Make Canada Great Again？
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this week's Off The Record, we discuss Ben Shapiro's new music video, the Canadian government's new policy protecting kids from sex-change operations, and the ridiculousness of the media's coverage of the trans issue.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
So wait, so YouTube demonetized us for the Ben Shapiro thing?
00:00:05.880
They, they, we, we put in a dispute, we followed the rules and it was, uh, I don't think it
00:00:10.860
was YouTube, but I think it was Ben Shapiro and Tom McDonald themselves who rejected us.
00:00:16.440
It's funny because the internet right now, YouTube is filled with like Ben Shapiro reaction
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And then Ben Shapiro even did a video reacting to his reaction videos.
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So you would think that he would want people to promote his song and his music.
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Like, but then when we did it, we get demonetized.
00:00:30.960
So unless it was just over the dancing, the dance moves might've just been, YouTube was
00:00:37.940
It's like the, my pillow guy all over again when I had him on my show and we like, couldn't
00:00:44.900
But that was, didn't that happen like eight months later?
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It was like Andrew interviews this guy and it was totally normal and totally fine.
00:00:49.640
And then like six months later, he does something controversial and they like go back and demonetize
00:01:13.480
So we're going to keep this format going and talk about the week's news from a little bit
00:01:20.540
And I know we talked about this a lot last week, but I just wanted to talk about it, mention
00:01:26.980
More fallout from Daniel Smith's policy, protecting kids from trans surgeries, basically from, from
00:01:34.120
being pushed into getting sex change operations while they're still children.
00:01:39.260
And it's just really been remarkable to see this whole thing unfold.
00:01:43.640
I was pleased that Pierre Polyev came out in the middle of the week and finally let us know what the
00:01:49.340
conservative position was on it because they've been relatively quiet up to this point.
00:01:53.120
I think he did take the right position and fall in the right place.
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But I just like, I still can't believe the way that the media has handled this issue and
00:02:01.900
the way that some left-wing politicians, Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, have just been completely
00:02:07.700
I just don't understand why they think that talking about trans issues for children is
00:02:15.000
Like as soon as, one of the things that Pierre Polyev did was that he, he got journalists to
00:02:20.260
explain exactly what policy they were talking about, because they would do this thing like,
00:02:23.960
why are you in favor of restricting healthcare to kids?
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Like we're not talking about access to healthcare.
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We're talking about elective surgeries for sex changes for little kids.
00:02:35.020
And, and, and once you make the journalists say that, then, then you, they've already lost
00:02:42.040
Well, yeah, the journalists were exposed a few days ago when one of the journalists asked
00:02:46.800
Pierre Polyev if he felt that only adults should take puberty blockers after they discussed
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And, and, you know, adults don't take puberty blockers because that's the whole point.
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It exposes the fact that the, the, the, the base position of the media here is whatever
00:03:07.480
And whatever the left is saying has to be right.
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And they can't even use their own judgment to realize what they're talking about is, is
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It took him a bit too long to finally admit to it, but at least he did come out and admit
00:03:21.000
Well, one of the things that was really interesting that I learned this week was that taking testosterone
00:03:26.460
is actually illegal and, and human growth hormones are illegal in Canada.
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So in some cases, it's not even possible to take it when you're an adult.
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They don't, they don't even allow adults to take it.
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I think if anything, it's just exposed this entire issue is like more Canadians are now
00:03:45.780
aware of the crazy stuff that's happening in our country to kids.
00:03:50.280
Like, like there was one clip that I found really amusing where a journalist was kind of
00:03:54.300
complaining to Danielle Smith about the onerousness of one of the policies, which was that every
00:03:59.260
time you talk about sex ed to children in your classroom, you have to write a report.
00:04:03.500
And the reporter was like, Hey, like, like, are they supposed to write a report like every
00:04:11.320
And Danielle was like, well, I'm sorry, but if they're talking about sex every single day
00:04:17.460
to students, I think we've discovered a good use case for this policy because they shouldn't
00:04:23.280
Yeah, there, there's a lot of gaslighting on this though.
00:04:26.160
Cause I remember like when, when Danielle Smith first came out and was talking about the, um,
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in, in Alberta, the, uh, sex reassignment surgery component, you had people say that
00:04:36.020
She's, she's banning something that doesn't exist.
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And literally news reports, uh, that came out yesterday, uh, national post, there were eight
00:04:44.820
transgender surgeries for minors in 2022, 2023.
00:04:49.100
So you may say, okay, eight, it's a small number, but still eight is, is, is above
00:04:53.840
So when you have people saying this doesn't happen, it's not there.
00:05:02.200
This kind of reminds me of the whole like libs of TikTok thing.
00:05:04.520
Like people who there's a, there's a very popular account on Twitter who people who don't
00:05:08.460
know that the, the, the account, the person who runs the account literally just takes clips
00:05:14.300
So people who have, you know, on their own decided to post videos, public videos on their,
00:05:21.680
And she just stitches them together and shows them to a different audience on, uh, on Twitter.
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And, you know, the left is like, oh, this is a hate crime.
00:05:29.980
She's targeting trans people and she's putting them at risk.
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She's just letting you know what they say, what they do.
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And it's usually teachers, uh, they're talking about how they're confusing their children
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and how they talk about sex in classrooms and how they're making kids, uh, you know,
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We know what's happening because we see it in this, in this, through this TikTok account.
00:05:55.800
And then the same kind of gaslighting that you're talking about, Andrew, that, that they'll
00:06:11.640
And then I thought Harrison was going to say something.
