The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - The Blueprint： Trudeau’s Budget with Jasraj Singh

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

00:00:07.460 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, for the likes of Brock,

00:00:10.520 with new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. We're glad you can join us

00:00:15.960 and we hope that you can like, comment, subscribe and share this program. Get others to join it.

00:00:21.200 Of course, if they can't watch or listen to the entire program right this second,

00:00:24.980 download it, listen to it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify. You name

00:00:30.160 it, it is out there. Lots to talk about today. We have news that the entire board of the Trudeau

00:00:35.940 Foundation has resigned and also a topic that we haven't covered yet is the 2023-24 budget. The

00:00:42.740 federal budget came down a couple of weeks ago. What a disaster that is, stifling innovation,

00:00:47.180 productivity, etc. We're going to bring on a great guest to the show. He's been on before. He has

00:00:51.400 his own podcast as well, Jasrez Hillan, the Member of Parliament for Calgary Forest Lawn. He's also

00:00:56.820 the finance critic, busy guy. Thanks for coming on. Jamie, thanks for having me. You are an absolute

00:01:02.700 legend and it's always great to join your podcast and be alongside with such greatness.

00:01:10.160 Well, you keep saying stuff like that. We're going to have to have you on every week. I think

00:01:13.640 we're going to have to bring you on as a permanent guest. All right, let's talk about something that's

00:01:18.620 breaking today. Of course, at Constituency Week, we're both in our constituency offices.

00:01:23.420 The entire board of directors of the Trudeau Foundation completely resigned. All of them,

00:01:28.360 including the CEO, walked out. There's a few stragglers carrying on so the entire organization

00:01:33.100 doesn't collapse. Of course, $200,000 roughly was given back as a potential alleged illegal

00:01:39.500 donation from Beijing, funneled through some other individuals. So what is your take on all this as

00:01:46.720 you watch this coming around? Of course, the topic today is the budget, but this is kind of

00:01:50.320 breaking. So I just want to get your thoughts on what's going on. Yeah, and I think that it just

00:01:55.800 plays into the whole thing where, you know, this foreign interference from Beijing is, it's a very

00:02:03.540 serious thing. And the only person that's not taking it seriously is Justin Trudeau himself.

00:02:07.840 You know, we are asking that there should also be our, you know, our leader, Pierre Paul Yev,

00:02:13.200 the future prime minister of Canada, today also said that we should get an inquiry into the Trudeau

00:02:19.240 Foundation to find out what happened. How did this money get funneled into there? And what led,

00:02:24.720 what actually led to these people resigning or wanting to resign? We know that it's because of this

00:02:30.320 donation that was taken, but it leads into this bigger, this bigger problem of foreign interference

00:02:36.640 that, that obviously Trudeau is doing his best to try to avoid at all costs. And we saw that when

00:02:42.760 they were trying to stifle or they're trying to filibuster the foreign, the, the proc committee

00:02:49.540 for more than 36 hours, I think it was. It just goes to show that what are they hiding? We all need to

00:02:56.860 know. Canadians need to know, because at the end of the day, we need to know that our democracy is

00:03:01.420 free, free from foreign interference and that it is, and we put back, you know, restore the confidence

00:03:08.840 back into our public institutions. So I think all of this plays into that. And I think the more things

00:03:14.340 come out, which I feel like there might be more that comes out as well from the story that, you know,

00:03:19.320 Canadians at the end of the day need to know that they can have confidence in their democratic

00:03:23.500 institutions. We've been calling for a public inquiry almost right from the beginning. Of

00:03:27.560 course, a special rapporteur that, that the prime minister appointed just to kind of drag things on

00:03:34.360 until that person, David Johnston makes the decision on whether or not we should have a public

00:03:39.060 inquiry. Let's stop that step. Let's get right into it. Call the public inquiry. Let the procedure

00:03:43.880 and health, health affairs committee, proc committee do their work as well. Let's try to figure out

00:03:48.340 the, what's going on. First of all, how deep is this? And obviously the questions that come after

00:03:55.500 that is when did the prime minister know anything, if at all, and, and what was done about it, if

00:04:02.100 anything? You're here. That's absolutely right. I couldn't have said it any better than that,

