In this episode, we take a look at how the Canadian government is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either they overpromised and now they cannot deliver, or because of a certain faction of their base, they are having to say things that alienate other Canadians from voting for them in the future.
00:00:00.160Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. As the title of this video implies, we are going to be taking a bit of a tour through multiple areas of public policy where Mark Carney's liberal government are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
00:00:15.360Either they overpromised and now they cannot deliver, or because of a certain faction of their base, they're having to say things that are then going to alienate other Canadians from voting liberal in the future.
00:00:26.640So, let's take it from the top, starting off with an issue you guys have heard about before, and that is tariffs.
00:00:35.200This is an article headline from the Globe and Mail, and they are really trying to front-run the idea that Mark Carney's liberals are being forced into having a tariff applied to Canada after the August 1st deadline.
00:00:49.160Both because there's probably not going to be a deal made by August 1st, but also because Mark Carney's liberals are probably going to cut a deal where we still have a tariff applied to us.
00:01:00.600Now, this article I read through the whole thing, they go over the idea that, well, because, you know, Japan and the European Union are going to be left with a 10 or 15% tariff,
00:01:12.360well, Canadians shouldn't be shocked if Canada ends up with a 15% tariff.
00:01:17.420But the thing is, Canada has far more leverage, and we have just not been using it whatsoever.
00:01:23.960I want to cut to another article right here that has Minister Dominic LeBlanc saying that he's encouraged after a meeting with Howard Letnick,
00:01:34.100and they go on to say that, you know, we have some common interests here, and maybe we can use that in order to get a better deal.
00:01:42.840And the article quotes a Republican senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, saying that, you know, it would be very bad for the U.S. and Canada to be at odds on trade,
00:01:53.140because, of course, many states rely heavily on exports into Canada and whatnot, or they rely on imports from Canada.
00:02:02.580But as I was reading this, I keep coming across things like, LeBlanc said complex negotiations are continuing between Canada and the United States,
00:02:11.820and that he will be returning to Washington next week.
00:02:24.960And he says, quote, Canadians expect us to take the time necessary to get the best deal we can in the interest of Canadian workers,
00:02:34.360LeBlanc said outside the Dirksen Senate office building in Washington.
00:02:37.660Quote, so we are only going to be in a position to accept a deal where the prime minister decides that it is the best deal we can get in the interest of Canadian workers in the Canadian economy.
00:02:46.560Well, if these guys cared about the Canadian economy, they would be putting supply management on the table,
00:02:54.020saying that we will either eliminate our supply management system or we will heavily modify it in order to allow some U.S. states
00:03:02.880to be able to send dairy products into Canada, poultry, and the rest.
00:03:08.140We could easily get down to zero tariff where we actually ended up trying to remove any barriers between the two countries,
00:03:15.380because we actually do have a lot of leverage on the Trump administration.
00:03:20.020He, his administration, has a lot of Republican Congress people up for re-election in 2026.
00:03:27.840Naturally, everyone in the House of Representatives of the U.S. has to run every two years,
00:03:32.440senators have to run every six years, and of course the president is up for grabs every four years.
00:03:36.940So Congress is at real risk in some of these border states or any of the states that have heavy exports to Canada.
00:03:44.260Many states have higher exports into Canada than they have to any other individual state.
00:03:50.360And so if we basically just make a deal to lower prices heavily in the United States by opening up the barriers fully,
00:03:57.780we could actually get a lot good out of this.
00:04:00.160Plus, supply management isn't even good for Canada.
00:04:03.600The example I've been using recently is the one that Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has been using.
00:06:27.700The problem is he's not doing a good thing.
00:06:31.420So it says here, union claims Prime Minister broke promise to cap, not cut public services.
00:06:40.600The sub-headline is the Liberal government is looking to cut most departments' budgets by up to 15% over three years.
00:06:47.280And I'm just going to read a little bit of this for you guys.
00:06:50.840It says one of the largest unions representing federal public servants says it's gearing up to fight cuts that have been proposed by the Liberal government.
00:06:58.160The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, PIPSC, which represents knowledge-based professionals such as government scientists,
00:07:06.180has taken aim at Prime Minister Mark Carney's plan to find savings in government departments and agencies.
