The Candice Malcolm Show - Carney’s conflict？ Ethics screen covers 100+ companies

00:00:00.000 I'm Chris Sims filling in for Candice Malcolm here on the Candice Malcolm show. Thank you so

00:00:08.640 much for watching and for listening to this show. We've got a great show for you lined up today.

00:00:13.360 We're going to be speaking with my good friend, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers

00:00:17.660 Federation, Franco Terrazzano, and for a very specific reason, because all of the bureaucrats

00:00:24.080 in Ottawa are apparently going to be spending their summer scurrying around with their hair

00:00:29.220 on fire saying they can't possibly find savings in the budget. They're cut marrow thin. They're down

00:00:36.100 to the bone, folks. They have nowhere to cut. I'm old enough to remember when then Prime Minister

00:00:41.740 Stephen Harper informed his ministers to find, I think it was between 5% and 8% savings within

00:00:48.740 their departments, and the bureaucracy freaked out. Spoiler report, we've got about 100,000 more

00:00:57.880 bureaucrats now, and their spending has gone through the roof. The numbers that are flowing

00:01:03.960 around right now in Ottawa as far as spending on our bureaucracy would choke a horse. So be sure to

00:01:11.000 tune in for that. I wanted to get into the element of accountability here though, and it's really

00:01:17.240 important to flag this. So I would recommend that people look this up in the National Post,

00:01:23.320 read about it at Juneau News and at True North and in online journalism. Check out Brian Lilly's column

00:01:30.040 on this. And it is that, remember when Prime Minister Mark Carney, who's got a big CV, okay, to be fair, he's

00:01:39.000 former governor of the Bank of England, former governor of the Bank of Canada, the dude's got a PhD in

00:01:44.520 economics, he's a business guy, he's got a very long CV, and a very deep contact Rolodex. We get it.

00:01:54.120 But remember how during the election, a lot of people were playing dumb, saying that Mark Carney

00:02:00.680 couldn't possibly have any conflicts of interest. And to their credit, even the mainstream media during

00:02:07.960 the election, was asking then candidate for Prime Minister, Mark Carney, if he would see that he would

00:02:15.160 have any potential conflicts of interest with businesses, if he were to govern as Prime Minister.

00:02:21.720 Remember what he said? Listen to this.

00:02:25.240 Those assets should be publicly disclosed within 120 days, which means you'll campaign

00:02:30.520 in a coming federal election, most likely within the next 120 days, and are serving as Prime Minister now,

00:02:35.640 with Canadians not being aware of what potential conflicts of interest you've sought to avoid.

00:02:39.720 What possible conflict would you have, Stephanie? Stephanie, I'm complying with the rules.

00:02:43.960 I'm complying with the rules in advance.

00:02:49.160 Yeah, that was not a good answer. And again, to a veteran reporter in the parliamentary press gallery,

00:02:55.160 he said, what possible conflicts would I have? And you might even remember, full disclosure,

00:03:00.280 the CBC reporter Rosemary Barton, commentator Rosemary Barton, asked him about this too.

00:03:05.480 And Carney's response, again, was very odd and defensive of look inside yourself, Rosemary.

00:03:10.760 It was a strange response during a very strange election campaign. The reason why this matters is

00:03:17.560 because taxpayers are on the hook for this stuff. And Canadians, at large, require accountability from

00:03:26.680 government. They need to know if their government is in a conflict of interest with any of the companies

00:03:34.280 that are getting contracts that are getting paid with our tax dollars. Remember, folks, close to half

00:03:41.560 of your money goes out the window to various levels of government in the form of taxes, levies, and fees.

00:03:51.080 To do a thought process on that, imagine what lands in your, say you're on salary, okay,

00:03:55.880 you've got a regular job that average people have, and you're on salary, and you get your paycheck

00:04:01.000 deposited in your bank account every two weeks. Imagine that amount being double what it actually

00:04:08.520 is. What could you do with that money? Could you afford better food? Could you pay down your line

00:04:14.280 of credit? Could you save up for a house? Could you get a better education for your kids? That's how

00:04:19.320 much money various levels of government take. So you are absolutely right to demand transparency

00:04:25.480 and accountability when it comes to where your money is going. This is where this is important.

