The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Inflation： the tax on everything and everyone

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:12.420 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, who orthodox Brock with new content

00:00:16.160 for you every single Tuesday, even throughout the summer, 1.30 p.m. Eastern time, because this is a

00:00:22.020 message, a conversation that you probably are not getting in the mainstream media. So we need you to

00:00:26.780 like. We need you to comment. We need you to subscribe and share this program. Of course,

00:00:31.700 you can download it and listen to it in your convenience on platforms like Cashbox, iTunes,

00:00:36.720 Google Play, and Spotify, you name it. It is out there. Despite being the summer, it is beautiful

00:00:42.020 weather in most parts of the country. There is a lot of issues going on, a lot around the country,

00:00:48.020 and we're going to bring in a good friend of the show, the Member of Parliament for Calgary Forest

00:00:51.840 Lawn, the finance critic, and also the host of the popular podcast, All That Jazz. Welcome,

00:00:58.200 Jazz Raz. Lawn, thanks very much for coming on.

00:01:01.760 Jamie, thanks for having me again on your world famous The Blueprint. You know,

00:01:06.040 the last time I was on, I had two people even contact me from India saying, hey, we saw you

00:01:11.440 on The Blueprint. And so I think you might have some new followers from then.

00:01:16.300 Look at that. All right. We are growing this not just nationally, but globally. Excellent. I love

00:01:23.000 that. The more, the merrier. That'd be great. I think it was, people are hungry for this message

00:01:30.620 as well. I think it's a message that is going across the world that there are some issues here

00:01:35.980 in Canada. And one of it is the inflation rate. It just keeps going up. Life is not getting easier

00:01:41.840 for the majority of Canadians. And not only that, I know you've been traveling across the country.

00:01:47.180 Our leader, Pierre Polyev, has as well. And the number one thing that I know I get when I talk

00:01:53.300 to people is that life is not getting any easier. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Look,

00:01:59.580 just inflation has struck once again is what we're seeing. It was only a few weeks ago where Justin

00:02:04.420 Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland were doing victory laps that look that they were taking credit for

00:02:09.960 inflation coming down. And it was only a few weeks later when they were proven wrong once again,

00:02:14.820 as inflation went up just last week. This means the cost of everything is still going up on top of

00:02:21.060 their high taxes, on top of their high deficits, which are causing these interest rate increases and

00:02:26.440 the cost of gas groceries and home heating going up because of their failed carbon tax. And you're

00:02:31.280 right. We've all been traveling all across the country. Our leader, Pierre Polyev, has been

00:02:35.920 everywhere. He's the most active. And you can just feel the pain everywhere you go. I'll give a

00:02:41.760 quick example of how bad this high deficit, high tax government, the Liberal and NDP are having a

00:02:50.940 negative impact on Canadians. I just met a single mother last week. She was from Pakistan, mother of 0.98

00:02:58.240 three, who moved out of her abusive relationship years ago. And just recently, because of Trudeau's

00:03:05.380 rate hikes, the Bank of Canada had to increase its rates, as we know, over the last two years, the

00:03:10.320 most rate hikes we've seen in the last 20 years. Because of those rate hikes, her rent went up by 0.98

00:03:15.420 $600. And unfortunately, because of the rent situation, she had to move back in with her abusive 0.95

00:03:21.900 ex-husband just so she could afford to feed her kids and keep a roof over their head. And these are

00:03:27.200 some of the decisions people are having to make out there, let alone people aren't able to buy the

00:03:33.400 nutritious food that they used to be able to because they're having to make different decisions, all

00:03:37.880 because of things like the carbon tax, which keep going up, and things like the inflation rate that

00:03:43.840 we're seeing in Canada. So all these things are affecting people's day to day lives. And there's a lot of

00:03:47.920 pain out there. And this is all caused because of the bad policies of this Liberal NDP government.

