Pathetic： Carney hands Ukraine $2.5 Billion despite fraud and Canada's deficit!
Episode Stats
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Summary
Mark Carney's $2.5 billion pledge to Ukraine has been widely derided, and rightly so. It comes at a time when there is a massive graft scandal going on in Ukraine and the government is trying to crack down on it.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. Never underestimate Prime Minister Mark Carney's ability to make
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stupid decisions. For some reason, to finish out the year, Carney needed to do something
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that was only ever going to get him mocked, and in this case, it is pledging $2.5 billion
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to Ukraine during a giant graft scandal that is happening in that country. Let's just get
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right into it. Here is Mark Carney speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
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about giving $2.5 billion that we do not have to them.
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Welcome. Thank you for taking this time at a crucial moment in this process.
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Under President Zelenskyy's leadership, we have the conditions, the possibility of a just and
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lasting peace. But that requires a willing Russia. And the barbarism that we saw overnight,
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the attack on Kyiv, shows just how important it is that we stand with Ukraine during this
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difficult time, and that we create the conditions for this just and lasting peace in a true reconstruction.
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And I want to underscore something that has happened in recent weeks, is that the development
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of that possibility under your leadership, and also the prospect of true prosperity for
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the Ukrainian people. I'll just finish with one point on Canada. We've provided military
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assistance, further military assistance. We're announcing today further economic assistance for
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Ukraine, two and a half billion dollars worth of economic assistance that helps unlock financing
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from the IMF, from the World Bank, from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
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to begin this process of rebuilding. We have an important bilateral meeting, and then a meeting
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virtually with our colleagues from the Coalition of the Willing East.
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So, that was a lot of nothing to get to the point where we are giving a bunch of more money to
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Ukraine. I am not even necessarily against giving money to Ukraine, but don't we have a 78 billion
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dollar deficit? And yes, you could say, well, America gives a lot of money to Ukraine, and they
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always have a massive deficit. Sure, but they also have the economic power to be able to sustain that
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high of a deficit and the massive amount of debt they have. Does America have a lot of debt? Yes,
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they do. But Canada has a lot of debt we cannot at all sustain. And so the idea we're going to take a
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78 billion dollar deficit and just place another cool 2.5 million on the top, or 2.5 billion, I mean,
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on the top as if it means nothing, is quite the thing. We, for some reason, could not find reason
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to cut wasteful spending in government in order to try and balance the budget more. Instead, rather
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than trying to take fiscally conservative measures in order to make Canada's fiscal position better,
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not only did Carney not do that, he is adding even more money on top of the entire thing.
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And as I was alluding to before, this is at the exact same time that there is a massive graft issue
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in Ukraine right now. I've read this article, so I'll sum it up for you guys here. But this is from
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CTV News. It's not from some small blog claiming it's true. Even the legacy media knows that this is true.
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The headline here reads, Ukraine Anti-Corruption Agency Tries to Raid Parliament. And if anything,
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it's like CTV News is trying to make it seem like something nefarious had happened because of the
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Anti-Corruption Agency. It's just an awkward headline. I'm not going to assume they mean
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anything by it. But what had happened is that the Ukrainian government had locked out the Anti-Corruption
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Agency from being able to come into Parliament in order to get documents and the rest because of the
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massive graft issue in government that the Ukrainian government did not want the Anti-Corruption Agency
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cracking down on. And we just gave them another $2.5 billion. I think, in fact, we have given the
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most money per capita of any country on the planet. It's ridiculous, the sorts of things that we're
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doing. And again, I reiterate, I don't even necessarily think it's wrong to give money to
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Ukraine. You could say, well, they're corrupt. Russia is extremely corrupt, too. I think that we can't
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always just take the position that, oh, my goodness, all that stuff's happening very far away.
