Justin Trudeau's singular focus on climate change is making our economic problems much, much worse. Today, we take a look at a snapshot of the Canadian economy and compare it to the things our Prime Minister is talking about and what the media is focusing on.
00:00:36.500You know, people are, there's balloons and there's lots of kids running around and they do this whole cake thing, which is like very confusing for the baby.
00:00:45.600So anyway, it was a lot of fun over at my household.
00:00:49.620And, you know, while we're sort of taking moments off to enjoy the little things in life, the picture out there, the economic picture is looking pretty gloomy.
00:01:00.240And I'm going to focus the show today on just doing a snapshot of the Canadian economy, looking at where we are and sort of comparing that with the things that our prime minister is talking about, what his focus is and what the media is focused on.
00:01:13.680Because the media being the media isn't really doing their job.
00:01:17.000Sure, there's sporadic coverage of the various economic crises that are on the horizon.
00:01:23.220You know, the main focus of the media is cheerleading behind the liberals and all of their harebrained schemes that are coming out of COP26.
00:01:31.100The focus is on sort of petty partisan squabbles that are happening in both the liberal and the conservative party.
00:01:36.200And what we're not seeing is really a comprehensive look at some of these various economic issues in the country.
00:01:43.460So I want to talk a little bit about that and kind of give you a ballpark picture of just how badly Justin Trudeau is screwing things up in our country, how reckless and irresponsible he is by coming up with these pie-in-the-sky green schemes, which will not save the planet.
00:01:59.460They will not reduce carbon emissions.
00:02:00.820What they will do, though, is make our economic suffering much worse and create a very potentially dangerous situation for Canadians.
00:02:10.100So, look, the reality is that COVID-19 is still here.
00:02:14.800You know, we were promised that if we all went out and got vaccinated, life would go back to normal.
00:03:03.360They're keeping vague because they know that the health experts and the politicians know that when they make specific promises, they don't keep them.
00:03:36.160It shed 25,000 jobs according to a Statistics Canada report.
00:03:39.220The bulk of the gains in the month were in pandemic exposed retail sector, which returned to pre-pandemic levels with a net gain of 72,000 jobs.
00:03:47.680However, there were huge job losses in other parts of the economy.
00:04:31.180No one wants to go out and start a business right now, whether it be a restaurant or opening up a store or going into some kind of any kind of business.
00:04:40.620There's real hesitation by small business owners and entrepreneurs about what the rules are going to be one month, three months, six months from now.
00:04:49.280So you don't see that sort of economic engine that's driven by small businesses and entrepreneurs.
00:04:55.020And then at the same time, of course, you have this really tight grip in terms of the tax and regulatory regime in Canada,
00:05:01.820which already suppresses the sort of entrepreneurial spirit in the country.
00:05:05.880So you kind of have these dual issues at play.
00:05:09.020I'm sure there's other issues at play as well, which we'll talk about some of the supply chain issues in this show.
00:05:14.160But really, as a society, we've just become painfully risk-averse.
00:05:17.540We see that with all of the COVID rules, the fact that there are so many people who comply.
00:05:21.600You know, they don't want to contract COVID.
00:05:23.180They don't want to be exposed to COVID.
00:05:24.580Many of them don't want their kids to be exposed to COVID, even though we know that children don't really have negative experiences from COVID.
00:05:30.660It's not really a threat to them in the same way as it's a threat to adults.
00:05:33.680You can see that by the incredibly, incredibly, incredibly low case mortality rate.
00:05:38.820You know, fewer children die of COVID than do of the flu and influenza.
00:06:01.920They're paranoid because they've been exposed to a legacy media that drums up fear, to politicians who promise that, you know, the key to return to normalcy is just everybody get vaccinated, including little kids.
00:06:15.180And so because of that, we kind of live in this society of, like, heightened fear.
00:06:18.560We've really let basic freedoms slip away.
00:06:21.300And part of the real issue here is when you have a society that heavily favors safety and security and even has patience for the sort of authoritarian impulse of the government and says, it's OK that we have all these authoritarian rules because we want to stay safe.
