Inflation in Canada is driving up the cost of almost everything. We ll talk to one MP who is doing everything he can to ring the alarm bell and talk about what he calls Just Inflation. MP Pierre Polyev has been the Conservative MP for the Ottawa-based riding of Carleton since 2004. He currently serves as the party s finance critic and has kept the Trudeau government accountable for the unprecedented number of new spending initiatives during the pandemic.
00:09:00.780So, where modern monetary theory has the central bank print the money and literally just hand it over to the government to spend,
00:09:07.900the liberal government and the U.S. government in Washington and other central banks around the world have something that's even more devious.
00:09:17.020And that is to allow the financial institutions to play middleman and profit off of all of these transactions.
00:09:24.800And they call this quantitative easing.
00:09:51.560So, the government says, here's a bond that I promised to, it's a promise from me to you to pay you a certain amount of money in, say, five years and to pay you interest in the in-between time.
00:10:03.160That's how governments have raised money for deficits for years.
00:10:06.540But what's happening with quantitative easing is that the Bank of Canada then goes and buys the same bond right back.
00:10:14.600So, the government goes to a financial institution, sells a bond to raise some debt.
00:10:21.200And then within days, our central bank, which is part of the government, buys the bond back at a higher price.
00:10:27.920In other words, the financial institution profits off the difference between the price for which the government sold it, the bond, and the higher price for which the central bank bought it right back.
00:10:41.420And the effect is to allow banks and credit unions and insurance companies, private equity firms to profit off of the difference between what our government sells and what our government pays for those bonds.
00:10:56.460The other thing it does is it floods financial institutions with easy money.
00:11:01.260If you want any proof of how the impact of this, look at the Bank of Canada's report just last week on the investors, real estate investors, getting 100% increase in the number of mortgages they've had in a year and a half.
00:11:26.460So, all of this cash started funneling into the financial system and it got lent out to investors who then used it to bid up the price of real estate.
00:11:35.260And since that time, we've had a 32% increase in real estate prices.
00:11:40.140And that has priced poor working class people out of homes while making the existing mansion owners or investors extraordinarily rich.
00:11:50.820For the first time, our stock market is worth about 130% of GDP.
00:11:56.200So, what happens is when all this cash goes into the system, it inflates the assets that the rich own and the products that the poor and working class must buy.
00:12:06.840So, quantitative easing in the states has bipartisan support, Candace.
00:12:12.820Democrats love it because it inflates big government.
00:12:16.880Republicans love it because it inflates big business.
00:12:20.280Washington and Wall Street are happy and the working class gets screwed because it destroys the purchasing power of working class wages.
00:12:30.120So, it's a monstrous wealth transfer from the have-nots to the have-yachts.
00:12:36.620And so, Candace, you asked, are they smart?
00:13:03.540But the system is profiting them at the expense of the working class who pay the bills in this country.
00:13:10.680Well, you make it sound incredibly cynical.
00:13:12.880You know, usually in politics, if the question is, you know, is something happening because someone is evil or is something happening because someone is incompetent, I usually tend to lean more towards incompetency.
00:13:25.820But the way that you're painting it seems quite cynical.
00:13:29.000I know that the liberal government is sort of intentionally conflating two issues here.
00:13:33.000They're sort of pretending that their printing of money and inflation is caused by the global supply chain issues, which is a real issue, Pierre.
00:13:41.420I'm buying some new furniture for my house and I'm living it because everything I ordered that was supposed to be here in November is now they're telling me, you know, you might have it in January.
00:13:53.020The COVID pandemic is having an impact on that.
00:13:55.280I'm wondering if we could switch and you could address this issue as well.
00:13:59.260What would a conservative government do to address the supply chain issue?
00:14:02.660Do you think that Canada needs to do more to take back and build up our own domestic manufacturing industry, have a made in Canada solution the way that we that we see sort of emphasize in the US?
00:14:14.160Or do you think or conservatives still sort of stand behind the free trade model of having everything sort of imported from China and having costs go down that way?
00:14:24.500Well, I want to just address one last point on monetary policy with regards to supply chains.
00:14:32.100A lot of people say, well, there's nothing that the Canadian government or the bank in Canada can do about foreign supply chain costs.
00:14:39.560Well, actually, there is one very obvious thing, and that is if our dollar is more valuable, then we can outbid other countries for international goods.
00:14:47.500So while we don't, in Canada, set the global oil price, if our dollar were higher, then our purchasing power for oil would also be higher.
00:14:58.300So when governments print money, they deliberately actually devalue their currency, which reduces the purchasing power of their money in the international bidding war for scarce goods.