00:04:06.560 Jamie. That's why I said you're a legend. Well, I'm going to turn to you, the legend, the guy who's

00:04:11.600 rocking in question period. I got to tell you, the budget has given, unfortunately, a lot for you to

00:04:16.500 work with in terms of criticizing and also proposing alternatives. But my goodness, not even a hope

00:04:23.760 in the, not in the distant future and bringing the budget to balance. We all heard the comments

00:04:29.620 from the prime minister the other day at a town hall talking about using the credit card. If you

00:04:33.020 don't have any money, you can use the credit card. Well, since he took power in 2015, that's all he's

00:04:37.820 been doing is using the credit card to run the country. It's, it's unbelievable the amount of debt

00:04:41.960 we're under now. You know, you said there's a lot in there. Unfortunately for us to criticize,

00:04:46.680 it's too bad. There wasn't enough in there for Canadians or for small businesses or for,

00:04:51.180 for our Canadian economy to, to get better. So there was this, as our leader said, this budget

00:04:58.160 was a direct attack on Canadian paychecks. The reason for that is because it's a higher tax,

00:05:04.520 higher spend, higher inflation budget that they put out. You know, you had Chrystia Freeland a few 0.75

00:05:09.820 weeks ago coming out saying, we're going to focus on fiscal restraint. And they blew right

00:05:15.120 through that when they had more than $60 billion of new spending in this budget. And what does that

00:05:20.840 do? That gives Canadians more pain, more hurt, more taxes, more inflation. And at the end of the day,

00:05:27.660 this was a time for them to show that they were responsible. They were responsible government.

00:05:32.620 They would listen to Canadians. They would, you know, listen to the opposition. This is time to help

00:05:37.400 people out. And this budget didn't do that. We see that, uh, growth is basically going to be

00:05:42.320 stifled. Our economic growth is not going to go anywhere. And it's unfortunate because Canada could

00:05:48.740 have been a world leader. We could have had when, if, if we look at the globe, global scale, if,

00:05:54.960 if the rest of the world is, is going to be hit with a economic slowdown, this is a time in Canada

00:05:59.400 could have went blue past all expectations and help support the world as well. And one example of that

00:06:05.480 is our, our energy sector. Canada could have been a world leader today in LNG, but it's the prime

00:06:12.060 minister who continuously says that there is no business case. Like we saw when the German chancellor

00:06:17.540 came to Canada, literally saying, let's give us your product. We want your LNG. And what did he do?

00:06:23.800 He turned around and said, there's no business case for that. Yet he found a business case to give

00:06:27.640 $21 billion in cushy contracts to liberal insiders and consultants. This is just a theme of this out of

00:06:35.400 touch government that, that has done nothing but cause pain on Canadians and up to our economy.

00:06:42.040 Canada should be supporting our resources, our hardworking farmers, rather than attacking these

00:06:47.240 two sectors so that Canada can become a world leader and we can displace dirty dictator oil around 0.99

00:06:52.680 the world and bring strong paychecks to our Canadians. We had three simple asks in this budget.

00:06:58.820 We said, we want a budget that's going to bring home stronger paychecks, which means lower taxes,

00:07:03.500 lower the deficit so people can take home more. Number two, bring home more lower prices and get

00:07:10.000 which includes getting rid of the job killing carbon tax scam, which you know, it's a scam now

00:07:16.160 because the liberals for years were saying this is going to make the environment and the economy and

00:07:20.960 Canadians better. But the public budgeting officer said completely false. So this is a scam. We say

00:07:28.260 scrap the scam, axe the carbon tax that people keep more of their hard earned money in their pocket and

00:07:33.880 actually use technology instead of taxes to help fix the environment and work with the industry.

00:07:39.120 The third thing, bring home more homes that people can afford. We know that there's a housing crisis

00:07:44.620 all across the country and that we need to get more homes built. We need to get the government

00:07:49.060 gatekeepers out of the way on a municipal level that are stopping from projects getting built.

00:07:54.400 Canada's 64th in big projects as well right now when it comes to permitting. We need to get these

00:07:59.860 gatekeepers out of the way. This budget addressed none of that. We know that we're still at 40 year

00:08:04.300 high in inflation, highs in food inflation and gas inflation. Everything is just conflated right now.