00:06:37.320That's a very scary picture in terms of the loss of freedom, erosion of freedom, but also, you know, on the economic front, again, that sort of risk averse, not wanting to go out there and take a risk by starting a business, creating an idea, building the economy.
00:06:54.120That's what's needed. And those values are sort of slipping away within all this.
00:06:58.460And that's something that's rarely spoken about, the sort of second and third order consequences and unintended consequences of this sort of new health pandemic mentality.
00:07:07.980And sort of connected to that lack of entrepreneurial drive and just a lower job creation, the anemic economy that we're experiencing are these massive, massive supply chain issues that we started to experience them a little bit throughout the last year or so, but they've really exploded.
00:07:23.540They've really exploded. I'll give you an example.
00:07:25.360I was out in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, and as I was flying into the city, I just looked out the window and I couldn't believe my eyes.
00:07:32.520I just saw, you know, you're looking out the bay sort of over Long Beach in Los Angeles, and there were probably a hundred, maybe dozens or a hundred tanker ships just sitting out at sea, just sitting there, you know, waiting, I guess, to be unpacked.
00:07:50.040And there's huge labor supply issues that are happening in the Port of Los Angeles.
00:07:53.920It's the largest port in the United States, the largest port in North America.
00:07:57.580And you just see these ships and just sitting there, you know, and those are goods that are needed to keep the economy going, you know, things that people have ordered, things that people need for their business.
00:08:08.140So, you know, really, really major issues with regards to lack of ability to get things sent.
00:08:14.660Also, I know this, my mother-in-law owns a furniture store, and I know that people who are ordering furniture, people who are trying to get things for their homes are experiencing crazy delays,
00:08:24.300like year-long delays if you're ordering a sofa or if you're trying to buy maybe a new car.
00:08:29.460There's all kinds of just shortages out there that are having so many different impacts on the economy, and it really is starting to feel a little bit chaotic.
00:08:38.240This is a story over in the CBC, seven products that have been disrupted locally by the global supply chain chaos.
00:08:45.660COVID-19 has led to shortages everywhere.
00:08:48.800The article is just basically saying the same thing.
00:08:50.760COVID-19 has triggered a series of circumstances which have wreaked havoc all across global supply chains, causing everything from transportation bottlenecks to labor disruptions to scarcity of materials, furniture and appliances, cars, toys, and video game consoles, flowers, and construction materials.
00:09:09.480And as you would know, some of those things when you're talking about electronics or you're talking about construction materials, that's not just having an impact on one industry.
00:09:18.540And so you can really see that issue and how it's starting to rear its ugly head.
00:09:24.400And yet, last week, our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, went to the G20 meeting, and I didn't hear anything about the global supply chain issues.
00:09:32.880You would think that the purpose of an organization where the heads of the 20 biggest countries in the world get together, particularly for a focus on economic issues.
00:09:42.380That's the whole point, is to talk about financial, global stability, the financial systems, the financial markets.
00:09:48.160The whole purpose is to talk about these issues.
00:09:50.580And instead, Trudeau marched in there demanding climate change commitments from the world leaders, which, again, COP26 was the very next day.
00:09:58.880So he had the entire COP26 conference.
00:10:05.040So, yeah, you've got 12 days to talk about climate change, one day to talk about the global financial systems and the economic systems.
00:10:12.080Why not focus the whole thing on what you can do to move these supply chain issues along, to get to the root of the problem, to try to figure out ways to improve the situation?
00:10:22.460Instead, you have our naive ideological prime minister saying that he's focused solely on climate change, that that's what he cares about and that that's what he wants to talk about instead of dealing with the issues today, the issues on our doorstep, the complex, very, very difficult to solve issues of today and tomorrow.
00:10:41.600So, Trudeau would prefer to pontificate about an issue that may or may not have an impact on us 50 to 100 years down the road.
00:10:49.380So, again, strange set of priorities over there from the prime minister.
00:10:56.940Negative impacts of supply chain disruptions could last until mid-2022, according to a Canadian report.
