Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation joins Candice on the show today to talk about the current economic situation in Canada and what we can do about it. She also talks about the growing cost of living and the impact that is having on Canadian families.
00:00:00.000Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm Show. Happy Monday, everybody. Hope you had a wonderful weekend. So I am not going to be hosting the show today. I am busy and I am away. So I'm going to hand it over to a familiar face to the audience, Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. She's fantastic. She has got a great episode in store for you today, folks. So without further ado, over to you, Chris Sims.
00:00:22.820Hey, thanks so much for joining us. I am Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Thanks for joining us today and spending some of your time with us here on Juno. Now, some of the imagery coming out of Alberta right now is kind of sun filled, right? We have all of these world leaders gathering with our beautiful province as their backdrop.
00:00:49.120It just makes me think of a bunch of rich men from north of Richmond gathering together and making promises that we have to pay for, that taxpayers and normal working people have to pay for.
00:01:01.480Now, let's hold out hope that people like Alberta Premier Daniel Smith can have a great meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and work out things like getting rid of all of the tariffs, okay?
00:01:13.200Actually working out perhaps a new trade deal so we don't need to roll over and check X every morning to see, you know, if our economy is still here in Canada.
00:01:20.860So let's hope for those sort of things to be straightened out. My hope is that U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney actually talk about things like Carney's continued plan to ban the sale of normal gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.
00:01:38.380Like, it's one of the craziest ideas ever. And it's going to start kicking in six months. So in six months' time, in 2026, it's going to start kicking in so that dealers must have 20% of their new car sales to be battery-powered cars.
00:01:56.580And if they can't sell them, tough cookies. They just have to sit there on the lot and pile up as inventory.
00:02:02.420And if, guess what, you want to go purchase a normal gasoline and diesel-powered new vehicle, it's going to be tough cookies for you soon too in Canada. Why? Because the government says so.
00:02:12.940Now, the reason why I'm hoping that Trump and Carney have a conversation about this, among many other things, is that Trump, it's one of the first things he did when he was elected.
00:02:20.920He got rid of their so-called EV mandate in the United States. And when it comes to actual market force, we know who the big gorilla is here.
00:02:28.740That's the United States. So hopefully that changes. But something else that really needs to change is the affordability.
00:02:35.640I can't help but think, while I'm watching all of these fancy world leaders and politicians, these elites from all over the planet, sitting there dining, what the tab is going to be.
00:02:45.640Right? I can't help but think about people who can't afford those fancy dinners.
00:02:51.960And I gotta say, I was doing the grocery shopping for my family recently, and I was just thunderstruck, again, by the increased costs of things.
00:03:01.180I've got a picture here that I snapped when I was in Walmart.
00:03:05.400And this is just a normal-sized can of regular coffee.
00:03:09.080Okay? It wasn't one of those big honking ones that you'd get, you know, for the camper or something from Costco.
00:03:13.480No, it's just a normal-sized, you know, can of coffee.
00:03:59.600Because, of course, 50%, half of Canadians, now say they're within $200 every single month of not being able to pay the minimum amount on their bills.
00:04:11.480What that means in normal people talk is they're within $200 of insolvency every month.
00:06:34.420And look, I know a lot of people who are watching this show, like they know that Carney is not scrapping all carbon taxes, right?
00:06:41.040They know that Carney just wants to change the carbon tax, right?
00:06:44.020So he set the consumer carbon tax rate to zero.
00:06:47.340That's the one that you pay when you fuel up at the gas station or on your heating bill.
00:06:51.660But what Carney is doing is he's shifting, relabeling, repackaging the carbon tax into what is known as a hidden industrial carbon tax, okay?
00:07:01.360So that's a tax on like oil and gas producers, fertilizer plants, steel companies, and many others.
00:07:09.100But of course, it's not just those businesses that pay the tax.
00:07:12.320It's really Canadians, both consumers and workers, who pay that tax, right?
00:07:17.400So you have a lot of the media, you have a lot of the political class all up in arms over Trump's tariffs.
00:07:23.040And okay, fair enough, but we got to control what we can control.
00:07:26.880And what the Canadian government can control is not what Trump is doing.
00:07:31.000It's how the Canadian government is taxing Canadians.