00:08:11.500 This budget did nothing to help support Canadians. A conservative government would bring down the taxes

00:08:17.540 because we would bring down the inflation. We would cap government spending, bring down the interest

00:08:21.660 rate so people can get more affordable homes getting built in this country as well. But more

00:08:28.100 importantly, bringing down the interest level at the Bank of Canada would ensure people can start

00:08:34.460 affording their mortgages and rents again. Well, Jaz, of course, they have the grocery rebate. That's

00:08:40.040 what the Liberals are coming back with. And I don't doubt, judging by everyone I've talked to,

00:08:45.760 the phone calls, emails, I'm sure we're all getting the poll after poll that is coming out that's saying

00:08:51.220 it's getting harder and harder for Canadians to feed their families. Of course, any kind of rebate

00:08:54.860 will be better. But the bottom line is the problem is, this is a one time thing, right? When that's

00:09:00.440 gone, which it will be quickly because prices are out of control, the inflation crisis is still with us.

00:09:07.620 We are not actually fixing the problem there. They're almost just just a little bit here you go,

00:09:12.200 here you go, just to keep you going. But they have no idea how to actually put the fire out.

00:09:17.660 And they just keep pouring more gasoline, 40 billion in the hole this year, 40 more billion next year.

00:09:23.520 And it goes on and on in the tens of billions of dollars.

00:09:27.100 Absolutely. Look, if you look at just the rebate first, it's nice that they call it a grocery rebate.

00:09:32.700 What it is, it's a GST rebate, actually, that they've introduced once before. But you said it right.

00:09:38.100 We need to find long term solutions that are going to help Canadians in the long term.

00:09:42.540 We need to let Canadians keep more of their own hard earned money in their pocket.

00:09:47.640 When we look at the GST rebate, where if we suppose a family gets a little more than $400

00:09:53.240 one time payment, if you look at just the spending of this government, the new spending on their new

00:09:59.820 budget, that's going to slam each and every household, Canadian household with an extra

00:10:05.860 $4,200 in cost. So it evaporates, it vaporizes any type of support that they're showing that

00:10:13.500 they're trying to give. One way to help lower food prices, let's get rid of that carbon tax 0.90

00:10:18.820 so that it'll be cheaper for our farmers to produce, for it'll be cheaper for them to transfer,

00:10:25.720 transport the food and get into our grocery stores. That's one great way that we would do

00:10:30.900 immediately to help lower the cost. The second thing is we would get rid of this ridiculous 30%

00:10:35.860 fertilizer reduction that they came out with. None of these policies by this Liberal NDP

00:10:41.260 coalition are actually helping to reduce the cost of living. It's actually inflating it. It's making

00:10:48.240 it go up even more. We have to get rid of these ridiculous policies so Canadians can have a chance

00:10:53.100 to survive. You know, there was another recent poll, one in three Canadians are saying that

00:10:59.560 they're financially just completely wiped out or they're worried about that. This is not the Canada

00:11:06.340 that me and my family came to as immigrants, where there used to be a Canadian dream. The Canadian

00:11:10.720 dream is gone right now because one in five newcomers also, because of the cost of living,

00:11:16.640 are saying they want to pack up and leave from this country because they just can't afford it anymore.

00:11:20.560 And the second reason is foreign credential recognition, which under peer poly of government,

00:11:25.580 we have a plan for that as well, where we'll recognize credentials within 60 days of them

00:11:29.560 landing here. So, you know, with a conservative government, we'll have actual long-term sustainable

00:11:34.580 plans because along with supporting our farmers, if we support our energy industry, Canada become

00:11:41.520 a leader in help reducing emissions, not just in Canada, but around the world because we can

00:11:46.700 displace that dirty dictator oil. A couple of things that you talked about, you're talking about

00:11:51.480 lowering prices, right? One thing to do is, as you pointed out, stop printing money, stop devaluating,

00:11:57.040 devaluing, sorry, the currency and wrecking people's savings. You can stop doing that. But

00:12:03.040 also, you could add supply to the market. Of course, when you have too many dollars,

00:12:06.760 chasing too few goods, you have price inflation as well. And one way to lower the price of energy

