The Candice Malcolm Show - MONEY FOR NOTHING - Government blowing your cash while Mark Carney takes a VACATION

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Candice Malcolm Show. I'm Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian

00:00:07.240 Taxpayers Federation, guest hosting for Candice, sometimes this summer. Thank you so much for

00:00:12.100 making us a part of your week. It's really important to us in order to spread the word.

00:00:16.460 If you haven't done so already, make sure you hit that subscribe button and share this show

00:00:21.140 with your friends who want the real deal coming from independent media. Okay, so lots to do this

00:00:26.800 week. And I wanted to highlight something for all of our listeners and viewers. And I wanted them to

00:00:32.460 ask themselves this question. Are you getting good value for the money you pay for government?

00:00:40.480 Think of the services that you get from government. Are they top notch? Are they gold standard? Do you

00:00:46.200 brag to your friends and family about them? I'm sorry for laughing, but the answer is obviously no.

00:00:51.260 The Fraser Institute did great work the other day where they point out in their annual report

00:00:55.560 that we are paying more in taxes than we are for food, clothing, and shelter, and housing combined.

00:01:04.440 We're paying more in taxes than we are for food, clothing, and shelter. That's from three various

00:01:10.940 levels of government. So municipal, provincial, and federal. It's a disgusting waste of money.

00:01:15.560 I'm going to zero in on the federal here. And I want to kick this off with pointing it out

00:01:20.680 that Prime Minister Mark Carney is taking vacation again. This is an email that was sent out to the

00:01:28.760 Parliamentary Press Gallery. Let's just read it together.

00:01:31.560 To all Press Gallery members, while remaining in the National Capital Region and surrounding area,

00:01:37.520 the Prime Minister will be on a reduced schedule in the week of August the 11th, that's today,

00:01:43.200 to reflect a brief period of local vacation. As he does so, he will remain in close coordination with

00:01:50.400 his team and officials on several economic and security priorities for the weeks ahead. Media

00:01:56.420 advisories will be distributed should any public events arise during this time. Best PMO team. PMO stands for

00:02:04.800 Prime Minister's Office for folks who aren't huge political nerds. Now, granted, Prime Minister is a human

00:02:11.120 being. Human beings, if you can, should try to take a vacation, especially when the weather is good.

00:02:16.400 OK, we get that. But a couple of things. One, Prime Minister Mark Carney already did take a vacation

00:02:23.840 earlier this summer. And two, this is where we get down to value for money and keeping promises and

00:02:30.960 being accountable. Folks might remember that during the national election campaign, we were hearing all

00:02:37.120 sorts of things like, oh, by Canada Day, I think it was, we're going to get rid of interprovincial

00:02:41.920 trade barriers and problems. OK, number one, anyone who's worked in government knows that that was a

00:02:48.560 really silly promise to try to make, because actually, most of the interprovincial trade barriers

00:02:54.320 we have in Canada are with the provinces themselves. So we do have some issues with the feds getting their

00:03:00.240 nose in there and screwing things up for interprovincial trade. But a lot of it is actually on the

00:03:05.040 provincial governments themselves. So Carney shouldn't have made that promise. Also,

00:03:10.080 if we take a look at what is happening south of the border and compare to what's happening up here,

00:03:15.440 you got to start asking yourself if you're getting good value for money. Because again,

00:03:20.400 taxpayers pay a ton of money for the work of government. I wanted to pull up the schedule

00:03:25.600 here. It's the calendar schedule for the sitting of the House of Commons. So these are all the members

00:03:31.680 of Parliament. OK, where they all gather together in Ottawa. And this is when they are physically in

00:03:36.720 session in the House of Commons, the big building, the big room with the green carpet. OK, so take a

00:03:42.640 look here. OK, one week tacked on at the end of May and three-ish weeks tacked on in June and nothing

00:03:51.680 until the end of August. OK, the House will resume sitting in the fall. But I want you to ask yourself,

00:03:58.400 are you getting good value for money from those politicians? OK, we've got more than 300 members

00:04:04.800 of Parliament. If you add up all of their base salaries, that's costing taxpayers more than 70

00:04:12.880 million dollars. That's just the base MP salary because they're all paid more than 200 grand a year.

00:04:21.360 That's not including the cabinet ministers and the coin they make. That's not including the prime

00:04:27.440 minister and the money he makes. So 70 million dollars just in salaries for members of parliament.

00:04:35.520 And pull that pull that calendar back up again so I can take a look at that. And they're sitting this

00:04:40.720 many days. I don't know, man, that's not a really good return on investment. Now, to be very clear and

00:04:47.520 fair, there are a couple of committees that are squeaking in some work here and there. So I do want to

00:04:52.560 acknowledge that because people do need to pay more attention to what's happening at committee.

00:04:56.880 So I was hearing people talking about the BC Ferries deal they were making with China, etc.

00:05:01.840 There were some MPs and some staff and clerks who were working in the summer for committee. That's

00:05:07.440 good. The point here is, are you getting great value for money from your government? That's just the

00:05:12.960 politicians. This might blow your mind. Take a look at the permanent government cost. The US President

00:05:21.440 Donald Trump would call it the swamp. I would call it permanent government. And that's bureaucracies.

