The Candice Malcolm Show - When unions stop representing workers (ft. Brian Lilley)

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Candace Malcolm Show. My name is Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the

00:00:07.840 Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Thank you for including us on what is hopefully your Labour

00:00:13.200 Day long weekend. If you are actually out there labouring, thank you so much for the work you do,

00:00:17.940 and thank you for including us. We have a special show for you today because quite often you'll hear

00:00:23.700 government unions talking a lot about Labour Day. You're going to be seeing parades, you're going to

00:00:29.000 be hearing people saying things like, oh Prime Minister Mark Carney is going to cut government

00:00:33.680 services to the bone. What does that really mean? What's the difference between a trade union, okay,

00:00:40.780 so somebody who is say a carpenter or a boilermaker or a plumber, that's a trade union versus things

00:00:48.820 like PSAC, okay, the Public Service Alliance of Canada and other government unions. What is the

00:00:55.100 difference there? How much are we paying? And how can we actually get more efficient government in order

00:01:02.240 to hold them to account better and actually pay less in taxes? Because I wanted to point out, folks,

00:01:09.560 you're paying like 42, 43% of your pay to taxes. How is that nice for workers? How is that nice for

00:01:23.240 the labour movement? How is it that the biggest mouthpieces in the government labour movement

00:01:30.500 are saying things like, we need to spend more, we need a bigger bureaucracy, we can't cut?

00:01:37.680 I will remind folks that the researchers over at the Fraser Institute, they do a great calculation

00:01:43.420 every single year. They go through all levels of government, federal, provincial, and municipal.

00:01:49.540 They add up all of the taxes, fees, levies, whatever other euphemistic term is being applied to taxes

00:01:56.780 these days, and they come up with a calculation. And this year, yeah, it's around 42 or 43% of your pay

00:02:05.500 on average that's going out the door in taxes. Let's do this another way. Say you're on regular salary,

00:02:13.400 like most people, and you get your salary deposited into your bank account. Say it's every two weeks.

00:02:20.140 Do a thought experiment. Imagine what usually lands in your bank account. Double it. That's close to how

00:02:29.040 much the government is taking from you. Picture if that amount were doubled, what could you do with that

00:02:37.460 money by choice? Could you afford more nutritious food? Could you pay off some credit card bills?

00:02:44.520 Could you save up maybe for a house? Could you afford to rent a better place? Think of all of the

00:02:51.460 individual choices you would be able to make that would better your life or better the lives of your

00:02:57.740 children and your family if your pay were almost doubled. That's how much taxes various levels of

00:03:06.020 government are taking from you. And that is why I do not understand why the so-called labor movement,

00:03:12.880 especially the ones that are connected to government, refuse to tackle the issue of taxes.

00:03:19.740 Why do they keep on just demanding more and more government, bigger and bigger government,

00:03:25.020 more and more spending from government? Because at the end of the day, this is your money. And

00:03:31.840 pretty much all of us could be considered laborers. Unless you inherited well and you're sitting back

00:03:38.960 on your landed gentry manor by the pool, most of us work. Most of us are workers. And you know what the

00:03:46.180 biggest drain on the workers are nowadays this Labor Day? Taxes. How are we going to get the government

00:03:54.120 to be smaller? How are we going to hold them to account? How are we going to be able to save more

00:03:59.480 of our money? Let's find out. Joining me now is my good friend Brian Lilly. He is, of course, a senior

00:04:05.860 columnist with the Toronto Sun newspaper chain. He's also the host of this podcast, Full Comment.