00:12:12.540 is to put more of it into the market. One place to lower the cost of food is to allow farmers to

00:12:18.480 produce, not like other countries around the world. We're not going to name them, but it's very easy to

00:12:23.380 point out which countries are somehow and some reason, on purpose, shorting their food supply,

00:12:29.840 causing shortages around the world, which makes absolutely no sense. And people are just having

00:12:35.120 to deal with the problem. Of course, the rich elites will never stop eating the best cuts of 0.99

00:12:41.280 meat or staying at the best hotel or flying private. That's just for the common folk, right? 1.00

00:12:46.020 And you mentioned energy. This was in the news a couple of days ago. A Spanish company,

00:12:49.680 I believe it was, wanted to do an LNG project out in New Brunswick, which would have created amazing

00:12:54.340 jobs and opportunity and wealth for that province. Opportunities that now won't be realized because

00:13:00.140 of the policies implemented by Justin Trudeau and his energy killing C-69 to name one. C-48 is another.

00:13:08.360 Absolutely. So C-69, it's a no new pipeline bill. C-48, no new tanker, but not the tanker ban,

00:13:14.480 which, yes, we can get our product to the West Coast, but a tanker can't take it into the world

00:13:19.840 markets. Another great way that we can get more production and more energy in the market is

00:13:26.200 pipelines. We need more pipelines. Justin Trudeau has killed every single pipeline that was on his

00:13:31.600 desk. He's killed 15 good LNG projects that are still sitting on his desk that he has done nothing

00:13:38.720 with. We could have been that world leader and we could have produced more. We look at our home

00:13:43.340 heating bills over the last just six months, over the winter. Home heating costs doubled. That's

00:13:49.280 even before they raised the carbon tax, which they did on April the 1st. We need to get rid of these

00:13:54.620 failed policies, get more built, more produced so that we can give more to the world. And you're

00:13:59.500 absolutely right, Jamie. It's these failed policies that are hindering Canada that proves it in their

00:14:05.380 budget when they're showing that there's not going to be any economic growth happening for the next few

00:14:09.780 years. We're actually going to be stifled. We're going to have the slowest growth in the G7.

00:14:14.420 Canada should not be in that position. Canada should be a welcoming country. The industries

00:14:19.280 that we're talking to, we ask them, why isn't anyone investing in Canada? What's the holdback?

00:14:25.540 Two things they say, government regulation or burden, which we call the gatekeepers, which is Justin Trudeau.

00:14:32.200 And the second one is economic uncertainty, which Justin Trudeau has created

00:14:36.440 with his bad policies and overspending. We need to fire the gatekeepers, get them out of the way.

00:14:41.960 We need to make sure that we're looking like Canada is open for business again. We have enough

00:14:46.380 resources here. We have our own minerals here. We have our own energy here. We have our own food here.

00:14:51.260 The rest of the world needs to get that clean, responsible energy, food, and everything else, 0.97

00:14:56.760 because that's what the world deserves.

00:14:59.040 Well, you are absolutely right about that. But unfortunately, I believe the federal civil service

00:15:04.680 swelled, had a big swelling party. They hired about 31,000 new bureaucrats, I believe it was.

00:15:10.940 And of course, bureaucrats, they justify their jobs, most of them, if they're not providing

00:15:14.800 frontline service, the ones actually doing the work, the ones in the ivory towers in Ottawa,

00:15:18.760 they're just thinking of new ways to regulate people, new ways to control industry and stifle

00:15:23.420 innovation and growth. And that way they justify their jobs. Having said that, Globe and Mail headline.

00:15:29.240 March 28th, Andrew Coyne wrote this. If the government wanted to strangle economic growth,

00:15:35.040 this budget, it would produce. Now, of course, the carbon tax, the offsets the government keeps

00:15:40.500 is supposed to go to so-called innovation. We will say that. But massive, like above and beyond

00:15:47.100 massive spending in certain industries, the industries that the government deems as green,

00:15:51.560 those that got the favorable outcomes from government, the nod to continue to produce and do that.

00:15:56.560 And of course, if you're a company, why wouldn't you take that free money? It's coming your way.