00:05:26.720 So it's not just the MPs, of course, who are in the House of Commons or not. It's the bureaucrats who

00:05:31.920 are working in all of these departments. They don't run for election. They don't need to put their name on

00:05:37.200 a ballot. They're making, on average, more than $120,000 per year each. The cost of the bureaucracy for

00:05:47.760 taxpayers last year was more than $70 billion with a B. Yeah. Easy to remember this, guys. The politicians,

00:05:57.680 the MPs, they're costing you $70 million. The bureaucrats, $70 billion. So add three more zeros

00:06:06.800 onto that tax bill. So this is an outrageous amount of money. We need to demand good value for money from

00:06:14.240 our various levels of government. I wanted to point out also that we often hear things like,

00:06:19.440 oh, we're in the middle of a tariff war. We're in the middle of a trade war with US President Donald

00:06:23.840 Trump, et cetera, et cetera. As a taxpayer, I don't care about the personal, you know, behavior between

00:06:32.800 two people, if that's Mark Carney and Donald Trump. Work it out. Work it out. Because you have got

00:06:39.760 millions of people counting on your departments to work out a trade deal. The fact that we have

00:06:46.640 not been able to resolve the ongoing tariff dispute, and the responses is just increasing

00:06:52.800 our tariffs on both sides of the border, that only hurts normal working people. Tariffs are simply trade

00:07:00.240 taxes. That's all that is. It just winds up costing you more money. In practical situations,

00:07:07.680 it can be everything from the extra charge now on Alberta energy, which is a huge issue, okay,

00:07:14.320 to even simple little things at the grocery store. It's one of the reasons why you're not seeing pickles

00:07:20.160 on the shelf coming from the United States. So people who are out grocery shopping can see the real

00:07:26.000 effects of this happening. And then we've got entire industries that are holding their breath. People in

00:07:31.600 the steel industry that are holding their breath, waiting to see what happens with their jobs. We've got a

00:07:36.880 combination of tariffs coming from the United States and a looming huge industrial carbon tax

00:07:43.520 coming from Prime Minister Mark Carney. And yet we look across the border and we do more than a trillion

00:07:50.160 dollars worth of trade at the United States per year. I think we have a screenshot of this. It's from the

00:07:55.600 Canadian Chamber of Commerce. I would highly recommend going to their website. Look at this. This is the

00:08:02.000 numbers. $1.3 trillion in annual two-way trade between Canada and the United States. For investment,

00:08:11.920 we're going to be speaking about investment really soon here with Michael Campbell, more than $1.7 trillion.

00:08:19.280 So 1.4 million American jobs are supported by exports to Canada, okay? You cannot overemphasize this

00:08:27.120 importance enough. And what we're getting is kind of simple, dumb slogans online in the media between 0.93

00:08:34.400 these two departments and no deal. Why are we seeing US President Donald Trump inking huge deals

00:08:42.000 for their natural resources? They certainly found a market demand for their natural gas, right? He's

00:08:49.200 signing these big deals and he's also getting mega corporations to come to the United States and open up

00:08:54.320 shop shop there. Why isn't this happening here in Canada? And the reason why it's important to focus

00:08:59.680 on this is because if you don't have big companies coming in with confidence and doing business in

00:09:06.880 your country, the government's just going to wrench money out of you, okay? They're going to increase your

00:09:13.360 taxes even more because if you don't have good resource development and you don't have good business

00:09:18.960 investment, they're going to find that money somewhere, okay? They're not going to try to cut their

00:09:23.760 own costs. They're going to be bloodsuckers and they're going to come after you. So why is it

00:09:29.360 that we aren't able to find a huge export market for our natural gas yet? We are seeing some ships

00:09:34.960 head out, which is good, but we're seeing the opposite happen. We're seeing great deals happen

00:09:39.200 in the United States. This drills down to departments doing their job well or not. It doesn't have anything

00:09:47.040 to do with the political jersey or the color of the jersey that the prime minister or his department's

00:09:51.120 wearing. We pay people in the Department of Finance and Treasury and International Trade

00:09:58.160 to deal with this. Like this is a them problem. This is not an us Canadians problem. They need to

00:10:04.160 actually figure that out. I wanted to end on a couple of things here really quick, okay? Again, I want you

00:10:10.240 to do a thought process and ask yourself if you're getting good value for money. We're working on our gas tax

00:10:16.400 honesty report for this month, highlighting how many taxes you pay at the pump. And one of the really

00:10:22.720 good things that I saw compared to last year is the consumer carbon tax is gone. And yes, it's actually

00:10:29.360 been repealed now. It's technically gone. And so at the pump, largely in most places in Canada,

00:10:36.160 it's 20 cents cheaper per liter than it was last summer. That's because the carbon tax is gone.