00:03:53.620 We'll come back to the issue of rents and mortgages going up, because I think that's very

00:03:58.060 important. But something you said right at the beginning, I want to go over a bit because to

00:04:03.500 look at the situation we are in now, we have to remember how we got here. And Chrystia Freeland,

00:04:09.740 the finance minister and Justin Trudeau, you're right, they did not shy away from any media cameras

00:04:15.680 or any microphones and took a bit of a victory lap. It didn't mean inflation had actually stopped going

00:04:22.520 up or the prices have started to go down. It means the inflation rate wasn't going up as much,

00:04:27.360 it was still going up, but not as much as they had thought or predicted or anything. But for the

00:04:33.480 longest time, we were told that inflation was a global phenomenon. There's nothing they can do

00:04:39.320 here domestically to fix it. But yet, when it did not go up as much as they thought, they took a

00:04:45.000 victory lap. So how is that actually possible? Well, I think you're right. We should identify how

00:04:51.640 do we get here in the first place? Well, Justin Trudeau's promise when he became prime minister was he

00:04:56.400 wouldn't run deficits over $10 billion. This is the same guy that said the budget would balance

00:05:01.680 itself. And what did he do before the pandemic? He had already put $100 billion of debt onto Canadians

00:05:08.880 before the pandemic. And then he put a half a trillion dollars more of debt onto Canadians during

00:05:15.020 the pandemic. 40% of that spending had nothing to do with the pandemic itself. And we saw wasteful

00:05:20.300 spending, like putting, giving $54 million on a, on a arrived scam app that didn't work, that didn't

00:05:28.200 do anything that could have cost $250,000. They're paying $22 billion to consultants because the

00:05:35.240 ministers are too incompetent and not doing their jobs properly. These are the kinds of wasteful

00:05:39.280 spending that we're seeing that drove up inflation in the first place. And you know what? Don't take

00:05:44.260 conservatives' word for it that the liberal government is the reason why there's inflation.

00:05:50.400 Let's look back at former finance ministers and the current one. Former finance minister,

00:05:56.460 John Manley, said the situation today in Canada, and this is a former liberal finance minister,

00:06:02.580 John Manley, said today's situation is the government's deficits are like the government having

00:06:07.540 their foot on the gas. And the Bank of Canada, who was trying to counter that inflation, has a foot

00:06:12.660 on the brake by interest rate hikes. Both things are happening at the same time. And the engine is

00:06:17.220 going to blow at some point. And that engine is going to be on the taxpayer. When things blow,

00:06:21.920 taxpayer gets left with the debt to pay. Former finance minister, Bill Morneau, the one that

00:06:28.120 is no more. So we call him Bill no more. He also said that during the pandemic, he admitted the

00:06:35.100 government spent too much for too long. And that is another reason why we're in the situation we're in

00:06:40.740 today. Even current finance minister, Kristiha Freeland admitted that deficits fuel inflation.

00:06:48.700 And after she said that, what did she do? She threw a $60 billion jerry can of fuel on the 1.00

00:06:54.440 inflationary fire that she started with her failed budget just a few months ago. And all of this,

00:06:59.600 all of these things are inflationary. And even a for even a potential future liberal leader candidate,

00:07:06.060 Mark Carney admits that the inflation we're seeing today is homegrown. All these things are combined

00:07:13.040 and it's a taxpayer that's having to pay higher grocery prices, higher fuel prices, and higher

00:07:19.280 prices when it comes to home heating. And we're not seeing the cost of anything going down. All of these,

00:07:24.840 all of this spending has also made mortgages double, rents double. It now takes double the cost

00:07:31.980 just to save up for a down payment on a house. You used to be able to pay off a house in 25 years

00:07:37.000 of your mortgage. But under Trudeau, it takes 25 years just to save up for a down payment in a place

00:07:42.300 like Toronto. This is eight years of Justin Trudeau and life has not gotten easier or any more

00:07:47.680 expensive under Trudeau. This is the, this is his track record. And the deficit spending just continues

00:07:54.500 despite the economy being, let's say the economy is going well. There are more jobs than positions

00:08:01.580 to fill them. There, there is the ability for people to get ahead now. However, any raises they

00:08:08.920 get, their savings are being devoured by the fact that the cost of living is going up. And so a dollar

00:08:16.100 is not a dollar that it once was not, you know, we can, it wasn't that long ago, right? That, that,

00:08:21.780 that everything seemed normal. And then, and Justin Trudeau went to town.