00:15:59.760 Those with the ideas that might be able to produce something better at more cost affordable measures

00:16:04.740 with cleaner technology. Well, they have to fight the uphill battle to get the funding from the private

00:16:09.460 sector against all this government loan, easy money that's coming in from Ottawa. It's absolutely

00:16:14.160 incredible. Yeah, it's, you know what, it's sad to see that the Liberals game plan to try to fix the

00:16:21.060 problem that they created is more of a pay to play kind of scheme that, you know, we saw that with

00:16:25.600 Volkswagen as well, that they're paying companies in the billions of dollars to try to invest here.

00:16:30.100 But we don't know what the outcome of that is. We don't know how many real Canadian jobs or Canadian

00:16:34.600 paychecks people can have from those. And, you know, it is the stifling of and it's the crippling

00:16:39.640 of our energy sector that's not letting a lot of this, the things to be produced here. Canada is,

00:16:46.560 like I said, 64th in permitting, and it can take up to 25 years for a project to get approved. 0.70

00:16:52.720 That's ridiculous. We need to get these things, you know, fast track so that we can work on these

00:16:59.260 things and get good Canadian jobs, good Canadian paychecks from these jobs. But we need to get,

00:17:05.280 we need to get this Liberal NDP government out of the way for that to happen, because we will get

00:17:10.400 more produced when there's a peer poly of government. And it's also the double standard,

00:17:15.900 right? That's being used. The green, the eco activists are saying, well, we can't frack for

00:17:21.940 natural gas and oil, but it's okay to frack for lithium, right? And those tailing ponds and getting

00:17:27.920 the sludge out. And, you know, they completely turn a blind eye to the child labor being used in parts

00:17:33.680 of Africa to get their rare earth minerals needed for these batteries and everything else that they

00:17:39.480 seem to proclaim will save the earth. Well, we should be using the most ethical sources possible.

00:17:45.160 But we should be able to use the tools at our disposal, which is the resources we have

00:17:51.100 domestically. Let's get these people to work here. Let's get our industries back to work. 1.00

00:17:55.920 Let's start building stuff here again and stop this reliance on other countries around the world.

00:18:01.740 Because we saw during the pandemic, what happens when supply chains break down. We said this many

00:18:06.460 times for, I don't know how many years that we should be building stuff here because we need to rely

00:18:11.020 on ourselves when, you know, you know what hits the fan. We have to be prepared, right? And we should

00:18:16.020 be, there's no reason why we should keep offshoring jobs. Exactly. Jobs. And, you know, the other point

00:18:21.660 that I want to highlight is also the intellectual property that, you know, these companies are going

00:18:26.160 to be coming here, but Canada doesn't own that much intellectual property. Canada should have those

00:18:30.920 rights, whether it's, you know, getting these minerals dug up. But the problem right now is,

00:18:36.300 who can get a mine built with these policies like Bill C-69? It's impossible. We saw from just before

00:18:43.760 the pandemic was, you know, in Alberta was the Tech Frontier mine project that was ready to go.

00:18:50.360 It was about a 20-year, you know, approvals project that they were 20 years in. You know,

00:18:56.360 the government moved the gold post many times on them and they still met all the requirements.

00:19:00.080 And it died on the cabinet table of Justin Trudeau because of ideology instead of actually getting

00:19:08.080 good Canadian jobs and good Alberta jobs. That was going to create 8,000 good jobs. We would have a

00:19:14.020 good input into our economy with it. But again, ideology always trumps common sense with this

00:19:19.980 liberal government. Well, as we all know, capital investments, they always take the path of least

00:19:25.720 resistance. Obviously, if you're going to put your money forward to take that risk, you want to

00:19:29.720 minimize that risk as much as possible. You couldn't be more right. Like, look at the tens

00:19:33.580 of billions, billions that have left this country for environments that allow growth to happen.

00:19:40.820 Obviously, it's the most responsible and ethical way possible. Every country wants to ensure that's

00:19:46.360 happening. But if you look at where the investments are happening right now, a lot of it is government

00:19:50.440 money because things, as you just mentioned, can't be done here. Trans Mountain Pipeline is one. If the

00:19:55.760 government didn't buy it, that project would not be going forward. Look at what they're

00:19:59.580 doing to the investments, right? The selected winners and losers in the marketplace. If the

00:20:06.080 government's saying, you know, the environment isn't correct for you to make a go of it here

00:20:10.480 without this government support. So we're going to take taxpayer money. We're going to dump it into

00:20:14.240 your industry and hope it works. Hope it produces something that we want and can use. But at the same

00:20:19.440 time, when that money stops, that whole industry stops because it needs to be proven, right? It needs to

00:20:26.580 keep growing. And this is my big concern out of all of it. Where is the endgame here?