00:06:13.080
I thought Harrison was like awkward live to date moments that we'll, uh, all just have
00:06:17.080
to hope the audience finds endearing instead of horribly unprofessional.
00:06:20.120
No, I thought Harrison was about to jump in with somebody.
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The media were exposed for just basically taking whatever the left is, is saying and believing
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that that is the only acceptable position to have.
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I think Paul Yev is right when he says Justin Trudeau will eventually have to back down
00:06:42.180
from this because common sense and just what the majority of Canadians think isn't going
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The majority of Canadians don't want children to take puberty blockers and do, you know,
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So eventually the prime minister will likely have to, uh, step down from this position and
00:07:02.380
be asked the kind of questions that Pierre is being asked.
00:07:04.940
So double standards everywhere, but it's just the usual media playbook.
00:07:09.120
Although I will say that the media did their job this time because we didn't know where
00:07:12.560
And, and I do think that it took them pushing him and, and you can see there was one press
00:07:17.480
And Justin Ling, who's like a left-wing reporter was asking him these annoying questions and
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And it was like, why basically like, why do you hate trans kids?
00:07:26.400
And you can see Pierre just kind of lost his patience.
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And then that was like the moment where he first came out.
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And then the next day he was in the House Commons, he was getting scrummed and the reporters
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So, uh, good, good for Pierre for landing in the right place.
00:07:41.520
I want to talk about this other story that happened this week, which was that we learned
00:07:46.760
It was prime minister Justin Trudeau's own office that invited that Nazi veteran to, uh,
00:07:52.480
reception and, and to, to be at the House of Commons.
00:07:55.460
So we, we all remember this very embarrassing, uh, moment that happened last September where
00:08:00.380
the entire House of Commons gave a standing ovation to a Nazi and basically interesting
00:08:06.540
I know you cover this on your show, Andrew, but, but just, just to, just repeat it.
00:08:10.520
It's like at the time when the, when this happened, the scandal came out, the government blamed
00:08:18.820
He ended up resigning, but there were some interesting quotes from the time.
00:08:22.660
Uh, so we had liberal cabinet ministers insisting that this person, this house leader could not
00:08:28.380
stay on the job because what he had done was just so beyond the pale and so reprehensible.
00:08:31.700
So we had Karina Gold saying, I can't see based on the conversations I've had, how he can continue
00:08:37.620
to have the support of liberal members of parliament.
00:08:40.100
Then you had Melanie Jolie, the foreign minister saying what happened on Friday is completely
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It was an embarrassment to the House of Commons and Canadians.
00:08:47.480
So we had all of these liberals at the time saying that because of what Anthony Rota did,
00:08:52.800
because he invited this Nazi, it was all his fault.
00:08:57.740
This guy's to blame and he just can't be in cabinet.
00:09:02.260
Well, well, oops, because now we, now we know that it wasn't, it wasn't Anthony Rota.
00:09:08.300
He was just the guy that they decided to throw to the bus.
00:09:10.240
It was actually Justin Trudeau's office that sent the invitation.
00:09:13.640
So wouldn't all those things now apply to the prime minister, just using liberal logic
00:09:18.700
here, if, if what Anthony Rota did was so terrible, then now that we know it was actually
00:09:22.920
Justin Trudeau, why aren't they saying the same thing about Justin Trudeau?
00:09:29.180
Well, I should just clarify, it was a set, it was a separate invitation.
00:09:33.700
So Anthony Rota had invited him to the House of Commons.
00:09:36.580
Justin Trudeau invited him to this reception in Toronto where he, he didn't end up attending,
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but he was going to be there and it was honoring Volodymyr Zelensky.
00:09:47.840
I mean, the current framework you've just laid out there of, you know, guy who invites
00:09:52.220
Nazi to public event resigns is still something that should apply.
00:09:56.740
And, but, but we saw Trudeau doing that Trudeopian thing that he loves doing with this, which
00:10:03.440
I apologize on behalf of Canadians as though you Harrison, you Candace, me, our, our video
00:10:09.400
guys, Jacob, Philly, like they were all the ones that did it, not just Trudeau.
00:10:19.920
So, you know, yeah, maybe giving the apology on behalf of a larger group of people was warranted,
00:10:26.220
And it was amazing that now all of a sudden it's, oh, whoopsie, just an honest mistake.
00:10:30.540
When it was Anthony Rota, it was something that had to cost him his job.
00:10:34.220
When it's Justin Trudeau, it's, oh, well, you know, we just, you know, the name was given
00:10:37.520
to us on a list and we just, oh, you know, who among us hasn't?
00:10:43.280
Didn't he apologize on behalf of all Canadians when he was coming?
00:10:47.960
So yeah, so the guy next door does blackface and we all have to learn more about race relations
00:10:54.780
Yeah, it was, it was a joint learning opportunity.
00:10:58.960
Well, the level of incompetence from the prime minister's office from inside this Canadian
00:11:03.980
government is reaching such dangerous levels that it's becoming like a national security
00:11:08.840
These people literally can't even understand very basic historical facts.
00:11:14.660
The reality that if you were fighting against the Soviets in World War II, you probably weren't
00:11:23.600
And clearly some people in the PMO had no idea.
00:11:26.220
And it's not like these invitations, you're just a junior staffer writes this stuff out.
00:11:33.520
Everyone else did once it made it, once it was public.
00:11:35.500
Once the standing ovation had already been given to a Nazi, but no one had caught this
00:11:42.320
And of course they have to just blame the speaker.
