Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Just say no to Trudeau's so-called Just Transition

00:00:00.000 How much is Justin Trudeau's just transition going to cost the Canadian economy?

00:00:04.680 Someone far smarter than Justin Trudeau ran the numbers and she joins me today.

00:00:08.960 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:00:11.560 The Gunn Show.

00:00:41.560 The just transition is Justin Trudeau's plan to rewrite the Canadian economy away from reliable fossil fuel-based industries like farming and manufacturing and oil and gas toward some green economy that doesn't exist yet, reliant on green energy that isn't reliable yet.

00:01:10.480 Now, Chris Sims, my friend from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, whom I feel like we maybe were hatched from the same egg, she ran the numbers on this and it's appalling.

00:01:23.740 Billions upon billions of dollars will be vaporized from the Canadian economy along with all the jobs associated with it.

00:01:32.320 So Chris Sims joins me now in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon to tell us about the financial catastrophe Justin Trudeau's Green New Deal will cause if indeed he does pursue it.

00:01:48.480 And if I know anything about Justin Trudeau, he's not all that eager to back off of a bad idea.

00:01:55.660 Here's Chris.

00:01:56.240 So joining me now is my friend Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:02:07.300 And I wanted to have Chris on the show because, well, we talked last week.

00:02:10.580 She's such a strong advocate for Albertans and she's just a brand new baby Albertan, fresh from BC.

00:02:19.160 But boy, does she love it here and we love having her.

00:02:21.940 But Chris, you wrote this incredible piece about this thing that everybody seems to be talking about.

00:02:29.560 And it's sort of cloaked in friendly language.

00:02:33.080 But when you really break down what just transition means, it's anything but just and it's definitely not justified.

00:02:40.840 And it's going to cost billions of dollars.

00:02:45.500 I think you have it pinned down to like two tenths of a trillion.

00:02:50.400 Yeah.

00:02:50.860 Like it's a lot.

00:02:52.740 It's a crazy amount of money.

00:02:54.620 And this is why we had to break it down with a lot of questions.

00:02:57.940 OK, so I think we should back up and explain what just transition is as best I can, because it just it's new speak, new world order gobbledygook to be right there.

00:03:08.260 So at first, it sounds like one of those jokes on plays on words from the House of Commons.

00:03:13.140 Remember about nine months ago or a year ago when they got Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to say just inflation like over and over again in the House of Commons?

00:03:21.960 And he didn't notice he was saying his name.

00:03:23.800 Over the past weeks, what have we seen from the Conservatives telling Canadians that the problems they're facing with increased affordability, increased prices on everything, difficulty buying gas, difficulty buying computers.

00:03:36.160 They've shrugged and said, oh, it's just inflation.

00:03:38.420 Well, it's not just inflation, Mr. Speaker.

00:03:41.060 It is a focus that we have to have.

00:03:43.240 The Minister's response was just incredible.

00:03:46.180 He said even after House prices increased by a third, he didn't think about monetary policy.

00:03:53.280 Even after gas prices hit $1.60 in some places, he didn't think about monetary policy.

00:04:01.200 Even as CPI hit a two-decade high, he didn't think much about monetary policy because he only thinks about himself.

00:04:09.940 Won't he admit that what it took for him to start thinking about inflation is when we put his name in the word?

00:04:17.040 Yeah, and it's all a big joke because it's mostly high school, right, in the House of Commons.

00:04:23.620 So just transition sounds like that.

00:04:26.080 But no, it's not.

00:04:27.140 It's actually the official name of an official plan of the government of Canada.

00:04:32.280 So that includes the cabinet, the elected members of parliament and the politicians sitting on the government side and the bureaucracy, the unelected bureaucrats that we all pay for.

00:04:42.200 So the permanent government that we don't elect.

00:04:44.240 And what it is, is basically their plan to get to net zero or whatever term you want to use to get to the agreed to amount of carbon emissions internationally.

00:04:59.620 So holding ourselves to our own plans that we've agreed to, the Canadian version is called just transition.

00:05:06.800 And what it means is just transitioning away from carbon-based fuels, so oil and gas, to normal people speaking.

00:05:17.360 What's weird here and interesting is that other countries have their own plans, but all the ones that I saw use the word just in it, too.

00:05:27.360 It's super weird.

00:05:29.000 Yeah.

00:05:29.880 I know.

00:05:30.520 It's like this weird club.

00:05:32.600 And so Scotland calls theirs their just new deal.

00:05:35.820 And so this all blew up a few weeks ago when Blacklock's reporter, which, as you know, does amazing work there.

00:05:42.740 Amazing.

00:05:43.680 Ottawa, just praise be.

00:05:46.200 They found a memo that went to Jonathan Wilkinson.

00:05:50.040 Jonathan Wilkinson is our natural resources minister.

00:05:52.660 And the memo was from the bureaucrats, so his bureaucratic staff within the department, to him, to himself and his political staff.

00:06:02.760 And it was 80-something pages, if I recall correctly, big, long, honking memo.

00:06:08.180 And it was to explore the potential impacts of just transition on the economy.

00:06:14.340 And this is where we get to the numbers you mentioned.

00:06:17.260 They're mind-blowing.

00:06:19.140 Okay?

00:06:19.380 In total, it would affect, they say in the memo, 2.7 million workers.

00:06:28.220 So 2.7 million individual jobs and positions.

00:06:32.780 So those are human beings that have those jobs.

