The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Panic at the Liberal Party

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to a special Wednesday edition of the Blueprint Canada's

00:00:10.760 Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton

00:00:14.160 Corps. Please like, comment, subscribe and share this program. If you're on YouTube,

00:00:19.140 hit the bell, be notified when new content is being made available. Today's show is going

00:00:24.020 to be a barn burner. We have disarray within the Liberal Caucus, the Cabinet, members of

00:00:29.880 the caucus themselves, want the Prime Minister out. And oh yeah, there was a fall economic

00:00:34.920 statement. Talk about this and much, much more. We have Greg McLean, Member of Parliament for

00:00:38.880 Calgary Centre. Thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure, Jamie. Great to see you. Always good

00:00:42.260 to see you. I appreciate the opportunity. All right. This was a heck of a week. I got to tell

00:00:46.960 you, Parliament is taking a break for Christmas. We'll be back in January. Justin Trudeau has

00:00:53.580 his hands full. The only person keeping the Liberal Caucus together is Jagmeet Singh, which

00:00:59.580 is absolutely incredible. That's a good way to put it. I don't know what the NDP are doing.

00:01:04.160 Nobody knows what the NDP are doing. Did you see Peter Julian on TV the other night? Oh,

00:01:09.760 yes. Quite frankly. Okay, after February, we'll get rid of this Prime Minister. What happens in

00:01:13.460 February, right? Someone's pension kicks in. What occurs in February? Exactly. You know,

00:01:17.740 it's blatant that he said that. Okay, in February, we'll rethink this. Well, why haven't you been

00:01:23.960 thinking about this the whole way along? You admit this country is in disarray, economic turmoil,

00:01:29.520 effectively governance that doesn't happen anymore, all dysfunction at the intergovernmental level,

00:01:37.040 you know, taxation system that's anybody's guess at this point in time. And of course,

00:01:40.100 the fall economic statement, which was a turmoil. Yeah. And don't forget the housing minister resigned

00:01:44.960 on the same day the finance minister resigned, which is a few hours before the fall economic

00:01:50.200 statement. The industry minister was supposed to read the statement. He said, no way. Then some

00:01:55.460 Randy was supposed to, one of the Randy boss knows, the employment minister, former minister was supposed

00:01:59.780 to read it. He was next in line. That was a dumpster fire. Now there was nobody else to read it. Karina

00:02:04.900 Gould just basically threw it on the table and said, here you go. And we have $62 billion in the hole for

00:02:10.560 last year. We're projecting what, 43.8, something like that for next year. What? I don't even think

00:02:18.220 they are even focused on governing at this point. Like call an election. I agree. The 19, like I saw

00:02:24.080 the polls earlier this week, 19% of Canadians are still going to vote liberal. And I just go,

00:02:29.400 what do you need to see here to realize that this government has messed up almost everything they

00:02:35.820 do here in Ottawa and running the country? There is nothing they're getting right. Absolutely nothing

00:02:41.480 to get it right. I ask people, show me a program they're getting right. Yesterday, of course,

00:02:46.220 you had Jonathan Wilkinson, the Minister of Natural Resources, back away from his promises

00:02:51.400 on the clean energies, you know, clean energy production across the provinces. He finally

00:02:56.260 listened to the provinces. And you'll listen to his words. There are words from, you know,

00:02:59.640 two years ago while he went down this path with a whole bunch of expertise, expert advice

00:03:04.100 from his people and his department. This is ridiculous. You know, okay, well now we've lost 0.93

00:03:08.260 the election. We'll back away from our fantasies. But economically, you're not going to talk about

00:03:12.920 the fall economic statement here. Again, more fantasy on paper as far as what they're doing

00:03:17.600 and what they're trying to do. Yeah, and we have an incoming administration that is going to be

00:03:22.980 sworn in in the United States in just a few weeks. As I mentioned earlier, we're on a constituency break

00:03:29.380 for Christmas. We come back in January. So that will have already occurred while Parliament's in