00:11:46.260
Good soldier, Anthony Rota, for just taking it and not exposing the PMO on his way out
00:11:55.020
The people inside the PMO are dangerously incompetent.
00:12:00.480
Well, I think it maybe says something about our history and the whole liberal mantra of
00:12:04.900
like, let's erase everything that happened like prior to, I don't know, 1965 or prior
00:12:11.460
Like Canada's history starts with Pierre Trudeau.
00:12:13.300
And let's not even learn about World War II or not even learn about Canada's contributions.
00:12:18.640
It's like, as soon as I heard the introduction in the House of Commons and it was like, this
00:12:26.200
It's like, well, that obviously, to your point, Harrison, that should ring alarm bells.
00:12:29.400
The fact that the conservatives also stood up and applauded was deeply shameful, but
00:12:33.360
at least they could be forgiven for getting caught up in a moment, right?
00:12:35.880
You're at an event and you're not really paying attention and you're focused on something
00:12:40.880
And it's like, okay, this guy's a war veteran, you stand.
00:12:43.940
But it's like, you know, the people who are organizing this event, right?
00:12:50.700
This is like going with whole, the whole like Justin Trudeau, you know, fighting for Ukraine
00:12:55.520
is fighting for democracy, et cetera, et cetera.
00:12:57.680
Like you know that a lot of eyeballs looked this stuff over, a lot of thought went into
00:13:02.840
And the fact that none of them know even basic, basic history about what happened during World
00:13:09.160
But Andrew, did you have any final thoughts on this one?
00:13:11.820
I mean, everyone got so into the whole, over the last 10, 15 years, everyone's a Nazi
00:13:18.640
And it's amazing how that everyone is a Nazi except for the literal Nazi.
00:13:23.360
The literal Nazi is not a Nazi, but everyone else is a Nazi.
00:13:25.940
That was the one imbalance I found when this thing first came up that I've been reminded
00:13:32.820
Well, and, and I think this is not, this has not been a strong week for Justin Trudeau.
00:13:39.680
I want to play this clip where Justin Trudeau, he's trying to go after Pierre Polyev, but
00:13:47.560
And I think I could give you some credit, Harrison, because you've been talking for a
00:13:51.840
while about how Justin Trudeau is trying to run against Donald Trump and not Pierre
00:14:00.200
Speaker, what we hear from the leader of the opposition is under the previous conservative
00:14:08.560
And what he is proposing to do is to make Canada great again.
00:14:16.540
He is pining for a nostalgia that, quite frankly, Canadians do not feel.
00:14:24.340
I do like the part where he was trying to, he was trying to insult to the conservatives
00:14:28.560
by saying that they thought everything was perfect under Harper.
00:14:30.840
And then the conservative side all starts cheering, like, yeah, everything was great under Harper.
00:14:35.720
And then it was just also going well for Trudeau.
00:14:37.760
And then he tries to land this, like, make Canada great again.
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It doesn't roll off the tongue like Maka-ga does.
00:14:49.880
And I think that if most people just heard that sentence, you know, Pierre Polyev wants to
00:14:59.400
And the conservatives should have all, like, leapt up and started doing the standing ovation.
00:15:02.960
But it's like, you know, people don't, people aren't as obsessed with Donald Trump and this,
00:15:11.820
It was almost, I mean, nine years ago, 2015, that he first came up with that make America
00:15:16.960
It's like, you could just tell that Justin Trudeau is so inside this, like, bubble of political
00:15:22.480
mudslinging that he's obsessed with it and it's not working.
00:15:27.400
Yeah, well, clearly they can't run against Pierre Polyev, they can't run against what
00:15:32.220
he says to Canadians because it works and it's working with the conservatives.
00:15:36.960
Where's the art of subtlety gone in politics these days, guys?
00:15:40.560
I mean, they can't, the liberals can't even be clever about their approach to try and make
00:15:44.880
Polyev to seem like some sort of Donald Trump, Donald Trump reincarnate in Canada.
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They put him up on a split screen with Donald Trump and every other week they've got some
00:15:55.560
sort of split screen between what Polyev is saying, exactly how that's what Donald Trump
00:15:59.340
says, and now they're bringing out the make Canada great again line.
00:16:02.480
The reality is Canadians are pining for the nostalgia of a pre-Trudeau Canada.
00:16:07.860
Clearly, things are much worse after this guy's been in power for eight years.
00:16:12.100
That's not even a very controversial thing to say.
00:16:14.860
The majority of Canadians seem to agree on that.
00:16:17.360
I don't think this is going to land at all, but this is what they want to do.
00:16:20.800
They're going to, all throughout 2024, they're going to run off the U.S. election, basically.
00:16:27.020
They're going to try and make the conservatives out to be the Republicans, make Pierre out
00:16:30.420
to be Donald Trump, and, you know, I guess good luck to them.
00:16:35.360
Pierre Polyev is such a different political figure than Donald Trump.
00:16:40.720
Like, sure, yeah, they both believe in, like, I don't know, smaller government and, like,
00:16:45.980
Like, when it comes to their actual personalities and where they stand, like, their age, everything
00:16:55.780
Well, yeah, but it's just, like, politics and political media coverage are like that
00:17:00.880
It's the same reason that Justin Trudeau for the last, you know, decade has been, you
00:17:04.980
know, comparing and blaming everything and everyone on Harper.
00:17:08.020
It's, you know, the Harper years, the Harper years.
00:17:10.160
And at a certain point, it's like, you've been there for now nine years.