00:08:27.200 Absolutely. Look at people's disposable income is being stretched out. There's barely any money

00:08:32.900 left for them at the end of the day. And why? Because housing costs have doubled. So more of

00:08:37.060 their paycheck is going towards housing. When you implement a carbon tax, which you're taxing the

00:08:41.860 farmer, that's making the food, taxing the truck driver, that's transporting the food and taxing the,

00:08:46.900 the companies that are selling the food, just restoring it. Of course, at the end of the day,

00:08:52.660 that's going to make the price of food go up. So everything is being stretched. People's paychecks

00:08:56.860 are being stretched out. We're seeing food bank usage of Canadians in the millions per month.

00:09:02.240 We're seeing one in five Canadians having to skip meals. This isn't the Canada that me and my family

00:09:06.340 came to when we first immigrated here, but this is Justin Trudeau's Canada. And what's happening today?

00:09:11.320 We're seeing more and more people suffering, making decisions that they never had to make before.

00:09:16.440 These deficits are making life more expensive, and things are just getting worse. And we also have

00:09:23.180 a shortage in housing supply because of government gatekeepers that Justin Trudeau keeps fueling more

00:09:29.380 and more into the municipalities without any outcomes. And so when you look at rents, rents have

00:09:35.100 doubled as well under Trudeau. All these problems are caused because we have a federal government

00:09:40.220 supported by the NDP that is not taking housing or this affordability crisis serious, but actually

00:09:46.860 fueling it even more. This is the track record again of Justin Trudeau, who thinks budgets will

00:09:53.260 bounce themselves. That also says housing isn't a federal issue. It's not one of his primary issues.

00:09:59.340 This is how out of touch they are. And again, for them to do victory laps last month is just a slap

00:10:04.400 in the face to Canadians that are already suffering.

00:10:06.680 So the government, as we all know, has basically three ways to get the money they spend. They can

00:10:13.320 tax, borrow, or print. We've seen a combination of all of them over the last few years, which is

00:10:18.720 driving up the cost of inflation. We had the Bank of Canada trying to fix that. The other way to bring

00:10:24.000 down inflation is to actually grow the economy. And we know that this government is having problems

00:10:29.320 with that. Mexico is now the United States' largest trading partner, if you can actually believe that.

00:10:34.160 We also have the three sectors that are hurting in terms of their ability to bring supply to meet

00:10:42.340 the demand. And that is the energy sector. Well, we know Bill C-69, the No More Pipelines Bill,

00:10:47.060 another piece of legislation, has really hurt a natural resources sector, whether it be the lumber

00:10:52.180 industry, oil and gas, or even mining has been hampered by this. We see farmers. You just mentioned,

00:10:58.380 Jazz. We talked about the agriculture industry wanting to bring down the cost of food. Well,

00:11:02.240 we need to add more supply to that food. But yet we seem to be losing farmers left, right, and center,

00:11:08.040 mostly because the cost of doing business is getting so out of control. They can't handle that.

00:11:13.220 And the housing, of course. The housing minister was supposed to bring down the cost of housing. 0.97

00:11:17.840 It's only gone up. So they actually only sparked the demand, but actually did not address the supply

00:11:24.860 side. Like how unbelievably brutal is all of this? And it's unfortunate because, as you said,

00:11:32.780 it's the regular people that have to be hit the hardest.

00:11:35.680 Absolutely. Look, you've identified many different issues and how they've all been at the expense of

00:11:45.100 Canadians, literally. And when we look at the growth rate in Canada, even in Liberals, their own budget,

00:11:52.000 they admit that they have the worst growth rate since the Great Depression in the 30s. But on top of

00:11:57.320 that, Canada will have the worst growth rate in all developed nations. This is another reason why

00:12:02.820 people are not investing in Canada. Investment is fleeing from here. There's two reasons,

00:12:08.120 main reasons, when we talk to the any type of industry, why they don't want to invest more in

00:12:12.560 Canada. Number one, there's too much government regulation, too much red tape, too much bureaucracy.

