Liberal Senators snub Carney and join Conservatives!
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Summary
Two more liberal senators crossed the floor and joined the conservative Senate caucus, which is led by Conservative Senator Leo Housakis. What does it mean for the future of the Liberal agenda in Canada? And why did they do it?
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. A story that may have gone under the radar for you in this last week
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has been the story of two liberal senators choosing to cross the floor and join the
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conservative senate caucus. Or I guess I mean to say they were independent senators who joined
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the conservative caucus because former prime minister Justin Trudeau had this strange habit
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of appointing his senators not as liberals but as independents and they would go join the
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independent caucus which made Justin Trudeau seem very moderate and centrist even though
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many of his senate picks were to the left of the typical liberal member of parliament.
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Now it seems two of the more moderate liberals are just sick of the way that the liberals do things
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and now they're choosing to go sit with the conservatives I guess to retain some level of
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dignity in their political careers. So these senators are Senator David Richard Adam Richards
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for New Brunswick as well as Senator Mary Jane McCallum both I believe Trudeau appointments at
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least the one David Adam Richards is a Trudeau appointment and now sitting over in the conservative
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senate caucus which is being led by Senator Leo Housakis. Again this isn't like the biggest
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coup on the planet because the senate oftentimes is a rubber stamp for whoever is in government
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but it is a telling that as a senator who doesn't really have to do anything you still are not
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comfortable being with the other liberals in the senate and now you want to go sit with the
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conservatives. Here's a quote from the National Post that they got from David Adam Richards that I
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think is very elucidating on his mindset when he was crossing and it probably is the exact sort of
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way that also Jane McCallum was or Mary Jane McCallum was also thinking when she moved over
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but what he said David Adam Richards is quote for years so many of the concerns I and others had about
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our country were dismissed by an insular self-absorbed government with almost blind indifference
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to ordinary men and women quote Richards and then he went on to say now the liberals are insisting on
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policies that certain senators pleaded for and were so often ridiculed and refused and yeah so he then
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basically goes on from uh to say in other statements that the liberals were very obviously
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plagiarizing ideas from the conservatives and that if they're going to just openly plagiarize
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Tory policies then he may as well go and join the conservatives who are actually championing the
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ideas that are getting passed and so what I also think went on here because he never left under
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Trudeau he's leaving under Mark Carney possibly because some of the senders were seeing what would
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happen once Mark Carney took over for Justin Trudeau was there going to be a real change in leadership
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style was the government going to change priorities like David Adam Richards had highlighted are they going
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to talk about the things that actually matter to ordinary men and women and not really if you look
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at the current liberal agenda it's pretty much just microwave Justin Trudeau stuff with maybe Mark Carney
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having a little bit more confidence in driving towards their policy goals which is not even necessarily
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a good thing because many of their policy goals are terrible look at Bill C-3 for a prime example
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let's just give citizenships to anyone who spent three years in Canada and has a citizenship even if
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it's not three consecutive years of being here back to back as long as they're here for you know a couple
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months here and there and they have a citizenship they should be able to pass Canadian citizenship
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onto their children even if they're being born overseas and that person has no intention of coming back to
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Canada just an awful awful policy increasing the industrial carbon tax the carbon border adjustment
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all this is absolutely ridiculous and so again we'll probably have to see a little bit more of what
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these senders say over the coming days but this has been a development over the last week there could
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be more senders coming over from here because again I genuinely just think there's a lot of people
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in the liberal senate caucus or independent caucus who aren't full-on leftists who want to make sure that
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people don't think that they're like complete you know ideologues and that they can actually you
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know like they have far broader horizons than the very metropolitan progressive politics of the liberal
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party and at the end of the day ideology doesn't matter when we're just trying to solve things like
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inflation when we need to lower taxes unless you're just a full-on zealot for the liberals and you just
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believe in their very high tax high spending subsidy agenda you know anti-oil and gas agenda at some
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point even someone who's like a pretty consistent liberal will have to say like guys you know people
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can't make ends meet maybe we should lower taxes but now I want to move on to another thing that the
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liberals are doing right now that I think highlights again why their appeal is going to be very short
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lived right now their numbers are up obviously they just won government so they're in a bit of a
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honeymoon right now but they're pushing this modular home idea which could have some limited success
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sure as long as you put anything into the ground that people can live in it is going to take some
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pressure off the housing market but I think something like this in the long run is going to be viewed as
