The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - March 02, 2018


Budget 2018： Trudeau’s budget fails Canadians

Topics
debt and deficits tax changes for small businesses state control of media
Hosted by
Jamie Schmal
Mentioned
Tony Clement Justin Trudeau Carleton Andrew Scheer Bill Morneau
Trudeau must show leadership Aecon sale should require national security review

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

152.23

Word count

2,086

Sentence count

151

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Pierre Polyvencic, MP for Carleton and Shadow Finance Minister on Budget 2018, joins me to talk about the Trudeau government's $18B deficit and $500B surplus, and the impact on the middle class and local businesses.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Today on The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast, we will be hearing from Pierre Polyev, Carleton MP, and Shadow Finance Minister on Budget 2018.
00:00:10.520 Stick with me, the host, Tony Clement, MP.
00:00:16.140 You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:21.540 Is the Prime Minister actually saying that taxpayers should be on the hook when he breaks the law?
00:00:30.000 What is it going to take for the Prime Minister to have any respect for any laws in this country that may curb his out-of-control behaviour?
00:00:43.100 All these deficits leading to nothing but burying Canadians in taxes.
00:00:53.260 And now, here's your host, Tony Clement.
00:00:55.460 You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:01:00.580 I'm your host, Tony Clement, Member of Parliament.
00:01:02.780 And with me today is Pierre Polyev, the Member of Parliament for Carleton and the Shadow Critic for Finance.
00:01:09.260 Pierre, welcome to the program.
00:01:10.600 Good to be with you, Tony.
00:01:11.600 And of course, this week we had the big bust, the Budget 2018.
00:01:17.840 Lots of spending, lots of taxes.
00:01:19.600 Tell us your take on the budget.
00:01:20.820 I agree with Andrew Scheer when he said never has a Prime Minister boasted so loudly and spent so much to deliver so little.
00:01:30.140 The deficit is three times what he promised.
00:01:32.900 He said it would be $6 billion.
00:01:34.420 It's $18 billion.
00:01:35.820 Instead of balancing the budget next year, as the Liberal platform committed,
00:01:40.280 they now say it won't be balanced for another quarter century.
00:01:43.060 During which time, Tony, the government plans to have another half a trillion dollars of debt added onto the shoulders of Canadians.
00:01:56.880 And that assumes they don't add any new spending in the final budget of their mandate.
00:02:03.060 So it is debt and deficits as far as the eye can see.
00:02:08.100 And tell us what that means for the average Canadian.
00:02:10.060 I mean, debt and deficits, a lot of zeros, a lot of numbers.
00:02:13.200 But how does that translate into government services or the ability of people who are struggling to make ends meet?
00:02:20.960 Well, the government is spending tens of billions of dollars on debt interest.
00:02:25.180 Because, of course, people don't lend the government money for free.
00:02:28.140 They want interest in return.
00:02:30.560 And the cost of that interest is rising dramatically.
00:02:34.000 In fact, it will rise by about $9 billion over the next five years, which is a 40% increase.
00:02:40.500 That's $9 billion per year that we have to spend in return for which we get precisely nothing.
00:02:49.860 We do not get a health care.
00:02:52.220 We do not get a hospital, a school.
00:02:54.460 We do not get a job training program.
00:02:56.000 We just pay taxes and then hand that extra $9 billion over to a bondholder who has lent us the money.
00:03:05.980 And you know what's ironic about that, Tony?
00:03:08.140 The liberals are always talking about how the 1%ers are making off like bandits and the working poor left behind.
00:03:16.800 Well, debt interest is a wealth transfer from working class people who pay taxes to the wealthy people who lend money to governments.
00:03:26.240 The bondholders, of course, are typically wealthy.
00:03:28.760 They're the ones who have money to lend.
00:03:30.740 And therefore, they are the ones who get the cash when we pay more in interest.
00:03:35.300 So if you're an international banker, you're probably pretty happy with this government.
00:03:39.900 But if you're a working class guy who's tired of paying taxes and getting nothing in return, more bad news from this budget.
00:03:46.360 Let's talk a little bit more about the tax situation because there were some tax increases and how that impacts the middle class and local business owners in particular.
00:03:56.420 Well, as you know, Tony, even before this budget, the Fraser Institute calculated that 80% of middle class taxpayers are paying more now than when Trudeau took office, contrary to the central plank of his last platform.