00:04:31.880 On Friday afternoon, the traditional time where all governments like to take out the trash.

00:04:38.520 For those of us who've worked on Parliament Hill, who have ever worked in government as staffers,

00:04:42.840 it's affectionately sardonically referred to as recycling day. Who's got some recycling for today?

00:04:48.920 Well, the thing that was pulled out to the curb on Friday afternoon was this.

00:04:53.960 Turns out, Prime Minister Mark Carney is going to need a special screen set up between himself,

00:05:01.480 his dealings, and any of the companies that he previously had connection to. Apparently,

00:05:08.120 it's going to be in more than 100 instances. Check this out. Carney to recuse himself from dealings

00:05:16.120 with over 100 companies in sprawling government conflict screen.

00:05:21.240 Okay, that is super important. That's the headline from the National Post. Go read it. Go read that

00:05:29.560 article. Share it with your friends. Keep it in mind as we deal with government going forward. Because

00:05:35.960 again, you folks need to be informed citizens on this because this is all your money and we need to

00:05:41.800 hold government to account regardless of party. Which leads me to another key issue here,

00:05:47.960 and that is accountability and the Auditor General. So folks might remember that the Auditor General

00:05:56.200 plays a very clear role when it comes to counting beans, checking in on ethics violations, all that

00:06:03.240 stuff. Finding out where money is going, okay? How contracts are procured on Parliament Hill.

00:06:09.800 The role of the Auditor General was really made famous, I would argue, during the so-called

00:06:16.040 sponsorship scandal. For those of you who are kids who don't know what that is, go look that up. That's

00:06:21.320 what eventually brought down the Liberal government and ushered in the Harper Arrow was the so-called

00:06:26.440 sponsorship scandal or ad scam. Now, it's really important to key in on this because the Auditor General

00:06:33.160 pointed something out quite recently, just a few weeks ago, and that is this. Apparently,

00:06:39.000 bureaucrats in Ottawa have forgotten how to properly do up a contract, open it to public tender,

00:06:47.320 and get ethical procurement of things. In normal people talk, what that means is the bureaucrats that 0.71

00:06:53.720 you're paying on your taxpayer dime have forgotten their duty on how to properly give a contract to an

00:07:01.240 outside agency without ethics violations. Listen to this. Given the investigations you've done so

00:07:06.920 far on McKinsey and GC strategies, do you have a sense at this point of how widespread these issues

00:07:12.040 are in the public service? Well, I can only speak to those two elements, and in both cases, the vendors

00:07:18.680 represented a really small percentage of what was spent on professional services contracts by the

00:07:24.760 federal government. But in the McKinsey work, we had looked at 10 crown corporations and 10 departments.

00:07:31.800 In this audit, there's 31 federal organizations, including one crown and departments. And we found

00:07:39.240 issues in almost every contract that we looked at, which tells me that there's no reason to believe

00:07:45.080 it's limited to these two. And it's time for the public service to go back to the basics and

00:07:50.120 understanding procurement rules and why they should be followed. Understanding procurement

00:07:55.320 rules and why they should be followed. For folks who haven't worked in government, again,

00:08:01.960 on Parliament Hill particularly, there's the ministers, okay, who are elected members of

00:08:07.400 parliament who are then appointed to cabinet as cabinet ministers. They have staff. They're often referred

00:08:13.880 to as political staff. So you've got, you know, people who are in strategy, people who are in

00:08:18.760 stakeholder relations, communications professionals, etc. That's political staff. Next to that is the

00:08:25.960 department, okay? The deputy minister is a bureaucrat, okay? They don't face election. They don't have to

00:08:34.440 run for public office. They typically have a permanent job. Underneath that deputy minister is the entire

00:08:41.240 department. There's communications people, like, you name it. They're all under there, okay? Those people

00:08:49.240 should know how to do procurement, okay? This should be just part of their DNA. Back when I was a

00:08:56.600 staffer, telling tales at a school, I don't care. When I was a staffer, I specifically remember somebody

