Candace Malan is joined by political commentator Wyatt Claypool to discuss the bombshell dropped by Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne that Canada will not be getting a budget this year, which means no hope of a new government this year.
00:00:00.000Hi, I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show. We have an excellent episode for you today, folks.
00:00:07.560So it has just been a few days since Mark Carney has assembled his cabinet, this ragtag crew of recycled liberals.
00:00:14.760It looks exactly the same as the Trudeau cabinet. There's a few new sort of star cabinet ministers, and yet they are each a disaster.
00:00:22.640Each one is worse than the other. So anytime one of these people gets up in front of a microphone, speaks to reporters, the whole game is given away.
00:00:30.000The whole idea that this has changed, that this represents some kind of new government, it is the exact same as the previous government.
00:00:36.780And we are going to go through that today. Absolutely stunning news.
00:00:41.180We learned that we will not have a budget this year, that Canada will not table a budget, which means no hope of a cabinet, of a confidence vote, no threat to the Carney government that they could go down before they even start.
00:00:53.060We will show you all of the dirty tricks that the Liberal government is rolling out already.
00:00:56.900And I'm very pleased today to be joined by Wyatt Claypool. Wyatt is a political commentator and founder of the National Telegraph based in Calgary.
00:01:04.680Wyatt, thank you so much for joining the show.
00:01:07.180Absolutely. I usually don't like talking about budget, so maybe Mark Carney did this for me because it makes it simpler to talk about.
00:01:14.680But yeah, you know, you'd think that the, you know, the master businessman and the man who's worked as the governor of the Bank of Canada in England would be able to at least do the finances properly.
00:01:24.880You know, they're not going to be great, but they're, you know, filed and formatted properly. But I guess not.
00:01:29.360Well, it's just a total abdication of any responsibility. Like, how are you supposed to have any accountability?
00:01:35.020How are you supposed to be held to account by the opposition if you're not even providing the basic information?
00:01:40.380So let's just play this clip. This is Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne speaking to CTV's Vassi Capellos, where he just sort of lets it out, lets this bombshell out that no, Canada will not be getting a budget this year. Let's play that clip.
00:01:55.080I want to ask you explicitly, will there be an actual budget in 2025?
00:02:00.800There will be a fall economic statement when we're coming back.
00:02:03.660How are we as Canadians to hold your government accountable for what you're promising if you're not going to be transparent about it for six months or so?
00:02:10.540And I take your point about the timeline. Throne speech, there's still another month.
00:02:13.920And I would say this is a new government. So let's start, if we're going to start, this is a new government, new legislature, new prime minister.
00:02:19.960So the direction is very clear. He's being very...
00:02:22.280But you're still the finance minister.
00:02:23.020Yeah, I'm still the finance minister. And I would say the world has changed also in six weeks. So Canadians understand that.
00:02:28.700Canadians understand that. Okay, so let's go to X. Table Salt points this out.
00:02:32.520Countries that are not doing an annual budget in 2025 include Afghanistan under the Taliban, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority under Hamas, Iraq, Iran, etc.
00:02:46.900Well, Polyev issued a statement saying this. First, he said, parliament has already been shut down for nearly half a year.
00:02:54.460Now, in the face of serious economic threats, the liberals don't intend to present a budget this year.
00:02:59.360There is no red roadmap forward, no economic vision, no willingness to lead.
00:03:03.820This is not the leadership Mark Carney promised. It's an abandonment.
00:03:07.840Okay, and then he was also speaking to reporters earlier this morning, Wyatt, and here is what he had to say.
00:03:13.900Mr. Carney said during the election campaign that he had a plan, and he took great delight in saying that a slogan is not a plan.
00:03:23.340Well, a budget is a plan. And if he does indeed have a plan, if he does know what he's doing, then he would introduce a budget so that Canadians know exactly what the finances are.
00:03:34.980Some say the bubbles in an aero truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth, sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.
00:03:44.740Rich, creamy, chocolatey aero truffle. Feel the aero bubbles melt. It's mind bubbling.
00:03:51.760And just one final piece of context that I wanted to add here, Wyatt, which is that we didn't really get one last year either.
