Canada’s Affordability Crisis
Episode Stats
Words per minute
208.55835
Harmful content
Hate speech
1
sentences flagged
Summary
On this episode of The Blueprints, Conservative MP Brad Redekop joins us to talk about the ongoing affordability crisis in Canada, and why we need to elect a Prime Minister who can fix it. We also discuss the impact of the carbon tax and the proposed carbon tax on small businesses.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your
00:00:09.760
host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Cawortha-Legues Brock, with new
00:00:13.200
content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We ask that you like, comment,
00:00:17.840
subscribe, and share this program. There are ears that need to hear this message, probably not
00:00:22.840
being heard in the mainstream media, to ensure that Pierre Paulyov is the next Prime Minister
00:00:26.820
of Canada. On today's show, we are going to talk about the affordability crisis that is being made
00:00:32.520
worse by this Liberal government, and to talk about that, we bring on Brad Redekop, the Member of
00:00:36.880
Parliament for Saskatoon West. Thanks for joining us. Great to be here, Jamie. Happy Vimy Day, by the
00:00:41.540
way. I guess when we say happy Vimy Day, as we recognize Canada coming together, the 107th
00:00:46.680
anniversary of that very famous battle, where Canada came together as one and overtook that
00:00:53.000
German trenches that were immovable by other Allied forces. Yeah, we don't have many of those veterans
00:00:59.780
left with us anymore, and it's getting, the ranks are getting smaller at Remembrance Day ceremonies,
00:01:04.660
but it's still, it was an amazing time for Canada, a great time to come together, you know, in what was
00:01:09.400
a very horrific situation. Absolutely, absolutely. So we say thank you for those who have served in our
00:01:15.480
armed forces, in present, in past, in combat or in peacetime, home or abroad, we thank you all for
00:01:22.220
your service. The affordability crisis, gone off the charts. Canadians everywhere, struggling food
00:01:29.940
bank usage is up to record levels we've never seen before. The Prime Minister doesn't seem to care,
00:01:34.800
but I think he's more in crisis mode right now, right? Like you see a bunch of announcements,
00:01:38.960
and it's been a long time since I've seen so many pre-budget announcements on the budget,
00:01:43.360
which is usually top secret, right? Like, you were always threatened, like, you will lose your
00:01:47.540
post or you will be in trouble if you let anything slide. Right now, they are throwing it all on the
00:01:51.660
table. Hopefully something sticks. Exactly. You used to get in big, big trouble if you leaked any
00:01:56.280
little smidgen of information about the budget, but this time, it's a free-for-all. Everything's
00:02:00.720
out there. I'm not sure we're going to see anything new on Budget Day except for the total bill for all
00:02:05.280
this, because this has been billions of dollars that they've announced over the last week,
00:02:08.800
week and a half, and I can't imagine where the money's coming from for this.