00:06:35.140 If you added up how much money that costs per year just in the salaries, just in the average stats can, run-of-the-mill salaries for those roles, it's about $219 billion per year.

00:06:53.480 Okay?

00:06:54.160 So this is when your alarm bells are going off saying, holy cow, how much money are you going to spend here?

00:07:00.320 And this is where we need to tap the brakes, I think.

00:07:02.960 Yeah.

00:07:03.560 And what has happened is those numbers came out.

00:07:07.820 Everybody justifiably freaked out, especially here in Alberta.

00:07:12.400 Like, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about?

00:07:14.120 2.7 million.

00:07:15.340 Yeah.

00:07:15.500 We're talking energy workers, truckers, farmers, manufacturing, you know, the people who build our homes and keep us warm and feed us, farmers.

00:07:23.860 What are you doing?

00:07:25.680 And then Ottawa went into Ottawa mode.

00:07:28.560 And that's where they try to explain slash spin slash whatever to say, oh, no, no, no.

00:07:36.500 The memo was merely mentioning the totality of the roles within all of these sectors affected, not necessarily Sheila, the ones that are going to be turned upside down by just transition.

00:07:51.620 So that's where Franco and I stepped in.

00:07:53.780 Franco took the big lead on this.

00:07:55.400 He's our federal director, a good Alberta boy living out there in Mordor in Ottawa.

00:07:58.960 And he did the math on this and he's like, OK, fair enough.

00:08:03.860 But if you add up all these jobs, it's two hundred and nineteen billion.

00:08:07.580 We can't afford a fraction of that.

00:08:09.980 Yeah.

00:08:11.380 Right.

00:08:12.020 We just can't afford a fraction of that.

00:08:14.180 And so this is why he he and I teamed up to write the national piece.

00:08:19.200 He did the big lead on it.

00:08:20.320 And then I wrote a basically an Alberta version of it because you might as well have just renamed this thing.

00:08:26.500 Just break Alberta. 1.00

00:08:27.680 Yeah.

00:08:29.240 When you and I were talking earlier this week about just how atrocious this is, I mean, you've narrowed it down to Alberta because it is true.

00:08:37.780 This will disproportionately affect the West, not that the bureaucrats in Ottawa care about those sorts of things.

00:08:43.340 But being a Westerner, I sure do.

00:08:45.720 But just as a percentage of the economy as a whole.

00:08:48.920 So when I checked, because I was sort of astounded at the numbers to lose, I think it was two point seven million jobs out of the workforce.

00:09:02.820 Canada has a workforce of about 19 million people.

00:09:06.240 That's approximately just nuking 14 percent of the workers in the entire country.

00:09:15.600 But I think you have to remember that's if you spread that out evenly across the country.

00:09:20.080 But that would be disproportionate in the West where the farmers and the energy workers are.

00:09:26.240 And I think the liberals seem to think this is the acceptable cost of doing business here.

00:09:31.940 And I share your suspicion and your caution, which is why I said, you know what, we need in on this and we need to sound the alarm bell.

00:09:41.840 Because, again, even if it's just a fraction, we don't have the money for this.

00:09:45.500 And it's wrong to throw people out of work like this.

00:09:48.540 And to be really paint a picture here, like we said, this is farmers, energy workers, construction workers, manufacturing, truckers.

00:10:00.620 These are the people who get the energy out of the ground that keep our homes warm and dry.

00:10:07.240 These are the people who literally feed us.

00:10:09.760 They're farmers and the truckers who deliver everything we eat and use.

00:10:14.940 So these are kind of important jobs.

00:10:18.540 And that is why we need to pay attention to this.

00:10:21.480 And also, this leads us back into the previous treatment of the West by this government.

00:10:28.040 So even if we were to try to be as charitable as possible and take these bureaucrats at face value, as if we've never met them before.

00:10:36.020 And say, OK, sure, fine.

00:10:37.780 This is all big misunderstanding.

00:10:39.080 Nothing to see here.

00:10:39.980 Just trust us.

00:10:41.580 Well, should we really?

00:10:43.920 Should we?

00:10:44.700 Should we?

00:10:45.540 Because let's look at the past track record, right?

00:10:47.660 They've got the No More Pipelines bill.

00:10:50.080 They dragged their feet on Trans Mountain for so long and so hard that they nationalized it because Kinder Morgan threw up its hands and went away.

00:10:58.660 By the way, the costs are tripled.

00:11:00.880 Right.

00:11:01.220 Kinder Morgan was going to spend $7 billion of their own money.

00:11:04.620 Instead, Trudeau's spending $21 billion of our money.

00:11:09.080 So that tanker ban, right?

00:11:12.020 They've been fiddling around with nitrogen for farmers' fertilizers.

00:11:16.820 Yeah.

00:11:17.500 Not such a great track record when it comes to treating people well who work in the energy sector, farming, whatnot.

00:11:23.980 So one of my favorite quotes, I learned it on an Oprah show, like probably 20 years ago.

00:11:30.060 I think it was Maya Angelou.

00:11:31.600 She said something to the effect of, when people tell you who they are, believe them.

00:11:36.840 Yeah.

00:11:36.920 You know, we think the federal government, the Trudeau government, has certainly told us repeatedly who they are.

00:11:42.940 And we should probably believe them, especially when their departmental bureaucrats put out a big honking long memo to their minister saying,

00:11:50.600 Hey, folks, this is how much this is going to be impacted or affected.