00:17:13.760
I think it's hard to blame Stephen Harper for your government's poor performance, but
00:17:20.560
They just cling to, like, the easiest comparison.
00:17:22.720
And I mean, the one thing that Trump has done, which is really annoying, he didn't do
00:17:26.820
it, but has been done around him, is that it's become the laziest, easiest comparison
00:17:38.960
And, you know, journalists can just say, like, Trump.
00:17:41.100
Like, I once got into an argument with someone when I did my old radio show, I was defending
00:17:47.720
The zipper merge, which is a piece of urban planning where, you know, when a lane is closing,
00:17:53.100
it's actually most efficient to alternate, to use both lanes right up until the merge
00:17:57.880
point instead of, like, you know, two kilometers out getting into the lane that's continuing.
00:18:02.300
The reason I share that boring bit of trivia is because I was talking about this and why
00:18:08.100
And someone said, you're just like Trump for saying that.
00:18:11.340
And I'm like, was Trump like a known fan of the zipper?
00:18:14.880
But like, but it's just, it's the only thing people know how to, it's the only insult people
00:18:22.640
The liberals always try to rail against the conservatives for importing American-style
00:18:27.900
That's their line against the conservatives before they even tried to-
00:18:34.040
They try to blame the conservatives for importing American politics.
00:18:36.800
What could be more, what could be more American politics than making your opposition out to
00:18:54.960
No, it's, it's, it's, it's really, no, there's some good points raised.
00:18:58.740
And yeah, the exact idea that any, any, anything bad you do is, oh, you're Trump.
00:19:04.580
But I just, I just don't think it's going to work.
00:19:06.280
I think that Trump was deeply unpopular, especially in Canada during the beginning part of his
00:19:10.660
first term, but I don't think that's there anymore.
00:19:17.060
He doesn't carry the same fear and hysteria that he did in 2016.
00:19:20.920
So again, if this is a liberal strategy, good luck, because it doesn't seem to land.
00:19:24.660
I just want to quickly, quickly cover this story, which is the NDP wants to make it illegal
00:19:32.860
So Charlie Angus, an NDP, MP, long time member, tabled a private member's bill, Bill C-372,
00:19:45.000
Basically, it will criminalize the promotion of fossil fuels.
00:19:48.040
You can go to jail, you can pay a fine up to $1.5 million, up to two years in jail for
00:20:02.740
The NDP is sort of just like the fringe, weird character in Canadian politics.
00:20:10.740
But, you know, this is the direction they're going.
00:20:15.380
They don't want you to say nice things about Canada.
00:20:18.100
They don't want you to be proud of your country.
00:20:25.140
This just shows us so much about the Canadian left and where the NDP wants to take this country
00:20:34.720
Yeah, I mean, the basis for what he's doing is he's trying to say that, and it says it in
00:20:39.480
the legislation, in the preamble, that it's based on this climate crisis and that we have
00:20:44.540
to, he said in his remarks, start treating oil and gas the way we've treated big tobacco
00:20:48.980
He made the comparison between, you know, oil and gas saying that, you know, oil and
00:20:53.360
gas is good for the Canadian economy to, you know, what is it?
00:20:56.440
Bensman and Hedges, Rothman and Benson, Rothman, Hedges, whatever, you know, one of the tobacco
00:21:00.160
companies is saying that, oh, you know, tobacco smoking is good for your health.
00:21:03.860
So he's trying to use that precedent to say that the crisis caused by fossil fuels outweigh
00:21:11.880
But it's kind of amusing because I'm just imagining, like, I don't know, you know, Ontario
00:21:15.960
if we have them, but I'm sure in Alberta, there are these, you know, oil and gas weekly
00:21:20.700
And I'm just imagining like going into the variety store and, you know, like with your
00:21:24.480
head down and being like, hi, I need the magazines in the back room, if you know what
00:21:33.800
It's in the plastic cover and more like the cigarettes where, you know, you have to get them
00:21:37.420
to open the case and, you know, quickly close it.
00:21:39.640
And but it's insane because they're trying to stigmatize a sector that is the lifeblood
00:21:50.180
So even like, you know, fancy bankers and and marketing executives in cities like Vancouver
00:21:54.820
and Toronto that think they're above and removed from oil and gas.
00:21:57.060
It's like, no, no, it's all like like oil and gas is still the Canadian economy.
00:22:02.580
But but resources have always been Canada's core economic engine.
00:22:12.780
I can only I'm thinking about what was going on in Alberta when their power grid basically
00:22:17.920
And, you know, no one is allowed to go on social media and say that, oh, I really wish
00:22:21.920
we had natural gas to to stay warm in the coldest day of the winter.
00:22:26.120
Otherwise, they might get fine for saying something like that.
00:22:28.700
They might get fine for noticing that actually, you know, the wind and the and the solar isn't
00:22:40.400
This is not I wish I was surprised when I read this story yesterday, but it was more it
00:22:45.080
was more just like, oh, Charlie Angus is speaking.
00:22:48.180
Of course, he's putting this this bill forward.
00:22:49.920
I would have been a little less surprised had it come from Elizabeth May.
00:22:57.260
And just like the core of their of their thinking is that they hate free speech.
00:23:04.800
This kind of takes me to the whole like post truth argument that we don't agree on the facts
00:23:10.820
So what Charlie Angus is saying is that he is the arbiter of what is true.
00:23:15.600
And if you disagree with him, it is disinformation to the point where you should go to jail, which
00:23:25.840
It's not it's we're not talking about like a democratic parameter here.
00:23:31.140
You're talking about demonizing speech that you personally disagree with.