00:04:13.000 You straight up are. Like, Brian, it's between us girls. It's like the only mainstream media podcast,

00:04:19.420 and I'm using that term loosely out of respect that I listen to. And so you are my conduit into

00:04:25.340 what is actually going on in the parliamentary press gallery and mainstream media. So really, you could

00:04:29.900 just tell me anything and I'd believe you at this point. Well, it's good to hear from my former intern

00:04:34.780 that she likes listening to my podcast. Yeah, it's kind of weird. You say you're using mainstream media

00:04:41.900 loosely. It's kind of weird whether I am mainstream media or not. I mean, clearly I write for the Toronto

00:04:47.580 Sun. Full Comment is with National Post. Those are pretty mainstream. But a lot of people who are

00:04:52.700 part of the clique, they're like, Lily, over there. But, you know, I'll tell you on stuff like our

00:05:01.660 trading relationship with the United States, I've been getting calls from high level people telling me,

00:05:06.540 you know what, you're the one that's actually getting the meat on this that understands what's

00:05:12.300 happening and why there's such a problem with the talks between Canada and the US, Ambassador Hillman.

00:05:20.860 And so it's, or, you know, the various things that are going on. But yeah, I'm in the mainstream,

00:05:26.940 and I'm not accepted by the mainstream. So it's a fun position to be in. I also straddle online and,

00:05:33.260 you know, Dead Tree publications, like a few others that are in the gallery sort of stuff.

00:05:38.540 Didn't you get an interview with Steve Bannon recently? Or was that like an old Sun News Network

00:05:43.260 fever dream that I had? No, that was February. I was down in Washington. And I texted Bannon and

00:05:51.100 said, Okay, can we connect? I had met Bannon before the first Trump White House. It's funny,

00:05:59.180 I used to interview Steve Bannon and John Bolton, two guys that both ended up in the Trump administration

00:06:04.300 who can't stand each other. And, you know, both having various troubles with the law. But I reached

00:06:11.820 out to Bannon and I said, Can I do an interview with you about the 51st state about trade about

00:06:18.460 what's going on? And it's some really fascinating insights, whether you, you know, like the guy or not,

00:06:24.460 he's very smart guy, very plugged in. And yeah, on that front, the Republicans are starting to say,

00:06:34.700 back then, people like Bannon and others were like, Oh, no, we don't mind Doug Ford, because, you know,

00:06:39.740 he's attacking the tariffs. But, you know, now, they're not liking Doug Ford, because he's going

00:06:45.660 personal. And back then he wasn't. So it's interesting times.

00:06:51.180 Yeah, it's always smart. And I'll stand by this to go meet the people who actually have the ear of

00:06:57.340 the US president. So it's a smart thing to do. It was a smart thing for Alberta Premier Daniel Smith

00:07:03.420 to fly down there and talk to Ben Shapiro. That is a smart thing to do.

00:07:07.260 I know we're supposed to be talking about other stuff, but I know, I'm sorry.

00:07:12.300 I'll talk about anything with you. You know that.

00:07:15.900 On that issue of talking to people who have the ear of the president or are influential,

00:07:20.620 Danielle Smith was raked over the coals. National TV newscast doing stories about how she's meeting

00:07:26.860 with this controversial guy and he's anti-Canadian. First off, Ben Shapiro used to be a big part of

00:07:33.500 Sun News Network. We ran his columns in the Toronto Sun. We run them again these days,

00:07:37.740 every week, Wednesday or Thursday. And he's a guy whose sister used to live here in Toronto,

00:07:44.700 and knows the country well, has spoken up for the country. So she goes down, meets with him.

00:07:52.460 And then what's he doing? He's talking about how Canada is not the enemy. This is a dumb policy.

00:07:57.980 We should change this. He's speaking up for Canada. What's the Canadian embassy doing? They're hiring a 1.00

00:08:05.180 firm run by Democrats, a firm who's headed up by a guy whose claim to fame was he helped take back the

00:08:12.460 house from the Republicans in Trump's first term in 2018. And that's the firm that's going to teach

00:08:19.500 them how to access conservative media, how to understand it. Give me a break. As Steven Taylor said,

00:08:27.900 any Canadian who spent a weekend at CPAC has more conservative and Republican connections in

00:08:34.140 Washington than the Canadian embassy does. It's hopeless. Yeah, that's even dumber than I thought

00:08:39.740 they were pulling. Okay. Speaking of dumb, we're speaking today on Labor Day. Yeah. And I, you know, 0.99

00:08:46.300 I've got some mixed feelings about Labor Day. So I was raised in a union household. All of my brothers are tradesmen.