00:03:34.600 recess. Meanwhile, let's queue up cut one. We have this happening within the Liberal caucus. Play cut

00:03:40.240 one. But I can say we're not united. There's still a number of our members who feel we need

00:03:45.060 to change in leadership. I'm one of those. Today was supposed to be a presentation of a plan. And

00:03:49.480 now we're talking about a finance minister who has resigned. So he needs to go. Sorry, I'd like to

00:03:54.520 hear you. I think he needs to go. Yeah. Justin Trudeau. Yep. Jessica asked the same question of you. Do you

00:04:00.380 think the prime minister should resign? Yes, I do. Why? I have been observing what has been

00:04:07.140 transpiring both in Parliament and within caucus over the last several months. A secret ballot in

00:04:13.660 terms of the leadership of the prime minister was important to clear the air, to have people

00:04:19.740 express their feelings about his leadership. So Jagmeet Singh basically agrees with all this. He wants

00:04:27.280 the prime minister to resign, but he will continue supporting the Liberal government until such time

00:04:32.620 as they pick a new leader. So why doesn't he just take out a membership card in the Liberal Party and

00:04:38.240 have his say in the leader? Because nobody else seems to have this kind of confidence. I know. And

00:04:42.780 when you look at this, you look at the polls across the country, even in Alberta, it's got the NDP

00:04:47.540 still show up in the polls. And I don't know what the federal NDP have to show Canadians to say,

00:04:52.280 we're not worth anything here anymore. Yeah. We've completely capitulated again and again and again to a

00:04:57.040 government that has led Canada down a rabbit hole as far as where we're going economically,

00:05:01.580 world reputation, international fiascos, defense spending. We no longer show up on the world stage.

00:05:08.720 We no longer show up for Canadians. And yet there's this pretense that they're still getting 1.00

00:05:12.620 something done. This is a disaster. Oh, absolutely. And I remember the big huff the media was in

00:05:17.500 when Stephen Harper didn't get that seat on the UN Security Council. And then Justin Trudeau,

00:05:22.100 in all his glory and the media was pumping him up, he got less votes than Stephen Harper did for a

00:05:28.200 Canada seat, right? It was just a steamroll after that, right? But it's just incredible that there

00:05:35.240 is such pain and hurt in our towns, in our cities, right across the country. Unemployment rates going

00:05:42.480 up. Talk of recession. Maybe we can put up the graphic here showing that the real GDP per capital

00:05:50.060 was bigger in the second quarter of 2008 than in the third quarter of 2004. So as you can read,

00:05:55.760 that means more than six years in this country with basically no growth. We're not building

00:06:01.560 anything. Nothing's happening. Exactly right. The issue, of course, is we brought in a whole bunch

00:06:05.720 more people and they think there's about 5 million people in Canada that are not Canadian citizens.

00:06:09.980 Some are becoming Canadian citizens, but that's 5 million people that we've added

00:06:13.220 to the population in Canada. And so as a result, our economy is still inching up a small rate. And

00:06:20.280 you know, the federal government likes to brag that, look, we got 1.7% growth. Okay, but we let

00:06:24.780 in 5% more people kind of thing. So as Stephen Pelosi has said, that the per capita GDP has gone

00:06:31.860 down steadily now for eight of the last nine quarters. This is a problem. Effectively, it means

00:06:36.720 we're going deeper and deeper and deeper into recession. You just can't change, you know,

00:06:41.060 the denominator and expect the whole thing to lift itself up. The numbers matter at the end of

00:06:46.340 the day. And this government doesn't get that. You know, it is that whole thing about disguising

00:06:50.220 their economic performance. Their economic performance has been miserable. They're financially

00:06:54.860 illiterate. And I can say that, as you know, because I have some background in the area, but

00:06:59.540 you take a look at what they've spent money on here. They've blown the doors open. You've seen our

00:07:04.060 deficit numbers. Let's put up the pie chart here. We'll show that. No, I don't give the previous