00:07:34.480And by imposing a hidden carbon tax on Canadian businesses like oil and gas, like fertilizer plants, like steel manufacturers,
00:07:42.820yes, that is going to make prices go up here in Canada.
00:07:45.880But that is going to push Canadian entrepreneurs to cut production here and then to set up shops south of the border.
00:07:53.040Because, oh, by the way, the White House doesn't impose carbon taxes like Ottawa is doing.
00:07:59.600You don't need to take Franco's word for it here.
00:08:02.560Remember just a second ago during the federal election when a labor union endorsed the conservatives?
00:08:10.100Like I said, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience.
00:08:13.780I've been in the game a long time and I've never seen a labor union endorse the conservatives.
00:08:23.140And it was the steel workers around Hamilton area who were saying that the industrial carbon tax was going to, quote, decimate their industry.
00:08:32.240And for exactly the reason you just said, on increasing the costs and making them pick up and move south.
00:08:38.980Yeah, I mean, look, the United States doesn't have a national carbon tax, right?
00:08:42.640The White House doesn't impose a national carbon tax.
00:08:45.500And it doesn't matter who is in the White House, right?
00:08:50.840So you have that extra cost that makes Canada less competitive because we are hammering our entrepreneurs with carbon taxes while the United States government isn't.
00:09:01.180Not to mention that if you look around the world, it's like 70% of countries that do not impose national carbon taxes.
00:09:09.140And then you layer that all on top of the fact that Canada is not competitive on income taxes or business taxes.
00:09:15.500And this is just another smack in the face from the Canadian government on to many of our Canadian businesses and therefore also our workers and our consumers, right?
00:09:25.740That trade organization that you mentioned there, they know that when you make Canadian businesses less competitive, well, that means fewer jobs as our tax system is pushing our businesses to leave Canada.
00:09:38.040And in some cases, just increase production south of the border.
00:09:42.560And then lastly, we haven't even touched on carbon tax tariffs.
00:09:47.500Like, Carney mentioned this out loud with his face during the election campaign.
00:09:53.160And in a nutshell, what that means is Carney looks around the world and if he sees a country that doesn't have a carbon tax, that upsets him.
00:10:01.780And that upsets him so much that when we take something in from that country, when we import a widget from a country that doesn't have a national carbon tax, he's going to slap a tariff on that import for us to pay here in Canada.
00:10:38.280Lastly on this, I might just be blue-pilling here, hoping for the perfect day, but do you think there's a chance that Carney just wrote all that stuff in his book, Values, about things like carbon tax tariffs, industrial carbon taxes, personal carbon emissions budgets, all carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, tax, tax, tax, tax.
00:11:00.500Is there a chance, do you think, Franco, that he wrote that because he was the UN envoy on this topic and there's a chance that that PhD in economics will win out the day and he'll actually be the Paul Martin type and start balancing the budget?
00:11:28.860But look, I wrote it because I believe what I was saying, that the carbon tax always was and always will be a scam for the ordinary Canadians who are forced to foot the bill.
00:11:38.320So I can only imagine that when Carney wrote those words in his book, Values, he meant what he was saying.
00:11:45.720And look, all I can really say for sure is what the government has done so far, what Mr. Carney has said so far, right?
00:11:52.960And on carbon taxes, well, he's been very clear that he supports carbon taxes, right?
00:11:56.880He just wanted to change, his words, the carbon tax from the consumer, the one that you see, to the hidden industrial carbon tax that will mean fewer jobs for Canadians, but also higher prices, right?
00:12:09.140Because when you tax a fertilizer plant, well, that makes the cost of growing food and the cost of buying food more expensive.
00:12:15.960When you carbon tax refineries, well, that makes your gasoline and diesel more expensive.
00:12:20.340And when you carbon tax utilities, that makes your home heating bill more expensive, right?
00:12:25.380So look, you know, look at Carney's own words.
00:12:28.500He wants to impose hidden carbon taxes.
00:12:31.060Now let's look at the debt, the spending, right?
00:13:41.460The economist can't be worse with money than the drama teacher.
00:13:45.540But apparently, survey says, he's going to be.
00:13:48.300I wanted to shift slightly here because before things really got ramped up, I would even say just leading up to the lockdowns, I would say.