00:08:52.220 They're in what I would call real unions. Okay. Similar to the union that endorsed conservative

00:08:58.140 leader Pierre Polyev. So I know that you have it in your family as well, and that it's really

00:09:03.260 important to you. I wanted to get into this Labor Day issue of a real, what I would say, trade union,

00:09:09.740 a normal workers union versus government union, because we're hearing so much. Once again,

00:09:15.820 you and I spent a lot of time together in Ottawa hearing from government unions, including PSAC,

00:09:20.300 now saying the sky is falling because Prime Minister Mark Carney is actually saying, you know what,

00:09:25.820 we got to trim the fat around here. We need to reduce the budget. What's your take on this year's

00:09:30.540 Labor Day? Where do we stand when it comes to unionized workers? Well, do you know the history

00:09:35.260 of why they chose the first Monday in September? Actually don't remind me. I'm going off memory here,

00:09:42.140 but if memory serves, it was to get away from the actual communist celebration on May Day,

00:09:48.300 on May the 1st. And so they wanted something different to try and, you know, okay, well,

00:09:54.300 you're going to have trade unions, but let's not be communists. That's my understanding. Hopefully,

00:09:59.100 it's not an urban myth, like we change the clocks every spring for the farmers. You know,

00:10:05.260 and where don't they do that in Saskatchewan, where there's a lot of farmers. But my understanding is

00:10:09.980 that's what they did. There is a deep divide between trade unions and government bureaucrat unions.

00:10:20.380 My son is in a trade union down in New Brunswick now, was down visiting him and mentioned CUPE and

00:10:29.020 he just went off. I mean, look, the building that I'm sitting in right now is the Ontario legislature at

00:10:34.940 Queen's Park. A lot of the workers here that are part of the Ontario public service are represented by

00:10:42.300 CUPE. There's good public service unions and bad ones. Ops is pretty good. CUPE, you know, Fred Hahn,

00:10:50.540 the guy is horrible. He basically runs it as his own personal political pack. It's like he's out there

00:10:58.860 running on other political issues that have zero to do with the the working conditions of public

00:11:06.700 service, which, you know, they should be protected to a degree. I mean, I think they go a little bit

00:11:12.220 crazy in terms of how they do it. And, and they're more concerned about their working environment than

00:11:19.420 the customer service they provide to you and as taxpayers. But sure, you know, if you want to unionize,

00:11:25.580 go ahead. But Fred Hahn runs a political operation obsessed with Israel, obsessed with

00:11:33.420 anti-Semitic comments and behavior. You know, if I was a member of that union, and in not, I'm not,

00:11:41.100 I'm a member of Unifor, not by choice, but I am required by law to sing the internationally twice a day.

00:11:48.220 They, you know, if I was in that CUPE union, I'd be voting to decertify. I'd be saying, get me out of

00:11:54.220 fear. Let me go find, you know, a proper union that's going to negotiate a contract,

00:12:00.540 negotiate him on behalf of me on, on issues that a lot of workers are dealing with right now, such as,

00:12:07.500 okay, how does AI play into how our jobs are done? Can we use it? Can we not use it? What are the

00:12:13.740 limitations? These are, these are real issues. Fred Hahn going off about resistance by any means

00:12:21.100 necessary after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, isn't a workplace issue.

00:12:27.260 No, it's not. It's a big, big charge political issue. And I can't imagine being forced to pay

00:12:33.980 dues in order to pay that guy's salary. I haven't even looked to see what his salary is. It's probably

00:12:39.660 disgusting. You see less of that in the trade unions. Now, United Steelworkers is pretty far left.

00:12:47.260 I was amazed that Ontario Premier Doug Ford was at their union hall recently in Hamilton at 10.05.

00:12:54.300 The guys on the shop floor at Stelco, which is where 10.05 represents, they love Ford. They love

00:13:01.100 Pierre. I've been to Stelco with both of them. They are mobbed. These guys are conservative voters,

00:13:07.420 but the leadership of local 10.05 has generally since the 1930s or 40s been communists.

