The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Risks to Economic Prosperity

00:00:01.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:05.300 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Caliburton, Co-Worthodox Brock, thanking

00:00:09.020 you once again for joining us here today. And if you can't watch or listen to the whole

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00:00:27.980 the ever-moving Liberal Agenda with new content every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time.

00:00:33.360 We're just a touch behind, but we are glad you are here. We have an amazing topic today.

00:00:37.880 Of course, the new cabinet for the Trudeau government has been sworn in today. We're going to go

00:00:43.040 over that in just a second with our guest. He's a good friend of the show. He's coming

00:00:46.660 back, the Member of Parliament for Abbotsford. He's also the finance critic of Record. We

00:00:51.660 have Ed Fast. Hello and welcome. Thanks for coming back on.

00:00:55.200 Hey, good to be on your show, Jamie.

00:00:56.600 And you did have, we did have good reason for going a little late. You were just sworn

00:01:01.000 in, so congratulations.

00:01:02.760 Thank you. Thank you. I was there with Doug Shipley and a few other Shipleys and enjoyed

00:01:10.220 the swearing-in ceremony and then had a meal at the Parliamentary Restaurant.

00:01:15.320 Very good. Well, well-deserved. And of course, Bev Shipley, a Member of Parliament for

00:01:18.920 Southwestern Ontario, just recently, I guess, retired in the 2019 election. So it's great to

00:01:24.920 see him again, I'm sure, and spread some good cheer and some memories. Catch up. Big day. The Liberal

00:01:32.300 Cabinet was sworn in, as I mentioned off the top. And I think the one thing that really stands out

00:01:39.260 to me is the fact that Stephen Gilbeau was moved. Mr. Censorship. Stephen Gilbeau was moved from

00:01:44.200 Heritage, Mr. Bill C-10, centering what you can watch and see on the internet, now in the environment

00:01:51.200 and climate change portfolio. My goodness, if you were out West, my goodness, anyone in the oil and

00:01:57.900 gas industry, I'm sure people in the mining industry in Northern Ontario and elsewhere and

00:02:02.280 in the Yukon. But now we have a real hardcore activist in the environment and climate change

00:02:09.660 portfolio. Well, I would say that if you are someone who's interested in maximizing Canada's

00:02:17.280 potential, not only in natural resources, but in development generally, the appointment of Mr.

00:02:23.940 Giebel, as Minister of Environment, should send shivers down your spine. Mr. Giebel has proven that he is

00:02:32.320 willing to go to extremes to implement his agenda, Justin Trudeau's agenda. And as you know, with Bill

00:02:40.620 C-10, he was the minister responsible for the bill that would have censored what we post online. He would

00:02:49.480 have given the CRTC the power to look over our shoulders, tell us what we can and cannot post on

00:02:55.900 social media. And now we have that same minister in charge of our environment file. That should concern

00:03:03.200 every committee. Our leader, Aaron O'Toole, put forward a statement just a little while ago, basically

00:03:09.760 calling out this new cabinet, saying it poses a serious risk to economic prosperity and national unity.

00:03:17.840 And if you go down these names, it really does show that. I'm starting to get very concerned. We have

00:03:24.680 Melanie Jolie, who was demoted at one time because of some errors she made in her portfolio. Now,

00:03:31.140 she's been elevated to the foreign minister, one of the top diplomatic post. Well, the top diplomatic

00:03:36.600 post. I can't see how that makes any sense either. Well, Jamie, I'm not going to cast aspersions on any of

00:03:45.760 the individuals that have been appointed, other than to say that there are virtually no new faces

00:03:52.640 here. The only new, really new face is Sean Fraser. And I think that's a good appointment. He's a capable,

00:03:59.400 eminently capable member of parliament. I think he'll do well in his new immigration portfolio.

00:04:05.240 But for the most part, this cabinet is just, it's like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

00:04:11.460 It's the same faces, just in different portfolios. We'll be making the same basic mistakes in those

00:04:18.200 portfolios. I'm not encouraged at all by what I've seen in today's cabinet.

