Rebel News Podcast - June 11, 2026


SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Honouring the worst of government： Kris Sims breaks down the 2026 Teddy Waste Awards


Episode Stats


Length

28 minutes

Words per minute

159.27

Word count

4,502

Sentence count

118


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Tonight we're getting a sneak peek from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation about
00:00:03.860 the big winners or rather big losers receiving the annual Teddy Waste Awards.
00:00:11.520 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:00:30.000 you know our friends at the canadian taxpayers federation they do great work every single day
00:00:36.860 of the year they file access to information to hold the government to account on behalf of the
00:00:44.360 taxpayer for how our money is being spent we just experienced tax freedom day last week
00:00:53.580 what that means is all the money you made up until last week went to the government
00:01:01.080 guys it's june okay roughly half of your income goes to the government in some form or another
00:01:11.340 and i'm not just talking about income tax so from here on out you're working for yourself and your
00:01:16.600 family which is crazy but if the government is taking that much money from you you'd think they
00:01:22.240 would care about spending it wisely? Well, apparently they don't. Thank goodness for our
00:01:27.440 friends at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation because they, every single year, find the worst
00:01:35.640 offenders in different categories across the country and give them a Teddy Award. Now, my
00:01:42.260 friend Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is going to join us in a minute and
00:01:45.860 she's going to tell us why they're called Teddy Awards, who are some of the worst offenders and
00:01:51.700 why we should laugh at these people instead of putting our head in our hands and crying.
00:01:59.180 Take a listen.
00:02:07.500 So joining me now is my good friend and good friend of taxpayers everywhere, Chris Sims,
00:02:13.780 the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:02:16.640 I know Chris was just on the show but Chris is a news maker and a news breaker and I wanted to
00:02:22.600 have her on the show today to talk about the Teddy Awards and I'll let Chris explain this
00:02:29.400 but this is an award that the CTF gives out for extravagant government waste we're recording this
00:02:35.920 before the awards the awards are tonight so when you at home are watching this Chris is I think
00:02:43.260 dressed as a pig heading out awards chris tell us first of all what the teddy awards are yes so
00:02:50.740 the teddy waste awards are named after the now late uh bureaucrat named ted weatherhill and way
00:02:57.660 back in the before times like in the 1990s uh he spent around 700 ish dollars on a dinner in france
00:03:06.960 now in today's money that's well over a thousand dollars so right i was gonna say i wish we just
00:03:12.540 had a bureaucrat spending money on 700 bucks of a dinner in france those are rookie numbers i know
00:03:18.680 so they now the teddy waste awards are named after him so ted weatherall teddy waste awards
00:03:25.240 and so every year we hand out these golden pig statues to politicians and bureaucrats who waste
00:03:32.000 your money in spectacular fashion and we do a whole gala like franco is dressed up in a tux
00:03:38.300 somebody is dressed up as a huge big pink pig mascot named Porky the waist hater and he's
00:03:45.280 usually in a tux as well and we do this in order to frankly mock and shame them for wasting your
00:03:52.300 money. Now we're recording this before the awards are announced but our viewers at home won't see
00:03:59.040 it until after the awards are announced so can you give us a sneak peek on some of the worst
00:04:04.340 defenders okay great yeah so here in the city of calgary they got a strong nomination because they
00:04:11.280 managed to spend i think it was like four million dollars with an m on changing their logo sign on
00:04:18.460 the way into calgary from energy city which i thought was super cool to blue sky city and you
00:04:26.380 can see a picture of it like it's the most boring sign you've ever seen it's basically like right
00:04:31.820 click fill with blue paint put white text over top how they managed to spend millions of dollars
00:04:38.280 on that thing we don't know so they got a strong nomination but but they got beat they got beat by