00:13:13.100 And so I'm amazed that they would stand next to Ford even if he's giving them money for

00:13:19.420 training. But are the steelworkers a trade union in the way the carpenters and plumbers are? That's

00:13:24.620 up for debate. But the hardcore trade unions where you've got a skilled trade have moved away from

00:13:33.340 supporting NDP leaning parties. Quick example, you said I grew up with this in my house. I grew up when I

00:13:40.620 was young. I only remember orange signs on the lawn. Didn't know why they were there. Eventually found

00:13:45.660 out it's about elections. And well, my dad came from Scotland. He was an old style labor guy. He was in

00:13:54.460 the Boilermakers. He supported the NDP because that was the party that looked out for working class men and

00:14:03.580 women. This past federal and provincial election, in fact, the past two provincial elections, the

00:14:12.940 Boilermakers, my dad's old union, my dad's old local. In fact, the guy that announced the endorsements

00:14:20.620 for both Pierre Polyev and Doug Ford apprenticed under my dad. There has been a wholesale change.

00:14:27.900 And it's because these guys build things. And the NDP, and to a very strong extent, the liberals,

00:14:37.420 we'll see if Carney changes this, they have moved from being a party that wanted things built to a

00:14:42.460 party of just saying no. You know, no, you can't have a new highway. No, you can't have a new port

00:14:48.060 infrastructure being built. No, we can't build anything. Well, what happens to those men and women 0.98

00:14:55.020 in those unions? If you keep having no be the only answer, they're not working. They're on pokey.

00:15:02.460 And that's not where most people want to be. So that's why there's been this wholesale change. And

00:15:10.620 they're voting with their wallets. Also, I would argue on many cultural issues, which some conservatives

00:15:18.060 never want to touch and others want to hang on to too tightly. Got to find the balance there. But

00:15:23.500 you know, their voting patterns have changed because of the way that the parties have decided

00:15:33.180 they want to align. The NDP does not get much support in that. David Puccini, Ontario's labor

00:15:41.100 minister is marching in the Toronto Labor Day parade. That was a tradition started by Monty McNaughton.

00:15:47.100 And, you know, when Monty was in opposition under Tim Hudak, there's no way that they would be showing

00:15:52.620 up. There was a lot of hard work. Stephen Harper tried to bridge this divide a little bit. And he got

00:15:59.020 some support from the Building Trades Council over infrastructure money in a couple of his budgets,

00:16:06.060 but he couldn't get it that far. And the real shift in Canada, I would say,

00:16:13.820 started in Ontario, a lot of hard work by Monty McNaughton, who was he's out of politics now,

00:16:20.620 but was Doug Ford's labor minister, by Premier Ford himself, and then by successive people that also

00:16:27.580 worked with Pierre Polyev. McNaughton was advising Polyev on his strategy for doing this,

00:16:33.900 essentially replicating what Boris Johnson had done in the UK, taking on the red wall. These guys are

00:16:40.620 never going to make inroads with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, or as I like to call them,

00:16:44.940 because it annoys them, PSAC. They don't like PSAC. Did you know that?

00:16:49.180 No, but it's their name. So why not say PSAC all the time?

00:16:52.380 Because it sounds funny, and we might giggle.

00:16:55.820 That's the whole point of saying it.

00:16:57.260 Exactly. My late brother was also a Boilermaker. He passed away suddenly a couple of years ago,

00:17:05.260 and I could see this shift even in them, in my brothers who were in the trades,

00:17:09.900 and they were all moving that direction. And at least what I was seeing on the ground out west,

00:17:15.580 when Pierre Polyev was doing a lot of those campaign type stops, when he was doing those

00:17:20.940 leadership stops, he would stand there for hours, like two or three hours, while people lined up to

00:17:27.180 get a picture with him. And a lot of those guys and gals were there in work boots. They were just 0.83

00:17:32.940 coming off shift. So I really noticed this big ground shift over to Team Blue. And in your neck

00:17:39.820 of the woods, seeing the pipe workers like directly endorse Pierre Polyev because of things like the