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Who cares? The problem with that is that Russia, China, Iran, Qatar, all these sort of hostile
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foreign nations don't think anything's too far away for them to mess with. And they will always fill in
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a vacuum that the West ends up leaving. But that is a discussion that is entirely aside from the fact
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that you shouldn't be just injecting a bunch more money into Ukraine on the heels of them disallowing
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the anti-corruption agency from actually doing the investigations that they need to to crack down
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on graft. Because, in fact, it's bad for Ukraine to get a bunch of money that a lot of their
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politicians and other bureaucrats are going to steal. It's not they're going to steal 100% of it. But
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obviously, why should Canadians put up money if the Ukrainian government's not taking it seriously
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enough to actually prevent fraud from eating away large portions of it? They had said that around
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100 million dollars of previous aid packages had effectively been stolen by members of the
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Ukrainian government, including elected officials. And we're just kind of, I guess, going to ignore
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all that. This came out on December 18th, by the way. And now on December 27th, we are just giving
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them more money nine days later. No questions asked. If anything, it would be good. It would be
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productive to kind of sit Vladimir Zelensky down and say, I want these problems solved,
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then we'll give you money. If you did that, I would have far more respect for you. But Carney's
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just trying to make himself look good in comparison to Donald Trump, because Donald Trump per capita
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isn't giving as much money. But who cares what the per capita is? America still gives way more money
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than Canada has ever given. So the whole idea that Carney's trying to like one up Donald Trump with
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Ukrainian aid is just patently silly. We should just be kind of leaving the whole situation alone,
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since we don't even have anything useful to give Ukraine. We do not have a weapons industry. Our
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defense industry has absolutely cratered under Justin Trudeau, and it's not being revived fast
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enough by Mark Carney to make a difference. And the U.S. actually does have weapons to send them.
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It's like, what are we doing? Sending them like food? Sending them other economic resources?
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Maybe it's a loan and they'll pay us back. That's,
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fine. But again, how about Mark Carney cuts the Canadian federal budget, massively reduces the
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deficit, and then part of the savings can go to the Ukrainians. Maybe have a small foreign aid
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package that you send them after you find billions of other dollars to cut and money to give back to
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Canadian taxpayers. Again, I know there's lots of people out there who hate all foreign aid because
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it feels like an affront to the country that's giving money to others. It is a good diplomatic tool
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at times. You have to use it sparingly, but Mark Carney's not using it sparingly. He's not doing a little
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bit of it for diplomatic reasons or for world defense reasons. He's doing it for virtue signaling
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reasons, and that's why this entire thing is so stupid. We have a $78 billion deficit. Somehow he could only
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find enough money to take 1% off of the rate of taxes for the first $50,000 of Canadian income.
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That's all he could find for Canadians. 1% tax cut under $50,000. For Ukraine, $2.5 billion. It's
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obviously stupid. I don't know how they end up being able to square the circle that they can't
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find a way of cutting more taxes for Canadians, but they can find $2.5 billion for Ukraine. In fact,
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you could actually do both. You would have to cut all of the stupid other services that the government
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is operating that we don't need, a lot of the social service spending that we do not need,
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like school lunches. Yes, it sounds compassionate providing people school lunches, but the problem
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is if you are providing parents money to be able to get their kids school lunch, couldn't you just
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give those parents a bigger tax cut so that they could afford to pay for their own kids' lunch for
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school? This is why I hate liberal programs. Every time they come out with one pretending to meet a
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need, it is really just them trying to put a band-aid over a problem that they themselves
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caused. But of course, we have $2.5 billion more for Ukraine here. It's absolutely stupid.
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And I have ranted on long enough already for this video. You guys don't need all the details. I could
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read you that CTV News article. Again, the gist is just the anti-corruption agency was trying to
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investigate the government for politicians effectively pocketing money through their own corporations by
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sending foreign aid to different businesses that they had a stake in that were not actually really
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fulfilling anything. You understand it. It's typical kind of Eastern European, like fiscal
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corruption, the sort of thing that you would see all the time in Ukraine, Russia, places like Moldova,
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places where there is just not that sort of like, I guess, Western democratic ethos where politicians have
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to be somewhat transparent. Like I know our politicians in Canada are not transparent, but
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compared to Eastern European politicians outside of places like Poland, it's absolutely horrific.
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But anyways, that should be it for me today, guys. Hopefully you didn't mind this little quickie video.
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If you do like it, make sure to like the video, subscribe, leave a comment. And if you want to support the
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