The Candice Malcolm Show - March 23, 2022


Are massive tax hikes coming？ (Ft. Pierre Poilievre)


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

167.6194

Word count

2,727

Sentence count

155

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Did Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh form their coalition pact to avoid fiscal collapse? Does it mean that huge tax increases are coming? MP Pierre Polyev is here to discuss. The Candice Malcolm Show is hosted by Candice Malan.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Did Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh form their coalition pact to avoid fiscal collapse?
00:00:05.260 Does it mean that huge tax increases are coming?
00:00:08.520 MP Pierre Polyev is here to discuss.
00:00:10.580 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:23.760 Hi, everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
00:00:25.920 My guest today is Conservative MP Pierre Polyev.
00:00:28.620 Pierre has served as an MP in the Ottawa-based riding of Carleton since 2004 and is one of
00:00:33.560 the candidates running to be the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:00:36.940 So each of the candidates has joined my True North colleague, Andrew Lawton, on his show
00:00:41.120 in the last few weeks, including Pierre, and I really encourage you to go and check out
00:00:44.640 all of those interviews here on our channel.
00:00:46.880 Now, today, I want to discuss something a little different.
00:00:49.320 I want to talk about the latest coalition pact, whatever you want to call it, between the
00:00:53.840 Liberals and the NDP and what it will mean in Parliament.
00:00:56.400 So, Pierre, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:00:59.480 Great to be with you, Candice.
00:01:01.680 So let's talk about the biggest news in Canadian politics right now.
00:01:04.660 Let me hear your opinion on this formal governing agreement between the Liberals and the NDP until
00:01:09.500 2025.
00:01:10.960 Nobody voted for it.
00:01:12.500 People who voted NDP thought they were advancing an independent opposition party.
00:01:17.640 People who voted Liberal didn't realize that they were going to get NDP, far-left, extreme
00:01:24.960 radical policies.
00:01:26.900 So there will be a lot of betrayed voters for both of those parties.
00:01:31.420 And what does it mean for the country?
00:01:33.240 I think it means that the government will double down on massive deficits, money printing, and
00:01:40.100 as a consequence, very high inflation.
00:01:43.720 As you know, the cost of government is driving up the cost of living.
00:01:47.960 More dollars chasing fewer goods always leads to higher prices.
00:01:51.480 That's why we have 30-year highs in inflation and all-time highs in housing inflation.
00:01:55.620 House prices have doubled in just six or seven years.
00:01:58.700 That's what I call Justin-flation.
00:02:02.360 There'll be more of that.
00:02:03.880 But we're going to fight back as leader.
00:02:06.480 I'm going to mobilize the Canadian people to pressure more reasonable Liberal MPs and
00:02:13.080 more working-class-oriented NDP MPs to turn against this backroom deal and ultimately pull
00:02:20.920 apart the coalition, bring down the government in a confidence vote, and win the following election.
00:02:26.820 Well, that sounds like quite the plan, and I think there'd be many conservatives that
00:02:31.980 would be excited about that.
00:02:33.600 I want to ask you specifically, Pierre.
00:02:35.520 So 18 months ago, I had you on the show.
00:02:38.020 It's September 2020, and we talked about the finances of the country at that time.
00:02:42.380 Now, you must have a crystal ball somewhere because you predicted that Justin Trudeau would
00:02:46.000 trigger an election and that he desperately needed a majority government.
00:02:50.420 And you said that was for two reasons.
00:02:52.100 One, because his spending was mathematically impossible to maintain, and that in order to maintain it,
00:02:56.680 he would need to have some kind of a massive tax increase.
00:02:59.180 And second of all, because the ethics commissioner was going to expose some ugly truths about his
00:03:04.220 government.
00:03:05.020 And so I'm wondering, you know, he did trigger that election.
00:03:07.900 He thought he was going to win.
00:03:09.120 He didn't.
00:03:10.080 But it seems like with the deal that he came up with on Tuesday morning, he sort of managed
00:03:14.900 to create a majority government out of nothing.
00:03:17.160 So I want to revisit those predictions that you made.
00:03:20.120 But do you think that part of the reason this coalition is in place now is because of the
00:03:26.340 possibility of tax increases?
00:03:28.480 And what would that look like?
00:03:30.340 And then also, what is the update with the ethics commissioner?