00:03:58.540Philippe Francois Champagne said that he that they had a fall economic update, but because they prorogued parliament, parts of that were never approved.
00:04:06.500You can recall that in the middle of the election campaign, this bombshell was dropped.
00:04:11.160This is from an account called Canada Spends. And I just want to point this out that it is run by a liberal, right?
00:04:16.380This is not a right wing account. This is run by someone who used to work in the Trudeau government, who is just sick and tired of government's spending like there's no tomorrow.
00:04:25.940So this is what the account writes. The government approved 40 billion dollars in spending from April 1st to May 15th through a special warrant.
00:04:34.360This was done because parliament is prorogued. It's not possible to make appropriations.
00:04:38.280The only information shared with Canadians is a list of departments in total and the total amount.
00:04:42.560According to the document, the appropriate ministers have reported the payment of these sums is urgently required for the public good.
00:04:49.060We'll leave it here for you to decide. And then they screenshot all of the amounts that each each ministry receive. Right.
00:04:57.080And there's just no accountability. They never voted on this in our parliamentary system.
00:05:00.640You're supposed to vote to approve budgets. You're supposed to vote to approve spending.
00:05:03.720We didn't have that. And it looks like we're just not going to have it again.
00:05:06.740I mean, if the conservatives were doing this, it would be a huge national scandal.
00:05:10.280And every single news outlet, news agency and journalists in the legacy media would be like sounding the alarm.
00:05:16.740And the liberals are doing it and they're just sort of getting away with it.
00:05:19.840It's unbelievable that this is the state of Canada under the liberals in 2025.
00:06:32.100And then consider on top of this that we've already had a credit downgrade under the final year of Justin Trudeau as well as Mark Carney's advisorship over the economy.
00:06:44.620So why are we thinking that this is not going to result in us going from, I believe we went from AAA to AA plus.
00:06:51.000We could end up just going to AA over the next year or so because we're not actually being, we're not taking any steps to make any credit raging agency think that we're actually trying to get back on the horse.
00:07:04.780And also with the OIC, $33 billion that the government spent, both them and their defenders at the CBC tried to make it seem like, no, no, no, this is just to bridge the gap before we table the budget in a few weeks.
00:07:17.840And I already knew that was nonsense because you'd only need about 5% of your budget for each department to be given to them to bridge a gap for a couple weeks and then put forward a budget.
00:07:27.640I noticed that the CBC in that, uh, readout of where money went was given $178 billion.
00:07:35.900Now they get about a billion of their budget every single year for taxpayers.
00:07:40.860So why do they need 17.8% of their budget given to them all at once?
00:07:46.660If this is just to bridge the gap, it was obviously to give strategic, like money strategically to departments that the government favored with a little bit of money to bridge the gap.
00:07:56.580Until they now they give up more money in an OIC.
00:08:00.080And this is going to be probably a way of baiting and switching Canadians where you can kind of give small lump sums of money all year long through OICs.
00:08:09.300And it's going to be very difficult for the average citizen to be able to kind of keep up with, well, how much has each department been given?
00:08:16.100Because in theory he could give the CBC as an example, 2 billion, but it's in 5 billion, 10 billion, 50 billion chunks as time goes on.
00:08:26.500And it allows them to basically spend like it's a credit card rather than actually having to, you know, follow a budget like a responsible household or business would do.
00:09:33.440OK, I want to keep going on because that was just that's just dipping our toe in the water of the complete disaster show that is this cabinet so far.
00:09:42.100So as well, yesterday speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Canada's new housing minister.
00:09:47.140This is a new face federally, although those of us from British Columbia know this man very well as a socialist mayor of Vancouver, Mr.
00:09:55.460And here he is, Gregor Robertson, the new housing minister, saying that, no, no, our goal is not to actually lower housing prices to make it more affordable for young people to be able to afford their first home.
00:10:22.480We need to be delivering more affordable housing.
00:10:25.740I think it shows that he doesn't know the first thing about economics, right?
00:10:28.500Because he's saying, like, the question to him is, should I want housing prices to go down?
00:10:31.820He says, no, no, we just have to stable them by increasing supply.