00:11:55.340 Now, the devil's in the details.

00:11:57.260 What do they mean by impacted?

00:11:59.020 What do they mean by affected?

00:12:00.700 How much is it going to cost?

00:12:01.860 And I know I'm rambling on, but I found something that I found really interesting in the memo, and it was about Scotland.

00:12:09.620 So what you do, like you know from journalistic practice all this time, is dig in, read the whole document with an open mind, find your data.

00:12:20.100 What we found was that they praised Scotland.

00:12:23.580 They said, here is an example of something we're really interested in, basically a how-to.

00:12:28.780 This is what we would model.

00:12:30.120 Well, Scotland's just new deal is costing them the Canadian equivalent of $35 billion.

00:12:41.620 That's their own data.

00:12:43.560 This is not something we looked up elsewhere.

00:12:45.640 $35 billion, folks, just for their just new deal.

00:12:50.420 That's not including a whole bunch of other financing and weird stuff they're doing on this in Scotland.

00:12:54.740 That's just the cost of this program.

00:12:56.680 So that is why we need to pay close attention to this.

00:13:01.380 Even if the numbers sound unbelievable, we should pay close attention and get some answers.

00:13:05.920 And so far, we're not getting any.

00:13:06.940 Well, and you know, when you and I, again, we were talking earlier in the week about this, I tried to sort of put this into context so that, you know, I like to test my theories.

00:13:16.280 I'm like, is the West being treated unfairly here?

00:13:18.840 Or am I just a hypersensitive Albertan about these sorts of things?

00:13:21.340 And I thought, okay, well, let's put this into context with auto manufacturing.

00:13:25.200 I looked up the numbers.

00:13:26.260 Roughly 30,000 people work in the associated auto manufacturing industry, which is, by and large, an Eastern Canadian, East Central Canadian sort of thing.

00:13:37.280 And for some reason, the liberals are very fiercely protective of the auto manufacturing sector.

00:13:43.300 Would they ever do that?

00:14:12.220 But definitely never.

00:14:14.040 In fact, they routinely subsidize the auto industry to make electric cars that nobody wants to buy anyway and don't work very well, but they continue to do it to protect those jobs.

00:14:24.160 And we don't really want our jobs protected here in Alberta.

00:14:26.540 We just want to be left alone to do them.

00:14:28.080 We don't need your money.

00:14:28.820 We just, like, get out of our way.

00:14:30.300 But the liberals would move heaven and earth to protect just a fraction of those jobs in the auto sector. 0.99

00:14:41.000 But for them, again, it's just fine and dandy because we're not losing anything.

00:14:46.120 We're not losing any liberal votes if we continue to attack the West to please our friends at the United Nations or the World Economic Forum with our policies.

00:14:53.660 You hit upon something important there because we noticed a discrepancy in there, too.

00:14:59.120 So if we were, again, to take the bureaucrats at face value and say, OK, fine, you're talking about the totality of all of the roles within these sectors.

00:15:07.660 They way lowballed the number of people working in manufacturing then because Statistics Canada's stats on how many millions of people work in manufacturing.

00:15:18.120 I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but they're like up here.

00:15:21.280 And within the memo, it's way down here.

00:15:24.660 And the weird thing is, is all the rest of the numbers were pretty roughly accurate for the totality of those roles.

00:15:32.460 So in energy, farming and trucking, they were pretty close, but they weren't close for manufacturing.

00:15:40.080 They were way lower in the memo for manufacturing than they actually are in the totality of that sector.

00:15:46.900 So it leads us to your question exactly of, OK, well, where are you expecting these impacts to happen?

00:15:54.220 And is that going to mostly happen out here, out West?

00:15:57.980 Or are you just measuring it differently?

00:16:00.780 Like, are you calling, you know, a form of farming manufacturing?

00:16:05.600 Like, who knows?

00:16:06.860 How are you measuring this?

00:16:08.280 And again, we're not getting these answers.

00:16:10.240 And we would really like to see some of the questions and question period be along these lines.

00:16:15.220 We're hearing from Canadian Taxpayers Federation supporters, as you can imagine, saying, hello, where are the politicians on this?

00:16:23.260 Why, other than our premier and other than like provincial leaders, where are the federal politicians on this jumping up and down saying what's on what's going on to just transition?

00:16:32.720 And what are you going to do with our job and how much is this going to cost?

00:16:35.880 We need those answers.

00:16:37.920 Yeah.

00:16:38.040 And why are some jobs more important than others?

00:16:40.140 Why are some jobs worthy of protection than others?

00:16:42.980 We all just can't be nipple greasers on the wind farms of the future. 0.89

00:16:47.860 Like, you know what I mean?

00:16:50.600 I didn't know where you were going with that.

00:16:53.040 And I'd never heard that term before.

00:16:55.160 And I'm like, is this for dairy?

00:16:57.440 What is she talking about?

00:16:58.940 Please let this be dairy. 0.99

00:17:00.360 Oh, it's wind.

00:17:01.260 Oh, good.

00:17:02.080 It's wind.

00:17:04.120 Dear God.

00:17:05.260 Okay.

00:17:05.760 So, no, we can't all be that, Sheila.

00:17:09.060 We can't all be that.

00:17:10.000 That reminds me of the time when I was at Sun News Network, rested peacefully kind of, and we were spending taxpayers' money on, how do I put this, adult films?