00:17:46.780 industrial carbon tax saying that this is going to decimate our jobs in the steel industry and chase

00:17:53.020 some of these industries south to where there is no industrial carbon tax in the States. I found that

00:17:58.140 to be a profound shift. Do you think now you've been in the game for a long time? Do you think

00:18:04.060 that Carney is pragmatic enough to realize this sea change? Do you think that he's going to say

00:18:10.220 something like, okay, you know what? No more industrial carbon tax. I don't want to ruin our

00:18:15.020 steel industry. Turns out we do use it a lot, you know, joking aside. No more, you know, carbon tax

00:18:21.180 tariffs that I've been thinking about imposing. Do you think he might be pragmatic?

00:18:25.260 You know, the comments the other day from Tim Hodgson, which were much, that was in Berlin.

00:18:35.740 So he is the Minister of Energy and everything, everything that's important to us right now.

00:18:42.140 He was in Berlin, and he talked about how Canada's domestic and foreign policy will now align

00:18:49.820 with policies on things around energy and critical minerals. And he chastised the former Trudeau

00:18:59.100 government for taking LNG off the table and said they're going to do that. Now they're talking medium

00:19:03.820 term. They're not talking about doing what the Germans did and getting an export terminal built

00:19:08.300 quickly. So, you know, my answer on almost everything with Mark Carney is it depends because he talks a

00:19:17.420 lot but hasn't delivered much yet. If he starts delivering this fall and early into next year,

00:19:23.900 he has the potential to govern for a long time if he wants. If he doesn't and he just keeps talking and

00:19:30.620 not delivering, he could quickly turn into the next Paul Martin. We just, we don't know which way it's

00:19:36.860 going to go. But if he is pragmatic, and he builds, and Hodgson is giving free reign to go out there

00:19:46.060 and start getting projects moving, he could stop some of this shift, he could pull some of those voters

00:19:52.700 back over to, you know, liberals, you know, I don't see the NDP making that shift, they are quickly

00:19:59.340 trying to make themselves irrelevant, or as Christian Luprecht described Canada on the foreign, on the

00:20:06.540 international stage the other day, we're significant by our insignificance. That's what the NDP is trying

00:20:11.900 to do to themselves as a political party. So I don't see them getting it back. But the liberals could peel

00:20:17.100 some away. In John Zerichelli, who is the Minister of State for Labor, he's not full minister, the full

00:20:24.940 Minister of Labor would be Paddy Haidu, who's got a different title. But Zerichelli is a smart guy.

00:20:33.100 He is a political operative who goes back to Dalton McGinty at the Queen's Park days, worked with the

00:20:43.100 Trudeau government in their early years. If they start using someone like him to make inroads the

00:20:51.180 way that McNaughton did for both Polyev and Ford, that that would be problematic for the conservatives

00:21:00.780 at both the federal and provincial levels. Because, you know, these guys, I spent 20 years listening to

00:21:08.140 politicians of all stripes, but it started under the liberals, saying, well, we're moving to the

00:21:14.060 knowledge economy, they weren't exactly saying go code. But they were saying, we're moving to the

00:21:20.300 knowledge economy, they had no time for this. You know, you're going to rue the day that you you hold

00:21:27.580 on to that view, going forward, what are the jobs that aren't going to be hit by AI, things like this,

00:21:33.660 or healthcare workers, anything that's hands on. You know, it's not there yet. But one day I'll be

00:21:40.540 replaced by AI prompts, or I'll replace myself with AI prompts and have more time.

00:21:46.700 It'll just be these terrible kind of Frank Miller comic book talking heads, the two of us talking.

00:21:52.060 All right, I quickly wanted you to touch on the government unions and our favorite one to say,

00:21:56.940 PSAC in Ottawa. I think it's the Public Service Alliance of Canada, in all seriousness. But yeah,

00:22:03.340 PSAC, they're now sounding the alarm, saying, oh my gosh, you know, the sky is falling,

00:22:08.060 Carney's going to cut. Okay, number one, the public service, the bureaucracy has grown like,

00:22:14.540 in a huge way. So like,

00:22:15.980 It's something like 40% over 10 years, isn't it?