00:10:34.120Well, the whole idea is that if you do increase the supply to match the demand, the prices will automatically go down because there won't be such a shortage, right?
00:10:42.200The costs have gone up because there's an artificial shortage in housing because we've flooded the country with new immigrants at the same time as just refusing to really grow to keep up with the growth.
00:10:51.040And here, like, this is also something that drives me crazy about these socialist types is that they think that the answer is like a government program, right?
00:10:59.900So he says we need more affordable housing.
00:11:03.020They want more rentals that are subsidized, right?
00:11:05.620They want, like, price controls on rentals so that some families who get into this program can afford to pay the rent because it's artificially lowered by the government.
00:11:13.640That doesn't solve the problem of young Canadians getting locked out of the housing market.
00:11:17.720That doesn't solve the problem of people not being able to find a house in a safe neighborhood to raise their families.
00:11:23.040Like, to me, this is just going to be an absolute disaster putting someone like Gregor Robertson in the housing portfolio.
00:11:29.600Well, it's like Mark Carney saw, like, Sean Frazier as housing minister.
00:11:33.760And when someone thought there couldn't be possibly anyone worse for that role, he said, hold my beer.
00:11:38.460And he ended up finding this guy, dragging him out of retirement, saying, this will make sure that people are confident that our government's going to do a good job.
00:11:46.460And here, they kicked out Nate Erskine-Smith as housing minister when he only came back to run for re-election under the promise that they would let him be housing minister.
00:11:57.120Now, I disagree with Nate Erskine-Smith on pretty much everything.
00:12:01.620At the same time, it's like Mark Carney is a career politician in the sense that he may have not been in office for very long,
00:12:09.560but he has a lot of the flaws that you would normally associate with a really bad quality, like, career politician.
00:12:17.040He wants to be around people in his government that he likes to talk to and that he pairs up with well.
00:12:22.960It doesn't matter if they're incompetent.
00:12:24.380He just picks people he's friends with and maybe he doesn't jive very well with Nate.
00:12:28.840So Nate's not in and now Gregor Roberts gets in because maybe Mark Carney knew him from back in the day.
00:12:34.820So his cabinet, at best, is full of dumb and pretty people that he likes to hang out with.
00:12:40.500But we don't actually have anyone who has a track record of success in any field.
00:12:46.180And sometimes they're even moving up to more complicated departments.
00:12:50.340Well, plucking the former mayor of Vancouver, I mean, Vancouver is, like, ground zero, like, patient zero in terms of unaffordable housing.
00:12:56.820Like, it's the least affordable housing market in the country.
00:13:00.220The rest of the country is starting to catch up to Vancouver, but Vancouver has been dealing with this problem since Gregor Robertson has been mayor, if not thereafter.
00:13:08.880By the way, though, the prices in Vancouver spiked, like, 178% or something crazy, like, more than double when he was mayor during the housing crash.
00:13:19.640He somehow increased prices during the housing crash.
00:13:25.240Right. Well, I mean, that's what happens, again, when you have your borders completely open and you allow, like, speculative investors from foreign countries to just swoop in and buy single-family homes.
00:13:35.500And then the regulations are so tight that you won't allow anything different to be built.
00:13:39.660Okay, I want to move on to Stephen Galbault because many people might have, like, breathed the sigh of relief that this guy is no longer the environment minister.
00:13:46.700He has been given a new portfolio called the Canadian Identity Minister, okay?
00:13:51.280And yet, when he was speaking to reporters yesterday, he just couldn't help himself.
00:13:56.920And he doubled down on his crazed environmentalism, saying that there is no appetite, that investors will simply not pay for new pipelines.
00:14:05.900Before we start talking about building an entire new pipeline, maybe we should maximize the use of existing infrastructure.
00:14:14.880And the Canadian Energy Regulator, as well as the International Energy Agency, are telling us that probably by 2028, 2029, demand for oil will peak globally.
00:14:49.340Canada's new identity minister, Stephen Galbault, just deceived Canadians, saying,
00:14:53.780We don't need more pipelines because the Trans Mountain pipeline is only 40% full and peak oil will be here in two years.