00:04:45.640 the city of toronto because the city of toronto sheila sorry i'm gonna try to get through this
00:04:52.020 they spent like 10 grand like thousands of dollars on a plaque for a dead raccoon
00:05:00.180 i remember the dead raccoon like i remember when that story was out there and it became one of the
00:05:08.320 first viral sensations but it was like a raccoon harambe i think at the time it was sort of we were
00:05:18.360 trying to be our like us meet like us too we have a harambe it's a dead raccoon but why the plaque
00:05:26.120 who cares? I know, right? So apparently, this raccoon was named Conrad, for some reason. And
00:05:34.840 I think what happened was, so 10 years ago, like a decade ago, some raccoon died. And the city,
00:05:43.660 of course, took its own sweet time cleaning it up. I think it was there for like 14 hours or
00:05:47.560 something. And people being funny left, you know, memorial cards and flowers and all this other
00:05:52.940 nonsense right just being goofy but you know no offense to the raccoon population who might be
00:05:58.500 watching right now I know they have opposable thumbs so they know how to work keyboards but
00:06:01.840 um there's like 40,000 of them in the city invasive yeah it's like the population of the
00:06:08.580 Comox Valley but of raccoons living within the city of Toronto so he croaked and his body was
00:06:14.840 there for like 14 hours or something fast forward a decade though Sheila so a decade ago this raccoon
00:06:24.020 died and then the city of Toronto spent taxpayers money on a plaque for this thing like I can't even
00:06:32.960 if you want to get cool and do like street art and stuff and do your own thing that's cool it makes
00:06:37.900 the city livable but don't spend a nickel of taxpayers money so I'm sorry Calgary but the
00:06:43.480 city of toronto beat you because they gave a dead raccoon a plaque from 10 years ago and spent money
00:06:49.340 on it now i should tell you that our mutual friend lise merle does stuff like this for free
00:06:55.080 for example she likes to be funny and i suppose it's her own version of gorilla art but to brighten
00:07:02.880 people's day yes sometimes when she sees a dead deer on the side of the highway she'll go buy
00:07:08.600 get well soon balloons and put it near the dead deer yeah like some people drive by and they're
00:07:17.160 like haha that's funny but she does it for free bless her heart yeah she does it out of her own
00:07:21.740 pocket you know that's fine but no leave it to toronto they they took them took home the hardware
00:07:26.360 this year because they spent money on a plaque for a dead raccoon anybody else worst offenders
00:07:31.800 Oh, my goodness.
00:07:32.780 Yes.
00:07:33.280 David Eby.
00:07:34.700 Okay.
00:07:35.100 Oh, okay.
00:07:35.780 So David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, they're already blowing like a redonkulous
00:07:41.840 amount of money on FIFA, on two FIFA sites in Vancouver and Toronto.
00:07:46.640 If you combine how much taxpayers' money is being spent on those two FIFA cities, Vancouver
00:07:53.500 and Toronto, I'm sorry, I'm actually going to get pretty ticked off here.
00:07:57.020 Yeah, do it.
00:07:57.880 It's around a billion dollars.
00:08:01.080 With a B, $1,000 million.
00:08:04.640 And out of rage, I sat there and I calculated how many kids in Canada
00:08:10.600 could have been put into a week-long soccer camp this summer.
00:08:14.820 $3 million.
00:08:16.960 Oh, my God.
00:08:18.340 I know.
00:08:18.800 It makes you want to barf.
00:08:20.260 So not only that, not only the blowing money on FIFA,
00:08:23.740 but they actually spent something like $300,000 in British Columbia
00:08:29.300 on wood leather soccer balls i don't know what wood leather is but we paid for it and it was
00:08:39.240 for like three separate they look like a multi-faceted it looks like something out of
00:08:44.920 interstellar they're not even round and they're wood leather soccer balls 300 grand thereabouts
00:08:51.260 on these stupid things so he took home the hardware for provincial waste award anybody
00:08:57.460 on the east coast yeah great question so for the lifetime achievement i like this one okay
00:09:03.200 this covers the east coast because it is the social sciences and research council
00:09:08.560 people often refer to it as the shirk so back in the before times like a million years ago
00:09:14.880 it actually used to be given to students for things like history linguistics like actual