00:22:18.940 Even more, it's like in the 70 range. So I'll put it this way, it's like 99,000 been added since 2015.

00:22:26.700 If we had kept the growth of the bureaucracy in line with population growth, we would be saving

00:22:33.020 $7 billion a year. It was, I couldn't believe it. Franco had to like walk me through the math. That

00:22:40.060 is astonishing amount. So do you, again, another practicality question with Mark Carney, and I know

00:22:46.220 I'm asking you to look into a crystal ball, but do you think he's got it when it comes to making cuts?

00:22:51.180 Do you think he's actually going to make cuts or do you think this is a lot of noise?

00:22:56.140 Well, he's asked his cabinet ministers to make cuts. And so the public service unions are always

00:23:01.180 going to decry. They only want more members, but that is the point of the union. They're there to

00:23:08.060 represent their members and they want to have more members because that's good for them. And so they're

00:23:12.460 going to oppose any cuts. No one can look and say that their services are 40 or 50% better than they

00:23:20.700 were when the Trudeau liberals took office. Things were actually working pretty well back then. I mean,

00:23:26.860 I remember the passport office got streamlined years ago and getting your passport used to be a huge

00:23:32.540 pain. And then, you know, under Harper, they completely changed the system. Suddenly getting

00:23:38.700 your passport was a breeze. It showed up on time. It was easy to get appointments. And then the Trudeau

00:23:43.420 liberals came in, bad management. And we remember the people lining up outside and paying people to

00:23:49.340 stand in line to get their passports because it was taking months to get these things. Good

00:23:53.820 management matters. And so look, one of the things that both the unions and the bureaucrats and the

00:24:02.140 political staffers do if they're told to cut is find something really public. So the RCMP is going

00:24:08.780 to be good. Oh, we need to cut the musical ride. If you are covering City Hall, as I have done in

00:24:14.620 Toronto and Montreal and Ottawa. Oh, we have to cut the budget. Oh, waiting pools are going to have to

00:24:20.620 close and libraries. Oh yeah. All the libraries have to be shut down. And so they go for these public

00:24:26.780 things. And there was an example of that that we saw. All of their budget cuts that the departments

00:24:34.060 were asked for, the ministers were asked for, were supposed to be delivered to Frankie Bubbles on

00:24:39.740 August 28th, so last Thursday. And Frankie Bubbles, by the way, for people that haven't heard me call

00:24:46.780 him that, that's what I call our finance minister, Francois Philippe Champagne. My understanding is he knows

00:24:53.420 the nickname and doesn't mind it. Well, it's funny. He was supposed to, yeah, and it's not mean.

00:25:00.220 His name's Champagne Bubbles. He was supposed to get those last Thursday. Well, last week,

00:25:07.020 Stephanie Taylor at National Post got added to a group chat, kind of like that guy, what was it,

00:25:12.940 the Atlantic that got added to Pete Hegseth's group chat. J.D. Vance's, oh my gosh.

00:25:19.580 Except this one wasn't about war. It was about budget cuts. And, and so she gets added to a group

00:25:25.420 chat with senior political staffers at Environment and Climate Change Canada. And they're doing what

00:25:31.500 I was just describing, you know, cut the musical ride, cut libraries, cut, uh, we're going to have

00:25:35.660 to close all the schools if we cut the provincial budget, that sort of thing that, so for their

00:25:40.780 department, they're like, well, what can we cut? Well, you know, there's this program that helps

00:25:44.780 control algae blooms on the Great Lakes. And people will notice that. So this is what they're

00:25:52.060 talking about cutting. Um, so this is the challenge that Carney's going to have, uh, if he wants to be

00:25:59.180 successful, I think he should spend a lot of time talking to Jean Chrétien, uh, much like the, uh,

00:26:04.620 former prime minister, Stephen Harper did. One of the stories that I heard about Chrétien was when