00:14:59.900The facts are that TMX, which just opened and wouldn't have been built entirely,
00:15:04.780sorry, and would have been built entirely with private sector dollars if Ottawa hadn't made it impossible for the original proponent to build it,
00:15:12.940Further, most estimates of demand for bitumen shows it growing for several decades and that it will be needed to replace declining U.S. conventional oil fields.
00:15:21.320This is just another example of how misleading and destructive this former environment minister was to Alberta's and Canada's economy and investment climate.
00:15:29.380We ask for the new environment minister to disavow these comments and commit to working with Alberta to build new pipelines to access markets.
00:15:38.240Why on earth is this fool talking about pipelines?
00:15:40.960Like, he was removed from that portfolio.
00:15:43.340Mark Carney is out there presumably saying to people in Alberta, like, cool, like, it's OK.
00:15:48.420We're going to be more pro-energy and more pro-pipelines than the predecessors.
00:15:53.740And yet, he has this guy out here speaking like that.
00:15:58.980Well, the fact he feels like he can speak about it so confidently means probably a shared view within Cabinet.
00:16:04.600If he was taken aside and says, like, you are on this new file, you cannot talk about this anymore, he wouldn't probably talk about it.
00:16:11.520He's doing this because this is probably just the common belief that's within Cabinet.
00:16:16.360Also, this is just what I would consider, like, a Maxwell Fawcett-ism of whenever you're trying to, like, run down the oil and gas industry, you just pretend there's no business case for it.
00:16:28.880In this case, he's just lying about the 40% capacity.
00:16:31.740But whenever, like, oh, well, an oil and gas project didn't go forward or this oil and gas company just shut down.
00:16:39.680It's like, wow, I can't believe that when you shoot the industry in the head, it might actually have a bit of a headache and a little bit harder time being able to get going over the next few years.
00:16:50.480At the same time, these people are totally fine with subsidizing renewable green energy projects everywhere, despite the fact that they would never have any investment unless the government was backing it up with subsidies at the same time.
00:17:04.340Oftentimes, giving them way more money in subsidies than they're actually having to even invest in the project.
00:17:10.640We're going to get to that in a few minutes when we get to Melanie Jolie and her comments.
00:17:17.780So earlier, Danielle Smith had also raised her concerns with his predecessor, who is, sorry, with his successor, who's the newly appointed environment minister, Julie Debrusen.
00:17:31.480She says they put out a release yesterday saying not only is she a self-proclaimed architect of the designation of plastics as toxic, but she is a staunch advocate against the oil sands, a proponent of phasing out oil and gas.
00:17:44.860And for the last four years, she served as the right hand to former environment minister and militant environmentalist Stephen Gelbeau.
00:17:51.800So, yes, Smith asked her to disavow Gelbeau, but presumably she won't.
00:18:13.700I just find it astonishing that Mr. Carney would appoint a man who says we don't need any pipelines built.
00:18:21.260The Liberals went around the country pretending they had changed their minds about pipelines after 10 years of blocking them.
00:18:27.740But now one of Mr. Carney's top ministers comes out and says we don't need any more pipelines and that he would work to block those pipelines.
00:18:37.280So really just saying what needs to be said here.
00:18:41.300OK, I want to move on, Wyatt, because we also have Anita Anand, who is the new foreign affairs minister.
00:18:46.940And I think she really put her foot in her mouth when she talks about what is happening in Israel and Gaza.
00:18:53.320She basically blames everything, right, the entire war on Israel.
00:21:41.640The whole thing is just people who are just not very good at their jobs saying kind of flowery, idealistic things right before, like, face planting into the ground when it comes to their actual job performance.
00:21:53.640Like, none of these people, like Anita Anand back with the Israel question, it's like, be an adult.
00:22:00.540Figure out how to, like, this is, I meet a lot of incompetent politicians.
00:22:05.860And everyone, and you're just sitting there like, oh my goodness, someone in your office is holding your hand every day.
00:22:11.460Because you can't even, like, you can't even think on your feet for the most basic thing you should say for this question.
00:22:18.880How are you going to actually do, like, how are you going to, like, engage in any diplomacy as the Foreign Affairs Minister?