00:10:42.720 I did some really frightening math a few weeks ago. And I added up how much the current government had

00:10:52.320 taken from us in the carbon tax since it was first imposed back in 2019. It's more than 40 billion

00:11:02.880 dollars. 40 billion plus dollars. That's just the federal carbon tax. That's not including British 0.96

00:11:12.160 Colombia or Quebec. Just to do a bit of quick math. 40 billion dollars collected in the carbon tax

00:11:21.760 because they said it was super duper important could buy around 800 water bomber planes.

00:11:31.520 That might have been a smart investment. But instead, we're 40 billion dollars poorer and they're not

00:11:37.760 talking about it. What we do need to talk about is where Canada is headed, how we're going to start

00:11:44.480 getting good value for money out of our government and kick the government into action and making sure

00:11:51.360 that they are getting good investment in our country. How are we going to do that? Let's find out.

00:11:57.520 Joining me now is Michael Campbell. He is the host of Money Talks. And whenever I have a business

00:12:04.400 question, whenever I'm wondering to myself, do we really not have a business case for natural gas

00:12:10.080 in Canada? I tune in to what Michael Campbell is saying for real. So you can follow his show. You

00:12:16.400 can follow him online. He's, I would say, a frequent commentator on all things politics on social media.

00:12:23.200 Michael, thank you so much for joining the show and welcome to The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:12:27.680 My pleasure. It's interesting. What I look at is economics and finance,

00:12:31.760 and I'd love never to talk about politics because people sometimes are irrational about it. They have

00:12:36.880 a tribalism. You know, that's not what two plus two equals four is about when you talk about finance.

00:12:42.480 But how can't you, when you have so much intervention into the economy, you know,

00:12:47.040 whether it's our standard of living? Well, taxes are my biggest expense. That's political. You know,

00:12:52.560 interest rates are the Bank of Canada, but also influenced, of course, by, you know, fiscal policy there.

00:12:58.640 Uh, housing. I can't, how can you not talk government if you're worried about housing?

00:13:04.480 My big thing is I'm worried about our young people looking at the highest rate of unemployment in,

00:13:10.080 since 2010 X pandemic, but you know, 14.6% or, you know, those kinds of things. So you're forced

00:13:17.520 into chatting about politics. And one of the things politicians do very well is forget to tell us

00:13:23.280 the consequences, the full story. They don't say, okay, I mean, there's always a consequence to any

00:13:29.120 policy. Then you get to decide, or I think the public should, do I like that consequence or not?

00:13:34.400 And so, uh, yeah, I just correct that. I, I'm in the finance and economics and that forces me into

00:13:40.480 politics. I knew you were reluctant to get into politics, but here you are because as the old saying

00:13:46.080 goes, uh, you may not take an interest in politics, but politics will take an interest in you.

00:13:50.720 And that's exactly for the reasons you just mentioned there. Uh, we've been talking for

00:13:54.400 years and, you know, Trans Canada, the Trans Mountain pipeline, that's a perfect example of

00:13:59.440 where it was a private company, Kinder Morgan, that had all their ducks lined up in a row.

00:14:03.520 They're going to spend their own money twinning their own property, the pipeline that ran from

00:14:08.160 Edmonton out to Burnaby to try to get Alberta's oil and gas to market. But here we go, we've got the

00:14:14.640 Trudeau government getting involved, foot dragging, foot dragging, foot dragging until the company

00:14:19.840 throws its hands up in the air, leaves, and now taxpayers are on the hook for it. We had

00:14:24.880 similar interference for a pipeline going out East, similar interference again with Northern

00:14:29.440 Gateway and suddenly there's a big tanker ban. So to your point exactly, you may be reluctant

00:14:34.880 to have to comment on politics, but man, those politicians are really getting up in your grill.

00:14:39.600 And so I wanted to speak with you specifically about this because we take a look at what's going

00:14:44.800 on right now down south. We take a look at this ongoing trade war that's going on, this tariff

00:14:49.840 war. And there's all this, you know, silly childish language of elbows up and we should be best friends.

00:14:55.600 And like, I don't care. Like, quit talking like an eight year old. What I care about is the fact 0.88

00:15:00.400 that we've got billions and billions of dollars on the line here. We're not getting along with our

00:15:06.000 biggest trading partner. And all we need to do is look, look at what the deals are that US President

00:15:12.400 Donald Trump is doing here. He's finding deals for his natural resources. He's convincing mega

00:15:18.960 corporations to do business in the United States, Apple for one. And I'm taking a look at what's going

00:15:25.600 on in Ottawa. I am not seeing the same up to snuff work going on here. I got to ask you because I'm not

00:15:32.560 a business person. You understand this world. Is there a market demand around the world for Canada's

00:15:39.120 natural gas? Would they buy it if we had it ready to go? Well, I think the best story we've had

00:15:45.120 economically in the last short while has to be the first shipments of LNG going to Asia.

00:15:51.600 The first boat went, of course, and it did get some coverage. I think another three, though,

00:15:55.200 are leaving right now. So there's a huge appetite. Also, it's become a recognition that if you really

00:16:01.360 want to, if your big worry is global emissions, well, natural gas is far superior to coal.