00:17:21.860 Oh, I believe that.

00:17:23.040 But what was really getting me is it wasn't even Canadian actors, darn it.

00:17:27.100 We were importing adult films and paying for it from France.

00:17:30.800 And so I ran around with an iPad showing it to members of parliament saying, do you think that we should spend money on this?

00:17:36.440 It's not even Canadian jobs.

00:17:38.060 So, anyway, I'm glad it was wind.

00:17:40.700 You know what that reminds me of?

00:17:42.120 Remember, I think it was Judy Skrull.

00:17:43.800 Look, it's a reminisce hour with Sheila and Chris.

00:17:48.320 Judy Skrull, I think she was, like, helping foreign-trained workers get into the country, and they were exotic dancers from Eastern Europe. 0.94

00:17:59.360 Filling the gap in the workforce, Judy.

00:18:01.540 There were a few cartoons out about that one.

00:18:04.240 But, yeah, this is why we're asking, where are these jobs going to be cut?

00:18:08.360 How many of them are there?

00:18:09.900 How much is this going to cost?

00:18:11.340 Because, again, $219 billion.

00:18:13.760 If you added up all of the jobs listed in this government memo, it's $219 billion.

00:18:19.680 And even if they say, oh, well, that's not, you know, we're not going to nuke all of them.

00:18:23.680 Okay.

00:18:24.440 But even if you nuke a fraction of them, that's still billions of dollars and thousands and thousands and thousands of people out of work in really essential roles.

00:18:33.380 So, what are we doing here?

00:18:35.540 And I really like the reference to Scotland because that's hard data.

00:18:39.900 I went and checked.

00:18:40.740 Yes, they are indeed doing this on their Scottish website.

00:18:43.520 It's right on the government website.

00:18:45.360 And they reference it right here in the memo.

00:18:47.300 So, if they're using Scotland, as an example, out loud with their face, and it's $35 billion, we should probably know what's going on there.

00:18:58.020 Well, and there's all these trickle-down effects of supply chain issues.

00:19:02.400 So, now you have Canadian farmers unable to be productive and going out of business because they are just jobs up on the altar of climate change.

00:19:12.960 And so, now you have to source your food, which would have been locally sourced.

00:19:17.120 And, you know, now they tell me they care about greenhouse gas emissions, but trucking your food from somewhere else on the world into Canada doesn't seem all that green to me.

00:19:28.580 So, there's all these extra ramifications.

00:19:30.880 And then, you know, we've seen how fragile supply chains are.

00:19:36.420 One shutdown somewhere can make it impossible for you to get plywood for some reason.

00:19:43.860 And there are those things that these lessons we've all just lived through in the last three years that the liberals just refuse to learn.

00:19:50.240 Yeah. And this is where it gets frustrating because they keep trying to do these.

00:19:55.380 I said it in one of my pieces, I think.

00:19:57.820 There's something typical about bureaucrats quite often is if you let them.

00:20:01.660 They like playing like it's almost like a world builder video game.

00:20:05.260 Or Sims.

00:20:06.180 Or Sims.

00:20:07.120 Or Sims, right?

00:20:08.080 And it's just, you know, I didn't, but it's on our time and using our money.

00:20:13.840 Yeah.

00:20:13.980 And they try to interfere in stuff that they don't understand.

00:20:17.500 It's too complex a system.

00:20:18.820 But that doesn't stop them from throwing a monkey wrench into the works.

00:20:22.580 And then it takes months and months and months to go back and figure out what it is they did that caused the delay in the first place.

00:20:29.160 And by then, people have got shortages, prices have skyrocketed because of a shrinking supply with the increased demand.

00:20:35.660 This is a major problem.

00:20:36.960 And so we get real nervous when we see government bureaucrats tinkering with something as important as energy, trucking, farming, construction, manufacturing.

00:20:50.020 Like these are all huge industries that make life as we know it in modern Canada possible.

00:20:54.840 So forgive us if we get nervous when there's literally a memo explaining what they're going to do and we're asking them to confirm that this is indeed what they're going to do.

00:21:04.780 So we're glad that Premier Smith sounded the alarm bell.

00:21:07.860 We're glad that we've got Columbus here in Alberta who are all doing the same, yourself included.

00:21:12.700 But we're not seeing this resonate as much as it should yet in Ottawa.

00:21:17.380 And I think there's just too much out there.

00:21:19.700 There's just so much waste and so much going on, like you were talking before we started chatting about the long term contracts in order to pay attention to it.

00:21:28.560 So this is why we're trying to get the data out there.

00:21:31.020 Yeah.

00:21:31.440 Let's just touch on McKinsey really quick, because I have the I have my conspiracy theories and I think they're probably conspiracy facts.

00:21:39.120 I just have to wait a little bit about why the government hires these expensive outside contractors to do work, which normally could easily be done within a federal bureaucracy.

00:21:50.220 If they would, as you say, put their pants on and actually just go into the office, that would be helpful.

00:21:55.380 And I don't want to grow the size and scope of government.

00:21:57.920 That's the last.

00:21:58.360 Oh, they're already doing that on their own.

00:21:59.840 They don't need my help.

00:22:01.480 No, no.

00:22:02.020 I just want them to do their job.

00:22:03.700 But the government seems to be contracting with these outside consulting firms to do work that could be done within a ministry.