00:26:09.900 he finally decided, okay, we have to cut, he didn't come in on a promise to cut and he was

00:26:15.260 forced to do it. And Paul Martin really hated cutting because Paul Martin, despite what people

00:26:19.740 think was a far left liberal, he thought Chrétien was too right wing and he only cut because Chrétien

00:26:25.820 forced him to, but every, uh, department would, their minister would go in and try and make the case,

00:26:32.620 oh boss, you know, we could, we're doing great work, but we could do so much better if you just gave

00:26:37.100 me another, uh, 10%, another 5%. Chrétien only had a couple of meetings like this after he decided

00:26:44.060 to cut, because according to the story I was told, people would go in and pitch to him, boss,

00:26:50.220 I need another 5%. He'd sit there, listen patiently, respectfully. The minister would leave and he'd call

00:26:56.060 up treasury board and say, cut them double what they just asked for. If you're not ruthless,

00:27:01.980 the, the ministers won't do it or most ministers won't. And the, the, the bureaucrats will never do

00:27:09.420 it, but you know, there are ways to, to streamline government services and provide better service

00:27:15.980 without costing more. It's just that we have refused to do it. And look, I know the feds have

00:27:23.260 pooched themselves by getting rid of a lot of office space during the pandemic. And then now they can't even

00:27:29.100 get people to the office three or four days a week, nevermind five. Um, but I, I think a lot

00:27:35.900 of lost productivity is caused by the work from home mentality. Um, some people are more productive

00:27:42.140 at home. I know I can be, but writing is a solitary endeavor. Uh, but I interviewed one, uh, business

00:27:49.020 executive trying to get his office back to work. And his line to me was, you think you're more productive

00:27:54.300 at home, but the company's more productive with you at the office because you're able to collaborate

00:27:59.900 that, you know, getting them back to office will be a major thing for, uh, productivity and also

00:28:05.420 figuring out, well, do you need to, to cut so many jobs or are people going to quit and say, no,

00:28:10.700 I don't want to ride the bus in from Orleans. I'm going to stay where I am. That LRT doesn't work

00:28:16.220 properly anyway. No. And we all warned them that it wasn't going to work properly. Brian, before I let

00:28:21.260 you go, I needed just one of our favorite topics is the CBC, or as we named it back at sun news

00:28:26.780 network, the state broadcaster. Uh, there's something, two things. One, the taxpayers

00:28:31.500 federation, we're taking them to court because they're refusing to tell people how much they're

00:28:35.260 spending on ads. Like we don't need to know the specific bus ads. Like we get that, but just give

00:28:41.340 us the entire lump sum amount, which is like, you're not even asking for how much did you spend

00:28:47.100 on bus shelter ads or on radio or billboards, just how much, what's your ad budget that that's

00:28:54.460 a reasonable ask under, I'm pretty well familiar with the access to information law around CBC,

00:29:00.220 because I've written more stories about access to information at CBC and their refusals than anyone

00:29:06.140 on the planet. Uh, my favorite was we asked them once, how many vehicles does CBC have either owned or

00:29:13.420 leased and they refused to admit to anything. They blacked out everything. And there's one page

00:29:18.700 that said they had two satellite trucks and a Ford Taurus. And so I said, well, apparently CBC runs a

00:29:25.740 whole network on, um, uh, two satellite trucks and a Ford Taurus. They got hauled before committee over

00:29:32.700 that. So I think you guys have a good chance of winning on this. Yeah, I think we're onto them. Uh,

00:29:37.180 cause that's all we're asking is that amount of money. And there's another push, uh, to find out,

00:29:42.060 okay. So folks might remember a little while ago when former CEO, Catherine Tate was dragged

00:29:47.500 in front of the heritage committee. That was really good fun. And she was, people were pointing

00:29:52.060 out the fact that you need like the James Webb telescope to be able to zoom in and find

00:29:56.860 any of their T TV viewers nowadays. It is microscopic. Okay. And her answer was always,

00:30:02.700 Oh, but our app, Oh, but our app now, all of a sudden people are saying, okay, fine.