00:16:08.480 And, you know, and so if we can ship and get China off coal, for example, that'll have a monstrous

00:16:13.360 impact. But then on the other side, you know, Prime Minister Trudeau famously said there was no business

00:16:18.240 case, you know, looking at supplying Europe. I mean, I think it was very short sighted. But I also look at

00:16:23.360 what the US has done recently. You know, they've signed some major deals for LNG going there.

00:16:29.040 And just that it was such a glib statement, a glib attitude that was born out of their ideology of

00:16:34.160 no fossil fuels. Well, that's proved incorrect. And as I say, thank goodness, we're doing something

00:16:38.960 out of the West Coast. Could have been easier, but happy to see it. Happy to see there is a Kinder

00:16:43.280 Morgan, despite the fact that you're absolutely accurate. I think the numbers they were throwing

00:16:47.760 around when Trans Mountain, sorry, pardon me, Trans Mountain Kinder Morgan was talking about seven,

00:16:53.200 eight billion dollars. It ended up thirty four billion. But you know what? It still makes sense

00:16:58.000 sense. Because up till then, we were forced to sell so much of our oil coming out of Alberta

00:17:04.000 at a discount, Western Canada Select. Well, that discount shrunk dramatically, because now we can

00:17:09.520 access other markets. So I think in the end, yeah, I'm not happy about spending about 25 billion more

00:17:15.520 than we thought. But it still makes sense economically. And so would another pipeline.

00:17:20.960 And that's what they're talking about. But, you know, as people certainly are aware of, BC Premier

00:17:26.720 David Eby made the comment, no pipelines on my watch. Absurd. But anyways, it's there. But yeah,

00:17:34.480 so that's the challenge. There is an LNG market. There is a market for our energy. And can we get it

00:17:39.520 efficiently and safely in pipelines when the when that battle hands down against rail or trucking

00:17:45.440 or whatever way we want to do it? I listen to your show often. And what I like about your show

00:17:50.720 and your delivery is that you can explain business situations in a way that normal people understand,

00:17:57.200 even if they're not a business person themselves, like myself included. And what you highlighted quite

00:18:02.320 often is trust. Yes. So business owners or people who want to invest need to have trust in where

00:18:09.680 they're putting their money, similar to a personal relationship. Okay, you need to have trust. Can

00:18:15.280 you go over this a little bit? Where are we as a country on the trust factor? So say, you know,

00:18:21.920 I've got this image in my mind of some big rich person who's got a huge company and they want to invest

00:18:27.360 their money in Canada geographically. It could be a gold mine, it could be a fuel refinery, whatever

00:18:33.120 that is. Okay, manufacturing. Where's the trust level right now with the Carney government versus

00:18:39.840 the Trudeau government? Well, I don't think there's a big change. That's the problem. There was no trust

00:18:44.800 with the Trudeau government. And I'll give you a quick example, because there has been a lot of talk

00:18:48.720 about pipelines, you know, and keep in mind, what was the experience of Enbridge at the Northern

00:18:54.080 Gateway pipeline. It went through all the hoops, it had conditional cabinet approval. I think they did

00:18:59.760 180 sort of public consultations. They had four out of five Indigenous groups supporting it. They

00:19:06.560 spent, here's the key, they spent $500 million in that process. And then what happens at the end,

00:19:11.760 cabinet withdraws, withdraws their approval. They put in a Northern tanker ban, which basically said,

00:19:17.840 you don't need a pipeline. Well, if I'm Enbridge, how fast do I want to get into business again

00:19:22.880 with the governments of Canada? How fast do I want? And you can say, well, no, but it's Mark

00:19:28.960 Carney. Well, Mark Carney is surrounded by many of the same players in cabinet. You know, when they

00:19:34.080 look across the table, they're still looking at Chrystia Freeland, Champagne. They're looking at,

00:19:39.520 I'm just starting to think, Guy Beau. My goodness, when they look at Guy Beau, they cry and have an

00:19:43.680 excedrin break, you know. And he's already made comments that are consistent with what he had said

00:19:49.520 before. Like, we don't need another pipeline because Trans Mountain's already full. Completely

00:19:55.120 false, inaccurate, but it's the attitude. And it is a confidence problem. And I mean, I look at

00:20:02.800 confidence as an overall thing. I mean, our whole financial system works on confidence. You put your

00:20:06.800 money in a bank, you keep it there because you believe you can get it back. If you heard rumors

00:20:11.760 that you weren't going to, believe me, you'd get your money out of there. You know, it's,

00:20:15.600 so when you come right down to investment decisions, I think it's important to understand

00:20:20.640 a sharp distinction between the study of economics and actual, I'm making a $500 million investment.

00:20:28.400 Or if it's you and I, we may be making a $10,000 stock investment. You know, it doesn't matter.

00:20:34.400 That's where the confidence comes in. And I think that the federal government has not, under Mr. Carney,

00:20:40.560 has not been realistic about what a challenge that is. And you know, he's talked a big game.