00:04:23.980 Are you surprised at all that Harjit Sajan, I guess another British Columbia member of parliament,

00:04:32.540 was moved out of the defence portfolio? He was put into international development and minister

00:04:38.240 responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada.

00:04:42.800 Well, I'm not surprised that he's been shuffled out of defence. I mean, that was a disaster of file.

00:04:48.500 I think Canadians from coast to coast to coast understand that he should have never been given

00:04:53.660 that file in the first place. And he certainly fumbled the ball on that, especially sexual misconduct

00:04:59.160 in the military, something he really has never taken seriously. But to see him still in cabinet

00:05:06.440 is a great concern. He's been shuffled off into international development. But quite frankly,

00:05:12.280 he shouldn't be in cabinet at all. And as a British Columbia, obviously, I want to see great

00:05:17.100 representation from our province. But having him there as our representative really reflects very

00:05:23.740 poorly on the Trudeau government. We see that Chrystia Freeland is back in the finance portfolio,

00:05:29.240 again, Deputy Prime Minister. Given that inflation is at its 20-year highs, 4.1%. Prices are going up

00:05:38.480 everywhere you look. Is there someone, is there kind of an adult in the room, if you will, that will have

00:05:45.720 the guts to stand up at the cabinet table and say, look, we can't keep printing money. We can't keep

00:05:51.680 spending $424 million more than what we have every single day, or print more than $400 billion,

00:05:57.920 which the Bank of Canada has effectively done. Something needs to give before we debauch the

00:06:03.820 economy, the currency or combination thereof. Well, you asked, is there an adult in the room

00:06:10.560 that can stand up to Justin Trudeau? And my answer is, I'm not sure there is. We've seen this government

00:06:18.600 take unprecedented steps to borrow and spend future generations' money. And this is money that has to be

00:06:26.980 repaid by my children, my grandchildren, and someday maybe my great-grandchildren. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget

00:06:35.920 Officer has made it very clear that based on the Trudeau government's current trajectory, the budget won't even be

00:06:43.660 balanced until the year 2017. 50 years from now, and that doesn't take into account the additional

00:06:52.160 spending commitment team made during the election, which have to be piled on top of that. And that is

00:06:58.080 the legacy that we're leaving behind for our children. Now, don't get me wrong. We've come through a pandemic

00:07:03.940 and some additional spending and borrowing was required. But you may recall during the Harper years,

00:07:10.600 we also had a global recession in 2008-2009. And what did the Harper government do? Well, yes,

00:07:19.780 they did invest in our economy by borrowing a little bit and investing that money in things that made a

00:07:27.780 long-term difference that strengthened our economy, things like infrastructure across our country.

00:07:33.380 And yet, what we've seen with the Trudeau government, their spending has gone far beyond

00:07:40.480 just coping with the pandemic. Everyone knows that he, the Prime Minister, allocated an additional

00:07:47.300 $100 billion of what he called stimulus funding, which ended up not being stimulus funding. It was simply

00:07:55.320 spending money, spraying money around to all the special interest groups that he hoped would re-elect

00:08:01.500 to his government. And in fact, he was successful. He sprayed that money all around. He was re-elected.

00:08:07.340 But you know what? It's my children, your children and grandchildren that are going to have to pay for

00:08:12.500 this. And there's no plan to manage this massive debt that this Prime Minister is leaving behind.

00:08:19.600 In this minority parliament, of course, you need the help of at least one other party,

00:08:23.580 the Liberals do anyway. The NDP want to spend even more money. It doesn't look like the Liberals are going to

00:08:31.680 take the opposite approach. So if they're teaming up with the NDP and they want to put, you know, more cash,

00:08:39.680 you know, print more cash, you know, we're going to have some very serious problems. As you mentioned, as the

00:08:46.620 interest payments keep coming up and get bigger and bigger and take up a bigger part of the federal

00:08:52.180 budget, there's going to be less money for those services that future generations need and want.