00:22:10.920 And I think they're doing it to obscure transparency and access to information, because I can't get my hands on those emails from McKinsey, who just got an 80 year contract.

00:22:21.780 But I can get my hands on bureaucrats emails.

00:22:25.180 So I think this is an extra layer of just obscuring whatever is happening, whatever the government is spending money on, what they have in store for the public by putting it in the hands of a third party.

00:22:37.160 And then, like you said, you can't find the information because it is not government.

00:22:41.780 So this leads us to, you know, the CTF, Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:22:45.180 We were started 30 years ago for low taxes, less waste and government accountability.

00:22:50.460 And this is the accountability pillar that's really missing here.

00:22:54.800 You're right.

00:22:56.220 So, number one, it sounds like it's costing a heck of a lot of money and way too much.

00:23:01.460 And number two, it doesn't sound like it's accountable either.

00:23:05.000 So it's no wonder it's getting so much press.

00:23:07.800 We're really glad that they're hammering on this.

00:23:10.480 And again, we always need to do the accountability check by asking ourselves, would we be freaking out if another government were doing this?

00:23:19.480 If another party were in power and they were doing the same thing, would we be freaking out?

00:23:23.920 The answer is yes.

00:23:25.600 Absolutely yes.

00:23:27.160 80-year contracts, like what is this, medieval England?

00:23:31.060 No.

00:23:31.840 Right.

00:23:32.020 No.

00:23:32.480 You know, is this a deal with the king just taking your like, no, this is not what we do.

00:23:36.540 Or at least you're not supposed to.

00:23:38.180 It actually reminded me of back years ago in Ontario.

00:23:42.760 It was provincial.

00:23:44.200 And this is how they totally screwed up their hydro system and made hydroelectric power unaffordable for normal people in Ontario.

00:23:51.980 Which should be unthinkable because the amount of hydroelectric power, even that something like Niagara Falls generates, is a ton of energy.

00:24:00.280 You should be able to harness that for very cheap.

00:24:02.460 But what they did is in many cases, they signed 20 and 30-year contracts with friendly outfits to provide solar and wind energy at a huge markup.

00:24:15.740 Like, I mean, gigantic markup.

00:24:17.720 For the sake of argument, say the average energy cost rate on the market was about two cents per kilowatt hour.

00:24:24.700 However, they were signing solar contracts for 20 years for 80 cents a kilowatt hour.

00:24:33.140 Guess who makes up the 78 cents?

00:24:35.360 The rate payer.

00:24:36.820 Wow.

00:24:37.460 Energy they're never using, Sheila.

00:24:39.140 Ever.

00:24:40.380 They're just handing it to them.

00:24:42.480 And they might as well have a big bag of money with like a symbol on it.

00:24:45.680 It's so, you know, ridiculous.

00:24:47.820 This reminds me of that, but it's worse.

00:24:49.960 I thought 20-year contracts was crazy.

00:24:52.040 80?

00:24:52.860 Yeah.

00:24:53.160 Chancellor Hadrian Trudeau is going to be doing business with McKinsey from his deathbed while he's being, while he has like his IV drip of whatever is going to keep the last Trudeau alive.

00:25:08.560 Oh, don't worry.

00:25:09.620 There'll be more.

00:25:10.580 Oh, I know.

00:25:11.340 He's just going to keep doing business with McKinsey forever.

00:25:14.900 We should name a territory after them.

00:25:17.700 Right.

00:25:17.840 And so it's funny that you mentioned that because I'm always teaching my kids.

00:25:22.620 Just wait.

00:25:23.660 You'll have your own Prime Minister Trudeau.

00:25:25.440 Just wait.

00:25:26.160 Just keep an eye on it.

00:25:27.260 It's true.

00:25:28.560 We should never do a car trip together.

00:25:30.600 They just want to get out.

00:25:33.300 No, this is a major problem.

00:25:35.000 I'll joke.

00:25:35.320 Like I'm laughing because otherwise I will cry.

00:25:38.220 And you have to do the Patch Adams things, right?

00:25:40.340 Put your clown nose on and get people excited.

00:25:42.840 But this is a serious problem.

00:25:44.380 And I'm worried.

00:25:46.960 How do I put this?

00:25:48.580 I'm worried that people have been so battered, especially over the last three years, that they feel they don't have a voice.

00:25:57.340 Yeah.

00:25:57.440 They feel like it's so much money and it's so much waste that it's just too big for them to take on.

00:26:04.860 And I just wanted to encourage them that if we all speak up together at the same time, there's a chance that we can start chewing on the foot of that elephant and at least annoy it enough that it moves on.

00:26:16.000 So I just want to encourage folks like, you know, the more we speak up, the more we push back, the more we band together and we do critical mass, there's a chance that we could get them to move on this stuff.

00:26:26.920 You know, it's true.

00:26:27.460 We've seen them sort of slow down on their gun grab because of public pressure.

00:26:31.560 We've seen them slow down on their acceleration of the medical assistance and dying protocols to include the mentally ill.

00:26:40.220 They've pumped the brakes on that, and that is directly related to pressure from the public and interest groups like your own.

00:26:47.280 Now, I wanted to, before I let you go, I want to talk to you about this other multibillion dollar boondoggle that everybody just sort of seems to be shrugging about.

00:26:56.380 And that is the CERB erroneous payments.

00:27:00.660 Some estimates are 15, some estimates are 30 billion.

00:27:04.560 But the good news is from the CRA is that it's too much like the work they're paid to do to try to recoup some of it.