00:20:47.040 We're going to lead the G7. Sometimes I think, well, that's damning with free praise when I look

00:20:51.440 at what's going on in Europe. But anyways, we're going to lead the G7 and we're going to do this and

00:20:56.480 that. Well, everyone doesn't matter your political stripe. It doesn't matter who you voted for.

00:21:01.520 It starts with capital investment. Whether you want to start your own store, you know, you said,

00:21:06.160 I want a hair salon. You know, I want a nail salon. Well, it takes capital. It doesn't matter

00:21:11.200 what the situation. So if you want to grow the economy, it starts with capital investment. Canada

00:21:17.360 has a significant trust issue. And sorry, I know I'm going on, but reputation. That guy can never

00:21:25.680 stop talking for goodness sakes. But let me add one more thing that's underappreciated. We're in,

00:21:30.880 we are in a competition for capital. No different. Again, if you were selecting a stock, you would have

00:21:36.320 a whole universe of things to put your money in. You know, if you're selecting an investment

00:21:41.680 property, same thing across the country, maybe you go internationally. Well, it's the same with

00:21:46.240 major investments. They have tons of selection. And unfortunately we're against President Trump and

00:21:54.480 the US. Well, what have they just done? Talked a big game and followed through on reducing corporate

00:22:00.160 taxes, you know, keeping them attractive. I'm talking about reducing the cost of regulation.

00:22:05.840 If you just stood back and said, well, which sounds a little more likely that I'll make a profit.

00:22:10.320 Unfortunately, the US wins. And now they're adding onto it, by the way, it's an interesting aspect of

00:22:15.200 the tariffs. And we saw that with Apple saying, you know, we're going to manufacture in the US. So we

00:22:22.240 don't even have to talk about tariffs for that product and makes a deal around it. And there's other

00:22:26.800 companies doing it. So Canada has to first appreciate how intense the competition for

00:22:33.280 capital is. And we have a bad reputation on that score. And it doesn't matter, again,

00:22:38.400 who you voted for. That's the reality. We've seen it in the capital investment numbers.

00:22:42.480 I'd put it this way for people who don't, you know, invest in stocks and things. Just imagine

00:22:47.120 if you were trying to buy a second house. Imagine if you're trying to buy a second house

00:22:50.960 and you wanted to say, do it for rental, you wanted people to rent your home, you would look

00:22:56.800 at the crime stats, you would look at the neighborhood, you would find out how often

00:23:00.880 garbage is picked up around there, you'd find out if there's schools, you do the tire kicking

00:23:06.160 on the neighborhood before you put your money into it. And now, there you go. And now we've got 0.93

00:23:11.680 companies that are kicking the tires on Canada saying, I'm not so sure about this. I wanted to

00:23:16.560 touch on something here because you are in British Columbia and you do follow stuff very closely.

00:23:21.600 And you mentioned in the case of Northern Gateway, where they had four of the five First Nations

00:23:26.320 groups on board, but it still turned into nothing. Are you following this decision, the so-called

00:23:32.240 Cowichan situation where it looks like a judge has, I'm just paraphrasing, basically said,

00:23:38.640 yeah, private property rights do not trump Aboriginal rights when it comes to land.

00:23:45.360 So this set off a whole bunch of alarm bells late last week. And, you know, the taxpayers

00:23:51.120 federation are keeping an eye on it because this could obviously have huge implications on private

00:23:55.040 property, which you pay property taxes for at the very bare minimum. So are you following this?

00:24:00.560 Is this making a lot of headlines in BC?

00:24:03.520 Absolutely. But it's right back to what you said. Think about the uncertainty that's produced.

00:24:08.080 This was a 600 page judgment and there's probably get, I hope it gets appealed,

00:24:12.960 but people will sift through it. What does it mean? In the meantime, all about uncertainty.

00:24:17.680 And the problem is it comes on the heels of last year when the government tried to push another

00:24:23.840 similar kind of bill that gave First Nations the right of consultation. Like we had to get First

00:24:31.040 Nations. Look what Prime Minister Carney just said about, you know, national projects have to have the

00:24:36.400 cooperation of First Nations. Whether you think that's a great policy or not, you should appreciate

00:24:41.920 that that adds a level of uncertainty, again, especially against the backdrop of experiences

00:24:47.680 like the Northern Gateway pipeline and others. You know, this is, you know, BC cannot afford to have a

00:24:54.800 weak economy. If you're watching across the country, you may not be aware of the significant

00:25:00.800 problems with the debt in BC. I mean, the British Columbia debt in the two years under Premier,

00:25:07.040 NDP Premier David Eby is up about 45% in two years, up 45%, for goodness sakes. You know,

00:25:15.920 you can't have that in any way sustainable without economic growth. Well, this is negative. Again,

00:25:22.480 I would challenge anyone, again, regardless of whether you think this is a good policy or not,

00:25:27.840 to tell me how that encourages capital investment and will encourage economic growth,

00:25:33.120 because it absolutely doesn't. Starting with even you asking the question, it shows the uncertainty

00:25:39.120 and the prominence of this. And believe me, there's no one considering a significant investment in the

00:25:44.240 province of British Columbia, who's not first looking at this and wondering about it and thinking,

00:25:49.440 again, there's other jurisdictions that don't have this roadblock.