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one of those key insults to Canadians one of those kind of political generation defining insults that
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at a time when young Canadians couldn't afford homes they basically started pitching the idea of having
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prefabricated two-room houses that can be put up for people in order to satisfy them this isn't exactly
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what your parents were getting back in the 60s 70s 80s and 90s but now you have to put up with
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literally living in a cheddar box Mr. Speaker one of the policies the Prime Minister campaigned on
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was building modular housing that is a way to get more homes built faster and we know that by
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removing barriers to internal trade in our country we can get a modular housing industry going in our
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country that is one of the solutions to the housing crisis I hope the members opposite will be
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constructive and support this important legislation
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Mr. Speaker my generation refuses to live in a shipping container
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a very good way of putting it from Jacob Mantle here and I think that is something again that is
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kind of going to define why this is going to be a very short-lived policy win for the liberals even
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if they start getting a lot of these modular homes built they're basically bribing people the idea is
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they don't want to get rid of all the regulations that make it difficult to build they don't really
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want to lower overall taxes although they are stealing the conservative idea of removing the
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GST on new homes but they don't really want to change the current government structure so instead
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they'll just give you less home that you can purchase to technically make it cheaper even though
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per square foot these homes are costing way more than they should back in the day it didn't cost very
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much to be able to build quite large homes and we're not in the point in Canada where we can't
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build large homes anymore like oh we're just too big or where you know we're in here like tooth and
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jowl or whatever we're like way too packed in so we need smaller houses if they just made it easier to
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build cities could easily expand old houses could be torn down and large houses could be put on their
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or mostly empty lots we don't need to descend into building you know six plexes and modular homes to
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do what we could do easier in the 1950s and 60s of just getting regulations out of the way blanket
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approving an area for building and just getting it done but i'll go back to jacob mantel here uh keeping in
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his lead up my generation refuses to live in a shipping container
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oxford economics reports yesterday that toronto's housing market ranks among the worst in the world
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for affordability at the same time mortgage delinquency rates in toronto are higher than at
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any time during the pandemic the financial burden is suffocating the next generation of home buyers
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and history has shown us mr speaker if you fail to plan you are planning to fail a budget is a plan
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mr speaker so my question to the prime minister is when will canadians see one that's another good
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point that that reminds me of something else i want to talk about with the budget although the
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conservatives have been bringing up a lot so it's hard to miss this as a a key uh issue right now
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that the liberals are promising a lot of stuff that they do not have the budget for and when i say
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they don't have the budget for it i mean they copied and pasted justin trudeau's budget from 2024
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into 2025 they have very few cost savings that they found yeah i guess they don't need to send
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out the consumer carbon tax rebates so that saves them like a small bit of money but they also got
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rid of consumer carbon tax that was paying for those rebates uh and at the same time they're jacking
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up the industrial carbon tax but not giving out rebates so basically the government is now just
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bringing in that revenue for itself and not even cutting people checks anymore but the liberals
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are promising things like these modular home programs and they're going to now raise our gdp
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spending on the military to two percent of our gdp but we don't have a spending plan that bakes that
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stuff in because again we copied and pasted trudeau's plan from 24 into 2025 but then we're going to be
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increasing military spending from like 1.2 or 1.3 percent of gdp up to two percent that's not
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something that we have budgeted right now so our current budget could well easily pass 600 billion
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650 billion this year because these are big spending items that are not baked into the previous budget
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that they're proposing spending for 10 years ago canada's defense spending fell to less than one
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percent of gdp it has since doubled in cash terms but it's still not close enough to face these mounting
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risks he's kind of side swiping stephen harper here because yes in the last year of uh stephen harper's
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like leadership of the country our gdp spending on the military fell to like 0.8 or something like
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that and then it had been almost doubled by trudeau the problem is the spending wasn't the problem we
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should be spending more it's the allocation so when he's proposing as he's going to get to here
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of spending two percent of gdp on the military we don't really have any way of absorbing that properly
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into you know tanks jets arms you know artillery because we currently spend more than we did
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under harper but under harper we actually had a functioning military and under justin trudeau with
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far more spending our military has mostly turned into an hr department that sometimes that has a few
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guns lying around the brave women and men who are protecting our sovereignty do not have the
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resources they need for a riskier world our military infrastructure and equipment have aged hindering