00:07:09.900 finance minister, Krista Friedland, any escape from this because quite frankly, this is on

00:07:15.500 her watch. And if you look at it, this is last year's number. We talked about last year's

00:07:20.060 numbers going from $40 billion when she announced this year's budget, the 2023-24 budget deficit

00:07:28.860 was supposed to be $40 billion. And suddenly a rewriting of that to be $62 billion. And you're

00:07:36.060 back-ending a whole bunch of expenses here that are effectively cooking the books at this point

00:07:40.860 in time. They don't want to have to put that on the books going forward because it'll look worse

00:07:44.700 and worse and worse. So the best thing to do is cut. Here's $22 billion. We'll bury on the back

00:07:49.580 balance sheets here. If you did that corporately, there'd be a whole bunch of regulators all over

00:07:53.740 you. So part of the problem here is what this government is presenting to Canadians is absolute

00:07:59.100 fiction. And Canadians even presenting to the opposition. Here's some documents that we're putting

00:08:04.220 numbers on paper, words on paper. And you and I have looked at those words on paper.

00:08:08.220 They are completely cherry-picking. They do not tell the economic picture what's happening in Canada.

00:08:13.180 They completely ignore the fact that we are going down an economic rabbit hole here

00:08:17.660 that we're going to take years to recover from because of the policies of this government.

00:08:21.580 Absolutely. And so when we look at these numbers of $61.9 billion, $48.3 billion projected for this

00:08:27.900 fiscal year, we've already passed the mark where we spend more on servicing the debt, so interest

00:08:35.660 payments, than we do actually transferring to the provinces for health care. That's a staggering

00:08:39.740 number I thought I would never see happen in my lifetime. We were there once before, so back in

00:08:45.340 the Moroni years. I was really young back then. Yeah, that's right. We had some difficulty at that point

00:08:50.860 in time and recognized one of the reasons that the Chrétien government had to actually reverse some

00:08:56.460 of the expenses, and that included the biggest expense on the federal government's balance sheet,

00:09:00.700 which is transfer payments to provinces. What they effectively did at that point in time was take

00:09:05.980 established program financing, which is primarily health care and post-secondary financing, take it

00:09:11.260 from 50% funding by federal government down to 23%. So think of what happened to the balance sheets

00:09:16.140 and the income statements of every province across this country. And we still have

00:09:20.540 a handicapped health care system because of that decision back in the mid-90s. Now, do I blame 0.99

00:09:25.260 Prime Minister Chrétien for having to deal with something where the IMF more or less came to him

00:09:28.940 and said, your country's deficits are unsustainable. Our country's deficits are unsustainable again.

00:09:35.740 This is the issue. People think running deficits is free money. It's not free money.

00:09:39.820 You've got to pay it back at some point in time. In the meantime, you're paying a higher and higher and

00:09:44.220 higher rate of interest. And that rate of interest, of course, comes out of everybody's pocket.

00:09:47.660 $53 billion per year at this point in time. 40 million Canadians. That's like $1,200 per Canadian,

00:09:56.060 not per family, per Canadian, just to service the national debt. This is a problem.

00:10:01.100 Absolutely. And as we know, it's winter here in Canada, it's cold, and we do a lot of importing of food.

00:10:07.180 So we're also seeing a discrepancy in the value of the Canadian dollar to the American dollar.

00:10:12.860 And we import a lot of food from the United States and elsewhere, but our dollar doesn't have that

00:10:19.340 same purchasing power. That's going to cause—we've already seen record numbers at the food bank—that's

00:10:25.340 going to cause the food insecurity issue to get even worse in the next few months.