00:09:20.780 research into our cultural origins and stuff like that but no nowadays shirk hands out things like
00:09:27.880 a hundred thousand dollars for a documentary on the life and times of a grocery cart oh my god
00:09:36.120 they hand out thousands of dollars to study the sexual behavior of singles who live and visit
00:09:43.540 bam. So people hooking up and I know people hooking up in a ski resort. Taxpayers are spending
00:09:51.300 money studying this phenomenon. Why would anybody care? I know this is a great question. The
00:09:58.240 government gives money to these people. And so they're getting a lifetime achievement award
00:10:03.900 for the federal category. It was the nameless, faceless bureaucracy that is the Canada Revenue
00:10:10.060 agency. They took home the hardware for the federal category because they only answer the
00:10:16.120 phone 30% of the time. And like 80% of the time, they give you the wrong information. Yep. Yeah.
00:10:24.960 So we invited them to come and take their trophy home, but we were sent the voicemail.
00:10:30.200 No way. That's so funny. Actually, I'm surprised the spaceport
00:10:36.860 didn't win something this was for 2025 right so the spaceport is still in the running for next
00:10:44.780 year it's in the running for next year people like put in your nominations let us know what
00:10:49.920 you think like for example mark kearney spending 194 000 europe city hopping in london brussels and
00:10:58.180 rome and buying you know what it was that legacy normandy buttercups and scottish salmon or some
00:11:04.820 Scottish salmon yeah yeah like dude um that prime minister Carney spent double on his in-flight
00:11:12.120 catering that Trudeau did when he went to Rome right so he's in the running for next year but
00:11:17.780 these were all waste categories 2025 that's right that's right but Spaceport it's it's going to be
00:11:24.120 a tough sled next year yeah uh you know what get your get your nominations in early because I feel
00:11:30.420 like spaceport is taking home uh the big prize next year i was talking to david nightleg today
00:11:36.160 and he told me the amount of money potentially wasted on that spaceport which by the way okay
00:11:44.120 so viewers at home if you don't know there is a gravel pit in nova scotia that is supposed to be
00:11:51.340 a launch pad for 10,000 low orbit satellites for a Canadian version of Starlink. But Starlink already
00:12:04.380 exists. And you know what they're going to use to get these things into the air because they don't
00:12:10.120 have launch capacity what starlink like so so why don't we just get starlink
00:12:20.900 cut out the middle man yeah that's what david said he said for the amount of money that they're
00:12:30.660 wasting on this thing for just i don't know elbows up reasons even though they're still
00:12:35.580 using an american company that already does this the they could have just cut a deal with starlink
00:12:41.640 and connected all of rural canada yes but talking about talk about uh cutting off your nose to spite
00:12:47.740 your face right yes so we're exactly in this situation right now um and again for folks who
00:12:52.780 are at home thinking why is she laughing two reasons one you'll either laugh or cry so let's
00:12:58.980 choose to be happy words and laugh and two this is the super important reason they hate it they do
00:13:04.860 Bureaucrats and politicians, oh my gosh, bureaucrats and politicians, they're used to getting scorn. If you mock them and point out how stupid they're acting and hand out pig statues for them, they get really uppity, like real fast.
00:13:17.060 Yes. So that's why we do it like every single year. So mock them. They deserve to win next year. And also, I'm not a physicist or anything. But I thought one of the reasons why they would slingshot rockets up through the atmosphere off of Florida was because that's where they're aiming it. Whereas if we're up in the northern, I've read, you know, I'm just saying.
00:13:41.860 Yep. That's why you're at Cape Canaveral. It doesn't work here.
00:13:47.060 I don't get it. And this is the thing. If we were just swimming in money, like if we were choking on it and it was causing roadblocks and problems, I could understand the argument of spending money, I guess. But we are going to be at the end of this fiscal year, $1.4 trillion in debt. That's just the federal debt, not touching the provinces. The interest alone is costing us a billion dollars a week.
00:14:11.940 so we have a hospital a week yes burn down a hospital a week instead of letting people move