00:03:33.160 I know they were investigating the WE scandal.
00:03:35.600 Where are we with that?
00:03:38.460 OK, let's start with the economy.
00:03:40.880 We now have about $3.50 of debt for every dollar of GDP in Canada.
00:03:46.340 That number fluctuates between $3.50 and $4.00.
00:03:49.780 That's near record highs.
00:03:52.520 That means for every one percentage point increase in interest rates across the economy
00:03:57.780 that we have to pay 3.5% of our economy in interest rates, in interest payments.
00:04:08.020 So just to give you a very practical example of what that means.
00:04:11.680 So the average typical home, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, costs $868,000.
00:04:18.280 There are about a fifth of households have only 1% down for purchases in the last two years.
00:04:26.740 And about half are variable.
00:04:29.860 So if you've got a variable rate mortgage with 1% down, and you have about an $850,000 mortgage,
00:04:35.300 if rates go up by just 1%, your annual mortgage payments are $8,500 higher, $8,500 more in annual recurring mortgage payments.
00:04:50.500 Many families would clearly go bankrupt, given that there are, what, a half of Canadians only have $200 left in the bank account at the end of each month.
00:04:58.920 So I think you could have a serious household finance crisis.
00:05:03.940 On top of that, that same percentage point increase in interest rates adds $12 billion in annual costs to the federal government.
00:05:12.560 So that means that the last thing Trudeau wants is for this financial reality to come to the surface,
00:05:21.800 you know, and then have the opposition vote him down and hold him accountable for having caused it.
00:05:27.120 So this could give him, you know, two or three years while Canadians are suffering under the hell of higher rates and inflation to avoid democratic accountability.
00:05:37.760 And as you said, if he runs out of money with the help of the NDP, he might be able to get through a very unpopular tax increase
00:05:44.860 that he would not have been able to pass in a normal minority parliament.
00:05:49.860 So we don't know for sure exactly what they're going to do.
00:05:52.860 It is possible that he would save tax increases for an eventual, in his eyes, future majority.
00:05:59.940 But it is possible that Jagmeet is going to back him up and get that passed.
00:06:06.360 And, you know, Candace, one of the worst things about these coalition governments is that the more unpopular they are,
00:06:13.420 often the longer they last because the coalition participants don't want to face the music with the voters.
00:06:19.080 So they bind together and hold themselves in office.
00:06:22.500 And that's why we need to have a strategy to pull it apart one MP at a time.
00:06:27.100 On the ethics front, I mean, I think that the bigger issue is where is the RCMP?
00:06:33.000 Not so much the ethics commissioner, but where is the RCMP on the WE scandal?
00:06:38.340 And on the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the Mounties said they were looking into both and we haven't heard anything back.
00:06:47.460 So we hope that that hasn't just gone into the law enforcement black hole again,
00:06:51.600 and that there is some legal accountability for what happened in both of those cases.
00:06:57.160 We know in both scandals, laws were broken because the ethics commissioner found Morneau guilty
00:07:02.360 and found Trudeau guilty for the SNC scandal.
00:07:07.660 Now it's time for the RCMP to come clean on whether or not criminal code violations occurred as well.
00:07:14.920 Well, it seems like Justin Trudeau always has a way to avoid accountability.
00:07:18.660 And I think that's one of the loudest complaints that I hear from True North viewers.
00:07:22.320 I want to ask you about the priorities that the NDP and the Liberals have presented,
00:07:26.020 because maybe they sound good on paper, the idea of universal pharmacare, universal dental care.
00:07:31.720 When I hear about that, it strikes me as so painstakingly out of touch,
00:07:36.240 given the financial situation in this country, given the performance of our health care system over the past two years.
00:07:41.800 It seems to me that we need serious change on this front,
00:07:44.600 not just adding in more goodies, more entitlements to a broken system, essentially.
00:07:50.420 I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that.
00:07:52.880 Well, the pharmacare idea sounds terrific until you scratch the surface.
00:07:56.720 A lot of people will be far worse off in drug coverage if this plan goes ahead.
00:08:02.220 Remember, 91% of Canadians have some kind of coverage, most of it through private sector employer-based plans.
00:08:08.580 The very poor usually have coverage through their provincial social services.