00:22:25.380Or how are you going to do any inter-provincial, sign an inter-provincial trade deal when you seem like you couldn't actually get through a normal question period, like, without, like, falling all over yourself?
00:22:35.980Okay, speaking of Veep, I think this might be the best Veep clip of the day.
00:22:40.120This comes from our new Innovation, Science, and Industry Minister, Melanie Jolie, sounding just like a total idiot here.
00:22:46.400So she's asked about the potential plant closures when it comes to auto plants vis-a-vis the tariffs.
00:22:53.200And she's really excited about the government's plan here in the wake of really bad news.
00:23:16.700We know you're concerned about losing shifts.
00:23:19.020We know we were concerned about losing your jobs.
00:23:21.500And we will always fight for your jobs.
00:23:23.700Notwithstanding that, we also have a $2 billion worth of support for the industry, the auto industry, the steel and aluminum industries that are affected by the trade war.
00:23:35.340One of my first decisions will be also to make sure that the workers can benefit from these investments.
00:23:43.500I can never tell with her whether she's just, like, really nervous and can barely make it through a sentence because she's just so bad at this.
00:23:51.240Or if maybe she's, like, on drugs or something.
00:24:07.200Really, 80% of the time, whenever somebody is talking who's in government, who's a minister, if they're not talking about tax reductions, they're just screwing up everything.
00:24:18.080Every single department in the government right now should just be, like, figuring out ways of reducing taxes, reducing regulatory burden.
00:24:25.800If you're scared of jobs being sucked over the border into the United States.
00:24:29.700But all these people are like, we talked with Stellantis.
00:24:40.820Like, I never understand why this is, like, a dirty word in government.
00:24:43.640Like, I know Mark Carney's technically cutting taxes right now, but I don't think exactly giving everyone 400 bucks back is going to save the economy.
00:24:50.780Well, it's so interesting because it's the exact opposite approach, as you mentioned earlier, to pipelines, right?
00:24:54.700So when it comes to pipelines, they're just like, oh, well, we just create all these regulations and there's no business case.
00:24:58.940The businesses just don't want to build these pipelines in Canada anymore.
00:25:03.660Completely ignoring all of their own policies.
00:25:06.240And yet when it comes to auto manufacturers, it's like they're literally just bribing them with our money, paying them billions and billions of dollars to please keep your businesses in Canada so that we can have jobs for these people.
00:25:19.060And even with all those subsidies over the years, the companies are like, yeah, no, you're not a good business environment.
00:25:24.920Like, it's like, hello, it is your regulations and your taxes that drive these people away.
00:25:29.720No amount of, you know, special subsidies is going to keep them.
00:25:32.960And just for some background, I mean, oh, sorry, just one more point about her.
00:25:36.600That she's just, like, super excited about their $2 billion, like, EI, basically, top-up fund.
00:25:41.900Like, I'm sorry, if you're about to lose your job, the fact that they have $2 billion, like, that's not going to go very far when you're talking about tens of thousands of laid-off employees, right?
00:25:59.360And so, yeah, if you are an autoworker, you should be nervous under this government, and you should be angry with your compatriots for voting in another liberal government.
00:26:07.620And obviously, the background here is that we learned that this Honda plant is closing.
00:26:11.340So JGenXer on X reminded us—here's Justin Trudeau—post saying Honda, Stellantis, NorthVolk, Volkswagen, Asshai, and Kasai, these are big companies that can choose to build anywhere, and they're choosing Canada.
00:26:53.520This is kind of part of the reason that got us into this whole mess with President Trump, Wyatt, is that Canada just loves to subsidize different industries.
00:27:00.740And that is what Trump is talking about when he says that countries like Canada are cheating.
00:27:05.100It's like, yeah, we are paying all of this taxpayer money to try to prop up America's competition.
00:27:11.200And he's saying, you know, I'm going to combat that with terrorists.
00:27:14.540And yet Canada's response is just to do more of the same.
00:27:18.860Well, it's letting the Americans take our jobs in the long run in the sense that when it's honestly what happened in the American auto industry in the 70s.