00:07:10.480Quote, let's not forget, this government ran on a promise to cap, not cut, of caps, not cuts.
00:07:16.900That promise has been torched, the union said in the news release July 18th.
00:07:21.040Quote, these aren't caps or efficiencies, they're deep, dangerous cuts that put jobs and critical public services at risk.
00:07:28.880Now, I want to explain why this story is not what you think it is.
00:07:33.780If Mark Carney was actually going to reduce the budgets of multiple ministries by 15%, I would be throwing a parade for him because we spend too much.
00:07:44.160Is Mark Carney actually cutting things in order to, you know, bolster the economic health of the country?
00:08:08.580And so naturally, your deficit is going to go down unless you add on even more spending than you had the previous year.
00:08:14.520But we're running a $92 billion deficit, which is the biggest deficit that we've ever had outside of 2020, which was an insane year.
00:08:23.340But it is the biggest deficit that we've ever had.
00:08:25.940And we're only cutting in government employees because we're taking that money and we are moving it to another area of government.
00:08:33.280So I do like pointing and laughing at all the public sector union workers who were going really hardcore against conservatives to only potentially have their useless positions cut.
00:08:45.180But at the same time, it's not like it's being cut for a good reason.
00:08:49.960It's being cut so we can spend money elsewhere.
00:08:52.440I'm fine with increasing defense spending.
00:08:54.520I also don't trust Mark Carney is going to spend money on defense in the right ways because technically, Trudeau was spending more money than Stephen Harper on defense.
00:09:05.000But our military got to the point where we had effectively no tanks.
00:09:58.960In health care, nobody wants to talk about cutting health care spending in British Columbia because it feels like we're taking dollars away from nurses.
00:10:07.160It feels like somebody sitting in a bed recovering is going to have like a government agent walk into their room and just start removing things to sell it to in order to take money back from the system.
00:10:17.820That's not what the system's problem is.
00:10:20.880If you take money away, that money is not coming out of hospitals.
00:10:23.820You should be slashing funds from the administration.
00:10:28.760You don't really even need to take money away.
00:10:30.860You could just basically cut the spending in B.C. health care through attrition.
00:10:36.020Just basically don't give it any increases for the next 10 years.
00:11:24.480But anyways, I want to move on to a clip of this PSAC representative taking issue with Mark Carney.
00:11:33.520Again, I like pointing and laughing at these people because a bunch of their own members are going to be screwed over by them being liberal sycophants.
00:11:40.200At the same time, the unions are still wrong.
00:11:50.900There is still a bloat in the middle of the room.
00:11:52.940He is just pushing the bloat to the sides.
00:11:55.840The bloat is less intrusive now, but the bloat still exists.
00:12:00.200Yes, we may get some more spending for defense, which I prefer over other areas of government.
00:12:05.240But we're not getting the actual fiscal house in order.
00:12:07.700And by the way, guys, if a war starts, even though I want more spending, I want a bigger military in Canada, we're really not going to be shouldering any burden, even under Mark Carney's plans.
00:12:18.760What are we going to spend more on reinforcing bridges that technically counts as war defense spending?
00:12:26.560We're going to have a few jets, which is not even equivalent to what the U.S. has.
00:12:30.240I'm fine with defense spending, but let's do it after we get the fiscal house in order, which you can do in the same year, but he doesn't want to do it.
00:12:38.120But here is the Peace Act president sounding off about this, whining about something that was obvious that eventually a government is going to have to cut some spending.
00:12:49.400So when I was speaking with an official in the Department of Finance about this yesterday, what they said to me was that this is not intended to be a job cutting exercise.
00:12:57.540They do want to rebalance the public service.
00:13:00.560This annual rate of growth of 9 percent is way outstripping GDP and revenue growth and is not seen as sustainable.
00:13:06.800But the job losses they suggested would largely come through retirement as people leave, the attrition approach.
00:13:15.480And then the prime minister has talked about using AI to make things more productive and efficient inside government.
00:13:21.520Do you buy that they can hit targets like this without big job losses?
00:13:39.520They need a good job to enable them to do that.