00:02:11.780
Well, I think they're just indebting future generations now at this point. We're pretty
00:02:17.180
much at the point, very close, that we're going to be spending more on interest to servicing the
00:02:22.300
debt than we are in transfers to the provinces for health care. Exactly. And, I mean, Trudeau has
00:02:26.700
doubled the accumulated deficit of our country to $1.2 trillion, which, as you say, has driven up
00:02:32.400
the cost of interest to an incredibly high amount. And interest is a thing we can't change. I mean,
00:02:37.540
we have to pay that interest. It's not something that we can say, well, we'll pay less. It doesn't work
00:02:40.920
that way. We have to pay that. And it's not just us, but it's going to be our children and our
00:02:44.820
grandchildren who are going to be obligated to continue paying interest on this debt that's
00:02:48.000
been accumulated. And when we talk about in the business atmosphere, we had the carbon tax go
00:02:53.680
up on April 1st. Not an April Fool's joke, unfortunately. You're a business guy. Small
00:02:59.120
businesses are getting hammered every which way from this Liberal government. Big ones, big corporations
00:03:04.700
can sometimes adjust through automation or other means, other measures that they have at their
00:03:11.000
disposal. It's the small businesses that are just getting hammered. And in small towns like mine,
00:03:16.460
it runs on small businesses, and they're having a harder time getting going, which means less
00:03:20.280
employment, less opportunity. Yeah, that's very true. And, you know, it can be thousands of dollars
00:03:24.820
to a small business. Now, that may not seem like much. You know, everybody says businesses are,
00:03:29.280
you know, business owners are rich. At least that's what Trudeau seems to think,
00:03:32.240
that they have lots of money to kick around. That's not true. And it is the small businesses
00:03:35.640
that really drive employment and jobs in our country. And so you tack on, you know, $1,000,
00:03:40.780
$5,000, $10,000 or more in carbon taxes, it hurts those businesses, and it causes them to make
00:03:46.320
different decisions on hiring. They can't pay the wages that they'd like to. And guess who pays it
00:03:50.360
in the end? All consumers, right? It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, all of those expenses are paid
00:03:55.440
by the consumers who buy those products, whatever they are, whether they're, you know, a car wash,
00:03:59.640
or whether you're buying food in a grocery store, whatever it is, the consumers end up paying more.
00:04:04.100
Yeah, and the small businesses are fighting against big corporations like the Costco's and
00:04:10.560
otherwise that have tremendous buying power, and may be able to up their price here and there,
00:04:16.780
but ultimately save somewhere else. Like we talked about now, we have, you know, self-service checkouts
00:04:21.440
in pretty much every large business. But the small business doesn't have the infrastructure,
00:04:25.400
doesn't have the capacity or the investment dollars to do that. And they can only put up their price
00:04:29.900
so much before they're out of business and uncompetitive. Well, it's very true. And another
00:04:33.740
way they do this, Jamie, is they'll actually squeeze their suppliers, who are often small
00:04:37.760
businesses. So if you've got a big corporation that's squeezing its suppliers to keep their
00:04:41.820
prices low, well, who pays for that? It's the small businesses that eventually they can't make it
00:04:45.740
anymore and they go out of business. So we really, anything that we can do to help business in our
00:04:50.580
country, particularly small business, is just good for the country. And the taxes and the carbon tax
00:04:55.100
that Justin Trudeau's introduced is the opposite of good. And we've seen emissions go up under this
00:05:01.020
Liberal government. But at the same time, we have, you know, tremendous forests, farmland that like
00:05:06.820
to absorb, right? And we don't actually talk about them as much as we should. But I think,
00:05:13.160
unfortunately, or fortunately, I'm not sure for Canadians, the Prime Minister said the quiet part
00:05:18.740
out loud at a recent event in Calgary. So let's get super producer Nick to cue up cut one. Let's
00:05:24.780
get your thoughts on this one. Let's play cut one. Sure.
00:05:30.560
I think the federal government's role is in part to encourage people and incentivize people
00:05:37.040
to think about the future. And yes, make it more expensive for people who don't want to think
00:05:43.580
if you don't want to prepare for the future. So you need to think the way we think. And you
00:05:50.900
might be rewarded for that, probably because you gave up your car or something otherwise.
00:05:55.800
And if you don't, we'll just keep punishing you until you submit.
00:05:58.820
Well, one thing he's very good at is making it more expensive for everybody. And he just
00:06:02.880
just admitted that. And I think, yeah, he said the quiet part out loud there. I mean, how can
00:06:07.240
you have as your goal to make it more expensive for your countrymen, for your constituents,
00:06:12.620
for their lives? That seems like a ludicrous thing.
00:06:16.160
Well, I think governments in general should, one of their first priorities should be to maximize
00:06:21.340
your freedoms, the individual's freedoms, not try to control your constituents through the tax code.