00:09:02.920 from the ethics commissioner giving everybody a briefing, giving staff members a briefing, political

00:09:07.320 staff a briefing. We were all communications types. And she basically said, if you go out for coffee with a

00:09:14.520 reporter, like a journalist on Parliament Hill, don't accidentally take home their pen, because I will

00:09:21.240 consider that to be a gift that you will have to declare. I'm not kidding. So the idea that a permanent

00:09:29.080 bureaucrat whose job it is to hand out taxpayers' money and to draw up contracts doesn't know how to

00:09:36.760 do ethical procurement is a huge red flag. And it really speaks volumes. It shows you that it's no

00:09:45.240 wonder we are spending money like crazy. Keep in mind, the arrive can app that most people loathed using

00:09:53.480 and never really worked, should have cost taxpayers around $250,000. Around that. It wound up costing

00:10:03.480 taxpayers more than $60 million. That is one example, one example of a huge screw up on Parliament Hill.

00:10:13.160 And it's one example of why they cannot get their spending under control. And they have to get their

00:10:20.120 spending under control. Otherwise, we're going to hit a debt interest crisis. Let's find out how much we

00:10:28.520 need to save in order to balance the budget and start paying down the debt and avoid a huge debt

00:10:34.840 interest crisis. How can we avoid this crisis? Let's find out. Joining me now is my good friend and

00:10:42.440 federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Franco Terrazzano. Franco, he's stationed in Ottawa.

00:10:49.800 I like to nickname it Mordor. I'm picturing what's going on right now, Franco, in relation to these so-called

00:10:56.680 cuts. So in the middle of summer, the kids aren't in school, the MPs aren't sitting there,

00:11:02.600 the leader of the Conservative Party doesn't have a seat. It feels like the phony war moment right now,

00:11:07.400 going into the capital from here. What's it like out there? Are the unions freaking out? Is Carney

00:11:14.040 actually going to make the cuts that he needs to make? Oh, I mean, there's a lot to dive into there.

00:11:18.760 But Chris, like, look, you asked me if the union bosses are freaking out. I mean, come on.

00:11:24.120 They are freaking out. They're fear-mongering over a spending review. Okay? Fear-mongering

00:11:30.280 over a spending review. So here's what's going on. Look, Ottawa has been wasting money like crazy

00:11:35.960 for more than a decade now, right? Like, look, back in like 2015, 2016, the federal government was

00:11:41.960 spending around $290 billion. Well, last year, the federal government spent more than $500 billion.

00:11:48.520 So even after accounting for inflation, you got spending up more than 40% in a decade. Okay?

00:11:56.520 So Carney comes along, he's like, okay, we're going to do a spending review because like debt

00:12:00.840 is spiraling out of control. And you've got the union bosses fear-mongering, right? You know,

00:12:05.000 calling this potential savings draconian rollbacks. You know, another union was talking about how it's

00:12:10.840 going to hurt everyone in Canada who depends on vital public services. And you know, my response

00:12:16.440 to that is like, oh, really? Now government union bosses are worried about services really now,

00:12:22.600 right? After the federal government rubber-stemmed hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses,

00:12:27.640 added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, handed out thousands of pay raises every single year.

00:12:34.200 Now union bosses are worried about the services. Like, come on folks. Like if more government

00:12:39.720 spending and more government bureaucrats meant better services, then there would be no potholes 0.96

00:12:44.520 left in Canada, right? There would be no wait times in hospitals. Like, come on after this

00:12:50.040 bureaucrat hiring spree, all taxpayers really got out of this deal is just higher taxes and a bigger debt 0.68

00:12:55.800 bill. Yeah. Because again, not to belabor it, we pay their wages. We pay their salaries. Taxpayers pay

00:13:03.320 the wages for all of these government employees. You raised a very good point there. Some folks will

00:13:08.920 be like, oh, well, it's essential. We need to nationalize everything. We need to have the

00:13:12.680 government take care of us. Okay. Let's go along with that line of logic. How's your healthcare doing?