00:12:17.800 Number two, economic uncertainty, which is also caused because of the failed ideology of this

00:12:24.240 government. You've identified energy, and I come from Alberta, our proud province that is resource rich,

00:12:30.620 and we want to be able to make more, sell more. We want to be able to help the world. But because of

00:12:36.200 the ideology of this government, with bills just like Bill C-69, the Noni Pipeline bill,

00:12:40.880 nothing can get built in this country. Canada could be the world leader when it comes to climate change,

00:12:47.560 when it comes to clean energy, when it comes to renewable energy, and all different forms of energy.

00:12:52.760 But because of the ideology of this failed liberal NDP government, nothing can get built here.

00:12:57.640 If you want to build a mine, good luck, you won't be able to. If you want to make more pipelines,

00:13:02.800 good luck, you won't be able to. Germany literally came here asking for our low carbon energy, 0.73

00:13:08.660 our LNG. Justin Trudeau said there was no business case for it. So what did they do?

00:13:13.180 Germany, first of all, turned around to Qatar that doesn't have as many environmental regulations

00:13:17.460 as Canada does. And human rights, they have human rights violations on inside their country.

00:13:23.300 Germany, they got their product from them. And they have high carbon that emits into the atmosphere.

00:13:30.940 On top of that, Germany took the step of making its own terminal. Within 197 days, 0.84

00:13:36.780 they were able to create their own terminal. Canada is in 64th when it comes to permitting.

00:13:42.640 And that is also a hindrance put in place by this government. So nothing can get built here.

00:13:47.280 If Canada wants to be a world leader in bringing down world global emissions,

00:13:53.420 we should be able to provide our low carbon energy to other places in the world. And we can put a

00:14:00.620 chokehold on dictators around the world that are now selling to places like Europe and other places.

00:14:07.240 We could replace that dirty energy with our clean, responsible, low carbon energy. But again,

00:14:13.280 it's this ideology of this government that wants to solve the climate issue with taxes and not

00:14:21.680 technology like what our leader has in place, where we will solve this issue with technology

00:14:26.420 and not taxes. Because at the end of the day, Canadians are paying more and more into this

00:14:31.320 failed carbon tax, which we got a second carbon tax on July the 1st. Emissions haven't gone down.

00:14:36.940 Our economy has not grown. Jobs have not grown in here, in those sectors.

00:14:41.360 And on top of that, the Liberals have not met a single emission reduction target that they set

00:14:46.460 for themselves. So when we talk about investment overall, nothing is being invested in Canada

00:14:52.000 because of all these regulations that the government put into place. So of course,

00:14:55.900 other countries are going to turn to their allies and not look at Canada as a place where they can

00:15:01.200 either invest or sell to, because we're just not a good trading partner anymore.

00:15:05.640 One of the biggest growth areas in the economy, and you know this, Jaz, and we've talked about it

00:15:11.620 many times in this country or in the show, is the size of government. Most jobs were created by

00:15:17.800 government coming out of the pandemic. And as we all know, the biggest pollutant to an organic economy

00:15:22.920 is government itself. So you're building the kind of the roadblocks to the path forward to growing the

00:15:31.580 economy even more burdensome than it already is. And capital is just flowing elsewhere because it will

00:15:39.500 take the path of leasers instance. Of course you will. And we have not made this country investor

00:15:44.840 friendly at all. Absolutely. Look, you know, during the pandemic, the government was saying,

00:15:50.720 we've created this many jobs, we've created this many jobs, but what they weren't telling people

00:15:55.720 were that more than 80% of those jobs were created in the public sector. Taxpayer, taxpayer funded jobs.

00:16:03.060 Now, it would be one thing to say that we had to increase our services for Canadians and actually

00:16:10.420 deliver on those. But what did we see? We see huge immigration backlogs. We see massive, massive

00:16:17.300 growth inside of, you know, manpower inside of immigration. But we also see the biggest backlog

00:16:23.860 in Canadian history in immigration with 2.1 million. We saw our passports, a complete disaster last year.