00:13:42.740In terms of AI, AI is great for tools, for patchwork, for doing calculations.
00:13:48.660But they can't actually do the job that someone who actually processes does.
00:13:54.680I might have the biggest fan of AI, but like, goodness, no, you can replace a lot of government jobs with AI.
00:14:00.520And that's not because AI is fantastic.
00:14:02.240It's because a lot of government labor is completely unneeded.
00:14:06.120Again, BC health care has 10 times as many administrators, people in management, people in HR, DEI, than the German health care system is 10 times more like the per capita amount of people who hold those most oftentimes completely worthless jobs are 10 times higher than the German system, where they've made it more efficient so that they only have as many administrators as they really need.
00:14:30.760Because you don't need somebody writing up reports about everything.
00:14:34.500Eventually, you're going to find out that if we just stop collecting reports on this, if we stop doing all this reporting on or some like efficiency reports, we can actually be more efficient without doing efficiency reports because we just put more people on the front lines.
00:14:47.58040% of people who work in administration in BC health care are registered nurses.
00:14:55.320I know some are probably in their 60s, don't want to go back to front lines, and some people genuinely are holding needed jobs in the administration.
00:15:03.000But let's say that you can take that 40% and even just return 15%, 20% back to the front lines.
00:15:14.860You just need to take your money and spend it on the thing that the service is supposed to provide.
00:15:20.320If you are spending on education, which is another area where we actually overspend, if you're spending on education has 50% of the money not going towards teachers, schools, janitors, principals, you're doing it wrong.
00:15:32.420This is the problem, too, actually, in Alberta schools.
00:15:35.560I've heard that 20 years ago, you'd have a principal, a vice principal, maybe a couple other administrators, people doing some management in a school.
00:15:43.640But these days, you have three vice principals.
00:16:21.420But it doesn't have to be on the backs of public sector workers.
00:16:25.120I believe that there's a way we can do this through consultation, looking at the contracting out of work that is already being done to save money.
00:16:34.560And there are solutions that we can actually propose.
00:16:39.580By the way, the union's not actually going to propose it.
00:16:42.600There's a she has an idea that there is such a thing as saving money.
00:16:47.320She's not going to say where the money can be saved.
00:16:49.520It just can't be saved on public sector workers.
00:16:51.660I guarantee you, if you held her down and you found 10 workers and they're like obviously doing nothing all day, it is club fed.
00:17:00.200They are sitting around playing Tetris, drinking coffee.
00:17:04.180Their work could be easily either just completely eliminated.
00:17:09.900The reports that they file don't actually benefit anybody.
00:17:13.080Or it could just be easily replaced by AI.
00:17:15.380If you brought that to her, I guarantee you she would refuse to say that they need to be fired.
00:17:22.560At the end of the day, I guess that's her job as a union hack is just to basically say that however many workers we have is not only good, but we probably need even more.
00:17:33.060Because the benefit to her is the more people you hire, the more power she has, the more union workers that believe the things that she says.
00:17:42.840But yeah, so I'll get back to the some of the details of how they're cutting just to give you a little bit more detail on this.
00:17:50.700Obviously, we're jumping around, so I'm not being super detailed.
00:17:53.640On July 7th, Finance Minister Philippe, Francois Philippe Champagne sent letters to ministers asking them to find 15% savings over three years in their departments.
00:18:02.840He has asked them to come up with savings of 7.5% during the 2026-2027 fiscal year, with an additional 2.5% the year after and 5% in 2028-2029.
00:18:15.100It isn't clear yet whether there will be widespread layoffs as ministers will have until the end of the summer to propose cuts to their department,
00:18:22.000but personnel costs such as salaries and benefits make up a significant chunk of department budgets.
00:18:27.860But again, this whole article doesn't really mention, as it should, that we have a $92 billion deficit, and that's new spending mostly.
00:18:40.240It's not like it was existing spending that's getting the better of us or whatever, like debt service costs are getting out of control, and so the thing's bloating.
00:18:49.820It's mostly bloating because of new things Mark Carney wants to spend on.
00:18:52.740And again, if we do not, going back to the first story, get a trade deal where we basically get tariffs down to nothing, or at least we lower taxes on our side of the border significantly.