00:13:19.000 How's the passport office being run? How's Canada Post working out for you lately? Like we're,

00:13:24.520 we're getting such crappy service coming from the federal government and yet they don't want to

00:13:30.120 actually make these cuts. How do we square the circle? Well, here's another little stat I'm going

00:13:36.360 to drop on you folks. Okay. So since 2016, the cost of the bureaucracy has gone up 73%.

00:13:45.160 Now ask yourself, I'm laughing because to ask the question is to answer it. Have you been getting

00:13:50.200 anywhere close to 73% better services from the federal government? I mean, look, unless you're taking a

00:13:57.800 taxpayer paycheck, that answer is a big fat no. I mean, here's another point, right? Like you are

00:14:03.160 now paying for 99,000 more federal bureaucrats today than you were just 10 years ago. Look,

00:14:10.120 the CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency has seen the second biggest increase in the number of bureaucrats.

00:14:16.840 And like, are you even able to get a CRA bureaucrat on the phone? The answer is, of course not. And you know,

00:14:24.440 like we've got these union bosses that are fear mongering right now over what seems to be any

00:14:29.400 potential savings. Um, but like, look, I think the union bosses need to be upfront, up front with

00:14:35.000 their membership. And, and that is that the biggest, the single biggest threat to a bureaucrat's

00:14:40.120 paycheck. It's not political ideology. It's not a pressure campaign. It's interest charges on the debt.

00:14:47.720 Okay. You want to know what will really cut healthcare transfers or will really cut the number of

00:14:52.360 bureaucrats. It's not political ideology. It's interest charges and interest charges on the debt

00:14:57.800 are spiraling out of control. Let's go there right now. I will also point out this always blows me away.

00:15:03.960 And whenever you raise this on the podcast, am I correct in saying that the average pay,

00:15:09.000 the average salary for the typical government employee is now over a hundred thousand dollars

00:15:15.480 federally per year? Well, okay. The average compensation, when you look at the salary,

00:15:20.520 the pension, the bonuses, the other types of perks, the average compensation for a federal

00:15:25.960 bureaucrat is 125,000 bucks a year. The average compensation, 125 grand. Hey, Chris, uh, as you'll

00:15:33.480 know, right, the federal government doesn't publish a sunshine list. Okay. They do not proactively disclose

00:15:38.920 the number of top earners that they have in the federal government, unlike the vast majority of

00:15:43.960 provinces, by the way. However, your friends at the Canadian taxpayers federation, we filed an access

00:15:48.840 to information requests to find out, you know, how many bureaucrats in the federal government are 1.00

00:15:53.320 getting a six figure base salary. Chris, this is going to blow your mind. There are 110,000 federal

00:16:00.280 employees with a base salary of more than a hundred grand, 110,000 employees. Okay. That means about one

00:16:09.320 third of the entire federal bureaucracy gets a six figure base salary. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. So folks,

00:16:18.520 when you're thinking about this, okay, and you're thinking about half your paycheck disappearing in

00:16:24.360 taxes, levies and fees, okay, to various levels of government, remember what Franco just said about

00:16:29.800 a third of the employees at the federal government level, you just said, make over six figures, make

00:16:35.000 over a hundred grand. Yeah. Salary. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. Okay. Let's get into the debt interest because

00:16:41.720 I'll, I'll be upfront. I think a lot of people don't like thinking about the federal debt because

00:16:48.920 they don't like thinking about their own debt. A lot of people are fighting to afford basics right

00:16:54.600 now. They're living paycheck to paycheck. They're within 200 bucks every month of not being able to

00:16:59.400 make the minimum payments on things like their car, their rent, and yes, their debts. But here's the

00:17:06.040 issue folks. We have to think about it because otherwise the politicians will refuse to, and

00:17:11.480 they won't fight it. And we're all the ones paying the interest on this darn thing. So Franco, get into 0.99

00:17:17.720 it for us. How much is the debt right now? And how much is the interest payment on the debt costing

00:17:24.280 taxpayers? Well, the debt is more than $1.2 trillion, which is crazy because fast forward back to 2015,

00:17:32.760 and the debt was about 600 billion. So in less than a decade, the Trudeau government doubled the

00:17:38.360 national debt, which means that your kids and your grandkids are going to be making payments on that

00:17:43.720 debt for the rest of their lives. But of course, it's not just the debt, right? The sum total that

00:17:48.680 you have to be worried about because the interest charges alone on the debt are astronomically high.