00:11:04.000So, Canada could face negative downstream economic effects for some time due to current and ongoing supply chain disruptions plaguing the country.
00:11:12.320According to the auditing firm RSM Canada, Canadian businesses can expect disruptions such as port closures, factors shutting down, production halts, and labour shortages well into next year, 2022.
00:11:23.640And, of course, there is corresponding spike in the prices of things because if you can't get things, if there are shortages, if there are products that you can't get, it drives the price up because of scarcity.
00:11:34.000So, many people are competing for the same scarce resources.
00:11:37.220Those prices are going up and that is what we're starting to see.
00:11:40.000The price of certain food items is soaring across the country, surpassing the rate of inflation.
00:11:44.500According to new data from Statistics Canada, the cost of meat, produce, and dairy up 20% to 30% in certain provinces.
00:11:53.560Again, according to Statistics Canada, written up over by TNC.news.
00:11:58.280So, according to the federal department, meats, produce, dairy up 20% to 30%.
00:12:02.940Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, food prices have been impacted by factors such as weather supply disruptions and shifting consumer demands, according to Stats Canada.
00:12:13.660And, look, there's multiple issues at play.
00:12:15.460It's sort of a confluence of issues because you have the supply chain disruptions, the just total bottleneck in certain areas, the inability for people like in the port of Los Angeles to just unload the products fast enough in order to get them to market.
00:12:29.100Whereas, at the other side of the supply chain, lack of workers, lack of ability, lack of capital to invest, to go extract materials needed.
00:12:39.380And then, on the other side, you have governments who have dealt with COVID-19, by and large, by just printing money, by borrowing, spending, spending, spending, borrowing, borrowing, borrowing, not having enough, not having enough access to pay for all of the bills that they're spending.
00:12:53.420And so, they have resorted to printing money, mass printing of money, on a scale that we haven't seen in decades.
00:12:59.580And the whole thing is justified by this sort of new left-wing monetary theory, economic theory, that's really just an old economic theory, but it's wrapped up as this new theory.
00:13:08.540It's called the modern monetary theory.
00:13:10.880And the idea is just that our economies are really strong, that countries are really wealthy, and that we have, you know, if you have your own currency, you can just print a lot of money and pay for it, and there won't be a huge consequence.
00:13:23.000So, that's a very simplistic way of explaining it, but more or less, that's the idea, is that, you know, we're very prosperous, we're very stable, we're very rich, so we might as well just print all this money.
00:13:33.480And, you know, we don't know exactly what's going to happen, but let's just try it and see what happens.
00:13:56.480Every single month, the Canadian government aims for about 2% inflation, and every month we see upwards of 4%, it's approaching 5%.
00:14:03.960And so, you know, this is what we're seeing.
00:14:07.020So, it starts with the printing of money.
00:14:09.080Trudeau racked up the biggest deficit ever in just two months.
00:14:12.340So, this was back in April and May of 2020, the shortfall, so the amount that Trudeau was spending that he didn't have, that was less than the amount that they were bringing in through revenue, through taxes, was $87 billion, according to the finance department figures that were released.
00:14:29.180So, sure, Canadians supported this idea.
00:14:31.500Canadians wanted the Trudeau government to dig in and borrow a bunch of money so that people wouldn't have to necessarily go into their own debt.
00:14:39.340You know, if you lost your job, if you were laid off, it was the government that forced the economy to shut down.
00:14:43.540So, it sort of only made sense that the government would then pay your bills while you were forcefully unemployed.
00:14:49.020I do understand that, and I do support the idea.
00:14:51.960I didn't really support the idea of mass lockdowns, but if you're going to have mass lockdowns, then I do support the idea that you have to at least pay the people, because otherwise it's just completely unfair.
00:15:00.340So, it did have political support, but it was a dramatic departure for Canada, which had a long-standing aversion to high debt, to big deficit spending, and really what it did was just push the problem down the road, leave the problem for future generations.
00:15:15.200Canada is now years away, perhaps decades away from balancing the budget.