00:27:12.740 I've seen a number that says 1,550 convicts who are serving time in the pen received CERB.

00:27:21.580 And they try like, and the CRA tried to explain it saying, well, some of them were serving it on the weekend.

00:27:26.220 And some of them qualified for CERB before they started their sentence.

00:27:32.800 So that's how they ended up with these successive payments.

00:27:36.580 But they said, but don't worry, because if somebody was in a federal pen and that was their address, then we just didn't send the payment.

00:27:45.200 So I guess if they like gave a address of their cronies house, they could get the CERB.

00:27:51.520 And I think that's how we ended up in this place.

00:27:54.080 Sounds like a good plan, right?

00:27:55.440 I'm not surprised.

00:27:57.080 So to be fair, when this first hit and everybody was going bananas, we said, okay, fine.

00:28:02.920 You're shutting down businesses on purpose as an active government.

00:28:07.160 Help those people, obviously, because we don't want them to starve.

00:28:11.180 Like, you know, call us compassionate, right?

00:28:13.860 But then we said, make sure that you're following up.

00:28:17.860 And this is only for as long as it's necessary and whatever.

00:28:20.640 However, in fine government fashion, it sounds like they just didn't pay attention.

00:28:25.920 To your point, these are folks in penitentiary.

00:28:29.560 Spoiler alert.

00:28:30.780 We have records through the courts that tell us when people are doing time.

00:28:37.000 It's literally a function of the government.

00:28:39.280 So if they don't know those folks are not, you know, eligible, just imagine.

00:28:45.440 And so this is where it's frustrating, where we've got billions of dollars because that's so hard to grasp, right?

00:28:52.680 I think they take advantage of people's mental kickout over a certain amount of money.

00:28:58.860 I personally can imagine about $30,000 because that's like a new truck or a new-to-me truck, not like a brand-new truck, but like a new-to-me truck.

00:29:09.020 Nice one.

00:29:10.080 But after that, you start having to break it down.

00:29:13.220 So if you've got – let's do it this way.

00:29:15.100 If you've got $5 billion, you can build four brand-new, nice hospitals from start-up to finish with that amount of money.

00:29:26.340 So what the CRA, I think, is doing here is, you know what?

00:29:29.420 That's a lot of money.

00:29:30.940 Sounds a lot like work.

00:29:33.120 And we're not going to do it.

00:29:34.860 What's really frustrating, Sheila, is that in some cases, the folks who are employed at the CRA,

00:29:41.180 they're demanding wage increases of around 30%.

00:29:46.600 Right.

00:29:47.960 Like, I'm not joking.

00:29:49.360 And there's other unions within the PSAC umbrella, which is the one that represents all the government employee unions.

00:29:56.700 They're demanding 14% salary increases per year.

00:30:02.640 Per year.

00:30:03.680 So these are the same folks who are now saying, you know what?

00:30:07.500 We're not going after the billions of dollars that we erroneously, our mistake, paid out.

00:30:14.520 And you know what?

00:30:15.280 If you're not going to give us the pay raises, we're going to strike around tax return time.

00:30:22.540 People should be – to borrow a phrase from Franco that he had his headline the other day about this –

00:30:28.500 people should be mad.

00:30:29.400 They should be really angry at the federal government for a million reasons.

00:30:34.660 And this is one of them.

00:30:35.980 And if it's not making you mad enough, just remember a few years ago, you and I were talking about this off air.

00:30:42.020 CRA is really keen on shaking down teenage girls who work at malls. 0.69

00:30:48.920 So before COVID madness hit, I think it was about four or five years ago, remember when they were going after girls or whoever, teenagers who worked at the mall,

00:30:59.880 if they got a discount on clothes, say you're working at a bootlegger or a clothing store, and you get 25% off your top or your pants,

00:31:08.400 they were going after them for taxable benefits.

00:31:12.020 And most of them have to wear the clothes that they sell at the store to work.

00:31:18.580 I know.

00:31:19.140 It's just so gross.

00:31:20.940 So they're going after minimum wage kids or minimum wage people for the tiny little five bucks off, six bucks off the clothes that they're wearing. 1.00

00:31:31.040 Or say, I used to work at A&W.

00:31:34.100 I worked there for three years, three months and two days.

00:31:37.100 And I got, not that I was counting.

00:31:38.920 And so I got 50% off my teen burger.

00:31:42.820 So back then, they would have come after me for that buck 52.

00:31:47.560 Not kidding.

00:31:48.840 And on a bigger scale, they were going after waitresses.

00:31:51.580 Like, seriously, you guys will shake down a traveling salesman or a tradesman who's driving to his job site,

00:32:01.340 and you will nitpick every nickel that he's charging for mileage to get to his site.

00:32:06.440 These are tradesmen.

00:32:07.520 By the way, the NDP did nothing on that.

00:32:09.760 I tried to get their attention on it.

00:32:11.540 Reaching, you know, over, not a word.

00:32:13.880 Not a word.

00:32:14.420 Not interested.

00:32:15.940 I contacted headquarters.

00:32:17.480 I contacted people I used to know from my job on Parliament Hill.

00:32:20.120 I said, dude, they're going after pipeline workers, truckers, like welders.

00:32:24.760 Like, these are your people, right?

00:32:27.040 Crickets.

00:32:27.960 So the CRA will go after those folks.

