When unions stop representing workers (ft. Brian Lilley)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
167.25255
Summary
On this episode of The Candace Malcolm Show, Candace talks to Brian Lilly, senior columnist with the Toronto Sun and host of the Full Comment podcast, about the growing role of government unions and their role in the labour movement.
Transcript
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
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,
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
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?
00:16:57.260
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
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,
00:22:15.980
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
00:30:47.260
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.
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.