00:15:19.320Remember, the Parliamentary Bureau officer had a projection that under Trudeau's plan, Canada would not balance its budget until 2070.
00:15:26.480So, you know, we're talking about almost 50 years of piling on more and more and more debt.
00:15:32.180In 2021, the Liberals, again, created an absolutely staggering deficit, a $354 billion projected deficit for this year.
00:15:42.560So, they really blew the bank out last year, and then instead of, you know, calming things down and removing all those temporary measures, they kind of just kept it going.
00:15:50.060We kind of just kept it going and continued to absolutely blow the budget, spend on an unprecedented level.
00:15:58.560Canada's federal debt is expected to cross the $1.3 trillion mark.
00:16:03.260Remember when Justin Trudeau was first elected?
00:16:05.260He promised to do tiny little deficits, $10 billion, small little deficits relative to the size of government, and then get back to normal.
00:16:12.300Well, that, of course, was total nonsense, totally, totally untrue.
00:16:18.140He's almost tripled the debt, and Canadians will pay for it.
00:16:21.280And what happens when you blow the bank, when you spend all this money, borrow all this money?
00:16:26.700It's hard to get bonds to actually cover the money that you're borrowing.
00:16:30.160So, again, they've resorted to inflation.
00:16:32.340They've resorted to printing lots and lots of money, and this leads to inflation.
00:16:36.920So, we're going to talk a little bit about inflation and how that happens.
00:16:41.140But first, if you're watching this video on YouTube right now, I'm just going to stop you.
00:16:44.320I'm going to ask you to please like this video, leave us a comment, don't forget to subscribe to True North.
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00:17:43.600And I think Pierre Polyev is one of the only people in the country who's properly reacting to this and ringing the alarm bell and raising his concern and talking about how this really is a tax.
00:17:53.360It's a hidden tax that makes all of our money, all of your savings, all of the money that you've saved up, your paycheck, all the money that you used to live, it makes it less valuable.
00:18:02.200So, inflation is the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time.
00:18:06.700Inflation is the rate of which the value of the currency is falling.
00:18:09.740Consequently, the general level of prices and goods and services is rising.
00:18:13.600So, the general idea is just that the amount of money that it used to take to pay for things is no longer the case.
00:18:18.420So, you know, your salary remains the same.
00:18:20.240Your take-home pay after taxes remains the same.
00:18:22.420But it used to cost you around, say, $100 to do your weekly grocery shopping.
00:18:26.600And now, all of a sudden, it costs you $150.
00:18:29.160Or even on a smaller level, say you used to go and pick up a sandwich for lunch.
00:19:11.760It's bad for, again, your ability to budget, your ability to make ends meet.
00:19:15.620But the bigger fear here, the underlying fear, because we're talking about such huge numbers, such unprecedented spending, again, not just in Canada, but all over the world, is the fear of hyperinflation.
00:19:25.980And that is what really, really destabilizes societies.
00:19:40.220It's a term to describe the rapid, excessive, and out-of-control price increases in an economy.
00:19:45.440So, what happens when the central bankers just sort of lose control, they require to print so much money to keep up with the government spending, that they just create such a huge input of cash into the system that prices surge out of control, that the value of money doesn't hold, the value of money changes.
00:20:01.400We've seen it in various places around in recent history in the last hundred years, where, you know, the price of bread in the morning is totally different than the price of bread in the afternoon, where the value of the money is less than the dollar, the paper that's actually printed in or the coin that's actually held.
00:20:20.760You know, we're not there right now, but we should be more aware of how this happens, how we get to these conditions, and what happens after a country goes through something like that.
00:20:30.080You know, it's happened throughout history.
00:20:31.840It's happened recently in countries like Germany, Russia, Hungary, Argentina in the last hundred years.
00:20:37.240So, again, very concerning stuff and not the proper attention needed, you know, if you ask left-wing economists or you ask people in the Trudeau government about the risk of hyperinflation, they'll just shake their head, shrug, and say, no, that's not a concern.