00:06:27.900
Exactly. And it's a problem this government, this liberal government has, which is they
00:06:32.120
see a problem and then they like to identify a solution. And if you don't follow that solution,
00:06:37.940
And so it's a way of picking winners and losers. And they've done this recently in housing,
00:06:41.640
where they have said to, you know, clearly we need more housing in Canada. We have
00:06:45.820
too many people trying to find housing and there's not enough supply. So what does that do? It drives
00:06:51.380
up pricing. So clearly we need more supply in this country. So the government of the Trudeau
00:06:57.440
government has decided we need to build more fourplexes. So they're trying to force Ontario
00:07:01.560
to build fourplexes. This is typical. They want, they have their solution. They're trying to impose
00:07:06.160
their solution rather than letting people figure it out. You know, Ontario can figure out how to build
00:07:10.000
more houses. They don't have to be told how. And that's the problem with the government is they
00:07:13.780
like to tell you exactly how to do it and what to do. And that takes away freedom.
00:07:17.600
And we've said this many times, leadership is about avoiding the problem altogether,
00:07:21.100
not trying to fix the problem that you created in the first place. Like why? Let's avoid all the
0.95
00:07:26.760
pain and punishment that citizens have to go through. Let's avoid it.
00:07:29.880
Yeah. And that's the crazy thing too, is, is, you know, they're coming out with solutions to
00:07:33.900
problems that they created. That's right. And they don't, they don't even admit that they've created the
00:07:37.640
problems, but you know, so how can you trust them to have a solution to a problem they created in
00:07:42.120
the first place? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Trust us. We'll get you through this problem, right? Like
00:07:45.780
we'll figure it out because we're just super smart. Well, and of course, what's the solution? Yet
00:07:50.380
another program. Another government, the answer to one failed government program is another government
00:07:56.620
program. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, we have very smart people in our country. We've got incredible
00:08:00.960
entrepreneurs. We've got incredibly creative engineers, designers. We can figure things out if we let
00:08:06.440
people do it rather than telling them how to do it. And we give them the tools, give them the
00:08:10.620
environment, give them the opportunity, you know, good, low taxes, an environment where people can
00:08:16.420
excel and use the creativity that they have. Canada can be a world leader in anything.
00:08:21.300
But we're not, we're not actually incentivizing those to create the next best thing or go into
00:08:26.600
business or start a business for crying out loud. We're doing the opposite. We're making it difficult
00:08:31.140
to do that. We're making it difficult for country companies to invest in our country. We're making it
00:08:35.420
difficult for small entrepreneurs to be willing to take risks. I mean, if you're going to take a
00:08:40.060
risk as an entrepreneur, there has to be some sort of a payback, an opportunity for a payback.
00:08:44.000
Risk reward. And, you know, sometimes you make money on a risk and sometimes you lose money. But as long
00:08:49.160
as you have the ability to make money or to be successful, that people will take those risks. But
00:08:53.800
this government has taken away a lot of the opportunities to be successful. And so large companies,
00:08:59.600
large and small, are choosing to invest elsewhere. That's right. Investing elsewhere. And when you look at the
00:09:05.360
traditional staples, the anchors of our economy, oil and gas, mining, forestry, those type of
00:09:11.440
industries that have been tried, tested and true up until eight years ago, people had a wide variety
00:09:18.620
of places to put their money. Now there's very few. And one of the places that seems to be having this
00:09:24.700
major turnaround because of the conditions created by this government is real estate. So we have a housing
00:09:30.620
shortage. We have people that can't get into the housing market. We have housing being built,
00:09:35.700
but people can't get into it. This is a compounding problem that this government has no clue how to fix.