00:23:37.520
But I think we can just if this is the rule and this is what we're now allowed to do,
00:23:41.620
I think some conservative needs to introduce a private member's bill saying it is illegal
00:24:01.680
The good news is the NDP will save money on its ad budget when they're not allowed to
00:24:09.640
It's like the it'll be like when Elizabeth May got pulled off stage by by at least the
00:24:14.460
We'll just have to pull Charlie Angus off stage like he's gone on too long at the Oscars,
00:24:24.980
It'll sanitize political discourse in this country.
00:24:27.760
No, that would be some top level trolling if the conservatives were to actually do that.
00:24:31.300
I would I would applaud that just for trolling, not because I would actually want that
00:24:35.980
But speaking of socialism, let's try that transition.
00:24:40.240
Speaking of socialism, everything in Ottawa speaking of socialism for the last few years,
00:24:45.800
the NDP have been on this sort of crusade against grocery stores in Canada and sort of
00:24:50.840
blaming the companies for the sort of consequences of Justin Trudeau's pandemic policies.
00:24:56.980
So the idea that they printed a lot of money, they gave away a lot of money during the pandemic
00:25:03.100
There was a whole bunch of supply chain issues when things were started to get back up again
00:25:06.960
because the government shut down the economy and then it took a while for the economy to
00:25:11.600
That whole time, rather than looking at the economic picture, the left, the NDP and some
00:25:24.840
It was big grocers that are causing high food prices in Canada.
00:25:31.040
So it was all corporate greed and profiteering.
00:25:33.700
It just seems like the Ottawa bubble just sort of really hates law, blah.
00:25:37.340
So it became a big scandal this week when Justin Trudeau alerted the country that Pierre
00:25:42.720
Polyev's advisor, Jenny Byrne, is actually lobbying for law, blah.
00:25:48.400
So let's play this clip of Justin Trudeau, you know, again, pointing the finger and basically
00:25:53.760
saying that it's all the Conservatives' fault now that your food prices are too high.
00:25:57.920
Pierre Polyev has been standing up for months now, pretending that he cares about high grocery
00:26:09.480
And it turns out that his top advisor is working as a lobbyist for Loblaws.
00:26:18.340
I think Mr. Polyev owes some explanations to Canadians.
00:26:21.060
Okay, so Mr. Drama, Mr. Drama Queen, they're giving his, you know, explanation and his super
00:26:29.220
serious voice that it's all the Conservatives' fault that prices are too high.
00:26:33.840
Well, oops, Pierre Polyev came back at Justin Trudeau in question period with his own response.
00:26:41.360
You're getting desperate if he has to blame Conservative campaign workers for the fact
00:26:49.680
that he raised food prices, especially when, Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's new marketing
00:26:57.260
director, Max Veliket, did marketing for Loblaws for four years.
00:27:02.520
Don Guy, Don Guy, the Prime Minister's chief pollster, works for GT & Co., which collects
00:27:13.720
As does Dan Arnold, his other pollster, getting checks from Loblaws.
00:27:18.520
Are they the ones that forced him to quadruple the carbon tax on our family?
00:27:23.240
Gotta love the drama, the fake drama question period.
00:27:26.300
Like, oh my goodness, can you believe it, fellas?
00:27:30.380
Like the Scooby-Doo mask moment of like, look behind this Galen Weston mask, it's the
00:27:37.660
Yeah, so it turns out that a lot of political staffers have side hustles as lobbyists.
00:27:43.220
A lot of these guys work for companies and they also work for political parties.
00:27:47.480
And so just to go back to Justin Trudeau's like huge dramatic moment about how it was all
00:27:52.500
Pierre Polyev's consultant's fault that food prices are too high.
00:27:58.840
And then Andrew came in with his own scoop, which was that even the NDP, even the socialists
00:28:03.120
who have long been calling corporate greed the culprit.
00:28:07.060
Well, Andrew, I'll let you explain your own scoop.
00:28:09.120
Yeah, so Don Guy, who Pauly, I've mentioned, co-owns this GT & Co.
00:28:13.940
with Brian Topp, who's a longtime NDP advisor and chief of staff and whatnot.
00:28:18.960
And Brian Topp and Don Guy in business together.
00:28:21.460
Their business lobbies Loblaws as recently as last year.
00:28:29.060
So it's kind of rich here that you have these folks saying, oh, well, anyone who works for
00:28:36.260
And I should just say, Jenny Byrne, who Justin Trudeau was talking about in his criticism
00:28:43.400
She owns the firm who has lobbied and does lobby for Loblaws provincially in Ontario.
00:28:49.720
So it's the exact same as right here, where the owner of the company is the liberal and
00:28:58.480
So completely analogous, apples to apples comparison.
00:29:01.180
But of course, the criticism only works when it's directed towards the right.
00:29:07.600
One, it just shows you the inside world of Ottawa and how basically insincere it all is,
00:29:11.940
because they'll sit there in their political posture.
00:29:13.820
But then when you look at, you know, you mentioned Galen Weston, Andrew, who's the owner, very,
00:29:26.680
You know, there is a lot of political connections and a lot of crony capitalism and corporatism
00:29:34.560
when it comes to these big Canadian corporations and government.
00:29:39.560
So it's just a silly game to go down, a silly hole to go down.
00:29:44.240
Yeah, I think all Canadians will take from this is the fact that basically everyone in
00:29:48.840
Ottawa, when they're not a staffer, they're lobbying for a company.