00:08:13.560 And many people purchase their own private insurance for supplementary drug plans already.
00:08:20.860 Finally, then there are also the small minority of very wealthy people who just pay out of pocket.
00:08:27.000 So the number of people who don't have some coverage and can't afford to pay for their medicine is well below 10%.
00:08:35.060 And the answer would be to give them some targeted assistance with their needs,
00:08:40.540 rather than creating a national governmental program that would ultimately incentivize employers to dump their private plans.
00:08:47.920 And this is where it's going to become extremely unpopular, especially with unionized blue-collar workers.
00:08:54.280 If their employers say, well, we're paying for a government plan through taxes,
00:08:58.800 so we're not going to provide you with the workplace plan,
00:09:02.960 then these workers could end up stuck with an inferior government plan that has a smaller formulary,
00:09:11.060 higher deductibles, and much less responsive.
00:09:15.460 And you could find the NDP and liberals face a massive backlash from their own voters,
00:09:21.500 not just because it costs $20 billion to institute this new national bureaucracy,
00:09:26.960 but because people actually get worse drug coverage.
00:09:30.820 And so I'm in favor of keeping our market-based system with possibly some incentives to cover the very small minority of people
00:09:39.420 who don't have coverage now.
00:09:41.600 That is far superior.
00:09:43.280 You remember when Kathleen Wynne brought in this program provincially for people under the age of 26?
00:09:49.980 You know how she paid for it? 0.99
00:09:51.020 She actually cut the drugs that were covered for children's cancers at the children's hospitals.
00:09:58.280 So we had doctors at the Ottawa Hospital here for children having to call drug companies
00:10:04.500 and ask for donations of drugs to save the lives of kids who were literally on their deathbed,
00:10:10.120 because Gwynne actually cut off these kids from cancer drugs so that she could pay for a governmental program
00:10:17.700 to help 22-year-olds get acne medications over at their local drugstores.
00:10:24.200 So again, they sound wonderful when they're announced,
00:10:28.420 but in practice, they can not only be extremely expensive,
00:10:32.220 but very detrimental to the health and the coverage of Canadians.
00:10:37.460 Oh, that's truly awful.
00:10:38.340 I'm so sorry to hear that.
00:10:39.860 I had a question about the trucker convoy,
00:10:42.700 because it seems to me that what we experienced this year in this country
00:10:45.580 was essentially a huge working-class uprising and backlash against the governing elites.
00:10:51.980 And it seems that the NDP was once the party that represented those sorts of people.
00:10:56.220 Well, no longer.
00:10:57.060 I mean, first we saw Justin Trudeau refuse to meet with them,
00:11:00.060 call them every name in the book.
00:11:01.380 Jagmeet Singh essentially kind of went along with that.
00:11:03.480 And now here we have the NDP essentially just joining the liberals,
00:11:06.660 turning their back completely on those people.
00:11:09.980 What does that mean to hardworking people in this country
00:11:13.680 that don't feel that they have representation in the NDP left-wing socialist party anymore?
00:11:20.180 Well, they're coming to vote for me.
00:11:22.500 That's why I'm attracting massive crowds.
00:11:25.340 You know, I've had rallies with over a thousand people,
00:11:27.660 and it's mostly working-class folks.
00:11:30.340 I was traveling through Quebec.
00:11:31.920 I had 250 people in Laval, a place where we typically finish third or fourth.
00:11:36.700 Huge crowds in Trois-Rivières, Quebec City, Montreal,
00:11:40.020 all populated with working-class people,
00:11:43.100 many of whom tell me they never even voted in their lives.
00:11:45.680 But as you say, there is a working-class uprising in this country.
00:11:52.700 People who've been cast aside,
00:11:54.720 they've been told to shut up and do what they're told
00:11:57.600 and let the powerful elites in Ottawa run their lives for them.
00:12:03.220 And they're saying, no, they've had it.
00:12:05.140 These are the people who do the nation's work.
00:12:07.480 They build our roads.
00:12:08.660 They deliver our goods.
00:12:09.940 They feed our families.
00:12:10.980 They build our structures, our homes, our office buildings.
00:12:16.440 And they get very little credit.
00:12:18.380 And they've been under attack for years now.
00:12:21.280 The entire monetary system is designed right now
00:12:23.820 to destroy the purchasing power of their wages
00:12:26.660 while inflating the asset values of the billionaire class.
00:12:30.800 Now the Liberals and NDP want to stand with the billionaire class