00:17:54.360 Okay. So interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers about 54, 55 billion dollars a year.

00:18:01.640 Okay. Which means that interest charges are blowing a $1 billion hole in the budget every single week.

00:18:09.400 Now let's give some context to that. Okay. That's a brand new hospital that isn't getting built

00:18:15.240 every week because that money's going to the bond fund managers on Bay Street to pay interest on the

00:18:20.840 debt. Or let's put it like two other ways here. Okay. Last year, the federal government spent more

00:18:27.080 money on interest charges than it sent to the provinces in health transfers. Okay. That's how

00:18:34.120 crazy it's getting. Or think about it this way. Welcome to Canada, where every dollar you pay in

00:18:39.800 federal sales tax goes to pay interest on the debt. So to really sum it up, think what we could do without

00:18:46.360 this massive debt. Okay. We could nearly double health transfers, or we could essentially eliminate

00:18:52.760 the entire federal sales tax. Picture that folks. And imagine, Franco, you made a good point there

00:18:59.640 about a billion dollar hospital and not being built. Perhaps a stronger visualization is, okay,

00:19:06.040 everybody gather around every Saturday evening. We're going to stand around a brand new hospital,

00:19:11.880 shiny new paint. Nobody's inside of it yet. Burn it down. Every single week. That's just the interest

00:19:20.680 on the debt. Burn down that new hospital structure every single week. This is madness,

00:19:27.080 and this is where we're spiraling to. Now, I'm old enough to recognize this movie. I've seen this movie

00:19:33.560 before. And that's actually when the Canadian Taxpayers Federation got started. Back in 1990,

00:19:38.840 people were super ticked off about the GST. You just mentioned the GST. They were super ticked off about

00:19:44.200 the huge debt, okay? And the deficits and the interest payments. Do you think we are hitting

00:19:50.360 that wall? Because regardless of color of the team jersey, okay, it was the red team, actually.

00:19:55.800 It was Paul Martin who said that damn clock, the debt clock, we've got to slay this deficit. We have 0.99

00:20:01.160 to balance the budget. Do you think we're coming around to that moment again? Regardless of who's in,

00:20:06.760 do you think Carney has the chops to say, you know what, we got to put the brakes on this spending spree?

00:20:13.080 You know, I'm glad you brought up the point about the early 90s. And what's that old saying, like,

00:20:18.760 history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, right? I think we're getting to that part of the song again,

00:20:23.880 you know what I mean? But look, and let me just bring back the point I made earlier, where it's

00:20:28.040 that these union bosses need to be honest with their membership, because it's not really political

00:20:32.680 ideology that will lead to nurses getting fired, teachers getting fired, or hospitals getting closed

00:20:38.440 down. It's debt interest charges, right? And that's what happened in the 90s. Look, you brought

00:20:42.920 up the Liberals in Ottawa that made spending cuts, right? The red team. And also, Chris, in your

00:20:50.120 backyard in Alberta, you had the PCs, the Klein government, that, you know, save people money,

00:20:56.200 cut spending, held up that paid in full sign in the summer of 2004, right? I reminisce about those days,

00:21:03.320 but also the orange team in Saskatchewan in the 90s, right? With the finance minister, Janice McKinnon

00:21:09.080 at the time, what did they have to do? Because the massive interest charges, how much it costs

00:21:13.480 for the government to borrow money? Well, they had to close what, like 50 hospitals across that

00:21:19.080 prairie province. So this kind of goes back to the whole point that we're making. Look,

00:21:23.320 either the federal government under Mr. Carney, either they roll up their sleeves and they find some

00:21:28.440 savings today or big time spending cuts are going to be forced on them tomorrow. And Chris, to segue

00:21:35.640 back to the first part of this conversation, you asked me, is Carney really making cuts? Well,

00:21:40.440 look, I actually don't even think he's going to bring down total spending. Okay. What everything