00:08:58.720 That is correct. I think what we've done is we've positioned ourselves as an economy, as a country,

00:09:06.420 to face very stiff fiscal headwinds. And by fiscal headwinds, I mean very significant challenges in

00:09:15.000 trying to pay off the debt that is being left behind, to continue the services that

00:09:22.600 Canadians have come to expect from their federal government. And there's only three ways we can do that.

00:09:28.340 One is to reduce spending. Second way is to increase taxes. And the third way is to generate economic

00:09:38.280 growth. We as Conservatives believe that the way to address this is to generate economic

00:09:44.820 growth. And to do that, you have to address some of the challenges that we have within our economy.

00:09:51.380 We have some structural deficiencies in our economy that have to be addressed so that we can generate

00:09:57.160 the kind of economic growth and tax revenue that will allow us to afford this massive debt. And we have

00:10:04.080 not seen that plan from Justin Trudeau. My theory is the NDP now will extract even more concessions

00:10:11.880 from a spendthrift prime minister, whether it's going to be on dental care, national dental care

00:10:18.740 program, national pharma care program. We don't know what this is going to look like. We know the NDP

00:10:24.860 is going to hold the prime minister for ransom, and Canadians will pay the price.

00:10:30.060 You've seen media reports all across the globe, really, warning and forecasting higher energy

00:10:37.420 prices. We here in Canada have an amazing energy industry, but it's always pushed to the sidelines

00:10:44.460 by this government. We've seen massive pieces of legislation that regulates our ports to death.

00:10:49.840 We can't get pipelines built. We can't seem to get our natural resources to market other than

00:10:56.480 the United States. But yet we're doing everything we can domestically to cripple this industry where

00:11:02.860 demand is rising. And you're seeing warnings in some countries where shortages might be a reality

00:11:09.420 this coming winter. And we have the ability to do this. We have the ability to extract our resources

00:11:15.720 and provide the marketplace, the demand that they need, in the most ethical, responsible way possible.

00:11:21.900 You're absolutely right, Jamie. In fact, your comments go to the heart of what I just mentioned,

00:11:27.920 and that is the structural deficiencies we have in our economy. We are over-regulated. We make it

00:11:34.060 incredibly difficult for investors to invest in our economy because they don't trust this prime

00:11:41.020 minister. They don't trust this liberal government to put in place the kind of regulatory environment that

00:11:46.840 is going to be welcoming to investors that will allow projects to be approved, that will allow our

00:11:52.700 oil and gas to be shipped all over the world because it is the most ethical oil and gas you will find

00:11:58.720 around the world. And nobody is suggesting that overnight we're going to be able to stop using oil

00:12:04.800 and gas. It's just not going to happen. The world is still going to need fossil fuels for decades to

00:12:12.000 come. Well, if we're going to be using fossil fuels for the next little while, why not at least ship

00:12:19.240 the most sustainably extracted and produced oil in the world? And that is here from Canada. And the

00:12:27.520 problem is we can't even get it shipped across our country because we have an anti-pipeline prime

00:12:33.300 minister. We have an anti-resource liberal government that just does not understand how important the

00:12:40.860 re-resource sector is to our economy. Not only that, like you're in British Columbia, what's the

00:12:48.380 forest industry? That's an industry that was hurting before the pandemic. We know that mills were closing

00:12:55.140 for a whole bunch of reasons and then the pandemic hit. How's the industry faring right now? Is it still

00:13:02.020 struggling? Well, not only the pandemic hit, but we had the massive forest fires of a good chunk of our

00:13:10.380 forest. You may recall back in 2006, when Stephen Harper was elected, the first thing he did was to

00:13:19.480 get a liberal MP to join us and to appoint him to negotiate an end to the software lumber disagreement

00:13:31.640 that we had with the United States. David Emerson was appointed to resolve that dispute and he did it

00:13:38.180 in short order. And we had peace for well over a decade in our forests. And wouldn't you know it,

00:13:45.960 in 2015, Justin Trudeau gets elected. The software lumber agreement expires. He has this great meeting

00:13:53.240 with Barack Obama in the rose garden of the White House. And he announces that within weeks, they were

00:14:01.360 going to put in place a process to resolve the soft lumber dispute. And here we are, six years later,