00:09:41.020
Well, and the ironic part of this is that we are building fewer houses today than we were in the
00:09:46.180
early 70s. And our population is twice what it was back then. So clearly the policies and the
00:09:51.100
situation that the Liberals have created here is not helping. And it's actually making it way worse
00:09:56.000
for people right now in terms of housing. Well, according to the Prime Minister, we'll queue up cut
00:09:59.640
two here. The Prime Minister says if you have a big house, you deserve to pay more. And otherwise,
00:10:08.140
let's see. Let's play cut two. Yes, if you have a giant mansion and an indoor swimming pool
00:10:13.600
and three big personal cars, it might not cover all of that. But for regular families that are
00:10:20.920
hardworking, it puts more money in their pockets. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that's
00:10:25.660
completely false. That's not true at all. We know that for sure because of his report. And you hear
00:10:31.000
that anecdotally as you talk to people as well. And we're not talking about people with swimming
00:10:34.680
pools. We're talking about average, everyday working people who have two cars. I mean, Saskatchewan,
00:10:39.920
you have to drive. There's no option. And so we have to heat our homes in the wintertime. It gets
00:10:43.800
cold in Saskatchewan. We have to drive long distances. We have no option. There is no option other than
00:10:48.780
what we are doing now with fuels. And so we pay a lot of carbon tax and we definitely do not get back
00:10:54.180
what we pay. Oh, I think that's clear anywhere you go in this country. If that were true, let's raise
00:10:59.580
the carbon tax. Let's keep going. The way to wealth is more tax. Yeah, exactly. $100 a ton if you get more
00:11:06.000
in rebates, which I don't know how any government program works like that. It doesn't. But if that's
00:11:11.940
true, let's raise it. Let's keep... In liberal fairyland, money grows on liberal trees, I guess. I don't know.
00:11:17.160
I don't understand their logic. But other than the ultimate goal of this elite class in our
00:11:25.140
government that believes that if the government isn't, and he said it in his first clip, telling
00:11:31.140
the masses how to live, then they must be doing it wrong. And if you don't agree with us,
00:11:36.560
you're definitely doing it wrong. Well, I think that's one of the foundations of this liberal
00:11:39.960
government is control and lack of freedom. They want to control how we live as Canadians.
00:11:45.660
They want to control what we do, how we heat our homes, how we drive the choices that we
00:11:50.000
make. And that's their goal. And we need to get... We need to move back to freedom. We
00:11:55.100
need less government. We need less government intrusions in our lives. We need... We all
00:11:59.500
know government is not efficient. And that's no knock against the people that work in government.
00:12:03.320
But it's just a... It's a large organization that's difficult to get things done in an efficient
00:12:07.720
way. And we need less of that. You know, only where it's absolutely necessary. And let our markets
00:12:13.040
take care of things. Canadians are smart. As I said before, Canadians are smart. They're
00:12:17.680
very creative and can solve the most complex problems. The freer the market, the freer the
00:12:22.860
people, the more money people have in their pockets to choose whatever they want to chart
00:12:28.360
their own course, the better we are. We have better products, better service, better price.
00:12:32.900
And the more the government comes into industries and starts to subsidize it or monopolize it, the
00:12:38.020
worse things get. You can name pretty much everything the government has tried to do that with.
00:12:42.400
Well, when the government stays out and lets markets take care of things, it is a win-win.
00:12:46.540
Because it's a win for the country. You get solutions and products people want. And the
00:12:50.600
people that design and make those products, they create jobs, they create wealth for themselves
00:12:54.460
and they create wealth for our country. They create taxes that go back to the government.
00:12:57.520
So it's a win-win when you allow freedom to do it.
00:13:00.040
Exactly. But if you're doing all that, exactly what you just said, you don't need the government
00:13:04.700
Right? I think this is why people who are able to experience freedom, wherever that
00:13:13.000
might be, and yes, it's getting harder and harder in this country, but once you're able
00:13:17.280
to realize that the government, you don't need the government to control your life to be able
00:13:21.140
to live your life. And once you realize that, the less you need government. And that, I think,
00:13:24.540
scares some of those in the big government thought.
00:13:27.600
Exactly. Because who does that threaten? Well, that threatens those in government.