00:21:45.640 that I've heard from the Carney government is that debt is still going to go up. And yes,

00:21:50.600 they're going to try to find savings in some areas of the budget, but they're going to compensate

00:21:55.720 that so to speak with higher spending elsewhere. So the only thing that I can see from the Carney

00:22:00.760 government based on what has been tabled before us today is that they will find some savings around

00:22:06.520 the edges, but really overall spending is still going to go up, maybe just not as fast as it did

00:22:12.200 under the Trudeau era. I want you to debunk a couple of things here for viewers here of the Candace

00:22:18.520 Malcolm show. Often we'll hear prime minister Carney say things to the parliamentary press

00:22:23.960 gallery like, Oh, I'm going to cut spending. It's going to be investing. It's government. Like,

00:22:30.440 it's not like he's taking his own money or, you know, uh, harvesting from an orchard of money trees.

00:22:36.200 It's still government spending, right? Like, is there a difference? Is there a difference between

00:22:42.760 operational spending and capital spending? Is there a difference between government spending and what

00:22:48.200 they're calling investing here? Okay. So you're so right to say that every single dollar, whether

00:22:54.840 they call it spending, investing, throwing the money out of a window, every single dollar is still

00:23:00.520 taxpayers money. And all of that money over and above the revenue take in that's more money added to the

00:23:05.960 debt, more money wasted on debt interest charges. Now, look, Chris, I can tell you, look, I just bought

00:23:10.760 a 24 pack of a Canadian, but don't worry. It was an investment. You know what I mean? Like,

00:23:16.680 so a lot of it also depends on what they decide to classify as operating spending versus capital

00:23:21.960 spending. Now, obviously what we're worried about at the Canadian taxpayers federation is we're

00:23:26.200 worried about accounting trickery, right? Oh, they might cut some operating spending, but what they're

00:23:31.160 really doing is just changing the title and then calling it capital spending, right? So it's really

00:23:36.120 hard to tell, uh, in an objective way, what is actually operating versus what is capital spending

00:23:42.280 other than what the government just wants to use as different labels? Um, like, look,

00:23:46.680 can you make the case that some type of capital might have long-term impact? Yes, maybe. Okay.

00:23:52.120 But it's still more money going out the window. And I would say this, instead of just reorganizing or

00:23:57.800 relabeling what different types of spending is, we should see overall spending going down. Okay.

00:24:03.160 Because after the last 10 years of out of, out of control, runaway borrowing, look,

00:24:07.480 finding savings in every area of the budget should be like finding water in the ocean.

00:24:13.080 Two more questions for you. One, uh, do our creditors care like the bond fund managers on

00:24:18.680 Bay street? Like you, like you often say, do they care if this is capital spending or operational

00:24:24.760 spending, or is this just a bottom line of going into deeper debt? Oh, they absolutely will care

00:24:29.960 if all of that extra spending means more debt, right? So they w they will totally care. Um, if like

00:24:36.360 all of this new budgeting still means more debt, right? And here's where the problem is even during

00:24:41.480 the election where Carney was saying, he's going to split the budget into operating capital. Well,

00:24:46.120 if you actually look at his numbers, Carney wants to add $225 billion to the debt over the next four

00:24:52.280 years, $225 billion folks. Let's put that into context over those years. Trudeau wanted to add

00:24:59.080 about $131 billion to the debt. Okay. So Carney is planning on adding about a hundred billion dollars

00:25:06.040 more to the debt than even what Trudeau was planning to add, right? The banker supposed to

00:25:11.400 be better with the numbers and the drama teacher, but the banker is adding almost a hundred billion

00:25:15.720 dollars more debt than what even Trudeau was planning to do. So you asked me, will they care?

00:25:21.080 Of course they will care if we're already more than a trillion dollars in debt. And then over the

00:25:25.800 next four years, the federal government adds $225 billion to that tab. Okay. Last question. And I think

00:25:32.520 it might be one of our favorite questions that we get at the Canadian taxpayers federation is okay,

00:25:37.720 tough guy, where do you want to cut first? Do you want to cut, you know, gruel budget for orphans

00:25:43.400 or do you want to cut hip replacements for little old ladies? Like I'm often, there's so much waste that 1.00

00:25:48.840 you and I cover and all of our team covers that the taxpayers federation, I get so mad that I feel

00:25:54.040 like just cutting government by like 80%, see which wheels fall off. Then I'll actually care about adding

00:26:01.000 things back onto this clown car, but in all seriousness, where can he find savings? Where

00:26:07.480 can he cut? Are there some big cuts that he could make that would instantly balance this budget?