00:32:30.640 But when it comes to following up on their own work, where they erroneously spent our money,

00:32:35.320 apparently they're just not interested.

00:32:37.260 And if we don't give in to their ridiculous wage increase demands,

00:32:40.300 they're planning on striking at tax time.

00:32:43.240 So folks, you should be mad.

00:32:44.980 If you're mad, I'm sorry, but you should be mad.

00:32:46.680 Take that anger and channel it into an email to your premier.

00:32:50.120 Because then your premier will chew on Justin Trudeau's leg.

00:32:53.540 Don't email the prime minister.

00:32:54.760 There's no point.

00:32:55.380 Email your premier.

00:32:56.540 Yeah.

00:32:56.920 And your MP.

00:32:58.160 And ask them, what are you doing?

00:32:59.560 What are you doing?

00:33:00.540 Yeah.

00:33:01.200 You know, what happens if you can't get with kids?

00:33:03.420 What happens if you can't get your way with dad?

00:33:05.960 Go to mom.

00:33:06.860 Right.

00:33:08.120 That's the truth.

00:33:09.420 Work the angle.

00:33:10.540 Right.

00:33:10.860 So go, go to your premier, go to your MP.

00:33:13.660 It's got way more clout.

00:33:15.180 Yeah.

00:33:15.820 Although my kids know, go to their dad and don't even ask me because I refuse to be emotionally

00:33:21.200 manipulated by them.

00:33:22.720 And he's not around all the time because he's away working.

00:33:25.660 So he's more inclined to say yes.

00:33:26.820 And I am the voice of no.

00:33:28.580 Oh, yeah.

00:33:29.040 Me too.

00:33:29.740 I'm the heavy for sure.

00:33:31.480 Yeah.

00:33:31.620 Now, Chris, I could clearly talk to you all day, but why don't you let people know how

00:33:37.900 they can both see the work that you're doing with the CTF, but also support the work that

00:33:42.660 you're doing because you're doing important work to hold these politicians to account on

00:33:46.560 behalf of the people, which is, I think, some of what we do over here at Rebel News

00:33:50.320 too.

00:33:50.860 You sure do.

00:33:51.600 And we really thank you.

00:33:52.900 I know a lot of our supporters watch your show all the time.

00:33:55.320 They watch Ezra's show all the time.

00:33:56.680 And so thank you for that.

00:33:57.680 Folks, you can go to our website, taxpayer.com.

00:34:02.080 What I love about it is that there's a million petitions there.

00:34:05.660 So sign up on whatever hits your fancy.

00:34:08.320 That could be against C-11.

00:34:10.220 So we're fighting that because you should be able to express yourself like we are right

00:34:13.060 now on the interwebs.

00:34:14.600 It could be opposing the gun grab, right?

00:34:17.060 Because we don't want to waste money and you shouldn't seize people's private property.

00:34:20.720 There's also defund the CBC, defund the media.

00:34:23.680 You can sign those things, right?

00:34:25.260 Because the government shouldn't pay journalists.

00:34:28.680 Don't care if you're right wing, left wing or a space ceiling.

00:34:31.200 Government shouldn't be paying journalists.

00:34:33.000 So go to our website, taxpayer.com.

00:34:34.800 Sign up on those petitions.

00:34:35.920 And what that does is we now know you're interested in that topic and we will make you part of

00:34:40.420 our army.

00:34:41.400 And so the next time that we all want to email blast the premier or a member of parliament

00:34:44.940 or a caucus member, you're on that list and you'll help us achieve those wins.

00:34:49.860 So just head over there.

00:34:50.700 You can also get swag if you're a big nerd and you want to wear swag.

00:34:54.200 And I do.

00:34:56.860 I'm working on another CBC one.

00:34:59.620 We had one and it was kind of Christmas based.

00:35:01.940 Yeah.

00:35:02.460 But we're going to try to find one that is less seasonal.

00:35:05.840 Nice, nice, nice, nice.

00:35:07.300 Chris, thanks so much.

00:35:08.940 Hopefully we can have you back on in a couple of weeks.

00:35:11.320 Yeah, for sure.

00:35:11.920 This has been great.

00:35:12.620 Thanks, Sheila.

00:35:13.240 Thank you.

00:35:13.620 Well, friends, we've come to the portion of the show where we invite your viewer feedback.

00:35:24.300 You see, unlike the mainstream media, I actually care about what you think about the work that

00:35:27.680 we do here at Rebel News and the interviews that I conduct.

00:35:31.460 And it's a reason why I give out my email address right now.

00:35:35.120 Sheila at Rebel News dot com.

00:35:37.000 Put gun show letters in the subject line.

00:35:39.100 And who knows, you might just have your letter, question, comment, story, idea, viewer feedback

00:35:43.740 read on air.

00:35:45.320 Now, today's letter comes from someone who prefers to use the pseudonym PlumDuff69, so

00:35:54.340 I will respect that.

00:35:56.420 And the viewer feedback is about the show that I did last week with Ben Nelson Creed.

00:36:01.980 He's a former professional wrestler, turned teacher, turned author.

00:36:06.240 I think that's the right order, but the last two might be reversed.

00:36:09.440 And he wrote a book that's a take on Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life about what professional

00:36:17.720 wrestling can teach you about achieving your personal potential in real productive ways

00:36:26.040 and not just making you, I guess, better at guerrilla pressing your enemies in the squared

00:36:31.600 circle.