00:19:04.440And I know Mark Carney's saying, we have middle-class tax cuts.
00:19:07.700Wow, 1% off the rate of taxes under $50,000 when you don't even pay taxes for the first $18,000?
00:20:05.020But, like, Canada doesn't give any money to Israel.
00:20:08.920And for some reason, we are telling them how to deal with terrorists on their border and constantly nitpicking them all the time.
00:20:16.340As a country that does not actually, again, do anything to actually protect people from terrorism or doesn't do anything to actually prevent deaths in different countries,
00:20:27.580Canada didn't do anything about the Druze being murdered right now in Syria.
00:21:36.280They don't get to stay as the governing force.
00:21:38.080Well, yeah, the whole point is that we will cease fire.
00:21:42.020You guys can just go slip back into the dark corners of the world, but you guys don't get to be in charge after all of this.
00:21:49.740You know, we'll let the Palestinian Authority take over or whatever, which seems more than fair because that would be like letting the SS just kind of, you know, leave without having to face military trial.
00:22:00.280As long as you stop bothering us, we will have a ceasefire.
00:22:06.140But not only is Anita Anand going after them, you will notice that in that tweet, Mark Carney had retweeted it.
00:22:12.760Mark Carney is also hitting them today himself, saying that somehow, again, they are being very, very bad in some way to the Palestinians, to the people in Gaza.
00:22:26.220I'll get into a little bit more of the details of what's going on here in a second, but it's really dishonest.
00:22:31.320Mark Carney says, Canada condemns the Israeli government's failure to prevent the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
00:22:39.340Israel controls the control of aid distribution must be replaced by comprehensive provision of humanitarian assistance led by international organizations.
00:22:49.240Many of these are holding significant Canadian funded aid, which has been blocked from delivering to starving civilians.
00:22:55.800This denial of humanitarian aid is a violation of international law.
00:23:00.560Canada calls on all sides to negotiate an immediate ceasefire in good faith.
00:23:05.360We reiterate our calls for Hamas to immediately release all the hostages and for the Israeli government to respect the territorial integrity of the West Bank and Gaza.
00:23:15.920And then he goes on to talk about a two-state solution.
00:23:32.340Hamas uploads themselves of them executing civilians because they got a hold of aid that they didn't want them to have.
00:23:38.900Some poor person ended up getting a hold of some rice and Hamas executes them on camera because don't you know that's Hamas's rice?
00:23:47.600That is why Israel, who sends in humanitarian aid themselves, has control over aid distribution, which most of it's actually coming from the United States.
00:23:57.640And the United States has no problem with the control that is being exerted because, again, they understand what's going to happen.
00:24:03.840It's like if the Red Cross was giving out aid to German civilians and just not caring whether or not the Wehrmacht or the SS was going to get a hold of it.
00:24:14.380But Mark Carney is pretending to be ignorant in order to shore up his far left flank because with the collapse of the NDP in the 2025 election, he has now inherited a bunch of NDP crazies.
00:24:26.880So he, in a certain sense, now has to act like an NDP crazy, taking issue with things that, if you actually do basic research, is not actually happening.
00:24:36.520Not Israel just being mean and not letting people have aid.
00:24:40.060In fact, a lot of the news of people starving is complete nonsense.
00:24:44.380They will take a photo of someone starving in another country and claim it's someone from Gaza.
00:24:48.700Or you'll see somebody who is legitimately looking like they are starving.
00:24:52.180But it's because they have a different medical issue and they're being held by their mother who is obviously not starving.
00:25:50.080These are just the three I noticed at the top of the day where the liberals, say, are trying to basically do this really crazy balancing act of pretending that they're fighting for Canadians on the tariffs, but they're not actually doing anything to alleviate the tariffs.
00:26:02.800Or that they want to seem like they're conservative on fiscal issues and they're making government more efficient, but they're spending $92 billion on – they have a $92 billion deficit.
00:26:25.800They're doing something to achieve a goal, but at the same time, they're doing something else that undermines the goal, and everyone's going to be rightfully upset with them.
00:26:35.260But anyways, so that's it for this video, guys.