00:13:31.060
And so, I mean, our principle, and I know our leader, Pierre Polia's principle, is less
00:13:35.520
government. You know, government needs to do the bare minimum that it needs to do. It
00:13:39.580
needs to do the things that only the federal government can do. And the rest of it, stay
00:13:43.140
out. Let other levels of government do it, if that's their responsibility, or let business
00:13:47.400
do it. Let individuals do it. Let NGOs do it. Let churches do it. Let charities do it.
00:13:51.820
All of these organizations exist. They want to help. They want to do things. Free them up
00:13:56.260
And when the government starts taking over those sectors, because either squeezing them
00:14:01.280
out through tax means or regulation, government has to pick it up because there's no one else
00:14:07.140
to do it. And they will always do a worse job than the other sectors. Because it's more flexible
00:14:13.520
And they also then, by doing that, discourage the next one from doing it. So if the government
00:14:18.560
takes over this responsibility, well, then anyone who is thinking about doing that will say,
00:14:22.280
well, I guess it's not my job, it's the government's job.
00:14:24.560
Well, you can't compete against the government.
00:14:25.700
No. And then pretty soon, the government's doing everything and nobody's doing anything
00:14:28.600
because, you know, and that's no good for anybody.
00:14:31.720
I don't think so because you're not innovating. You're not living a free and, I think, a very
00:14:39.200
productive life when you're being told what song you're going to listen to, what you're
00:14:43.100
going to see on the internet. Exactly. Where are you going to drive? Where are you going
00:14:46.560
Well, and that's socialism, right? And we know that socialism hasn't worked anywhere in the world
00:14:50.820
It's not the right, you're always told it's not the right kind of socialism, apparently.
00:14:55.100
Yeah. But overall, I think this government's, I think we will have a carbon tax election
00:15:00.200
as much as Justin Trudeau tries to dodge question period. You know, first day back after a two-week
00:15:05.720
constituency break and he's nowhere to be found, but he's up on the roof watching the eclipse.
00:15:10.560
He had time to show up for that, but not question period.
00:15:12.840
Yeah. And, you know, everywhere I go, everybody I talk to, they're talking about affordability,
00:15:18.140
can't afford rent, can't afford groceries, can't afford to live. They're talking about
00:15:23.780
trying to find accommodations for themselves. You know, housing costs are up, rental costs
00:15:28.220
are up, and there's just no availability. And they're talking about crime. Crime is the
00:15:31.600
other thing that everybody's talking about. These are problems that are prevalent. They are
00:15:35.520
problems that are in many ways caused by the current Liberal government and problems that
00:15:41.160
Absolutely. And if we keep the revolving door justice system going, we're going to have
00:15:45.760
an increased number of victims to these crimes, and we're going to have more problems within
00:15:52.560
Yeah. Brad, as you know, the guests always get the last word, so the floor is yours.
00:15:56.380
Well, you know, as you said, we are going to have a carbon tax election. It's coming whether
00:16:01.040
Prime Minister Trudeau wants it or not, and hopefully sooner rather than later, according to many
00:16:05.520
constituents that I talk to. So we're looking forward to that. We're looking for our chance to
00:16:09.740
do that, and we're looking for a chance for Canadians to have their say in whether we should
00:16:14.340
have a carbon tax or not. So it'll be exciting.
00:16:16.600
I think it definitely will. And I think judging by the reaction that we had on the weekend,
00:16:20.940
we had a national day of knocking, there was pretty significant pushback against the carbon
00:16:26.100
Yeah, I think I know which way this is going to go.
00:16:27.560
Yeah, I think so too. Thank you, Brad. Brad Redekop, Member of Parliament for Saskatoon
00:16:31.020
West. We appreciate his time. We appreciate yours as well. Don't forget to like, comment,
00:16:34.760
subscribe, and share this program. Tell your friends they can download it on platforms like iTunes,
00:16:39.580
Google Play, Spotify, and CastBox. You name it, it is out there. Remembering Vimy Ridge today,
00:16:45.160
the battle of that infamous battle where we all came together as Canadians and fought as
00:16:50.020
one the 107th anniversary of that battle. Until next week, remember, low taxes, less government,