00:14:19.000 in after you build it burn it down instead every single week that's how much we're spending just
00:14:25.000 on the interest if it were a wine item in the budget which it is if it were its own ministry
00:14:29.100 it would be more than what we spend on the department of national defense
00:14:32.540 oh my gosh so this is why they need this yeah i and you do raise a good point like look if we
00:14:39.960 were like dubai where we had a bunch of money we didn't know what to do with it and yes i would be
00:14:45.120 less angry about me too building two skyscrapers and connecting them on the top with a cruise ship
00:14:52.520 that's what they have they have that there i saw a whale shark in the middle of the cruise ship or
00:14:57.580 something too yeah yes i know crazy but we don't have that kind of money as you said we have un
00:15:03.380 money. We have our great-grandchildren who will be paying for these enormous mistakes that the
00:15:10.520 federal government is making today. Yes, which is why they must be yelled and laughed at and
00:15:15.980 mocked mercilessly. So folks, do the right thing. Head over to the website and find out your
00:15:22.000 favorite nominations. Phone them. Phone them and email them and tell them to knock this off.
00:15:27.120 Yes. Now, just quickly changing lanes, because I know you have to get ready for the awards.
00:15:31.540 um i wanted to talk to you about mp mike dawson and an update to his fight against his own pay
00:15:43.380 raise tell us what's happening beauty of a man so if folks do not know yet mike dawson he is the
00:15:49.580 member of parliament for grand lake near machie new brunswick as he often describes himself he
00:15:54.500 is a drywaller and he got into politics in order to help people as he says and he said
00:16:00.400 do not give me a pay raise i'm already making more than 200 grand a year being a backbench
00:16:07.140 member of parliament and folks in my riding are literally fighting to eat do not give me a pay
00:16:12.680 raise you'd think that would be enough you know but no he wrote to the clerk he wrote to the chair
00:16:19.480 of the committee for the treasury board and now mike dawson the beauty that he is is actually
00:16:24.980 going to court to say, do not give me a member of parliament pay raise. I refuse it. So as crazy
00:16:33.880 as this sounds, a member of parliament, a member of the legislator needs to go to court in order
00:16:42.380 to refuse a pay raise. And from what I understand, the CTF is seeking to intervene on the side of
00:16:51.940 the taxpayer here yes so we want to help mike um how do i put this nicely i'm not going to
00:16:58.200 um he got a lot of chirping uh when he was even in his conservative caucus on a couple of those
00:17:03.900 wednesday mornings it was not from leader pierre palia it was from other people i have now found
00:17:09.100 out it was not from mike by the way uh but i heard because i know a lot of people in that room
00:17:13.520 um and people were giving him a hard time if you can believe it conservative members of parliament
00:17:19.120 and they know who they are and they better be ashamed of themselves.
00:17:23.220 I know who they are too.
00:17:24.620 Yep, they better watch their expenses.
00:17:26.800 I'm just saying.
00:17:28.140 So we think on behalf of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that he's a beauty
00:17:32.320 and he was the one guy who stood up and said no.
00:17:35.180 So we are seeking to be interveners on his behalf
00:17:38.860 to help him make the argument in court
00:17:41.760 to say members of Parliament don't need an automatic pay raise
00:17:45.280 and at least when they volunteer to say no,
00:17:48.280 they should be excused from it and here's the thing according to the ctf press release on this
00:17:56.740 um and you guys conducted legé polling on this the overwhelming majority of canadians across
00:18:04.220 the entire political spectrum agree with mike's stand here 78 percent of canadians so that's not
00:18:11.660 78 percent of conservatives people who care about budget line items boring people like you and i on
00:18:17.180 this topic 78 over two or sorry over three quarters of Canadians say Mike you're doing the
00:18:24.440 right thing um it's you know the government that for some reason is saying um we can't figure out
00:18:32.940 how not to give you this money yeah I know um so I'm tired of begging the conservatives and other