00:25:52.960 This is it. And I think some, when people picture this ruling, which is again,

00:25:56.800 600 pages, it's a huge ruling. So we definitely need to follow it. When they picture the ruling,

00:26:01.520 they might imagine somebody with, you know, a house in Richmond, you know, tripping their hedges,

00:26:07.200 paying their taxes, which is fine. But there's the business issue there too. Like you just mentioned,

00:26:11.680 like, for example, I know for a fact that the, so the Trans Mountain Pipeline,

00:26:16.320 the one that Kinder Morgan wanted to twin, like I mentioned, they pay property taxes. 0.99

00:26:21.040 Yeah. Because the pipeline physically goes through land. Okay. Like these things have ramifications on

00:26:28.480 businesses too, right? It isn't just somebody who's a homeowner in Richmond. It's a business

00:26:33.680 who might be looking at that region of BC, right?

00:26:35.760 Yeah. And again, I'd say, it doesn't matter who you voted for. When you put your money somewhere,

00:26:40.880 you want it back and plus a return, whether you call that a bank or a credit union or a major investment,

00:26:46.960 or you've bought a warehouse and you're starting a business. All of that now has been put,

00:26:51.760 the very, this is getting talked a lot. You asked, is it on the agenda? It absolutely is.

00:26:56.640 And it started again with Vancouver Suns Vaughn Palmer going back last year, who did some great work.

00:27:02.400 And I think that work was pivotal in derailing a similar potential impact on the province of British

00:27:08.960 Columbia. Again, giving First Nations sort of the right of refusal to projects. And that's again, 0.86

00:27:15.920 the uncertainty kills them. And this is going to be talked about a great deal more because I think

00:27:21.120 people appreciate, especially these guys have now drilled it down to my home. Oh, I understand that.

00:27:26.720 I may never want to do a major project, a plant, the equipment that goes into it, whatever,

00:27:32.800 but I got a home and they're telling me that my legal rights are superseded by First Nations issues.

00:27:41.120 Well, I'm just saying that doesn't make anybody comfortable. A lot of questions.

00:27:45.600 Speaking of comfort and business cases, I wanted to shift gears here, no pun intended,

00:27:50.320 to the looming ban on the sale of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. People often refer to

00:27:56.400 it as the EV mandate, but I find sometimes when we call it that it kind of slips past people.

00:28:01.920 And if you actually visualize this as a ban by the government on the sale of a regular internal

00:28:07.760 combustion engine, that's a bigger deal. You can kind of imagine that better. And again,

00:28:12.560 if people choose to buy an electric vehicle, like that's on them, that's totally up to them. It may

00:28:17.280 suit their needs. That's fine. The issue here is twofold. One, the government shouldn't be telling

00:28:22.800 you what kind of vehicle you can drive. But two, especially from the Canadian taxpayers perspective,

00:28:27.920 we don't have the energy or the money for this. Like the math is not mathing here. But I wanted to ask you

00:28:36.000 with the business case here, because last I saw the last quarterly report, I think the sales of

00:28:42.240 electric vehicles are at nine percent. Single digit, nine. Starting in five months time,

00:28:49.040 the federal government is going to mandate that be 20 percent of new vehicle sales. Is there a

00:28:55.040 business case here to force people to buy battery powered cars? Well, there's not a practical case.

00:28:59.920 That's for sure. They can't do it. I mean, no, but flat out, they can't do it. As you say,

00:29:03.920 20 percent of sales in 2026, 60 percent nationwide. In British Columbia, it's 90 percent by 2030.

00:29:12.320 So we're talking four and a half years from now. And then 100 percent, I think it's 100 percent by 2035.

00:29:18.160 But again, what they're talking about is of new vehicle sales. So if I already have an internal

00:29:23.680 combustion engine, it's not impacting me. The resale value, I think that's it. Pretty good. But the

00:29:29.200 other thing, they've done it. They've done it at the same time, both federally and again, out in

00:29:32.800 British Columbia provincially, they've removed the rebates. So they've taken away the incentive

00:29:39.120 to compensate me. And then the mandates and they have been, I mean, there's been so much blowback

00:29:44.880 from the industry itself saying this is literally impossible, but they still are saying they're

00:29:50.800 sticking to their guns. And can I add one more aspect to this? We don't have the charging stations.

00:29:56.960 You know, where are you going to charge your car up? And then the power demand that you've described

00:30:01.600 is absolutely accurate. There's nothing practical in this. Forget we could have the sort of

00:30:06.720 philosophical debate about internal combustion engines and the emissions and all that. And that

00:30:12.080 is an important discussion to have. I'm just saying practically it can't happen.