00:20:33.080 Look, I think that their endgame is making energy as expensive as possible. This is what their plan

00:20:38.580 is. It seems like that's the direction that they're heading in. Why wouldn't anyone want their

00:20:44.620 country to be the world leader in things that we produce on our own here? We've highlighted food,

00:20:50.820 we've highlighted energy, highlighted minerals, critical minerals. We have all that here.

00:20:55.900 Why can Canada not be the world leader in that and produce it elsewhere? You know, the US also

00:21:01.980 created seven to eight LNG projects in the same time as Justin Trudeau has been in power for. And

00:21:09.860 Canada has barely almost finished one project. And what does that show you? It just shows you a

00:21:15.820 government that's not willing to budge on its ideology that's going to stifle the economy,

00:21:21.280 but hurt Canadians at the end of the day, because we can bring down food and energy prices if we

00:21:27.440 produce more. And that's exactly how you were the way you put it before, create more so that we can

00:21:32.120 bring down the market value, not market value, but the but the price of it can come down. And we can

00:21:38.460 sell it to others. And we can have that's the other thing. Good economy, right? That's that's the whole

00:21:43.640 goal. But you know what, it's gonna have to take a peer poly of government first to clean up this

00:21:48.680 mess. And second of all, we will be the world leader in these kind of things. Once peer probably

00:21:53.220 have become Prime Minister of Canada. I love that optimism. I love it. I think Pierre is on his way

00:21:58.060 to be Prime Minister. And it couldn't happen any sooner. I think many people are ready for an election

00:22:03.540 right this second, actually, probably years ago. All right. As you know, the we've ran a bit over time,

00:22:08.760 but the guests always have the last last words. So the floor is yours. First and foremost, Jamie,

00:22:13.820 thanks again. And thanks for the incredible work you do. I just want to highlight the incredible work

00:22:18.740 that Jamie has been doing, especially with our First Nation brothers and sisters all across Canada,

00:22:24.400 making alliances, but working on true reconciliation. I think this is great first steps for us. When

00:22:31.080 Pierre Polyev becomes Prime Minister of Canada, this is a big focus and Jamie is a huge part of that. So

00:22:36.980 thank you, Jamie, for all that. Thank you for giving the honour of being on this show again with

00:22:41.000 you. Look, I just want to leave people with optimism that, you know, under a peer poly of

00:22:45.920 government, the Conservative government, we will turn the hurt that people are seeing into hope.

00:22:49.840 We will bring more Canadian jobs, stronger Canadian paychecks, and make sure that Canada

00:22:55.000 is a world leader. Energy, food, minerals, you name it, Canada will be the world leader. Let's get

00:23:01.000 Canada back on track and make Pierre Polyev the next Prime Minister of Canada.

00:23:04.900 I couldn't have said it better myself. That guy is a star. Jazz Raz-Hallan, member of Parliament,

00:23:10.780 Calgary Forrest-Lonel. So the finance critic, keeping Christia Freeland's feet to the fire.

00:23:15.160 He's doing a great job. Look at him in question period too. This guy's on fire. And I don't think

00:23:21.620 any of your questions have been answered so far, Jazz. But one of these days, the finance minister

00:23:27.320 will give you an answer. Thanks very much, Jazz. And thank you for your time as well. We appreciate you

00:23:32.860 being here. And we ask that you like, comment, subscribe, and share this program. There are

00:23:36.740 eyes and ears that need to get this information. Please let your friends know about it. Also,

00:23:41.300 they can download it, listen to it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.

00:23:46.240 Of course, we have new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern time. Until next week,

00:23:51.360 remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That is the blueprint.

00:23:56.240 Hear, hear.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - April 11, 2023

The Blueprint： Trudeau’s Budget with Jasraj Singh

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