00:29:52.380
And then when they're not lobbying for a company, they're creating good little political
00:29:55.160
one-liners to rail against the company that they were lobbying for.
00:30:00.720
The people in the House of Commons sitting behind Justin Trudeau and sitting behind Pierre
00:30:05.220
Pauliev making all those ridiculously dramatic faces and weird noises.
00:30:09.220
They also, many of them were lobbyists before entering politics as well.
00:30:17.040
And again, it's one of those weird, cheap political attacks where the people who came up
00:30:21.100
with this didn't have the foresight to realize that they were going to just have this rebounded
00:30:26.940
Well, it is kind of interesting because, I mean, there's an interesting broader debate
00:30:31.800
about like why things are so expensive in Canada.
00:30:34.120
And you can look at like how our banking industry, our airline industry, our telecoms industry,
00:30:40.420
And there's a lot of rules about who can participate in these markets.
00:30:43.940
And because of it, Canadians do pay much higher rates on a lot of things than Americans.
00:30:49.200
Everyone knows it's way cheaper to fly in the U.S. than it is to fly across Canada.
00:30:53.940
Like you get a flight from like L.A. to New York for like 70 bucks, right?
00:30:58.920
And if you're flying from Vancouver to Toronto, it's like $800.
00:31:02.560
Like it's just like a totally of a mark because they have so much more competition.
00:31:05.640
And I think that there is something about how the Canadian government regulates these
00:31:09.540
industries that causes, you know, this kind of like price.
00:31:13.500
It feels like price gouging, but it's really just a lack of competition.
00:31:17.180
But then at the same time, when it comes to this issue of grocery stores, it's like, it's
00:31:26.300
It'll be like an American chain that tries to open.
00:31:28.940
I know Target is more like a big box store, but they tried to come into the Canadian market
00:31:34.140
It was just too expensive because of our prices, because of everything else.
00:31:38.500
There was a committee meeting yesterday or earlier this week, Wednesday, and basically
00:31:43.400
they brought an expert to talk about why food pricing was so high.
00:31:46.360
And he basically said it's because of the carbon tax.
00:31:48.220
It's because of the taxes on truckers and the taxes on, you know, it's all passed through
00:31:55.380
And so there are different problems in the Canadian sort of pricing system.
00:32:00.320
But this whole theatrics of like, let's just blame the companies and then blame the lobbyists.
00:32:05.400
And then in terms of we're all lobbying, like it just misses a point.
00:32:07.980
It just shows like how Ottawa just sometimes it's such a bubble.
00:32:11.640
It looks bad on all parties, but they don't talk about the real issue.
00:32:14.700
They kind of bypass it and play these political games.
00:32:22.720
Anytime someone, even with the carbon tax, tries to put a single cause on this, because
00:32:30.180
You have the carbon tax, you have inflation, you have regulation, you have labor costs.
00:32:34.460
I mean, that was one of the big things for Target, why Target had such a difficult time
00:32:37.940
in Canada compared to the US, because the labor and supply chains were just not what they
00:32:44.140
So Canadians that live near the border that had been to American Targets were going to
00:32:48.440
Canadian Target and being like, oh, this is like, this isn't what I thought Target
00:32:54.880
So I think with Loblaws, the liberal government has wanted to take away any of these factors
00:33:02.620
And I would include in that definitely the carbon tax to a large extent inflation.
00:33:06.080
And it's a lot easy to look at the rich guys that run the companies and say they're the
00:33:11.580
problem when that is a gross oversimplification.
00:33:15.660
And I would say if you were to list the top 10 reasons that grocery prices are high and
00:33:20.900
unaffordable for many Canadians, CEO salaries, I don't even think it's going to be on that
00:33:29.000
And again, I think when it comes to the cost of living, it's not just in the food, it's
00:33:33.980
not just in the grocery stores that we see this issue, it's across the board.
00:33:37.400
And so Harrison, you had a great report looking at the housing crisis and the rise of these
00:33:43.780
I couldn't believe some of these pictures that you were showing, man.
00:33:46.280
And so why don't you, why don't you walk us through the story?
00:33:49.220
So over the weekend, I was on, I was on X and Reddit.
00:33:52.760
I don't usually go on Reddit, but I was on there because I followed this subreddit called
00:33:57.220
And I started to see these unbelievable rent listings, these slumlord listings pop up,
00:34:03.160
pointing out just how unbelievable the state of the rental market is in this country, particularly
00:34:08.520
And I want to just highlight for you some of the listings that are available or that were
00:34:14.480
They might've already been taken by people who are just desperate to put, put a roof
00:34:18.500
over their head and to do so without having to spend thousands of dollars.
00:34:24.580
So we first saw this listing, this is for $500 a month.
00:34:37.240
I've been told in the comments of the video, at least you get like a nice lamp and a bedside
00:34:41.800
table and you get some fresh air, but you don't have finished walls.
00:34:45.480
This is like in the back corner of some basement.
00:34:58.040
I think that's, I think that's just the artistic design of the artistic blood splatters.
00:35:04.980
A new phenomenon, uh, you know, concrete brick basement apartments.
00:35:09.120
It kind of fits with the, with the jail, with the jail house, uh, style.
00:35:13.440
I think if that, if that really were what it, what it is, but hold on, it just, it just
00:35:18.740
So let's put up this next listing that we have, because this is just, this is just ridiculous.
00:35:30.660
It's not really downtown Toronto, but again, compared to Scarborough and Brampton, this is
00:35:36.680
You can live in the hallway on a mattress on the floor of a really dirty house.
00:35:42.920
This is listed on the, on Facebook marketplace.