00:30:16.320 I correspond with a gentleman named Blair King, who follows a lot of fuel and, you know,

00:30:21.760 that sort of business. You're probably aware of him there. He's in BC as well. And he did the math,

00:30:25.760 to be fair, many years ago. So the adjustment for inflation and that might be changed. But he did

00:30:30.560 the math and he said just to change over ground transportation. This wasn't full, like, you know,

00:30:35.840 factory heating or anything like that. But to change ground transportation, I believe he included

00:30:40.800 commercial. British Columbia would need like nine new sightsee dams, which is just coming online now.

00:30:47.520 Yeah. Like, W.A.C. Bennett was the first premier who mentioned sightsee because he already had A

00:30:54.080 and B lined up for folks who don't know BC politics. That's why it's called sightsee,

00:30:58.720 because it's the third one. They just got that thing going now. I think they first started talking

00:31:03.040 about that, Michael, 20 years ago. I can't even do the math on that one. 25? I think I was graduating

00:31:09.280 journalism school back then. And so my point here is like, we don't have the energy and we don't have

00:31:13.600 the money to build the energy, do we? But it's a typical example. And I can give you many more.

00:31:19.280 And this is where I am critical, because when common sense gets thrown out, you know, I love

00:31:24.320 my example coming out of Germany when they closed down their nuclear plants and never thought about,

00:31:29.120 well, where did we replace that power with? Like, are you crazy? You know? Or, gee, I didn't know that 0.85

00:31:35.440 the sun and wind were intermittent power sources and we needed a backup. Really? Well, I've got a four

00:31:40.000 year old grandson who understands the wind doesn't blow every day. It's that caliber of thinking.

00:31:45.040 And in this case, fine. If you want to do that, the electric vehicle thing, have a plan for the

00:31:51.360 infrastructure, you know, like to start with. And it's huge. I mean, that's a huge challenge there.

00:31:58.480 Like there's no practical way this is going to happen. That's what's going to be interesting,

00:32:02.640 but it's going to really hurt the car dealers because they get penalized if they don't meet that

00:32:07.840 mandate. 20% of their sales has to have been. It's not the consumer. It's I'm a car dealer.

00:32:14.160 20% of my sales must be EVs. And as they say, that's next year and 60% by 2030 and 90% in BC. I mean,

00:32:25.360 there's just so much impractical about it. I can't resist giving everyone a headache with this stat.

00:32:30.480 Think about this. They want us all in electric vehicles. Okay. So what do they do? Put a hundred

00:32:36.080 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, which we'd be selling where about half the price

00:32:42.400 with high quality choices there, you know, so wait, we're going to make it more expensive,

00:32:48.800 more less likely that people will adopt and we'll get rid of the rebates to make sure they don't

00:32:53.840 adopt. And then we see it in the sales figures almost immediately, you know, the plunging EV sales

00:32:59.520 without the rebates. It just doesn't make sense. I'm not even getting into the philosophical debate or

00:33:05.520 whether we should or shouldn't. I'm saying what they propose, you know, I know we want people

00:33:10.480 to buy cars. We'll make it even less attractive if they do. This is what's mind blowing to me.

00:33:15.680 It is. We only have a couple of minutes left here.

00:33:18.480 But I wanted to point out two things. One, Natural Resources Canada has already outsourced a project on

00:33:26.080 this and done the math. That report, which is on the Government of Canada's website,

00:33:31.040 says that transitioning to electric vehicles is going to cost upwards of 300 billion dollars

00:33:39.520 with a B. This is in a situation where a country has un-money, okay? The Trudeau government doubled

00:33:46.640 our debt. We're more than a trillion dollars in debt. The interest payments alone on our doubled debt

00:33:52.880 now, our 1.2 trillion dollar debt, is a billion dollars a week. To visualize this, folks, imagine

00:34:00.400 every Saturday night, instead of gathering around the hockey game, we picture a brand new hospital,

00:34:06.080 all full of bells and whistles and paint and stuff ready to go. Instead of cutting the ribbon and going

00:34:10.720 in, we burn it down. We burn it down. That's just the interest. This is a huge discussion about the 0.99

00:34:18.080 debt. Now give people quickly. It's no different in your own life. If you borrowed a hundred thousand

00:34:22.640 dollars and threw a hell of a party, that's the limit of it. So it's that we have borrowed a lot

00:34:27.440 of money and much of it is not productive. It's not gone into productive exercises. It's not like

00:34:32.640 a company borrows and says, I'm borrowing at 5%. I think I'll make 15% on that. No, that's not what

00:34:38.640 we've done. I think what we've just hit on though, is the biggest unappreciated story in the country

00:34:44.480 today. We're looking, we do not have a federal budget. I was looking to do some analysis just

00:34:49.600 yesterday. Couldn't do it because I needed the budget numbers. And I wanted to see what

00:34:54.400 are the interest exchange forecast as we go out? Because we know that Prime Minister Carney's agenda

00:35:01.360 is about double the cost in terms of debt of Prime Minister Trudeau's. Okay, so let me see the numbers.