00:04:11.820 On average, a middle class person pays an extra $800 in federal income tax now more than they did before, Trudeau.
00:04:22.200 That's because they've canceled the children's fitness tax credit, the children's arts tax credit.
00:04:28.240 They removed the deductibility of student textbooks and tuition.
00:04:33.560 They have removed the ability of families to split income between spouses to lower their taxes.
00:04:39.940 They have imposed higher payroll taxes, which means your take-home pay on your check biweekly is reduced.
00:04:47.960 So I don't mean to get too deep into the litany, but bottom line is people are paying more.
00:04:53.100 And I would argue that they're getting less.
00:04:55.780 You know, the government is more expensive, but does that mean it's a better government?
00:04:59.660 And that's a very good point.
00:05:01.220 And indeed, one of the things that I noticed after the big brouhaha about budget day was that spending on infrastructure has actually been reduced by $2 billion.
00:05:12.900 So we're paying more.
00:05:14.600 We were told, we were sold this bill of goods during the election that, oh, we're going to have a modest deficit, but don't worry, it's going to go to infrastructure.
00:05:21.160 But the deficit is three times what it was projected to be, and we're getting less infrastructure.
00:05:27.320 Exactly.
00:05:28.420 And the idea of their spending was they said, you know, we're going to borrow now when rates are low, but we're going to build stuff that Canadians will have for the long haul.
00:05:35.940 Kind of like borrowing to buy a house.
00:05:37.680 But we're not buying assets that remain with us deep into the future.
00:05:42.400 We're just buying bigger government, more expensive government, a government that takes more and gives, actually delivers less.
00:05:52.500 So, again, small business owners, there was a big kerfuffle, a protest, really a nationwide protest.
00:06:00.660 A real, real-life tax revolt in the fall when the Liberals unveiled their initial plans.
00:06:07.240 Mr. Morneau unveiled his initial plans.
00:06:09.580 Tell us what's happened in the budget with that.
00:06:12.400 Another flip-flop.
00:06:14.440 So, originally, Bill Morneau was planning to double-tax the passive investment income of small businesses to rates as high as 73%.
00:06:24.240 Passive income is when a company makes a few bucks and sets it aside in stocks, bonds, real estate rentals, or other investments that produce income.
00:06:35.720 Because of this incredible tax revolt, led really by the conservatives, but supercharged by people, grassroots people, from farms to pizza shops to every other setting.
00:06:53.460 The government was forced to backtrack and flip-flop multiple times.
00:06:57.720 The latest version of their tax increase is basically to take away the small business tax deduction away from any private company that has more than $50,000 annually in passive income.
00:07:14.740 And that means that those businesses will pay higher taxes on their active income, ironically.
00:07:22.780 And so, we are still watching carefully and consulting with our small business entrepreneurial sector to find out what impact this will have.
00:07:32.760 Yeah, it sounds like small businesses or local businesses did not get really free and clear.
00:07:37.720 There were some changes made, but there's still an attempt to grab tax revenue from local businesses.
00:07:43.340 Definitely a tax increase, but it is a different kind of tax increase than they were proposing even a few months ago.
00:07:51.220 So, it remains to be seen what impact it will have on the ground.
00:07:56.380 We'll be listening carefully.
00:07:57.740 We will not take the government's word for any of it.
00:08:00.160 And when the legislation implementing the tax increase comes forward during the Budget Implementation Act, we'll check inside every line.
00:08:10.980 As you know, Tony, the devil is in the details.
00:08:14.240 And we're going to look carefully in that bill to find out if he's hiding there.
00:08:17.720 What other highlights were there for you on the budget that you want to talk about to set things that maybe the casual observer may not have noticed?
00:08:26.520 Well, the payroll tax will go up modestly, but this is compounded on top of earlier payroll taxes, tax increases that the government had already approved.
00:08:36.960 Payroll taxes are particularly damaging for low-income workers and small businesses.
00:08:40.760 And the reason is that it's a flat rate of tax on roughly your first $50,000 of income.
00:08:46.880 So, the more you make, the smaller the percentage of the tax.
00:08:50.500 The less you make, the bigger the percentage of income you lose.
00:08:55.120 And small businesses, of course, have to also match the employee's contribution to payroll tax deductions for EI and CPP.
00:09:02.780 That means it's more expensive to hire when payroll taxes go up.