00:15:34.960Well, I go back to my slogan, which was a very deliberate one in the last election.
00:15:41.220We need an economy that makes more, costs less, with paychecks, not debt.
00:15:45.340If we had unleashed the productive forces of free enterprise in our country, we could make more things here in Canada.
00:15:52.940But here it is very expensive to set up a factory.
00:15:56.020We're ranked 36 of 37 OECD nations for the delay time to get a building permit.
00:16:01.720So why would you build a factory or warehouse here when you could go build it where they approve it much quicker?
00:16:09.000We have an extremely punitive tax regime with payroll and carbon taxes expected to rise January 1st, which means businesses who are thinking about setting up a factory here or say Ohio will say, well, I'm not going to move to Canada because I have to pay all these payroll taxes and these energy taxes to produce the goods and services that the people need.
00:16:32.460We, you know, we, you know, if we unleashed our energy sector by building pipelines, we could supply more of our domestic energy through from Canadian resources rather than importing them from expensive foreign producers.
00:16:46.720If we reduced the taxes and taxes and taxes, we'd have a greater supply of workers who'd have more powerful after-tax paychecks.
00:16:58.220You know, we have a million unfilled jobs, Candace.
00:17:15.300We should reward work with lower income and payroll taxes instead of rewarding non-work with greater welfare programs.
00:17:24.680Well, and it's even worse than that, Pierre.
00:17:26.740I read the other day about how the CERB, which was intended for people who had lost work, that there was about six times as many people collecting it as there were job losses due to COVID.
00:17:36.320So, you know, what happens when you pay people not to work?
00:17:40.660People are going to take advantage of that.
00:17:42.080And sadly, it looks like that's what we see on.
00:17:43.900And then on the other side, you know, my mother-in-law owns a small business in Toronto and she can't keep employees because, like, why would anyone go out and work if they can make the same amount of money staying at home getting paid by Justin Trudeau?
00:17:56.380I want to ask you a final question here, Pierre.
00:17:58.600I know, OK, so last week, you know, Parliament's back.
00:18:02.240Last week, the media and the Liberals were completely obsessed with this idea of finding out every individual personal health story of Conservative MPs and finding out why they had exemptions and who was vaccinated.
00:18:15.840And you rightly called out one journalist for falling into a Liberal trap.
00:18:19.840This week, it seems like the House of Commons is completely distracted by a disingenuously named bill called the Conversion Therapy Bill, but it had unanimous support in the House.
00:18:31.160Why is it that the issues that we're talking about right now, the things that really matter to Canadians, every time I talk to someone, they're talking about the cost of living.
00:18:37.440They're talking about how expensive it is to get gas, how expensive it is to go grocery shopping.
00:18:40.800And yet, when you look at Ottawa, you look at politicians, the media, the government, they're talking about issues that just don't matter at all, that are totally relevant to Canadians' day-to-day lives.
00:18:51.060So, you work in politics, you've been on the Hill for a long time.
00:18:59.020Well, the press gallery is largely bought and paid for by the state.
00:19:03.880CBC, of course, is the state broadcaster.
00:19:07.360Then they pay journalists from other outlets to do extremely lucrative commentary on the network.
00:19:17.120Very few people watch it, but it still pays a handsome sum.
00:19:22.420And so, all of those journalists then have to tow the CBC line if they want to keep getting the gravy.
00:19:27.720And then there's a half-billion-dollar subsidy for the rest of the outlets.
00:19:32.780So, basically, you have an ecosystem of media who live off big government, and they don't, therefore, want to report on any of the painful consequences of big government.
00:19:45.360Of course, big government overspending is causing this inflation.
00:19:49.600A half trillion dollars of deficits mean more dollars chasing fewer goods, driving higher prices.
00:19:55.600And those who live off of the ecosystem of big government don't want the average Joe on the street to know the reason he's paying more is because the state is spending more.
00:20:11.540So, you know, they want to talk about every distraction they can conjure up so that nobody realizes why and how the system is screwing them.
00:20:22.780And so, the important thing for us is to call it out.
00:20:28.440Be very honest and very blunt when you get these distracting, phony questions like I did.
00:20:34.000You know, journalists saying, what are the medical exemptions that four or five Tory MPs have to avoid vaccination?
00:20:45.000Like, as though I would call people up and ask them their deeply sensitive private medical information,
00:20:50.560as though that is my job as a Member of Parliament and finance critic, that is how crazy it's gotten.
00:20:56.700That's why it's so important to have independent media that doesn't rely on the state and doesn't just tow the government line like your publication.
00:21:06.760Well, I really appreciate that, Pierre, and it's always a pleasure to have you on.