00:10:29.500 That's right. So this government's running deficits, and they're bearing that with a

00:10:34.940 Bank of Canada rate that continues to go down in Canada. And they celebrate that at this point

00:10:39.500 in time, that the Bank of Canada rate is, at this point in time, 1.75 percent—pardon me,

00:10:44.060 I think 1.5—1.75 percent between the one—might be 1.5 here very shortly because the Fed rate comes

00:10:49.820 out today, I think you know. Yeah. And so the issue on that, of course, is we are now in that territory

00:10:55.020 where we are at the very tip of—the difference between the U.S. rate and our rate has hardly

00:11:01.340 ever been this wide a differential. What that means is the Canadian dollar goes down. So it's

00:11:07.100 a design to get the Canadian dollar down to make sure that, of course, you know, things don't look

00:11:11.340 as bad as they are for Canadians. Canadians are going to notice it at the grocery shelves. 20 percent

00:11:16.380 of our economic activity in Canada comes from imports. Those imports are suddenly going to cost

00:11:21.580 more. So yes, okay, our goods selling to the U.S. are going to be cheaper because of the dollar. We

00:11:26.780 don't know what's going to happen with tariffs. So the dollar is going to be lower vis-a-vis the U.S.

00:11:30.780 So it looks good. At the same time, it's going to cost consumers more. And that's the thing, you don't

00:11:36.380 get something for free in this equation. There is always a cost. That's right. And we're being asked or

00:11:42.140 not being told, I should say, by the U.S. and others to get our NATO spending up, right? So we're going

00:11:48.700 to have to put billions into that, but we're already on the credit card. The tank's almost

00:11:53.820 empty. So when you're talking about the economy and getting it moving, the Liberals have handcuffed,

00:12:00.860 and the NDP along with them have handcuffed the anchors of our economy, the oil and gas,

00:12:06.300 our mining, our lumber industry, right? Mills are closing all over British Columbia. Hundreds of

00:12:12.460 thousands are out of work. Villages and towns are decimated. And the Liberals just keep pushing

00:12:19.660 forward with their policies. And the NDP, as we keep seeing, are blindly supporting them.

00:12:24.940 I think they had an opportunity to come out and really set themselves apart from the Liberals. But

00:12:29.420 clearly, they have better minds in the NDP caucus that say, no, let's keep this ship afloat.

00:12:36.620 Yeah. It's kind of like, I think the NDP has a strategy here and they're just trying to survive

00:12:41.340 at this point in time. But you think about the war this government has waged upon the natural

00:12:45.820 resources industry in Canada, primarily in the natural oil and gas industry. But you take a look

00:12:51.500 at what they've done, the spillover effects to the other resource industries like mining,

00:12:55.900 it's going to take 15 years to build a mine in Canada, which is a ridiculous amount of time,

00:13:00.380 given all the hoops you have to jump through as far as the regulatory burden goes.

00:13:04.060 Get that regulatory burden ironed out very quickly here, because it's longer here than it is anywhere

00:13:08.540 else in the world, because the policies this government has put in place. This is something

00:13:12.860 where also courts looking at it, bureaucrats looking at it, different levels of bureaucrats

00:13:18.380 looking at it, pace, pace, pace. In economic development, time is money. If you're going to sink

00:13:24.220 money into the hole, and building a mine is literally sinking money into a hole, you're going to have to see

00:13:29.900 some line of return, some line of sight on when you're actually going to get some money in the door,

00:13:33.900 after pumping money down a hole, if you will. And we say that, because I used to be a flow-through

00:13:38.700 manager, and we say literally, looking for mines is still punching holes in moose pasture.

00:13:45.580 Because, you know, whereas oil and gas is in a pool, generally speaking, and you can kind of

00:13:50.300 find your way to it, mining is still stratified. You have no idea how the formation goes underground.

00:13:55.580 Might be a slant, might be all kinds of different locations. You've got to know what it looks like

00:13:59.820 underground. So, we've hampered that all the way across this country. It is part of the rural

00:14:04.380 economy. It's part of what makes this country grow. And the connection between the rural jobs

00:14:10.540 and the urban economy has been lost at this point in time. So, we need to make sure that people

00:14:14.460 understand this is all part of our economy. It isn't just a service economy. We still produce. The jobs

00:14:20.220 in the rural part of Canada pay a lot more than the jobs in urban Canada. And that's something that I think

00:14:25.260 people have to get their eyeballs on here. As a result of paying more for those jobs, they pay a

00:14:29.580 lot more taxes as well. And they're very good for our indigenous communities, as you would know, Jamie.