00:35:47.000
This is where you, you can, you can rent this out to live on a mattress in a hallway.
00:35:55.900
I want to show you one more because it is just, it's just absurd.
00:36:02.860
As I noted, it's exclusively for females who are renting this place out and you have to
00:36:12.920
And on top of the $300 and sharing of the bed in the room with the boy.
00:36:17.000
You have to do the cooking for the, uh, for the landlord here.
00:36:21.840
This made its way to blog to so you can take their word for it.
00:36:25.860
Um, it's also been listed on the slumlords of Canada, Reddit page.
00:36:29.400
And I just want to read the description of this listing for you.
00:36:32.020
So you get an idea of who, you know, who the tenant is or who the landlord might be room
00:36:36.960
available for girl and sharing with boy, good behavior.
00:36:46.680
So $300 for, uh, for exclusively for a woman to rent out this apartment.
00:36:55.800
A house in Brampton has apparently been multiple rooms in this house have been rented out.
00:37:00.880
People are now living inside of a car in the driveway of this Brampton house and urinating
00:37:07.940
So this is the state of what, of what we're working with here in Canada.
00:37:11.140
The slumlords have taken over and living conditions have plummeted all because of insane levels
00:37:19.120
And of course, inflation that has made basically everything way too expensive.
00:37:25.500
I didn't know you had to pay to be a live-in chef now.
00:37:28.460
That was, uh, I thought it was like, I went, cause I always imagined, you know, when I,
00:37:32.420
you know, strike it big, I pay to have the live-in chef.
00:37:34.820
I didn't know I could get paid to have someone come into my home and cook for me every day.
00:37:40.760
Well, I wonder who ends up not for the person living there.
00:37:42.760
No, if the chef has to pay for the food, then it's not really, you know, it's more than $300
00:37:46.440
a month and you're really, you're really, you really got a bad deal.
00:37:51.640
It's, it's unbelievable what people are willing to do and to live in.
00:37:56.520
And look, I mean, I think when you're young, you're willing to, you know, live in pretty
00:38:02.200
I know a lot of guys that go up to camps and they live in pretty brutal conditions for
00:38:06.460
a couple of weeks so that they can make some money and come back in.
00:38:11.220
This is like, they've allowed so many international students to come into the country.
00:38:15.520
A lot of them don't have any option for housing.
00:38:18.600
It's like, oh, let's just get like 20 guys to live in a basement.
00:38:21.120
I mean, I can't imagine that first one you showed it looked like a jailhouse.
00:38:24.180
I can't imagine what the rest of the basement looks like.
00:38:26.380
Is it just like, is it just like a dorm room or like a, like a hostel full of beds on the
00:38:37.160
I, there's this trend that I really don't like, uh, which is like a bunch of, you know,
00:38:41.400
younger people complaining that they can't buy a house and blaming it on the prime
00:38:47.080
Uh, yeah, it's tough and you got to save up and you got to make sacrifices, but let's
00:38:51.700
not just sit here and like blame our prime minister.
00:38:53.660
If you personally are like in your thirties and you can't afford to buy a house, like
00:39:02.840
You need to make good decisions, like live with roommates and save your paychecks until
00:39:08.120
And, and, and I get the fact that down payments are like super crazy now.
00:39:11.100
I was like, well, don't buy a house in Toronto, like go move somewhere else.
00:39:19.660
You can, you can still, you know, afford to buy something a little bit better there
00:39:25.080
But, but then when, when you, when you see the situation, you just think about the
00:39:28.160
people who are forced into that situation and that that's the only option they have.
00:39:34.220
And I do think a lot of it is immigration related.
00:39:38.480
Well, I think a lot of it is immigration related.
00:39:40.800
I think there is something to, I, I, I don't know if I, I think some people who are in their
00:39:45.740
thirties that got a later start in career and life, I I'm, I'm very sympathetic to them
00:39:51.380
not being able to do it because for a lot of people to have a single family home, if they
00:39:56.100
are single and have a single income, it is incredibly difficult.
00:39:59.460
I will say though, I thought there was a lot of truth to the point that people are a lot
00:40:04.620
too picky, a lot more picky than they should be on location.
00:40:07.680
I think a lot of people, like I I've heard stories and I've known people that have made
00:40:11.480
the decision to move, you know, hours and hours outside of the cities because they can
00:40:16.620
And in the remote work economy for a lot of people, not for, not for everyone, um, you
00:40:21.560
So I think, I think if you're stuck on this fantasy of living in Toronto or Vancouver, just
00:40:26.480
because you want to be, and not for any professional or significant reason, I think you should probably
00:40:34.040
try to shake that because that's the only way you'll be able to do it now.
00:40:40.420
Like, look, I grew up in Vancouver in a neighborhood where I think the average single family home
00:40:46.760
And it was not like that when I was growing up.
00:40:48.700
Like it was, it was, it was a fine middle-class neighborhood, but it wasn't to the extent it
00:40:52.800
was, but even, you know, by the time I graduated high school and left university, which we're
00:40:57.380
now talking about, you know, like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, there was no way, there
00:41:01.180
was no chance that I would be able to buy a place in that neighborhood.
00:41:04.240
And it's kind of sad because Vancouver has gone through this like a long time ago, you
00:41:10.780
And, and, and, and I always thought Vancouver was like an anomaly.
00:41:13.680
And then it's like, it's almost like that phenomenon that happened in Vancouver, uh, caught
00:41:18.580
up to the rest of the country and it's now happening in like so many other cities.