00:16:31.360 Our airports are still a complete mess. This is a government that's spending $21 billion on public

00:16:38.160 service, $22 billion on consultants with some of the worst outcomes for Canadians, with some of the

00:16:45.660 worst services for Canadians. Canadians deserve to have better services. If they were going to spend

00:16:51.180 that much, Canadians should have seen a better outcome in their lives. Not only have their lives

00:16:56.720 gotten more expensive, but government services have gone down when it comes to being able to provide

00:17:01.280 customer service for people. So this government is failing on all sides. And we need a better growth

00:17:07.960 environment so we can create more good jobs. We can create a better outcome for people that actually

00:17:13.860 want to move here. Today, under Justin Trudeau, one in five newcomers are thinking about packing up

00:17:19.520 and going back to where they came from. Number one issue, cost of living. Number two, it's because

00:17:25.000 their credentials are not being recognized, which could also help our economy and our health care

00:17:29.720 system. And that's why under a peer poly of government, we're going to bring in a national

00:17:33.580 Blue Seal program where if your credentials are recognized and you can pass a test within 60 days

00:17:39.160 of the field that you want to practice in, you will be able to practice in that field. That way we can

00:17:43.700 get more of our brilliant immigrants into engineering jobs, into trades jobs, into being doctors and nurses

00:17:50.480 so that we can have less of a pressure on our health care system. That is what we're going to do to

00:17:55.260 solve some of these issues on top of reducing the deficit so we can bring down those mortgage rates

00:17:59.700 and bringing the cost of living down. And we're going to axe the carbon tax so that more and more

00:18:04.040 people want to come to Canada because as we identified in the beginning of this podcast,

00:18:09.360 there are people in Canada or in places like India that we know that don't see Canada as the gold

00:18:14.900 standard of where people want to move anymore. And it's because everyone around the world is

00:18:18.860 recognizing our crime is up in Canada. Cost of living is up in Canada. Good luck for dream of

00:18:24.760 home ownership in Canada. Canada is not seen as the gold standard that it once used to be because

00:18:30.780 of eight years of Justin Trudeau.

00:18:34.420 And until we get this labour shortage issue dealt with, the cost of housing, that's going to be a

00:18:40.180 tough one to tackle. Mostly because of, as you mentioned, the gatekeepers stopping development from

00:18:45.680 happening. But also the fact, and we learned this last week with Scott Aitchison, our housing critic,

00:18:51.140 is also that we're going to lose four skilled tradespeople for every one that we're bringing

00:18:57.200 in in the next few years. So if you think it's tough to get a plumber, electrician, a roofer,

00:19:02.120 a cabin maker, et cetera, now in a few more years, it's going to get even worse. And how are we going to

00:19:07.380 build the housing stock or really anything that we need if we're losing all that talent due to

00:19:12.340 retirement? So we need to accelerate the fact that we need to get people back into the trades ASAP. 0.58

00:19:18.580 I agree. Look, I come from the construction industry. I was a home builder and

00:19:23.060 the trades are very close to my heart. We need to make sure that we get the regulations out of the

00:19:28.360 way. We can, you know, you have these out-of-touch ministers. The current housing minister, who was

00:19:35.500 the former immigration minister, is now blaming international students. But he's the one who set 0.54

00:19:40.980 the targets in the first place. And now he's blaming these international students who come here

00:19:45.560 to not only make a better life for themselves, but contribute to Canada to make Canada the beautiful

00:19:50.040 country that it is. And now he's blaming them. The liberals only take credit when it's good.

00:19:55.400 Inflation's gone down for that one month, credit. You know, immigration department's a mess.

00:20:02.040 It's got to be the foreign students. It's their fault. And on top of that, now you have the new 1.00

00:20:08.680 immigration minister who's saying, we can't build more houses without immigrants. So what, now they're 0.75

00:20:14.520 saying that that's all immigrants are good for to build houses here. What these guys are completely 0.99

00:20:20.360 out of touch and it's their failed policies. And like you said, they're always blaming someone else.