00:18:39.000 MPs to stand with Mike uh be like Mike refuse the hike I think that's a good bumper sticker
00:18:42.980 yeah um i'm just throwing it out there to prime minister mark carney hey you want to like score
00:18:48.220 some low-hanging fruit come out and say you know what we're rolling back the pay increases
00:18:52.780 yeah he gets so much press he'd get so much good press this is you know he's got so much capital
00:18:59.420 here he can turn around and say no to this and it's really frustrating that he has to go to this
00:19:05.560 extent to refuse a pay increase because it's pretty funny when they actually want something
00:19:11.380 done how lightning fast they're able to change things and my favorite thing where i laugh
00:19:16.980 saltily at it sheila is when they actually try to pull this crap where they say well what are
00:19:22.220 we to do it's automatic well yeah last i checked you guys work in that big building up on the hill
00:19:29.840 and you are legislators meaning you write laws right and if you're throwing your hands in the
00:19:37.480 saying what are we to do it's automatic like who do you think is making these rules in the first
00:19:42.800 place it's you guys it's it's it's an insult to people's intelligence yeah and to just put it
00:19:48.840 into context this is the 14th straight consecutive raise these people have gotten while the cost of
00:19:55.200 living crisis and regulation taxes is crushing the regular Canadian yep and keep in mind folks
00:20:02.160 um all through the lockdowns yeah all those times that all of those people were losing their jobs
00:20:08.240 and their bank accounts were getting frozen and their rights were being trampled and their
00:20:12.940 businesses were getting shut down and your kid was being told to stay home from school
00:20:16.940 that whole time they never missed one pay increase not one time so 14 years in a row
00:20:26.540 I'm livid. And so, you know, this has happened before where they've said no pay increase. Let's
00:20:33.380 freeze it. And that was under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Fancy that. I know this wasn't
00:20:38.880 back in wartime. This is back in people's living recent memory. It ain't rocket appliances. They
00:20:44.720 should be able to do this. I filmed this whole thing without recording. Hopefully there's
00:20:56.520 no hiss on my audio. I don't know what happened. I think my cord is just getting old. I'll just
00:21:02.200 order another one on Amazon. Well, as you guys know, the last portion of the show always goes
00:21:08.720 to you, our viewer at home, because without you, there's no revenue. So I should care about what
00:21:14.620 you think about the work that we're doing here. So I appreciate that. But I also want to know,
00:21:19.280 maybe you have an idea for a guest that I hadn't considered or a topic that you'd like me to talk
00:21:25.200 about. I'm always looking to add more people to my stable of reliable guests on topics that I talk
00:21:34.040 about. So let me know. My email, of course, is Sheila at rebelnews.com. But also, wherever you
00:21:40.460 find free clips of the show, be it on Rumble, or on YouTube, do leave a comment, do leave a like.
00:21:49.860 And I know you guys who are watching this, you are premium subscribers already. So you're already
00:21:54.280 doing your part but if you want to go one step further and it costs you nothing if you engage
00:22:00.740 with our content the free content like the clips not the full show the clips you know what I mean
00:22:05.400 the more you engage with our content the more YouTube will serve it up to other people
00:22:11.280 and then maybe we'll get some subscribers that way either to the YouTube page or to the paywalled
00:22:18.900 content, my show as our show. So it helps us out in a lot of different ways. And it brings more
00:22:25.180 people to the other side of the story, which is really our mission around here. Now, today's
00:22:31.360 viewer feedback actually comes to me by way of the email inbox. It is from Bruce, who is a regular
00:22:38.640 viewer of the show. He lives just north of me, but an hour ish. And he's one of the biggest
00:22:44.620 supporters of the work that we do here at Rebel News. He's so engaged with the things that we do.
00:22:48.900 now I'm not saying you guys at home aren't because I see the data I know who I actually
00:22:53.440 know your names I know who you people are but Bruce writes me so maybe you should write me too
00:22:59.160 so anyways Bruce writes to me on an interview I did with Tracy Wilson from the CCFR the Canadian