00:14:34.540 Absolutely. So, when we use the term economic vandalism, it's 100% true. You laid it out perfectly.

00:14:42.940 Right? This is, like you said earlier, Christina Freeland is not the hero in all of this. She ran

00:14:50.060 multi-billion dollar deficits. She signed on to the program. She was long for the ride and, you know,

00:14:57.820 said all those nasty things during the pandemic and the list goes on. She's trying to come out

00:15:03.580 of this as the hero to secure potentially a leadership run in the future, right? To establish

00:15:08.860 your brand like, oh, well, this isn't me. This is Justin all along, right? Exactly.

00:15:14.460 She was along for the ride. She was on board. She's been finance minister of this country for three

00:15:19.180 tumultuous years. Three years when our economy has tanked in relation to our peers around the world.

00:15:25.020 Now, the government will say, okay, well, compared to European countries, we're not as bad. Well,

00:15:29.100 Europe's gone through their own energy transition here that they are backing away from very quickly

00:15:35.100 right now because they realize it is a dead end. Canada tried following that path and now we've

00:15:40.620 recognized it's a dead end. We need to get back to actual economic development in the world that

00:15:46.540 includes the democracies, that includes the advancements in sustainable energy that are

00:15:50.380 brought about by our economies, not just by the developing world. We are very important in this

00:15:55.580 mix. We bring great regulations, great environmental performance, and of course, great economics to the

00:16:00.060 equation when we're allowed to prosper. Shoveling it off to the developing world is not

00:16:05.340 a solution. And the whole government, Christophe Friedland owns this for three years. And I think

00:16:12.700 it's part of the, you know, and everybody will say, I'm certain she's a nice person. And, you know,

00:16:17.420 if you meet her, she is a nice person. But you need to put a minister of finance in that actually

00:16:21.900 understands finance. And it's very clear to me, having seen her perform, having seen her respond to

00:16:27.260 questions in the House of Commons, that she knows very little about the portfolio she was supposed to be

00:16:33.100 looking after. And that's, I think, a testament what we have to look for in this House of Commons

00:16:37.500 from now on. I mean, is Dominic LeBlanc, does he have any background in finance? You know,

00:16:42.220 probably a little bit more than the previous finance minister. But the fact is, we need people

00:16:46.220 that actually understand what the Bank of Canada is doing, they understand what happens in the economy,

00:16:50.300 the effects of everything you do, because nothing, as we said earlier, nothing is free.

00:16:55.100 Nothing is free. Every move you make has an effect that you might not be positive for the economy.

00:17:01.260 Yeah. And, you know, when you look at the energy portfolio, it's, you know, you don't want to take

00:17:08.220 a victory lap here. But we warned, you know, the left about this, this government subsidizing all this,

00:17:16.620 these energy projects that didn't really have the rate of return in terms of the energy input into the

00:17:24.380 system, right? We warned them of all that. And then we were shouted down by the media and all

00:17:28.940 the activists. But yesterday's conspiracy theory is today's current events, because as you mentioned,

00:17:34.700 most of these countries are starting to backtrack because for the amount of investment, the rate of

00:17:39.020 return into the system is not meeting their energy needs. And we're seeing that all across Europe.

00:17:43.020 Yeah. We looked at, when I was in the investing world, we looked at investing in energy as a formula,

00:17:48.220 because you can manipulate dollars with dollars worth, you can manipulate tax systems, you know,

00:17:52.460 bigger capital costs allowance for certain industries, you can manipulate all kinds of

00:17:56.060 subsidies. At the end of the day, take those variables out of the equation, we used to look

00:18:02.300 at energy returned over energy invested. And if you look at the energy returned over the energy invested

00:18:07.020 in producing that energy, green hydrogen doesn't even show up. Green hydrogen is a myth. You have to

00:18:12.780 consume so much energy to produce green hydrogen, you may as well not even start at this point in time.