00:20:24.840 If they were actually serious about this, they would recognize that even under their watch,

00:20:29.880 the labor that comes for trades has gone down over the years. We see housing starts

00:20:35.320 down over the years, yet we're going to have 500,000 new people coming into the country. What we need is

00:20:41.080 the conservative plan to help increase housing supply. I've already identified

00:20:46.440 our national blue seal program for our immigrants so that they can practice in the field that they

00:20:50.360 want. But on top of that, for housing, what are we going to do? We're going to sell off 15% of the

00:20:54.840 land that's owned by the federal government and buildings that are just sitting there, convert those

00:20:59.000 into units so we can get more supply into the market. We're also going to incentivize municipalities

00:21:05.880 who for many years under Trudeau have been getting millions and billions of dollars without any

00:21:10.200 proper outcomes. We want 15% of permitting to increase. And we're going to do that by incentivizing.

00:21:16.040 You do that as a municipality, you're going to get a bonus. You don't do that. Unfortunately,

00:21:20.680 you're going to get fine. We need to incentivize. I recently met with the London Home Builders

00:21:24.840 Association who are talking about permitting that sometimes takes years. We need to fix that so that

00:21:30.680 we can get more built, more shovels into the ground. We also want for any federally owned transit,

00:21:36.920 we want to see high density built around that. And why? For our seniors, for our low-income

00:21:42.280 Canadians, we want to see for newcomers, those with accessibility issues so that they're able to get

00:21:48.840 accessibility to transit so that they can get around and save a cost on transportation. This

00:21:53.560 is the Conservative plan. We have a plan. And we know that in the next election, Canadians are going

00:21:58.840 to be looking at us just saying these are the kind of options that they want to see.

00:22:02.040 And some fiscal sanity back in Ottawa.

00:22:07.160 Hear, hear.

00:22:09.400 Well, Jaz, as you know, the guests always get the last word, so the floor is yours.

00:22:16.520 Once again, I'm so honored that I get to join this world-famous, The Blueprint. Jamie, look,

00:22:21.800 like we said, us as a team led by our next Prime Minister, Pierre Polyev, have been traveling all

00:22:27.640 across the country, talking to Canadians, hearing about the pain, the pain that the last eight years

00:22:32.360 has caused because of Justin Trudeau and the NDP coalition that they have. But I want to remind

00:22:38.680 everyone watching that hope is on the way. And under Pierre Polyev government, we're going to turn that

00:22:43.640 hurt into hope. We're going to bring home lower prices by getting rid of the carbon tax. We're going

00:22:48.440 to bring home stronger paychecks by making sure that we're getting rid of the things like the carbon tax,

00:22:53.480 and we're lowering the deficit and lowering people's taxes. We're going to bring home safer

00:22:57.560 streets. And we're going to do that by implementing stronger laws for those repeat crime, those offenders

00:23:03.800 that committed, repeated offenders. We're also going to bring home, we're going to bring home more

00:23:09.640 freedom. We see a freedom under attack under this country, like Bill C-18, where you can't even share

00:23:15.320 the undevastating news all across our country right now with wildfires because of this Bill C-18,

00:23:21.800 scrap that and Bill C-11 to make sure we bring home freedom once again. These are the plans and

00:23:26.680 we're also, the most important, we're going to bring home more homes that people can actually

00:23:31.320 afford with some of the things that I discussed. This is what we're going to see under Pierre Polyev

00:23:35.080 government under a strong, conservative, fiscally responsible government in the next election.

00:23:41.480 I love it. Thank you so much. I know you're busy, so I do appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on.

00:23:45.480 It's always a pleasure going back and forth with you.

00:23:47.960 Thanks, Jamie.

00:23:51.240 All right, Jazrez Halan, the finance critic, the member of parliament for Calgary Forest Hill,

00:23:55.800 and the host of All That Jazz podcast. We appreciate his time, we appreciate yours as well.

00:24:00.920 Even throughout the summer, we've got new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm

00:24:04.920 Eastern time. We ask that you like, comment, subscribe and share this program. Don't forget,

00:24:09.560 download it, tell your friends about it too. Platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify.

00:24:14.520 Until next week, remember low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the blueprints.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - August 22, 2023

Inflation： the tax on everything and everyone

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