00:12:33.800 and the managerial elite against these working people.
00:12:37.780 Well, I've got news for them.
00:12:38.760 These people deserve a strong voice.
00:12:41.840 And I am that voice.
00:12:43.160 And they will be part of a future conservative government
00:12:46.460 that stands on their sides,
00:12:48.080 puts them back in control of their lives
00:12:49.900 by making Canada the freest nation on earth.
00:12:53.040 So how do you dismantle that system, Pierre?
00:12:54.640 I mean, I've heard you talk about how 40, 50 years ago,
00:12:58.020 a working-class person could afford to buy a house,
00:13:00.300 whereas today their children, grandchildren,
00:13:02.100 who are Canadian college-educated,
00:13:04.500 cannot afford to buy that same sort of house.
00:13:07.100 How do you turn that around?
00:13:08.280 How do you get things back to the way that they were
00:13:10.160 back when a single-income family could afford to buy a home
00:13:15.180 in the suburbs or in the cities in Canada?
00:13:17.940 Well, we have to bring back hard money.
00:13:19.660 You know, the reason that...
00:13:21.600 What has happened here is like...
00:13:22.760 I told the story of...
00:13:24.020 Many of your viewers might not have seen it,
00:13:25.520 but of an Italian family that came to Ottawa in 1974.
00:13:31.260 And from the wages of the father who worked paving roads
00:13:37.020 and the mother who was making sandwiches at seniors' homes,
00:13:40.440 they were able to buy a handsome bungalow in downtown Ottawa
00:13:45.020 for about $40,000 or $50,000, something like that.
00:13:48.240 And they paid it off in seven years.
00:13:50.160 You know, they grow their own food in the backyard
00:13:52.160 and never went to restaurants.
00:13:54.620 Paid it off seven years, right?
00:13:55.940 Their grandkids now, all these years later,
00:14:00.720 would not be able to afford that house,
00:14:03.340 even though their grandkids are going to be university-educated
00:14:06.800 and supposedly living in a country
00:14:09.460 that has had a half century to advance and grow.
00:14:13.060 We should be able to afford better houses 50 years on
00:14:16.980 than we did back then.
00:14:18.920 And yet, there is no way that that house,
00:14:21.640 which is well over a million dollars now,
00:14:23.880 could ever be owned by someone just coming out of university
00:14:26.780 with a degree in liberal arts
00:14:29.460 or even in business or engineering.
00:14:32.180 So what is happening is in the early 70s,
00:14:34.960 government started printing massive quantities of cash
00:14:38.120 in order to fund their spending.
00:14:39.420 That led to inflation, especially asset price inflation.
00:14:43.180 And so the cost of things like houses
00:14:45.360 has outgrown the wages of the working people.
00:14:49.200 So I'm going to reinstate hard money,
00:14:52.060 give the Bank of Canada, again,
00:14:53.700 the singular purpose of keeping inflation low and very low.
00:14:56.840 And I'll be very specific about that.
00:14:59.300 But also, we need to, instead of creating cash,
00:15:01.500 we need to start creating more of what cash buys.
00:15:03.660 We need to incentivize our municipalities
00:15:05.680 to spill the speed of building permits.
00:15:07.700 Right now, it takes seven to 10 years
00:15:09.240 from the time you buy the land
00:15:10.540 to the time you build on it.
00:15:11.640 We have the lowest per capita number of houses
00:15:14.160 of any country in the G7,
00:15:15.840 even though we have the most land.
00:15:17.840 And so I'm going to be taking a very strong stand
00:15:21.200 to require incompetent big city mayors
00:15:26.920 to get out of the way
00:15:28.260 and speed up building permits,
00:15:31.340 allow for more land for housing
00:15:33.060 so that we can build millions of affordable homes
00:15:35.880 for our young people.
00:15:36.900 So that the dream that that Italian family,
00:15:40.300 I mentioned, who came here almost a half century ago,
00:15:44.040 can live on for their grandkids.
00:15:47.860 Well, that sounds like a plan, a wonderful plan.
00:15:50.720 And I think that what's very clear, Pierre,
00:15:52.440 is that we just need change from the Trudeau government,
00:15:55.880 the spending, the out of control,
00:15:58.220 big growth of government system.
00:16:00.780 And it seems like there's lots and lots of ideas
00:16:03.480 over on the conservative side.
00:16:04.500 So appreciate your time this morning, Pierre.
00:16:06.140 Thanks for joining the program.
00:16:08.060 Excellent. Great to be with you.
00:16:09.180 All the very best to you and your family.
00:16:11.320 Thank you so much.
00:16:12.200 That's Pierre Polyev, MP for Carleton.
00:16:14.340 I'm Candice Malcolm,
00:16:15.000 and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.