00:18:17.180 It's the same as fusion. And fusion is moving along, but it's still a whole bunch of energy consumption in

00:18:21.900 order to produce a tiny little bit of energy. So we've got to get back to where the efficient energy

00:18:27.500 is. That's oil and gas. And gas has become much better and is going to occupy a huge section of

00:18:33.340 the power production around the world going forward. Nuclear should also grow. Nuclear's pathway to

00:18:38.220 production though is very long because it has to be very safe. So the regulatory regime around nuclear

00:18:44.060 existed before the Impact Assessment Act. We need to make sure that we have a very safe power delivery in our

00:18:49.100 nuclear facilities in Canada. And we'll continue with that. And that's very important. But power

00:18:53.660 is important. Look at Ontario. Their near-term solutions include new natural gas plants for a

00:19:00.380 reason because there is no sooner path to actually getting the power they need. And it's not just power

00:19:06.140 for heating your homes. Absolutely. It's power for the industries that come here. It's power for the

00:19:11.580 internet. And you think about alternative energy. Look at the power suck that happens with

00:19:16.700 alternative energy. The entire internet is a huge energy consumption mechanism. And we know that

00:19:21.580 digitalization is something that's going to continue apace here. The problem with the energy

00:19:26.380 transition, as they call it, is that the transition is going to be very energy consumptive at the end

00:19:32.140 of the day. That's right. Yeah. So a whole bunch of energy expended to get towards solutions that'll

00:19:35.980 mean we're more energy efficient on the things we do in the past. But that's part of the pathway we have to

00:19:41.180 go through here and recognize, you know, the cost and the benefit of all of these things.

00:19:45.820 Yeah. And cheap energy is one of the things that grows the economy. Yeah.

00:19:49.420 We're pretty much out of time, Greg. That's too bad.

00:19:51.580 I know. I could have went on to that topic a lot longer. As you know, the guests have the last word,

00:19:56.700 so the floor is yours. Well, we've got a government here that frankly is at its

00:20:00.300 tail end. And I think all Canadians see it now. Everybody in the House of Commons sees it.

00:20:04.300 And I think this week's demonstration in the House of Commons very clearly showed Canadians that

00:20:09.580 this is a government in complete disarray. At least some of the Liberal backbenchers now

00:20:13.420 are actually speaking up about it. It's about time. But I think they're just looking at their

00:20:17.260 electoral fortunes going forward. They've got to start considering the country. What's good for

00:20:22.140 the country here? What's good for the country is a better government that actually looks at what's

00:20:25.420 good for all Canadians all the way across this country. Respects jurisdictions, respects our

00:20:30.300 constitution, and respects the fact that we've got to participate in the world, both economically

00:20:35.420 and as a foreign policy leader. And we're none of that right now. So this is what I think we're

00:20:40.060 going to deliver. I hope we get that chance very soon. I hope so too. That would be a great Christmas

00:20:45.100 gift. Greg McLean, Member of Parliament for Calgary Centre. Merry Christmas. Thank you for your time.

00:20:49.740 Thank you. Merry Christmas to you. And thank you for your time as well. I wish you a happy holidays,

00:20:53.900 and Merry Christmas if you are celebrating. We will not have a Christmas Eve episode,

00:20:58.380 but we will be coming back on December 31st, New Year's Eve, with a special Year in Review of 2024

00:21:06.860 with Tom Kamich and Kelly McCauley. We'll be looking back at some of the major events that put 2024 into

00:21:13.740 what it ended with, and I hope you'll join us then. So again, no episode on Christmas Eve,

00:21:19.100 but we will be back on New Year's Eve. Until then, thanks for joining us. And remember,

00:21:23.260 low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's The Blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - December 19, 2024

Panic at the Liberal Party

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