00:09:08.800 So, they're going to inch up yet again.
00:09:10.500 And so, I think that will create some pressures.
00:09:14.580 Didn't get a lot of conversation.
00:09:16.680 Also, there's a funny little quirk in the budget that's apropos to this particular setting.
00:09:23.320 We're on a podcast here.
00:09:24.820 The government's got $50 million for what it calls local journalism.
00:09:29.560 Right.
00:09:29.640 They're going to feed this through NGOs, who they call arm's length.
00:09:33.860 And I'm very curious where this money is going to end up and who's going to be eligible to receive it.
00:09:39.120 We know the government under Trudeau has put in place an attestation that small businesses and charities must sign in order to get Canada summer job students.
00:09:49.280 That's right.
00:09:49.720 That's another controversy.
00:09:50.640 And so, are they going to have an ideological attestation before a local newspaper can get any of this support money for local journalism?
00:10:03.720 And if so, is this an indirect way for the government to control what Canadians read, see, and hear?
00:10:10.200 I know that there are some journalists who are very uncomfortable with this, even though journalists have been covering the plight of journalism in Canada right now.
00:10:22.380 It's not very good for traditional newspapers, although I would argue a lot of the online editions of newspapers are taking over and are finding their space.
00:10:32.860 But regardless of that debate, the journalists who have been covering this have said there's a problem.
00:10:38.960 But this surely cannot be a solution that every journalist is comfortable with because you've got the government kind of deciding through a third party who's good enough for getting cash and who isn't.
00:10:52.640 Right.
00:10:52.780 And we don't know who those third parties are.
00:10:54.200 They just call them NGOs.
00:10:55.640 So they're liberal, connected, or ideologically sympathetic to the prime minister.
00:11:00.640 Then they get the money.
00:11:02.200 And then, you know, basically you have state control, state funding, and indirect state ownership of the media that people consume.
00:11:12.300 And it was interesting, if you read the budget document itself, the justification for this $50 million fund was that too many Canadians are getting local news from social media and not enough from traditional media.
00:11:25.620 So you're finding out about who won the local hockey tournament at the Osgoode Arena in South Ottawa from your brother's post on Facebook instead of from the sports station.
00:11:41.700 And I try to understand what is the problem with that.
00:11:46.600 If you're getting the information from social media, is it necessarily a problem that you're not getting it from a traditional media source?
00:11:55.560 But then I saw something very interesting. 0.50
00:11:57.920 Soon after Justin Trudeau was roundly ridiculed by Canadians for his ridiculous people-kind comment. 0.85
00:12:06.700 Remember that? 0.87
00:12:08.080 He said, you're not allowed to say mankind.
00:12:10.180 You must say people-kind.
00:12:12.020 He put this.
00:12:12.860 It's more inclusive, he said.
00:12:14.220 He was putting a woman in her place, ironically, when he said it.
00:12:18.820 But Canadians just ridiculed him up and down.
00:12:21.580 Three or four days later, a news story came out saying, you know something?
00:12:24.920 If Facebook doesn't quit publishing fake news, I'm going to regulate them.
00:12:30.100 Well, it was Facebook and other social media that Canadians had used to make part of Justin Trudeau.
00:12:34.980 So you have to wonder, given his propensity to try and control what people think, what he means about regulating Facebook and funding media.
00:12:45.660 Well, it's an open question.
00:12:47.420 Of course, you're going to be hot on the trail of this, as we all are.
00:12:51.600 Pierre Polyev, MP for Carleton, Shadow Finance Minister.
00:12:54.800 Thanks for giving us your take on the budget.
00:12:57.420 I know we're going to be following this very closely as they start to implement it.
00:13:01.260 And thank you, and thanks to the caucus, the Andrew Scheer's caucus, for fighting for the taxpayer.
00:13:07.500 Absolutely.
00:13:07.980 Thank you, Tony.
00:13:08.800 You've been listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:13:12.540 Join us next time as we delve deeper into the issues that are facing Canadians that are of topic here on Parliament Hill.
00:13:19.980 I'm your host, Tony Clement.
00:13:21.320 Thanks for listening.
00:13:22.160 Thank you for listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:13:31.120 To find more episodes, interviews, and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada,
00:13:36.440 search for The Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.
00:13:41.920 Thank you.
00:13:42.120 Thank you.