00:35:07.600 So that's a big one. But $92 billion, that's the C.D. Howe Institute came up that for our deficit this

00:35:13.600 year? Then I thought, well, no wonder they're not having a budget. They don't want us talking about

00:35:17.280 that. But I think this is a very serious case because this idea that we can run up these numbers

00:35:22.960 without consequences is absurd. So we should be looking, okay, what are the consequences of running

00:35:28.160 up those numbers? What are the other variables, i.e. you have to have economic growth if you're

00:35:32.960 adding that much debt? That's certainly debatable. Right now we're having an economy that's slow

00:35:38.480 to shrinking, actually. You know, unemployment numbers are up, all of that stuff. And as I say,

00:35:43.840 it merits a very focused discussion because I think we're just being glib about it at this point.

00:35:50.160 It's being glossed over. And the last thing I'll finish with is, again, another example of how young

00:35:56.560 Canadians are not on the agenda. Guess who's paying it off? Look at me. Look at my gray hair here. I'm not

00:36:01.760 paying that off. I'm not paying the interest for maybe for another week. Let's hope I live a little

00:36:07.760 longer. Yeah, let's go with that. But I mentioned my grandson. He'll be paying off the debt. They

00:36:12.480 are running up for 80 years. Yep. We'll never get off it. Nope. We shouldn't be quite so casual

00:36:18.720 about it. But again, now that's a political statement on my part or a philosophical value

00:36:23.280 related statement. I can't believe how it's ignored, but we really have to have a more focused

00:36:27.920 discussion on the amount of debt that the federal government is running up. Speaking of debt,

00:36:32.720 this is my last question for you. And I guess it's me pinning my hopes on something.

00:36:38.000 That Mark Carney, when you look at him compared to what our previous prime minister's qualifications

00:36:43.680 and capacities were, Mark Carney is the former governor of the Bank of Canada,

00:36:49.440 the former governor of the Bank of England. He holds a master's degree from, I think it's Harvard,

00:36:55.760 and then a PhD from Oxford in economics. Okay. So my point of all of this is, is this guy's no slouch.

00:37:03.840 Okay. He should be able to understand hard math. And when push comes to shove,

00:37:11.440 as Ben Shapiro says, facts don't care about your feelings. We have got a critical problem with our

00:37:17.120 debt. We've got a serious confidence problem when it comes to investors, as you point out very well,

00:37:23.600 people not wanting to do business here. So some rubber is going to have to hit the road here.

00:37:28.080 Do you think that Mark Carney is going to cause a change when they come back in the fall and they

00:37:34.320 start sitting? Do you see him shifting gears of this government?

00:37:38.320 Well, first thing is, I'll be looking to see if he does. All we've done so far is talk. And I know for

00:37:44.720 some Canadians, that's plenty enough. That's good enough. I'm much more practical and I know I

00:37:49.920 frustrate some people that way. As I keep joking, I'm from Missouri, the show me state. Show me,

00:37:55.920 you know, get rid of the obstacles, the legislative obstacles to a new pipeline, for example,

00:38:02.880 the oil and gas industry. Let's see lower corporate tax rates so we can compete for capital.

00:38:07.840 And let's see a lower regulatory burden. Again, I agree with you. He understands those things,

00:38:13.600 but I still need to see some action here. And we haven't seen any. And I think so much of our future,

00:38:20.560 my children, grandchildren's future, rests on our ability to do it. I'm not willing to bet whether

00:38:26.560 he is or not. I'm willing to just see how it goes, but there will be some specifics. We will have

00:38:31.520 to get beyond the happy talk soon. Again, that's not what investors are looking for is more happy

00:38:38.720 talk. They are looking specifically, does this project make sense? Does this investment make

00:38:44.880 sense? What are my costs? Reduce their costs, especially against a US government that's

00:38:49.840 competing for capital so aggressively with ours. So we'll see. Michael, this is why I count on you

00:38:56.320 for things like this, because you won't tell me what I want to hear. You'll just bring the data and

00:39:00.160 you'll look for it. Michael Campbell, host of Money Talks. Thank you so much for joining us today

00:39:05.040 on the Candace Malcolm show. My pleasure. Folks, once again, that was Michael Campbell.

00:39:11.440 He's been in the arena for a long time. He hosts a great show called Money Talks. You can follow him

00:39:16.640 on social media as well. Got a lot of really sage analysis there. And I wanted to introduce him to the

00:39:21.920 show because I've been following his stats and numbers for a long time. And this is where we get down

00:39:26.880 to brass tacks because it is super important for voices like this to get out to ears like yours

00:39:33.600 through independent media. It is critically important that we grow our network, that we grow

00:39:41.440 our base of independent media that asks hard questions, that does deep dives and brings you hard

00:39:48.800 data. And that is what we're doing here on the Candace Malcolm show. So if this episode was interesting to

00:39:55.200 you, if you feel like this is ringing some alarm bells and you want to send this to your friends

00:40:00.000 who need a big wake up call, do it. Share this show. Subscribe to the show. Better yet,

00:40:07.120 make a donation and support Juno News.

The Candice Malcolm Show - August 11, 2025

MONEY FOR NOTHING - Government blowing your cash while Mark Carney takes a VACATION

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript