00:00:30.000Just before I started filming my show today, I got an email in my inbox and it was from the federal government announcing that they would be cancelling the CRTC's proposed tax on streaming services.
00:00:44.700There was incredible pushback against the proposal of a tax on streaming services.
00:00:50.020Streaming services are already expensive enough. Inflation is through the roof.
00:00:54.800And of course, these streaming services would not just absorb this tax from the federal
00:01:09.060So at first blush, it was good news, right?
00:01:11.700Oh, maybe the government did the right thing.
00:01:14.080You guys, the government never does the right thing.
00:01:17.720And so in that same announcement about rolling back the streaming tax, or at least stop
00:01:24.120the proposed streaming tax, the government announced $600 million in support to Canadian
00:01:30.220content creators in the audio and audiovisual sectors. Of course, that doesn't mean us,
00:01:37.260we wouldn't take it anyway. But it would appear that the government is just cutting out the
00:01:42.280middleman instead of taxing the streaming services to give that money to Canadian content creators.
00:01:50.720So, you know, you pay more for Netflix so that Netflix can give more money to the government and then the government just gives that money to, I don't know, Corblund.
00:02:04.420The government is just cutting out the middleman and saying, OK, we're just going to take more money from the people and just give it directly to the likes of Corblund and other content creators.
00:02:14.800I'm just using his name because I know he's a Canadian artist and he and I are in a political disagreement right now.
00:02:20.720I don't know if he takes CanCon creator money.
00:02:24.400So joining me now to break this all down is my friend Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,
00:02:31.440who had to delay our interview so that she could digest the information and get a press release out the door.
00:05:10.040The review not capitulating to the U.S. Is that another concession to the U.S.?
00:05:14.820It is another step to reinforce affordability for Canadians. This is not the time to raise
00:05:22.520the cost for Canadians when the CRTC takes decisions as they did last summer with respect
00:05:28.680to telecom and telecom sharing non-broadband which helped to lower costs for Canadians
00:05:33.760we're very much in support but this is not the time to make Canadians pay another $50
00:05:38.760more so I know and so I have asked the Department of Heritage if this is new spending like new
00:05:49.820money that they're borrowing with interest or if this is some sort of you know redirection of cash
00:05:56.320that already comes out of Canadian heritage which we already spend more than two billion dollars on
00:06:01.180per year I don't know either way it sounds like taxpayers and or viewers are just going to get
00:06:07.320screwed right they're either way they're going to extract money from somebody and that somebody I
00:06:16.720think was always going to be us it just doesn't have the pass through now of Netflix or Spotify
00:06:23.180or the other streaming services before they give it to the failing media outlets and
00:06:28.520insufferable can con that yes you couldn't pay us to consume they've just taken the pass through
00:06:34.580out or they've you know cut out one of the two pass throughs because it's always
00:06:39.360you know from us to netflix over to the government and then over to the failing outlets now it's just
00:06:47.520from us to the government to the failing outlets it sounds like they're just going to sink their
00:06:51.880teeth into the other side of our neck oh okay is what this sounds like which is a bad thing
00:06:57.440so yeah anyway we are in the middle of fighting this this this could have been so simple sheila
00:07:01.960yeah all the minister had to say was no right there's your press we heard we heard from you
00:07:09.720and we're not doing this in a time of inflation um you know when they all when the former finance
00:07:19.160minister already admitted that streaming services can be a little bit too expensive in these trying
00:07:25.340times when i canceled disney plus you know to fight inflation so they already understood that
00:07:33.200these things are kind of expensive already their plan was to make it more expensive to help outlets
00:07:38.320that nobody wants to support anyway yes i'm just like gonna say something radical here um people
00:07:46.500should watch and listen to the stuff they want to watch and listen to well you extremist i know
00:07:55.320I'm a complete extremist. I'm just like Carolyn Finley, like right up there, you know, former cabinet minister, you know, super extreme. So people should watch and listen to stuff they want to.
00:08:06.000Yes. And then not be forced to pay for stuff they don't watch and listen to. So I'll put it this way. I watch Netflix. I need it, frankly, after working in this nonsense all day. I'll watch like old 90s shows because it feels like the before times. So I'll watch like ER or I'll watch like a work of art like The Crown.
00:08:29.060um I don't tell my neighbors to pay for my Netflix subscription right I don't like that
00:08:36.100would be so ghastly immoral and tacky could you imagine like hi I feel like watching this and I
00:08:43.020support this form of art pay for it for me right that's outrageous so no this is absolute nonsense
00:08:48.760Miller could have been a hero and come out and said you know what I saw the light um no Netflix
00:08:54.540tax increase we're scrapping all of that and further the review part is going to be whittling
00:09:00.520down the budget around here because we spend more than two billion dollars on the department of
00:09:05.320heritage more than 1.4 billion dollars on the cbc more than 300 million dollars on the canada council
00:09:12.140for the arts i'm just getting started that's not even touching the top of the iceberg that would
00:09:17.600have been revolutionary of him saying you know what uh people should pay for their own stuff
00:09:22.080yeah and and at the end of the day if you know to expand a program you might want to look at the
00:09:30.340outcomes and the outcomes are as such that as we continue to support these failing outlets that
00:09:39.060nobody wants to pay for there actually becomes fewer and fewer of these outlets in Canada
00:09:44.560um there are the more we support journalists journalists the more we support them through
00:09:52.500our tax dollars the fewer of them there are out there and um the fewer canadians trust anything
00:10:01.240coming out of their mouths yes uh i've been in the game for a long time i've been in the industry
00:10:05.780the business of journalism for a long time a full disclosure i did work for cbc for around six-ish
00:10:11.280weeks right girls got to eat um and that was way back in like i can't remember 2011 2012 but i want
00:10:17.520people to know that um and this is not an axe to grind they were fine it just wasn't a good fit for
00:10:22.940me because uh i was told i have a type a personality and i seem to want to save the network all the
00:10:28.520time um so anywho uh but this isn't a personal thing this is a common sense thing and a money
00:10:36.500And people, if they aren't watching stuff, why should they be forced to pay for the stuff they're not watching? I'll give it to you this way. The CBC costs us $1.4 billion per year. The head of the RCMP union, National Police Federation, represents around 20,000 boys and girls in blue, just told their rank and file, don't accept an invitation for an interview.
00:11:06.500if the CBC calls you. Why? Because they could be tricking them into coming to a fake TV studio for
00:11:14.660a fake TV show in order to take their phones away and then verbally harangue them. Like,
00:11:20.140I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, but that's what's happened. And gosh, Sheila, it's
00:11:25.200just such a terrible situation right now with Canadian media. The first thing that they need
00:11:29.840to do is pull the plug like yes stop funding it make it sort itself out but i'm i'm just a
00:11:37.500miller could have done the good thing here and he just didn't it's like he tried to swing the
00:11:43.760baseball bat and instead of like cracking it out past third base he's like hit himself in the knee
00:11:48.820it's the dumbest move he should have just told the crtc no netflix taxi done yeah but no now now we
00:11:58.160just are going to continue to pay more for their bad ideas and schemes. Yes. The one glimmer of0.98
00:12:05.100light is in the very garbled news release from the bureaucrats that I saw today is they use the
00:12:13.000term consultation, consultation a lot. Now that word might be lame if you think about it, but it's
00:12:19.300not in this case in government talk because that gives us windows to pummel them with entries and
00:12:26.340emails and stuff. And the only reason Mark Miller is even talking about a Netflix tax is because
00:12:30.980people who are watching this show freaked out, like flipped the table and said, no, we're not
00:12:36.380paying a one cent more. So folks just keep up the pressure. They will eventually sober up on this.
00:12:42.740The good news in that news release is that they're saying that they have to do public
00:12:46.900consultation again. Yeah, they darn sure do. Yeah, it shows they're wobbly on these issues.0.95
00:12:52.620and it shows that people are figuring out that when you tax a company that provides a service
00:12:58.520to you, they don't eat that tax. They pass it along to the consumer and people are figuring
00:13:04.740that out. I want to talk to you about how Canada is the only country in the G7 in a recession.
00:13:16.180And now, you know, you'll hear people in the mainstream media preface this by saying a
00:13:19.960technical recession. But I, you know, I saw a really incredible exchange between opposition
00:13:26.760leader Pierre Polyev and a journalist who said, you know, do you think it is Mark Carney's fault
00:13:32.660or it must, it must certainly be Donald Trump's fault. And Polyev was right to point out, look,
00:13:38.900we're all in the G7. We're all getting hit with tariffs. Mexico as well. And yet we're the only
00:13:45.900one in a technical recession so what what could be the interesting different denominator there
00:13:51.760perhaps it is mark carney and his spending habits yeah the group of 20 nations are all
00:13:59.300faced with the same tariffs wars and energy prices yet 19 of the g20 countries are not in recession
00:18:37.620Only Canada among G7 countries is in a recession.
00:18:41.800And only Canada among North American countries is in a recession.
00:18:45.720So it seems that the other countries, despite Mr. Trump's unfair tariffs,
00:18:50.420have been able to craft policies to avoid recession it's only well and you touched on0.71
00:18:56.960bevota's 16 orange juice and that ruined her career now i thought kind of thought bevota was1.00
00:19:03.360a little bit cool like there's so many pictures of her just ripping darts at the house of commons1.00
00:19:07.740outside and i kind of thought she was a cool lady um but she looks like something from the
00:19:12.780blues brothers i know oh just great like i've talked many times seems like a neat person like
00:19:18.360it's not even personal but yeah right right but that was too much for conservatives to abide
00:19:23.960but really like harper could have just done nothing about it but it was too much for general
00:19:30.320conservatives to abide and yet we have the latest spending scandal on the onboard catering for
00:19:39.440mark carney's uh i don't know junkets i i guess they're trade missions if you can call them that
00:19:47.280But, I mean, through the same order paper responses where you guys uncovered some of the spending on the plane, I discovered that they were just sending a random plane there completely empty for a photo op.