00:41:21.720
And so it does show, I think that something's fundamentally wrong.
00:41:24.080
And I think in Vancouver, it was very clearly driven by immigration, by wealthy foreign buyers,
00:41:30.480
Chinese buyers coming in and just liking that neighborhood and buying out all the houses
00:41:34.260
and kind of like displacing the people who had lived there prior.
00:41:40.500
When I say I'm annoyed by this whole trend, because I just, I just think it's like a simplistic
00:41:45.400
attitude for conservatives to say like, I can't afford a house and it's the government's
00:41:50.000
It's like, it's like, come on, take some, take some responsibility, man.
00:41:53.560
But I, I hear, I hear your point, Andrew Harrison, any, any final thoughts on this?
00:41:57.820
I mean, one of the questions that I asked at the beginning of my show on this topic was
00:42:01.740
the people who were responsible for bringing in all of these people into our country and
00:42:07.240
flooding the country and these, and these pockets of our population where houses are now
00:42:11.740
unaffordable knew full well, what was going to happen, what the consequences were going
00:42:18.760
So it makes you wonder if it wasn't obviously done for Canadians, even though the government's
00:42:23.920
responsibility is to make sure that Canadians are taken care of first and that they can
00:42:30.680
So if it wasn't done for Canadians, who was it done for?
00:42:33.240
And I think that that is a question that needs to be asked.
00:42:35.940
It looks like it was done for corporations who could benefit on a, on a massive amount of,
00:42:40.920
And also for these colleges to benefit from insane amounts of, of students paying three
00:42:47.000
I think there is something to be said about, you know, people having to be realistic and
00:42:52.840
But the reality is, I don't think it's fair to say to Canadians who are now looking at this
00:42:57.660
country and realizing that the life that they were expecting when they were very young,
00:43:04.720
And it's not the fault of people who made these decisions in the first place.
00:43:08.200
Um, I think there's a lot of, a lot of, of frustration and anger that is, is coming
00:43:14.360
from this situation that the government is not paying attention to.
00:43:17.920
I think the opposition doesn't want to accept the kind of anger that's actually coming from
00:43:21.940
young people in this country, but it is there and it's growing.
00:43:27.020
Well, uh, you pointed this out because, uh, Pierre Paglia put out a really informative,
00:43:31.800
great video about the housing problem in Canada.
00:43:34.120
And I think he made a lot of really, really strong points in that video, but there was
00:43:38.260
one sort of like elephant in the room that he just refused to acknowledge, which is immigration.
00:43:43.440
And you, you made a point on your show of going through the comment section.
00:43:46.160
Like people notice, people know that there is this problem when it comes to mass, mass
00:43:52.020
immigration, Canada has the highest immigration levels, uh, I think in the world, definitely
00:43:57.840
And that is having an impact and you got to talk about it.
00:44:00.660
You have to find a way to talk about it because it's an issue, uh, that's important.
00:44:08.100
I mean, I, I asked Pierre Paglia when I did my year end interview with him about that.
00:44:11.900
And he did admit, yes, immigration, it's just raw numbers has an effect, but still wouldn't
00:44:17.440
go to the point of giving that number of, of how many is enough of what the system can
00:44:24.340
So, uh, where he left, it was saying that yes, we'll tie immigration to housing.
00:44:29.240
So if you read between the lines, he is saying, yes, I mean, theoretically we could reduce
00:44:33.820
that number, but he, he still, for reasons we've all talked about on our respective shows,
00:44:37.740
doesn't want to come out and say that in black and white terms.
00:44:41.240
I said last word to you, but I just want to make one point of that because I made me think
00:44:45.040
of your interview and one of the things that I didn't like about what Polly have did was
00:44:48.160
that it was a purely economic math based equation.
00:44:50.960
Like to him, it was just about the math and nothing else.
00:44:53.680
And it's like, at some point you have to recognize that there is a deeper cultural, uh, issue here
00:44:59.240
that, that, that, that many Canadians are concerned with, like whether people are being integrated,
00:45:03.840
whether it's a good idea for our communities, whether this is having a good effect on things
00:45:07.420
like cost of living, how it's influencing people in your generation, Harrison, and people just
00:45:11.920
coming out of school and people just trying to like, like there are,
00:45:14.820
you know, more broad, uh, questions that need to be answered.
00:45:18.200
And I, I, I mean, maybe, maybe libertarians like these kinds of answers, but when he just
00:45:22.640
said it was like purely numbers, it was just a hundred percent on math and nothing else.
00:45:30.300
For the last time, Candace, libertarians can care about values too.
00:45:35.140
Every, every time you're just like staring daggers into my soul when you crap on libertarians.
00:45:39.420
You know, I was, I, I consider myself libertarian for a long time and, and I, and when it comes
00:45:44.800
to government spending, a lot of things are libertarians still, but I do think these deeper
00:45:55.540
And, and just as a reminder, remember that the show is called off the record.
00:45:58.180
So everything you just heard was off the record.
00:46:06.340
Oh, we didn't talk about the, uh, the guy that wanted me to do more rap dancing.
00:46:10.060
So we'll have to bring back the dance moves in the next show.
00:46:12.660
I was going to say, Andrew, you ditched the wine for what is that a coffee?
00:46:18.280
So I just, I should have put some Baileys in it just to keep on brand.
00:46:23.760
I, well, I was like, you know, let's keep it to 45 minutes.
00:46:26.840
And, and so I totally forgot about the comments.
00:46:32.740
Well, unless this is in the banter reel, then they'll know.