00:27:26.000When you prop up, when you protect an industry and you subsidize it for decades and that industry is allowed to become inefficient and bloated, unions end up taking over the entire labor side of the industry.
00:27:40.900And then suddenly there's increased competition like the Americans are pushing us for, or at least they'll tariff us back because we're effectively subsidizing our own industry to keep it here.
00:27:51.360Well, the whole thing is going to evaporate in a second because the thing is not actually built on like a solid foundation.
00:27:57.500It's built just on subsidies that can burn up in a second.
00:28:01.100It's just built on, you know, like easy money.
00:28:04.300People will rather go and build a company in a place that's going to be more stable in the long run, even if we're offering money because it's too much of a headache.
00:28:13.900Taxes keep going up or regulations keep going up in this country.
00:28:17.420So even if when you get money, you require more money every single year to stick around.
00:28:22.920They can't just keep giving a billion every single year to a car company.
00:28:26.300They've got to give $1.2 billion, $1.4 billion the next year and the next year because the liberals can only ever justify more rules, more regulations, more taxes, whatnot like that.
00:28:38.200Okay, I want to end the show on a fun note.
00:28:40.300We're going to move entirely away from Canadian politics and go to something totally different.
00:28:44.700So Brett Cooper, who is a YouTuber and sort of former Daily Wire personality, a young Gen Z conservative, she has been doing a tour and she was at a show in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend.
00:28:59.060And I want to play this clip because I just think it is so remarkable for so many reasons.
00:29:03.140So first, let's play this clip of Brett Cooper in Phoenix, Arizona.
00:29:06.260Um, because what I'm about to do tonight, I've never done before, um, ever, I'm literally like shaking right now, but I think you guys should know that the special guest is already on stage.
00:29:36.260So I'll tell you why I love this, right?
00:29:41.440This is a young, successful sort of career to Gen Z woman.
00:29:45.860And yet when she announces to her fans and to her audience that she's pregnant, she gets this like huge, like heroes applaud.
00:29:52.120Like people are so happy for her, right?
00:29:53.940And this is the kind of response that you would tend to get from like your friend group or your family when you tell them you're pregnant, if you have been like really trying to get pregnant.
00:30:00.760And to me, it signals like this cultural shift, right?
00:30:03.880Like for me and millennials, it seems like everything that was told to us, all the messaging from the culture was like girl boss, you know, go into the, you could achieve anything and go into any line of work and career, career, career.
00:30:16.220And I think that the culture is shifting and that women are being told that it's a great thing to be a mother and that our culture is celebrating it again.
00:30:23.860I'm really excited and happy for young women like Brett Cooper for sort of like paving this new path that yes, there's like no shame in being a mother.
00:30:31.580So actually it's like the most wonderful, amazing thing.
00:30:34.120And so seeing this reaction from her audience brought me a lot of joy.
00:30:38.960Well, I'm going to, I'll, I'll, I'll agree with everything you said, but then also counter by saying I'm the most socially awkward person I know.
00:30:45.920So I always think I was watching that.
00:30:47.320I was like, okay, well, I don't know what to do with this information.
00:30:49.600I'd be like the person in the back, like, I guess that's good.
00:31:00.480Well, it's also kind of funny because she's like, she doesn't really look pregnant, right?
00:31:03.860She's probably like just maybe a few months along.
00:31:07.260And, but I think she was thinking that she looked huge because when you're pregnant, you always feel like you're bigger than you are.
00:31:12.300So I think she was expecting it to be really obvious when she turned to the side, but she doesn't really have baby bump yet.
00:31:18.280So that was just another tidbit to make you feel even more awkward, Wyatt.
00:31:21.460Yeah, it is a cultural shift in the sense that that's probably something that someone would mention like, you know, decades ago.
00:31:29.380And that would be like a big celebration for someone who was like a news anchor or something like that.
00:31:33.380But these days it's kind of considered like, you know, that's gross.
00:31:36.900But like, I don't tell me about that or people don't like the subject of like kids because they want any adult subject being brought up because, you know, that might make them feel like they're, you know, they actually need to take their lives more seriously.
00:31:48.020But, you know, people are actually taking their lives more seriously in their, you know, the 20s now, which is good.