00:20:52.780That's not going to happen in a stable country like Canada, and they don't give it any thought whatsoever, but it should be something that they think about.
00:20:58.940And so instead of talking about all these issues, all the, you know, I just sort of glossed over things, I didn't go into great detail in any of these issues, but instead of talking about any of this stuff, instead of focusing on any of the real issues that matter in the country, any of the economic reasons, again, we have our prime minister over in Scotland at the COP26, just virtue signaling, showing off, doing things that make him feel good, totally over-the-top nonsense about a problem that's real too.
00:21:26.080You know, climate change is real. Climate change is a threat. Humans need to be able to adapt to our changing environment.
00:21:31.780Some people see this as a huge threat. Some people see it as something that is a challenge that we can overcome.
00:21:37.160But regardless, you know, instead of dealing with all of the various crises that we see and the issues, we have instead our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, with a singular focus on climate change.
00:21:48.120This is the only thing he cares about. This is all he talks about. This is what we see him focus on the absolute most.
00:21:54.340And so we have these ridiculous pledges. First, he calls for global carbon tax. Not going to happen.
00:22:01.000Next, he says that Canada is going to move forward on a pledge to cap oil and gas emissions, a hard cap that basically says that by 2050, no more emissions, zero, net zero emissions down the road.
00:22:16.120So we see him talking about that because really, you know, with a country that's struggling with job losses, with a country that's struggling with their money not going as far as it used to,
00:22:25.260with a country that's struggling with not being able to pay its bills, with spending so out of control that it has to resort to printing money in order to just pay the bills.
00:22:33.020Yeah, let's kill our biggest industry. Yeah, let's let's put a hard cap, put more Canadians out of work, kill the economic engine of the country.
00:22:41.300Why? Because of green ideology. OK, way to go, Justin Trudeau.
00:22:45.120This is one that I wanted to focus on because I wrote about it in my column. Truly, truly insane.
00:22:50.280So Ottawa pledges to end financing to foreign fossil fuel production projects in 2022.
00:22:56.980So the federal government is pledging to end all of its foreign financing of anything to do with oil and gas by next year.
00:23:03.380Commitment will place heavy pressure on Export Development Canada, which provides loans, insurance and other forms of financial backing to oil and gas companies.
00:23:10.500But it also impacts the Canadian pension and other pensions, public pensions that invest in oil and gas around the world.
00:23:18.800So here's the idea. In times of inflation, like we're experiencing now, there's a couple of things.
00:23:24.820There's a bit of advice that bankers tend to give to investors about things that you can invest in to sort of hedge against inflation.
00:23:32.320So so during times inflation, you want to protect your assets and you want to invest in things that will hold their value.
00:23:38.280And so you might get recommendations to purchase, you know, precious metals or maybe go into crypto or real estate is usually a good one.
00:23:46.220And another good one is energy, oil and gas energy projects.
00:23:50.500That is a good holder of value, a good hedge against inflation.
00:23:53.140So so instead of the Canadian pensions and other assets investing in something to hedge against inflation,
00:23:59.580Justin Trudeau is advising them to do the exact opposite and go out and divest and sell all energy stocks and just get out of oil and gas and fossil fuel, again, for ideological purposes.
00:24:12.080So not exactly taking the advice of people who do this for a living, going against common sense in this regard and selling off our oil and gas assets because of ideology, because of green ideology.
00:24:25.540But this brings us to a broader contradiction and a bigger problem, which is here we have a government, a Trudeau government, ideologically driven left wing government committed to transitioning Canada away from energy, away from oil and gas, blocking pipelines, doing everything they can to kill this industry in Canada.
00:24:44.080And meanwhile, they're still investing in, you know, you have Expert Development Canada, which is a bank that helps with developing countries.
00:24:51.300They're still providing loans, insurance and other financial backing to new energy projects around the world.
00:24:56.780What a what a what a bunch of hypocrites.
00:24:58.740What a huge contradiction that they are sitting at home telling Canadians to transition away from energy, oil and gas and transition away from fossil fuels towards what?