00:14:10.140 there is absolutely no prospect right now for resolving that dispute. Yes, it's impacting our soft lumber

00:14:17.360 industry. Fortunately, and unfortunately, in some respects, the pandemic has also generated this demand

00:14:28.340 for housing, that the price of lumber has just skyrocketed. And it's actually now factoring into

00:14:36.240 the inflationary pressures that we are seeing across Canada, across North America, actually. And so the

00:14:43.780 lumber industry is doing reasonably well. But I can tell you that once this spike in lumber prices

00:14:52.380 abates, we'll be back down to a situation where our forestry companies are going to be struggling

00:14:59.800 because of the fact that this prime minister has not made forestry a priority for his government.

00:15:07.800 Ed, we only have a few minutes left. And I always give the guests, as you know, the last word. So

00:15:12.240 you can comment on anything you like. The inflationary crisis, we can talk about the cabinet

00:15:17.840 that was just sworn in today, or whatever you want. The floor is yours.

00:15:21.080 Well, let me talk about inflation. And I want to make sure that the blame rests where it should be.

00:15:28.500 And the blame doesn't rest with the governor of the Bank of Canada. It's not the Bank of Canada.

00:15:34.540 The reason that we have inflationary pressures, at least in part in Canada, is because we have a

00:15:42.260 government in place that is borrowing and spending without any prospect of actually repaying this

00:15:50.260 massive debt we're incurring. What happens when you borrow and borrow and borrow and pump more money

00:15:56.040 into the economy? You have more money chasing the same number of goods. And what that does,

00:16:01.140 it leads to inflation. Now, there are other inflationary pressures from around the world. So

00:16:07.600 the prime minister's responsibility is to manage borrowing and spending so that it doesn't exacerbate

00:16:15.820 inflationary pressures. Today, our inflation rate is at somewhere in the order of 4.4%. It's going up

00:16:24.320 and up and up and up. The last six months, we've just seen increase after increase. Canadians are feeling

00:16:30.780 the pinch at the pump when they gas up. They're feeling the pinch when they're buying groceries. They're feeling

00:16:37.280 the pinch definitely when they're going to buy a house or even rent. This is going to be a real problem for

00:16:44.960 Canadians going forward. The cost of living is skyrocketing. And this Liberal government has no plan in place right now

00:16:53.460 to address that very significant challenge for families across Canada. And my other fear is,

00:16:59.920 of course, that as inflation continues to go up, the Bank of Canada will eventually be forced to increase

00:17:08.620 interest rates, which translates into mortgage interest rate increases, which means families that have

00:17:16.560 basically based their home purchases on the fact that we have low interest rates may not be able

00:17:23.020 to rely on those low interest rates for a longer period of time. This is going to start pinching

00:17:30.220 families across our country. I feel sorry for them, because the inflationary pressures have not been

00:17:35.940 managed well by Justin Trudeau. And that's why we are hoping that he will listen to us when we make

00:17:43.140 suggestions about how to control spending. How do we focus on moving back to balanced budgets as we

00:17:51.820 had proposed to do? Unfortunately, our Prime Minister isn't someone who likes to listen very much to the

00:17:58.340 opposition. Yeah, we've certainly noticed that in the past six years. Ed Fass, thank you very much.

00:18:04.320 Member of Parliament for Abbotsford, also the finance to predict a record. We do appreciate his time and his

00:18:08.700 insight on these very important issues. Again, we'll be back every single Tuesday with new content

00:18:13.740 1.30pm Eastern Time. We do appreciate you joining us. If you liked what you heard or listened to,

00:18:18.580 please like, comment, subscribe, share this program. There might be someone in your social media network

00:18:23.180 that might be open to hearing this message, something they might not be getting from the

00:18:26.960 mainstream media. And we do appreciate that help, because with your help, we can ensure that Aaron O'Toole

00:18:31.800 is the next Prime Minister of Canada whenever the next federal election happens. And of course,

00:18:36.320 as always, remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That is the Bluebirds.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - October 26, 2021

Risks to Economic Prosperity

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