00:30:07.660 How many subscribers do you have to your app? They won't say they won't say now. A lot of

00:30:14.220 people are saying that must be because they only have like six subscribers. Now I did spend some

00:30:19.420 time on the other side of the wall. I was inside the CBC for like six weeks or so. So I'm hedging

00:30:24.700 my bets here because they're weird. Okay. Like they're, it's as if a newsroom were run by the

00:30:30.940 government. That's what the CBC is like. So it is, they could have their knickers in a twist about

00:30:37.580 some other reason for not revealing how many people they have subscribed to their app. But

00:30:42.060 what's your guess if we're taking bets? Oh,

00:30:47.260 Oh, how like an actual number of subscribers? No, no, no. Like, why aren't they?

00:30:51.500 CBC is one of those entities that if you like it, you'll like it a lot. And that's why you can find

00:31:03.180 people who will buy CBC shirts. No, one's going to buy a CTV t-shirt and wear it around. They would

00:31:10.860 buy stuff from us back in the day. Yep. I think they're being foolish and paranoid.

00:31:17.900 I think it's going to hurt them in the end. I think they will lose on this one. 1.00

00:31:24.540 But they are odd. But don't believe things Catherine Tate tells you. She told that committee

00:31:29.660 hearing that she knew nothing about why Travis Danrash was off the air. And yet the briefing

00:31:34.060 notes for her committee appearance at that meeting showed that she was briefed on Travis Danrash and

00:31:39.100 why he wasn't on the air. That part, of course, was redacted, the why.

00:31:42.540 I missed that part. I was so focused on the numbers. She claimed to not know.

00:31:50.300 Yeah. Travis. Yeah. So, look, are there going to be some people that have the free app?

00:32:00.300 Sure. My guess is if you ever get the number and you want to know the paid, who's paying for CBC app,

00:32:06.780 it will if generally it's going to be between two and a half and five percent of whatever their free

00:32:15.100 subscriber rate is. That's going on years of things like sub stack subscriber rates. It goes back to the

00:32:23.180 old direct mail fundraising. That's about the percentage that would subscribe. So I'm betting it's

00:32:32.300 not an awful lot. But I would imagine, you know, CRTC wants to rule everything. Everyone's supposed

00:32:40.060 to report how much money they get in from what sources. I wonder if that'll be in a CRTC report

00:32:47.020 soon. I wonder. I get their updates every Friday afternoon, so I'm going to have to dig into that.

00:32:52.300 Brian Lilly, thank you so much for your time today. Once again, folks, go check out his columns. He's

00:32:57.340 the senior columnist. I'm using that word nicely, Brian, because we're the same vintage. He's a senior

00:33:02.060 columnist at the Toronto Sun. He knows everybody and everything. And I'm not kidding. Go like if you

00:33:07.420 don't subscribe to his podcast, it's this orange square. OK, I listen to him every weekend. Be sure

00:33:12.620 to tune in. Brian, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. Happy Labor Day. Once again,

00:33:17.580 that was Brian Lilly. He is at the Toronto Sun. And we brought him on for many reasons, obviously,

00:33:23.180 because he's super knowledgeable and he's been in the arena for like decades. OK, so it's super

00:33:28.300 important. And it's really important to keep an ear cocked on what the mainstream media is doing and

00:33:35.260 saying. And Brian is that great diplomat that goes back and forth between what we're doing right here,

00:33:41.980 independent journalism right online and traditional journalism. Luckily, it's at the Toronto Sun,

00:33:48.620 so they actually care about things like taxes and crime. Folks, it's super important, especially on

00:33:53.660 a day like today in Labor Day, where you're being told a million different messages, that you subscribe

00:33:59.100 to things like Juno News, because it's Juno News that is independent, along with the other online

00:34:05.340 journalism that is able to bring on guests like this, talk so openly about topics like this, and

00:34:11.740 ultimately hold government to account. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to click

00:34:17.420 that subscribe button, like this video, and share it with your friends.

The Candice Malcolm Show - September 01, 2025

When unions stop representing workers (ft. Brian Lilley)

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