00:36:32.560 I've included a link to the book in last week's show notes.

00:36:35.700 So if you go back and click there, it'll take you right to the Amazon page for Ben's

00:36:40.200 book.

00:36:41.800 So PlumDuff69, which is definitely not your real name, because I do know your real name,

00:36:47.840 but we won't say it, writes, Hi, Sheila, I really enjoyed your interview with Ben Nelson

00:36:51.980 Creed.

00:36:52.340 I'm so sorry to say I never saw him wrestle.

00:36:54.900 Yeah, me too.

00:36:56.080 But that battling bard is a hell of a gimmick and he's a hell of a handsome man. 1.00

00:36:59.580 Yeah, he is, in spite of his career in wrestling, right?

00:37:03.520 Um, and yeah, the battling bard is a pretty, it's pretty good gimmick, right? 1.00

00:37:08.880 And it, you know, it's sort of a little bit about him in real life.

00:37:13.200 Um, and it's, I think, a less shallow take on the genius.

00:37:17.920 Remember the genius from WWE days?

00:37:21.540 Um, it's, I think the battling bard is a little bit more developed than the genius was, who's 1.00

00:37:26.020 just some obnoxious uppity nerd. 0.53

00:37:28.640 Anyway, PlumDuff continues, I too am a fan of 80s wrestling and a fan of heckling.

00:37:35.240 I'm a, oh gosh, I'm a, I'm a great heckler.

00:37:38.980 I am, um, I don't know if this is a good or bad thing about me, but I'm a really, really

00:37:43.480 good heckler.

00:37:44.220 Actually, Adam Sosa and I were really good hecklers.

00:37:47.460 And Tariq El Naga, he's a great heckler too.

00:37:51.240 He's a good friend of the Rebellin.

00:37:52.900 One heck of a heckler at a wrestling event.

00:37:55.380 Anyway, uh, PlumDuff writes, I always liked the heels.

00:37:59.100 My favorite of all time is Rowdy Roddy Piper.

00:38:02.420 Hang tight here, guys.

00:38:03.980 Um, I've never given a sneak peek behind the scenes in the studio here.

00:38:08.320 Uh, but as you can well imagine, it's full of trinkets and artifacts of my interests.

00:38:14.060 So I have like my Rebel News awards and things people have given me, mementos that I get

00:38:21.000 when I'm out in the field, books and pictures of the history of Alberta, particularly like

00:38:26.560 miners and farmers and people who worked in the oil patch from the very early days.

00:38:31.080 Naturally, stuff from my kids.

00:38:33.020 There's a lot of religious stuff in here too.

00:38:35.900 Um, things I've collected while I'm, again, out in the field doing work.

00:38:40.620 So lanyards from events that I've covered.

00:38:44.540 There's Ghostbusters stuff.

00:38:46.380 As regular viewers will know, that's my favorite, favorite movie because it's about, you know,

00:38:52.060 the working man.

00:38:53.800 Guys leaving academia, by the way, starting a small business and then having that small

00:38:59.880 business destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

00:39:03.380 And then those small business entrepreneurs having to save the city from itself.

00:39:08.240 It's perfect.

00:39:09.420 It's perfect.

00:39:10.020 It's everything I hate about government and love about small businesses.

00:39:14.800 Anyway, I also have lots of wrestling memorabilia, including a WWE championship belt given to

00:39:21.300 me by David Menzies and some stuff from, uh, my collection of eighties wrestling trinkets,

00:39:28.440 including, uh, Rowdy Roddy Piper stuff.

00:39:30.980 So hang tight.

00:39:33.380 All right.

00:39:36.060 I have the Rowdy Roddy Piper Funko Pop from They Live.

00:39:41.460 That sits, uh, over on the shelf underneath the Ghostbusters stuff.

00:39:46.280 And I have this bottle, uh, of soda, which I don't drink.

00:39:51.480 So I don't feel the compulsion to drink this.

00:39:54.240 However, I will keep it forever for two reasons.

00:39:56.640 It was given to be my, my friend, Mike Mayer from Freedom Honey.

00:40:00.600 He's a great advocate for, um, vulnerable kids, but also for veterans.

00:40:05.680 And it is the Rowdy Roddy Piper, all out of bubblegum, bubblegum flavored soda.

00:40:11.180 And that sits on the shelf and it's, it's going to stay there forever.

00:40:15.220 Put it in my coffin when they bury me.

00:40:18.200 So yes, I too, I'm a fan of Rowdy Roddy Piper.

00:40:23.020 Between him and Hacksaw Doug, Jim Duggan, it's, uh, they're one and two, depending on the day,

00:40:29.500 depending on how I'm feeling, where I might rank the two.

00:40:32.380 Anyway, uh, Plum Duff's letter goes on.

00:40:42.900 Uh, great interview, great guy.

00:40:44.440 While I'm at it, a message from south of the border.

00:40:46.940 Never, ever give up your guns.

00:40:49.320 That's good advice.

00:40:50.980 If by some weird chance you use, you use this letter, please name me as Plum Duff 69.

00:40:57.020 Guess what?

00:40:57.800 I did.

00:40:58.860 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.

00:41:00.640 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:41:01.840 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.

00:41:05.240 And as always, remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:41:31.840 I'll see you next week.

00:41:37.240 I'll see you next week.

Rebel News Podcast - February 02, 2023

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Just say no to Trudeau's so-called Just Transition

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