00:23:07.620 Coalition for Firearms Rights in advance of my appearance at the CCFR AGM in Toronto super fun
00:23:16.980 if you get a chance to go to a CCFR AGM, I insist you must. Um, and we were talking about, um,
00:23:26.740 how this CCFR has been able to advance the challenge of the 2020 friends. We're halfway
00:23:36.720 through 26 the 2020 um assault style firearms ban um guns so dangerous you've had them in your
00:23:49.520 possession for six years so they were able to advance that to the supreme court the supreme
00:23:55.740 court is going to hear the challenge and i think it's going to be real tough for the federal
00:23:59.980 government to make the case for public safety like imminent public safety at the supreme court
00:24:08.200 since currently to date six plus years we've had them in our hands and i must tell you about this
00:24:16.780 victory that the ccfr was able to pull off now they haven't stopped the gun ban but because of
00:24:21.720 their legal challenge, the feds have granted amnesty or extended the amnesty period to 90
00:24:29.840 days after the Supreme Court hears the CCFR's challenge, which means by the time the amnesty
00:24:37.600 ends, it will be seven and a half years of us being able to own these guns that were so deadly
00:24:43.500 they had to be banned from us six years ago. So do you see my point? It's going to be real hard
00:24:49.520 for the feds to make the case for public safety imminent public safety when we have had these
00:24:56.900 firearms for three quarters of a decade you know and they'll have the data to point to the fact
00:25:07.880 that okay three quarters of a decade these people have had them they haven't turned them in and they
00:25:14.840 haven't committed crimes with them it feels relevant to me doesn't it so anyway thanks to
00:25:22.680 our friends at the ccfr for the work they do and thanks to everybody in the gun lobby including
00:25:27.720 our friends over at the national firearms association for their hard work defending
00:25:32.100 the civil liberties of canadians and our right to not be held responsible for the crimes committed
00:25:39.920 by other people so bruce writes hi sheila what a great show you did i love tracy wilson and the
00:25:44.740 CCFR, her and Rod, that's Rod Giltaka, her counterpart over there, do such excellent
00:25:50.700 work.
00:25:52.740 Just on that note, Tracy has a philosophy of, I forget how she puts it, but I'll paraphrase,
00:26:01.000 do everything all the time, all at once.
00:26:05.920 Attack the liberal gun grab on all the fronts, all the time.
00:26:10.500 in the court of public opinion in the supreme court at the local level whether it's at the
00:26:23.000 municipality or at the police force level getting individual cities and police forces
00:26:28.620 to back out of this putting pressure on that way they're doing everything all the time all at once
00:26:34.620 whatever it takes to save your property that's what they're doing Bruce says liberals are banking
00:26:41.760 on the level of ignorance the public has about guns they also keep pumping out the big lie about
00:26:45.900 how removing guns will make the country safer I had an order paper returned to me maybe last week
00:26:55.280 maybe two weeks ago I forget who who from the conservative caucus asked it but I wrote it up
00:27:01.240 for the website and the public safety department was asked who with a criminal record has turned
00:27:15.440 in their firearms like do you know if criminals are turning in their record or their firearms and
00:27:20.580 guess how many criminals turned in their firearms
00:27:24.740 any guesses zero which means you're only disarming the law abiding
00:27:34.140 of course sooner or later a critical mass of angry citizens will force the liberals to stop
00:27:43.020 their stupid gun grab we might be there meanwhile alberta must leave confederation
00:27:47.620 it's a sinking ship but the crew are still arguing about how to arrange the deck chairs
00:27:52.200 i think we all know how i feel about western independence
00:27:55.540 i'll just leave it at that and for those of you out there who don't agree with me that's okay
00:28:01.640 we're still friends we just disagree on this one thing all right everybody that's the show for
00:28:06.980 tonight thank you so much for tuning in i'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same
00:28:10.580 place next week and as always don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to
00:28:15.120 think.