00:26:13.000 Yeah. I mean, look, let's, let's talk about the small things. Okay. The infuriating examples of

00:26:17.240 waste. I don't know. Uh, maybe don't spend 8 million bucks building a barn on the governor

00:26:22.760 general's estate. Like Chris, I don't know about the first thing about farming, but my buddies back in,

00:26:27.560 back at Brooks, uh, could build a barn for a lot less than 8 million bucks. Right. Uh, or how about

00:26:32.120 this? I don't know. Call me old fashioned, but maybe we don't need to spend 8,800 bucks on a sex

00:26:36.840 toy show in Germany titled whose jizz is this, right? Right. I knew you were going to say that. 0.98

00:26:43.560 Yeah. Yeah. I did it for you. Uh, or, or, or I don't know, uh, 12 grand outsourcing old people,

00:26:48.680 sex stories in other countries, right? The government spent 12 grand. So seniors in other countries can talk

00:26:54.040 about their sex lives in front of live audiences in other countries. So look, there's, there's a

00:26:58.760 small examples of ways. Uh, the big examples though, like, look, there is no way to balance

00:27:03.640 the budget, to fix the budget and cut taxes without firing bureaucrats. There's no way,

00:27:08.360 there's no way around it. Okay. Because the federal government added 99,000 bureaucrats in, in a decade. 0.99

00:27:14.280 Okay. Now, uh, more than half of the government's day to day spending is consumed by the bureaucracy.

00:27:20.120 In fact, look, if you, if the government just increased the bureaucracy to stay in line with

00:27:24.680 population growth over the last 10 years, uh, we would be saving $7 billion a year.

00:27:30.040 So the big place to cut is the bureaucracy. I'll give you one more area that the government

00:27:34.360 must cut. And it's another big one, corporate welfare. Hey, how about this? How about you let

00:27:39.640 people and businesses keep more of their own money rather than hiking taxes on Canadians and Canadian

00:27:44.520 entrepreneurs, and then turning around and giving bucks of cash to multinational corporations,

00:27:49.640 right? Uh, like the government put taxpayers on the hook for like $30 billion to multinational

00:27:54.520 corporations, like what Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt. So look, there's a bunch of the

00:28:00.040 small ways that we could talk about the entire show. Uh, but the two big items that they have to

00:28:04.840 really tackle is the bureaucracy and then just completely ending corporate welfare and to grow

00:28:09.800 the economy. How about you cut taxes, cut regulations and get out of the way.

00:28:14.120 You've got so many stats. Just one second. Did you just say that if the feds had kept spending

00:28:19.320 in line with population growth, they'd save $7 billion a year?

00:28:22.600 Uh, no, no, no, no. I was only talking about the bureaucracy.

00:28:26.280 Oh yeah. So only the, only the bureaucracy, like me, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're giving them too much credit.

00:28:33.720 Uh, no, no, no. Like folks, if, if think about it this way, the bureaucracy grew out of control

00:28:39.400 so wildly that if they just allowed the bureaucracy to grow in line with population

00:28:44.760 growth, and you know how much Canada has grown over the last 10 years, if that we would save

00:28:50.440 about $7 billion a year, just by keeping bureaucracy growth in line with population growth,

00:28:55.400 $7 billion a year. I work with him every day, folks, and he still continues to amaze me.

00:29:00.840 Uh, Franco Teresano, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for joining the Candace Malcolm show.

00:29:05.400 Hey, that was fun. We should do this more often.

00:29:10.120 That's it for the Candace Malcolm show for today. Thank you so much for listening and for watching.

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The Candice Malcolm Show - July 14, 2025

Carney’s conflict？ Ethics screen covers 100+ companies

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