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our military preparedness I give an example or two only one of our four submarines is seaworthy less
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than half our maritime fleet and land vehicles are operational more broadly we're too reliant on the
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united states and so for all those reasons I'm announcing today that Canada will achieve
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nato's two percent of gdp target this year half a decade ahead of schedule but again this isn't even
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part of the current budget we his spending bill he's put forward the oic uh the order and council 33
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billion that he signed himself over doesn't include this two percent I'm all for getting to two percent
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but I'd also want to cut wasteful spending and cut taxes at the same time which is totally doable but
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he doesn't want to do those other two things so he's just going to jack up spending on the military
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with no real plan on spending it again he was the economic advisor for trudeau for five straight years
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he could have stuck his finger in more pies than just the economy somehow when he was around for five
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years he wasn't able to influence things enough to actually put some money towards the military to create
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jobs you know this is during covid you could have even said well we want to make sure those submarines
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are seaworthy so we're gonna throw a bunch of our covid money towards them to create jobs for people
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to repair them and get them up to the you know to that to that seaworthy level we could have done that
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but he never did it at the time he never suggested it there was no action taken on it under trudeau
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when he was around and a heavy influence on the government so I don't really trust he's doing anything now
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other than creating a jobs program that isn't actually going to get make the military any better
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off it'll it will but I don't think to the amount of money that we're spending we're not going to be
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getting good bang for our buck just as we were under Stephen Harper where the amount of money we put
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forward was actually going towards the right things and now under trudeau with far more spending we were
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not getting any of the right things so I don't think taking what we currently spend and then jacking it up
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to two percent is going to be actually beneficial at least in the short to medium term I think that
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it's going to take this government quite a long time to actually sort itself out because if you
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think these guys are going to cut the worthless uh jobs inside the military and shift back to actual
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equipment and uh soldiery you're out of your minds these people are totally fine with the military
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being a repository for you know people in HR and management and bureaucracy anyways so that should
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be it for me today guys I do want to quickly plug something because I mentioned it yesterday but I
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kind of want to mention it uh from here on out I'm not going to say it every video but if you live in the
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city of Calgary I have a link below in the description as well as pinned to the top the comments
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for Sonia Sharp's mayoral website make sure you sign up for a lawn sign if you live in Calgary because
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we actually need a conservative mayor and Sonia Sharp is the most conservative person who can actually
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win running for the mayoralship so make sure you sign up for that I've had people reach out to me and
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say like well Jeff Davison is a conservative not really you read his website and he won't even commit
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to cutting spending he's just saying I'm going to freeze taxes what do you mean freeze taxes because even if
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you freeze the rate taxes will still go up because people's home values go up over time and your
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property tax rate is based on the home value that is the weaselly way that previous mayors have
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actually raised the amount of tax that you're paying by just re-evaluating your house upward very
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aggressively you know even kind of going over what your house is probably really worth in order to
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extract more dollars from you I think a new mayor needs to actually reduce the rate so even
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if your house value goes up you're paying less in property taxes this is a bit of a Calgary rabbit
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hole but again I encourage people if you live in the city preemptively sign up to get a lawn sign you're
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probably not going to get it right away mayoral election is until October but do it now because
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we need to box out all these fake conservatives so that we have someone who can actually win
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in the mayor mayor's race rather than scrambling in the last month and trying to get behind one guy which
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never works you get behind someone early and you stick to them and I'm getting behind
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Sonia Sharp who I think is probably the best person for the job I'm going to break down some polling
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for the Calgary mayoral race because that's actually an interesting thing to dissect polling on people
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have been trying to put around polls showing well see Jeff Davison has like 14 percent and Sonia Sharp
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only has seven okay the problem with that is the person leading those polls is like at 25 percent
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and it's Jeremy Farkas and behind him is Jody Gondek is it because those two people are good candidates
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no it's because we're so far out polling just says whose name do you recognize and that's it
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Gondek didn't even have the highest name recognition in the 2021 race but she won because her campaign
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was well run Jeremy Farkas had the highest name recognition last time and got clobbered arguably
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Jeff Davison had as had higher name recognition than Jody Gondek did and he also got clobbered
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because they ran bad campaigns because they weren't really that conservative so conservatives didn't
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turn out for them so we're trying to change it this year make sure you buy a lawn sign not buy a lawn sign
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sign up for a lawn sign if you live in Calgary so anyways that's it for me today guys see you later