured labor i think
00:29:43.660
that's part of it i think that they were heavy heavily lobbied by um you know these diploma mills
00:29:51.420
and and and and provincial colleges that wanted an easy supply of revenue um and then you know there's
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with the hashtag welcome to canada tweet i think it was a way to sort of poke the american administration
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in the eye um and not really thinking about obviously the logistics or what that would mean for
00:30:09.580
um integration or uh and and by that i mean like housing jobs so i i'm not sure i never
00:30:19.580
try to ascribe one motive to the liberals for incompetence and just like fair enough you know
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that's what i've seen i've been immigration critic not always malice yeah but you shouldn't you shouldn't
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you shouldn't dismiss malice either but um the bottom line is it doesn't matter what matters now
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is that the liberal government has to implement conservative proposals to restore order and
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fairness i've literally given them everything they need to do like an entire road map we and we amended
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their bills to make sure that they couldn't do sneaky things like uh bill c-12 it's this bill that
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had suite of some immigration reforms they wanted to give more powers to their bureaucrats um on the
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surface it looked like okay well maybe they could cancel applications but i'm like maybe they could
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also change status from temporary to pr so we did all of these amendments to make sure that that wouldn't
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happen but man there's a lot of work left to do but that's my job working on it yes uh michelle thanks
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so much for taking the time thanks for covering our convention thanks for being here
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well folks a lot of feedback on my monologue the other day on how the dystopian science fiction film
00:31:37.740
a clockwork orange is basically becoming government policy in certain parts of the world including
00:31:44.940
right here in the dominion of canada let's get to some of the feedback from robert i'm 74 now with
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quadruple bypass thankfully i will not live long enough to see the final outcome of this insanity
00:32:00.940
elbows down hey robert i hear you uh meanwhile uh i'm really getting curious how that bet is going to
00:32:08.220
work what's going to happen first the leafs win a stanley cup or that i die as of now
00:32:14.940
the smart money is on the grim reaper and mr foo writes is it so odd that a criminal becomes a police
00:32:23.100
officer when we currently have politicians who are criminals and that's no exaggeration i mean minister
00:32:32.220
guibo uh that guy was arrested i think a couple of times once for climbing the cn tower and yet somehow
00:32:40.860
he becomes a cabinet minister wow talk about the right stuff indeed and a brh positive writes i asked
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the liberals if i could keep my eye clamps uh they said no and assured me i would watch nothing but cbc
00:32:59.020
for the rest of my days well my friend that's what you would need for me to watch the cbc
00:33:04.860
put in a straight jacket with eye clamps making sure i can't even close my eyes and cdc 101 writes
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a clockwork orange does not promote dystopia it promotes the idea of free will over determinism you
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know that is actually one of the themes in the book and the movie what i was getting at is some of the
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elements that we saw in the film such as you know criminals becoming law enforcement officers clearing
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out the prisons of actual felons so that political prisoners could be incarcerated and how that is
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becoming true that's what i was getting at with my analogy and finally andy writes stanley cubrick died
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after eyes wide shut that movie exposed elite satanic cults similar to epstein island yeah i can see
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where you would draw that comparison i found eyes wide shut to be incredibly disappointing at the end
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of the movie when the credits were rolling i was going what's the point i wish uh mr cubrick ended on a
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higher note than that particular film in any event folks thank you so much for tuning in to tonight's
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edition of the ezra levent show the big boss man he'll be back on monday in the meantime as always stay